Category: Energy/Environment

Zimbabwe Government Would Rather Starve Citizens than Allow GMO Food

(p. A15) Chikombedzi, Zimbabwe
My country’s government would rather see people starve than let them eat genetically modified food.
That’s the only conclusion to draw from the announcement in February that Zimbabwe will reject any food aid that includes a genetically-modified-organism ingredient–such as grains, corn and other crops made more vigorous or fruitful through GMO breeding. The ban comes just as Zimbabweans are suffering from our worst drought in two decades and up to three million people need emergency relief.
“The position of the government is very clear,” said Joseph Made, the minister of agriculture. “We do not accept GMO as we are protecting the environment from the grain point of view.”
In other words, my country–which can’t feed itself–will refuse what millions around the world eat safely every day in their breakfasts, lunches and dinners as a conventional source of calories. It doesn’t matter whether the aid arrives as food for people or feed for animals. Our customs inspectors will make sure that no food with GMOs reaches a single hungry mouth.

For the full commentary, see:
NYASHA MUDUKUTI. “We May Starve, but at Least We’ll Be GMO-Free; Unlike the Europeans we copied, Zimbabwe can’t afford such an unscientific ideological luxury.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., March 11, 2016): A15.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 10, 2016.)

Sanctimoniously Environmental “Honest Company Inc.” Is Dishonest

(p. A1) In less than four years, the Honest Company Inc. surged to a $1.7 billion private valuation thanks to its marketing of cleaning supplies, diapers and other consumer products that it says are safer and more ecologically friendly than other brands.
The company, co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, is challenging giants such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Clorox Co. with a guarantee that its offerings don’t contain what it says are harsh chemicals found in many mainstream products. One of the primary ingredients Honest tells consumers to avoid is a cleaning agent called sodium lauryl sulfate, or SLS, which can be found in everyday household items from Colgate toothpaste to Tide detergent and Honest says can irritate skin. The company lists SLS first in the “Honestly free of” label of verboten ingredients it puts on bottles of its laundry detergent, one of Honest’s first and most popular products.
But two independent lab tests commissioned by The Wall Street Journal determined Honest’s liquid laundry detergent contains SLS.

For the full story, see:
SERENA NG. “Trendy Detergent Caught in Spin Cycle.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., March 11, 2016): A1 & A2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 10, 2016, and has the title “Laundry Detergent From Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. Contains Ingredient It Pledged to Avoid.”)

Rates to Insure Against Global Warming Catastrophes Are FALLING

The “super-cat” insurance referred to below by Warren Buffett is the part of the reinsurance business that insures other insurance companies against the occurrence of very large (super) catastrophes (cat).

(p. A9) Up to now, climate change has not produced more frequent nor more costly hurricanes nor other weather-related events covered by insurance. As a consequence, U.S. super-cat rates have fallen steadily in recent years, which is why we have backed away from that business. If super-cats become costlier and more frequent, the likely–though far from certain–effect on Berkshire’s insurance business would be to make it larger and more profitable.

As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up nights. As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries.

Source of quote from Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder letter:
“Notable & Quotable: Warren Buffett on Climate.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 1, 2016): A9.
(Note: the online version of the quotes from Buffett has the date Feb. 29, 2016.)

Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway stockholders can be found at:
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2015ar/2015ar.pdf

Electricity from Cow Manure Failing Despite Administration Support

(p. B1) Wisconsin dairy farmer Art Thelen was full of optimism a decade ago when he joined a growing group of U.S. farmers investing in technology that turns livestock manure into electricity.
The systems promised to curb air pollution from agriculture, generate extra revenue and–in no small feat–curtail odors that waft for miles in much of farm country.
“It was a great idea, and when it worked well, it was wonderful,” Mr. Thelen said.
Now the 61-year-old is among a group of farmers who recently have shut down their manure-to-energy systems–known as anaerobic digesters–or scrapped plans to build them because of the prolonged slump in natural-gas prices and higher-than-expected maintenance costs that made the systems less economical.

For the full story, see:
DAVID KESMODEL. “Energy Prices Steer Farmers Away From Manure Power.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Feb. 19, 2016): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 18, 2016, and has the title “F.D.A. Regulator, Widowed by Cancer, Helps Speed Drug Approval.”)

Obama Says Stimulus Worked at Battery Plant Where CEO Remains “Frustrated” at Losses

(p. A12) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — President Obama on Friday [February 26, 2016] used a visit to a high-technology battery plant in Florida to argue that the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies he signed into law during his first days in office had bolstered the economy, transformed the nation’s energy sector, and positioned the United States for a strong rebound.
But Mr. Obama’s trip to the Saft America factory here, opened in 2011 with a $95.5 million investment from the Department of Energy, also highlighted the challenges that have tempered the economic recovery and the difficulty that the president has had in claiming credit for it.
. . .
After touring the facility and watching a large robot named Wall-E assembling one of the batteries, the president called the factory “tangible evidence” that his stimulus package had worked and said that the economy was better off for it. “We took an empty swamp and turned it into an engine of innovation,” he said.
That engine, though, has sputtered as it has struggled to start here. Saft, based in Paris, announced last week that it was reducing the factory’s value because it had still not gained profitability in the competitive lithium-ion battery market. Saying he was “frustrated,” the company’s chief executive projected the plant might not be profitable for a few more years.

