If anyone doubts that the world’s environment is in a state – if not of crisis then of grave concern – I suggest attending a major scientific conference. Among the sobering assessments offered at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held this past weekend in Chicago, came from climate scientist Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “The actual emissions of fossil fuel carbon dioxide since 2000 are outside the entire envelope of possibilities considered by the IPCC’s 4th Assessment released in 2007,” Field told us.  Atmospheric CO2, he explained, has been rising 3.5% annually between 2000 and 2007, compared with annual increases of 0.9% in the 1990s.

“We’re looking at a future climate beyond anything we’ve actually considered,” said Field. “This is very serious.”

But as greenhouse gas and sea levels rise, there seems to be another trend afoot. As the news from the field becomes more disturbing, an increasing number of scientists are becoming outspoken about the need to engage – not just in technical solutions but also in policy decisions that will make solutions possible. Science and policy have traditionally remained very separate, so this development is striking.

For example, several years ago while interviewing a senior EPA scientist, I asked if what she had learned about a particular substance’s toxicity made her think its use should be reconsidered. Before the scientist could answer, an EPA PR person on a third line cut in saying, “Not her area!” I had strayed to the realm of policy.

Now the message coming from many scientists is that we no longer have the luxury of this hands-off approach. “I’m not going to hang up my citizenship at the Senate hearing room door because I’m a scientist,” Stanford University biology professor Stephen Schneider said to a standing room only crowd at a AAAS symposium. During a session on deserts, an Egyptian scientist stressed the need to fill the gap between science and policy so that his country can effectively link climate issues with agriculture, poverty, food and societal security. Marine biologists emphasized the need to fold climate science into fisheries management and economic development programs, particularly for countries that depend on fisheries for food and financing. And scientists considering the future of agriculture and biofuels production outlined starkly how imperative it is to mesh science and policy to avoid exacerbating multiple environmental and social problems.

This doesn’t mean scientists are becoming advocates and abandoning professional objectivity and skepticism – and my observations are, of course anecdotal. Yet it does, I think, speak to the urgency of what we’re now facing in terms of climate change and all its ramifications. And if the impassioned plea Al Gore made during his AAAS talk is answered, this trend will continue.

“I believe strongly that scientists can no longer in good conscience accept the division between the work you do and the civilization you live in,” said Gore. “The stakes have never been higher,” he said. “I’m asking you for help.”

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

On a flight to Tokyo in September as the Chinese melamine tainted milk scare was breaking, I found myself looking suspiciously at the powdered creamer that came with my coffee. “Where does this stuff come from,” I asked the flight attendant who assured me galley supplies were loaded in the U.S., not in Asia. At my final destination, Manila, tabloid headlines shouted, “Milk Victims” and “Tainted Flour?” By the time I was on my way home, candy was being recalled throughout Asia. Chocolate bars at an airport newsstand suddenly looked ominous. A month later, melamine – a nitrogen-based industrial chemical used in plastics and fertilizers and, illegally, to boost the protein content of dairy products and processed food and the culprit in last summer’s poison pet food scandal – was being detected in numerous grocery products. On November 20, Reuters reported over 1000 Chinese infants still hospitalized for ailments resulting from the tainted milk. And melamine’s now turning up in infant formula sold in the U.S.

There is once again fighting in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The terrible conflict, essentially an extension of that country’s devastating ongoing civil war, is being fought in a region rich with mineral resources that include tin, cobalt, and a once obscure pair of ores, columbium and tantalum together known as coltan – all elements vital to high tech electronics. Tin is being used with silver to substitute for now widely banned lead solder. Cobalt is a key element in energy-efficient batteries, including those used in hybrid cars. Coltan is used in capacitors – tiny devices that store electricity in portable electronics like cell phones. The DRC has the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, and about 80 percent of the world’s coltan reserves, although much of what is now processed comes from Australia and Brazil.

During the high tech boom in 2000, coltan prices skyrocketed luring farmers in northern DRC to lucrative but dangerous mining work. War profiteers have been implicated in this metals trade. In response, major electronics firms and international metals companies pledged not to use Congolese coltan. The U.N. launched an investigation but its findings were revised to be less harsh and this work languished in the fall of 2001. When civil war flared in the DRC this year, Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced a bill to prohibit U.S. imports of coltan from the DRC until it can be proven that sales do not benefit groups engaged in human rights and international law violations.

In today’s global marketplace, it takes a tenacious detective to discover the source of all materials and parts that go into anything processed or manufactured, be it a candy bar or laptop. The same factory that makes chemicals to extend shelf life and add texture and flavor to snack food may well make chemicals never intended to be washed down with a glass of milk. When it comes to metals, short of a certification process like that documenting the origin of diamonds, one has to rely on voluntary assurances. These commodity markets involve many middlemen and processors so once an ore leaves a mine, it’s difficult to trace precisely. Coltan and melamine are examples of a recurring problem that will continue unless some fundamental practices change.

Auditable oversight and transparency have upfront costs but the price of ignoring such due diligence can be even more costly. Perhaps requiring accurately documented parts and materials sourcing could prompt both product design that eliminates hazards and improves labor practices.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

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On November 4, from the White House to state houses and the unsung offices of Soil & Water Conservation and Public Utility Districts, American voters elected what is likely an unprecedented number of pro-environment candidates. By Thursday of last week, the Office of the President-elect had already posted the “Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy America” plan. Among its goals are putting a million hybrid 150 mpg plug-in cars on the road by 2015, creating five million new “clean energy jobs” in the next ten years, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. The new administration also promises to double federal funding for scientific research, increase support for science education, technological research and development, and to “restore scientific integrity to the White House.” What would be a tall order in the best of times has been made even more challenging by the past eight weeks’ events.

Not only will the Obama administration take office amid the greatest economic distress perhaps since the Great Depression, but the Bush administration has also been busy issuing end-of-term regulations that will considerably increase environmental protection challenges.

Among these new rules are:

• A proposal that would make it impossible to use the Endangered Species Act to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and global warming even when they harm a listed species.

• A revision of how power plants measure their emissions that could result in greater overall emissions.

• A Bureau of Land Management plan to sell oil and gas leases on millions of acres in Utah previously off-limits to such resource extraction and approval of new uranium mining just outside Grand Canyon National Park.

• A Surface Mining Rule that could effectively eliminate a 100-foot buffer zone to protect streams from mining waste generated in mountaintop removal coal mining operations in Appalachia.

• Revision of how waste discharges from confined animal feedlot operations (often called “factory farms”) are regulated that would allow farms to decide when such permits are needed.

• An EPA proposal not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water – a contaminant toxic to the thyroid now found in hundreds of water sources in over thirty states.

• Approval of the pesticide methyl iodide to replace ozone-depleting methyl bromide, long favored by the U.S. strawberry industry. Over fifty scientists – including Nobel laureates – have written to the EPA protesting use of this powerful neurotoxin and potential carcinogen.

Environmental advocates have great expectations for what an Obama administration can achieve. But it won’t be easy. Environmental protection at a time of badly strained budgets and economic turmoil will require ingenuity and persistence – and I think, accounting for the full lifecycle costs of everything we use, including all the costs of global warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

“I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem,” says Alaska Governor Sarah Palin – What his VP pick says about McCain’s environmental policy

Upon learning that Senator John McCain had chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his vice-president my immediate thoughts were: 1) oil, 2) the New York Times photograph of a polar bear swimming in the Chukchi Sea, apparently heading towards the nearest ice some 400 miles away, and 3) what choosing Governor Palin says about a McCain administration’s energy, environmental and science policies.

The news media has immediately focused on Governor Palin’s personableness, her experience, strong “pro-life” position, NRA membership, and efforts to reform Alaska’s government corruption. Here are some other notes to consider:

With Arctic Sea ice at its lowest point since measurements began – scientists assessing Arctic conditions say what’s happening indicates we’re moving past the point of no return – under Governor Palin the State of Alaska filed suit against the Department of the Interior to stop the Endangered Species Act listing of polar bears. Alaskans don’t need other places telling us what to do, says Palin. Although she’s fished commercially, she supports the Pebble Mine – what would be North America’s largest open pit copper and gold mine – that would threaten Bristol Bay’s wild sockeye salmon run, the largest in the world.