For the full story, see:
JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS. “Obama Praises Stimulus at Battery Plant.” The New York Times (Sat., FEB. 27, 2016): A12.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 26, 2016, and has the title “Obama Points to Florida Factory as Evidence That Stimulus Worked.”)

Ethanol Adds Carbon Dioxide to Atmosphere

(p. A9) Before long, it may be politically safe to take a wise step and eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
. . .
Today, ethanol’s downsides have become clear.
First, it increases the cost of driving. Current ethanol blends provide fewer miles per gallon, so drivers pay more to travel the same distance. According to the Institute for Energy Research, American drivers have paid an additional $83 billion since 2007 because of the RFS.
Second, ethanol adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than it eliminates by replacing fossil fuels. The Environmental Working Group says that “corn ethanol is an environmental disaster.” The group explains: “The mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline has driven farmers to plow up land to plant corn–40 percent of the corn now grown in the U.S. is used to make ethanol. When farmers plow up grasslands and wetlands to grow corn, they release the carbon stored in the soil, contributing to climate-warming carbon emissions.” And then there is the carbon emitted in harvesting, transporting and processing the corn into ethanol.

For the full commentary, see:
MERRILL MATTHEWS. “The Corn-Fed Albatross Called Ethanol.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Jan. 6, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 5, 2016.)

Locally Sourced Chipotle’s Swift, Severe and Surprising Fall from Grace

(p. B1) Chipotle emphasizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients. It was the first major chain to reject genetically modified food. Chipotle has embodied the notion of doing well by doing good.
So it may not be too surprising that its fall from grace has been swift and severe.
Since July, when five customers became ill with the E. coli bacterium after eating at a Chipotle restaurant in Seattle — the first food-borne illness connected to the chain since 2009 — Chipotle has been confronted by a rash of outbreaks. At least six incidents have occurred over the last six months.
“I’ve been involved in every food-borne illness outbreak, small and large, since 1993,” said Bill Marler, a Seattle-based lawyer who specializes in representing victims of food-borne illnesses and has filed several recent cases against Chipotle. “I can’t think of any chain, restaurant or food manufacturer who’s ever reported that many outbreaks in just six months. Underlying that has to be a lack of controls.”

For the full story, see:
JAMES B. STEWART. “Common Sense; New Chipotle Mantra: Safe (and Fresh) Food.” The New York Times (Fri., JAN. 15, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 14, 2016, and has the title “Common Sense; Chipotle’s New Mantra: Safe Food, Not Just Fresh.”)

“Recyclers Around the Country Face Losses”

(p. B1) . . . recycling is a commodities business. The paper, metal, plastic and glass that recyclers collect, sort and sell competes against so-called virgin materials. And right now, many commodities are cheap.
Abundant oil is the latest headache for recyclers. New plastics are made from the byproducts of oil and gas production. So as plentiful fossil fuels saturate global markets, it has become cheaper for the makers of water bottles, yogurt containers and takeout boxes to simply buy new plastics. This, in turn, is dragging down the price of recycled materials, straining every part of the recycling industry.
In Montgomery, Ala., Infinitus Energy opened a $35 million recycling center in 2014. By last October, it was hemorrhaging (p. B5) money and shut down. Montgomery’s recyclables are now going to a landfill, and a once booming local business, United Plastic Recycling, filed for bankruptcy last year.
. . .
. . . as recyclers around the country face losses, they are passing their costs along to cities and counties. Increasingly, local governments are receiving nothing at all for their recyclables, or even having to pay companies to accept them.
Last year, the city government in Washington, D.C., paid Waste Management $1.37 million to accept the recyclables it collected from residents.

For the full story, see:
DAVID GELLES. “Losing a Profit Motive: A Skid in Oil Prices Pulls the Recycling Industry Down With It.” The New York Times (Sat., FEB. 13, 2016): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 12, 2016, and has the title “Skid in Oil Prices Pulls the Recycling Industry Down With It.”)