Palin established a sub-cabinet committee on climate change but doesn’t believe global warming is caused by humans. She strongly favors oil and gas drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and has called the area under consideration “flat and barren.” Those opposed to drilling in ANWR (a group that would include former President Jimmy Carter), she labeled “extremists.” A Wall Street Journal column called her “penchant” for increased oil and gas exploration “even bigger than John McCain’s.” And in July, Palin told Investor’s Business Daily, “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem….” Palin is eager to see to see oil extraction in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas – areas now literally on the front lines of climate change. She’s been praised for standing up to big oil companies. What this entails, however, is negotiating better deals for Alaska, a state whose economy depends on oil revenue.

Palin voices respect for animals but opposed a bill that would ban aerial hunting of wolves ­- a practice authorized under her administration’s predator control policy, which includes killing of grizzly and black bear mothers and cubs, and bear-baiting – previously not allowed in Alaska. In September 2007, dozens of scientists signed a letter to Palin,  protesting these practices and urging her to re-examine the biological and ecological basis of Alaska’s predator control programs. As for science in a McCain administration, if his VP has a say as she did during her gubernatorial campaign, it would support teaching creationism alongside of evolution.

There are hard questions about energy and environment to be asked of Obama and Biden but Biden’s League of Conservation Voters ratings ranged from 88 to 96% until missed votes lowered his 2007 score to 67%. McCain’s average score is just shy of 28%. It was 0 in 2007 when he missed every environmental vote – including bills to increase energy efficiency and consider global warming’s impact on water resources (all bills Biden and Obama voted for). Meanwhile Obama’s first term rated 96% and like Biden dropped to 67% due to missed votes last year.

Governor Palin may bring fresh personal energy to the McCain ticket and she clearly relishes time in the great outdoors, but her record does not signal a fresh policy direction for Republicans on energy or the environment.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

As I was making the morning’s first cup of coffee and comforting the cat who spent the pre-dawn hours cowering during a cacophonous thunderstorm, the morning news brought a story about the organic milk that I was pouring into a mug at that very moment. Escalating grain prices are expected to prompt a steep rise in the price of dairy products – especially organic milk prices. Apparently, the more grain a cow eats, the more milk it produces. With current competition from biofuels, farmers are receiving record prices for those crops. These high prices are beginning to erode the premium organic farmers have been getting for produce grown without synthetic chemicals – prompting speculation about a jump in the price of organic milk ($8.00 a gallon was cited) and questions about the loyalty of farmers who went organic for the price they can charge and consumers who pay them.

Stories about the competition between crops for food and for biofuels have been swirling through the news all spring. Will we be putting grain and beans in our fuel tanks at the expense of the world’s food supply? Will the new demand push farmers to destroy forests to plant more fields of soy and corn? Will demand for biofuels push food prices beyond the breaking point of  average family budgets? Will the hikes in oil and gas prices bump the cost of producing and distributing these products even further beyond manageable reach?

But I wonder, where exactly is all the corn and soy we grow going? How much is going to produce soundly nutritional food and how much to corn syrup and other fillers (for processed food and livestock feed)? If we’re also shifting to bio-based materials – plastics made from corn and beans, for example – how do we put this crop use into the mix? How much does producing crops with fertilizers that are washing down rivers, prompting overgrowth of aquatic vegetation that contribute to marine dead zones – and with pesticides that are globally mobile persistent pollutants – cost in environmental health? Why should products produced with petrochemicals cost less than those produced without even at a time of record oil prices?

My little household consumes over a gallon of milk a week, which means milk percolates through my body constantly. While it’s almost impossible to know how anything else that might come along with the milk – pesticide residue, traces of antibiotics – might monkey with the workings of my cells and to exactly what end, because we know these alien agents have that ability, I’d just as soon eliminate their opportunity to do so as much as possible. Why should that choice be cost-prohibitive?