Arbitrary Two Degree Climate Threshold Is Not Backed by Research

(p. A1) Many researchers have argued that a rise in the planet’s average global air temperature of two degrees or more above preindustrial levels would usher in catastrophic climate change. But many others, while convinced the planet is warming, say two degrees is a somewhat arbitrary threshold based on tenuous research, and therefore an impractical spur to policy action.
“It emerged from a political agenda, not a scientific analysis,” said Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at University College London. “It’s not a sensible, rational target because the models give you a range of possibilities, not a single answer.”
Policy makers tend to assume the two-degree target expresses a solid scientific view, but it doesn’t. The exhaustive reports published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are considered to be the most comprehensive analysis of the science of global warming. Yet the two-degree limit isn’t mentioned in a single IPCC report.
. . .
(p. A12) William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, appears to have been the first to mention the two-degree figure in a paper published in 1977. But rather than making a robust scientific calculation based on the physics of climate change, his paper argued that a rise of two or more degrees would put the earth’s climate outside the observable range of temperature over the last several hundred thousand years.
. . .
In October 2014, David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, and Charles Kennel, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., wrote a sharp critique of the two-degree benchmark in the journal Nature.
They argued that the yardstick was scientifically weak because it captured only a tiny portion of the planet’s climate profile. More than 93% of the extra heat, they noted, ends up in the ocean and not in the atmosphere.

For the full story, see:
GAUTAM NAIK. “Scientists Dispute 2-Degree Model Guiding Climate Talks.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 30, 2015): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 29, 2015, and has the title “Scientists Dispute 2-Degree Model Guiding Climate Talks.”)

The Victor and Kennel critique mentioned above, is:
Victor, David G., and Charles F. Kennel. “Climate Policy: Ditch the 2 °C Warming Goal.” Nature 514, no. 7520 (Oct. 2, 2014): 30-31.

“The Circus Is Gone, But the Clowns Stayed”

(p. A1) SHCHYOLKINO, Crimea — When residents in this typical Soviet factory town voted enthusiastically to secede from Ukraine and to become Russians, they thought the chaos and corruption that made daily life a struggle were a thing of the past.
Now that many of them are being forced to cook and boil drinking water on open fires, however, they are beginning to reconsider.
There has been no steady electricity supply in this hard-hit town since Nov. 22, when protesters in Ukraine blew up the lines still feeding Crimea with most of its electric power. The bigger towns and cities are only marginally better off.
Yet, people here are not sure whom to blame more for their predicament: the Crimean Tatar activists and Ukrainian nationalists who cut off Crimea’s link to the Ukrainian power grid or the local government officials who claimed to have enough power generators stored away to handle such an emergency.
“The circus is gone, but the clowns stayed,” said Leonid Zakharov, 45, leaning on a wooden cane. Moscow may have purged Ukrainian authority, he said, but many of the same corrupt and incompetent officials remained in office and life was only slightly less chaotic than before.
. . .
As often happens in Russia, some blame Washington rather than Moscow or Kiev.
“If it wasn’t for the Americans none of it could have happened. The Tatars, who are supported by the United States, would not do a thing,” said Tatyana Bragina, 57, an energetic woman who also once worked construction at a nearby, unfinished nuclear plant.
“Please write that we are not desperate. On the contrary, we are full of joy,” Ms. Bragina said, standing near a black iron kettle boiling away in the courtyard of her apartment block.

For the full story, see:
IVAN NECHEPURENKO. “Months After Russian Annexation, Hopes Start to Dim in Crimea.” The New York Times (Weds., DEC. 2, 2015): A4 & A12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 1, 2015, and has the title “Months After Russian Annexation, Hopes Start to Dim in Crimea.”)

Trophy Hunting Preserves Endangered Species

(p. A1) Despite intensifying calls to ban or restrict trophy hunting in Africa after the killing of a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe, most conservation groups, wildlife (p. A8) management experts and African governments support the practice as a way to maintain wildlife. Hunting, they contend, is part of a complex economy that has so far proven to be the most effective method of conservation, not only in Africa but around the world as well.
While hunting is banned in government parks here in South Africa, animals inside their boundaries are routinely sold to game ranches when their populations are considered excessive, generating money to maintain habitats and fight poachers.
And because trophy hunting is legal in private game reserves, the animals end up fetching higher prices than they would in being killed for food or other reasons, conservationists contend. Lion hunts, one of the most lucrative forms of trophy hunting, bring in between $24,000 and $71,000 per outing on average across Africa, according to a 2012 study. In southern Africa, the emergence of a regulated trophy hunting industry on private game ranches in the 1960s helped restore vast stretches of degraded habitats and revive certain species, like the southern white rhinoceros, which had been hunted almost to extinction, conservationists say.
A similar shift occurred in the United States decades earlier when the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 allocated the proceeds from hunting to bring back lands and animals, they argue.
“There’s only two places on the earth where wildlife at a large scale has actually increased in the 20th century, and those are North America and southern Africa,” said Rosie Cooney, a zoologist who is the chairwoman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group. “Both of those models of conservation were built around hunting.”

For the full story, see:
NORIMITSU ONISHI. “Outcry for Cecil the Lion Could Undercut Conservation Efforts.” The New York Times (Tues., AUG. 11, 2015): A1 & A8.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 10, 2015.)