And now, over my second cup of coffee, I wonder: How do we solve these problems from a whole systems perspective rather than with repeated applications of band-aids and duct tape? How do we get the food producers, climate change, energy and public health experts all working together, devising solutions to implement now rather than when it’s too late?

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

Yesterday, the front page of The New York Times business section ran an article headlined: “Dow Chemical Raises Prices For Second Time in a Month.” Citing energy and feedstock costs, Dow raised prices for its products some 25 percent, following an increase last month of 20 percent, the largest such raises in the company’s history. A spokesman said this could affect the price of products ranging from fabric, cushions, and CD cases to car parts. The story goes on to mention similar price hikes by other chemical manufacturers and per shipment fuel surcharges. It discusses rising costs of raw materials for steel manufacturers, and mentions plastic wrap and pesticides. But nowhere does it talk about convenience. Or the string on the chicken I bought for dinner.

First the string: It was nearly 7PM by the time I got to thinking about dinner so I walked to the local market for inspiration. Although it induces guilt prompted by having learned to cook from a mother who, as far as I know, has never gotten take-out food in over fifty years of making family dinners, I bought a store-cooked chicken. They’re the same chickens raised and processed without antibiotics on all vegetarian feed within a day’s drive of my kitchen that I buy to roast myself, and less per pound than the quick-to-cook chicken breasts. When I unwrapped it I noticed the string. Birds are often trussed for roasting with string, but what disturbed me about this string was that it was stretchy. Stretchy means elastic, which means plastic, which means petrochemicals. And broiled petrochemicals are not what I want spicing up my dinner.

Being that sort of consumer – and knowing that this market encourages customer interaction – I called and spoke to the fellow in the cooked chicken department who told me the strings were made specially to be convenient. So I thought about the day’s headlines and the petrochemical mess we’re in. For in part it’s the quest for convenience that’s encouraged our endless messing about with the by-products of petroleum processing. Non-stick pans, no-iron shirts, stain-repellant upholstery, toys that float and are flexible enough for toddlers to chew, food packaging that goes right in the oven. These conveniences create markets for petrochemical-based persistent pollutants with adverse health impacts while buoying the profitability of burning greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.

I’m not advocating doing away with all synthetics or suggesting we give up lightweight, durable, aerodynamic materials, but we have some serious choices to make. An easy one I’ll make is to cook my own chicken and if I need to, reach for the cotton kitchen twine and scissors. It will be worth the wait.

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

Unintended consequences. Do we wish we knew then what we know now? I encounter the phrases often while investigating environmental and health impacts of the materials that go into consumer products. News this week reminded me why it’s time to retire these crutches, take a close look at history and consider the big picture as we try to solve our biggest environmental problems.

On the campaign trail yesterday Senator John McCain called for more nuclear power, which he calls a “proven energy source that requires exactly zero emissions.” McCain’s goal: forty-five new reactors by 2030 on the way to his desired goal of one hundred new U.S. reactors. (Senator Barack Obama has said he’s not a proponent of nuclear energy, but that it should remain an option in the mix of national energy sources.) No new nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. in over thirty years. About two dozen U.S. plants are at some stage of shutdown and decommission. Most still have fuel on site. Current estimates for new nuclear plant construction average about $15 billion per plant. This doesn’t include financial and environmental costs of raw materials extraction, safety, and waste disposal.

On the same day as McCain’s proposal, clean-up of over 50 million gallons of nuclear waste stored at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state resumed for the first time since a spill there last July of about a hundred gallons of radioactive and other hazardous waste. About 80 square miles of groundwater are contaminated there, including a mile-plus long plume near the Columbia River containing carcinogenic hexavalent chromium at levels above federal safety standards for aquatic life. The Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River north of New York City has been leaking radioactive tritium and strontium 90 since at least 2005, and nuclear waste stored at the Idaho National Laboratory is seeping towards the Snake River.

Also this week, both McCain and President Bush called for an to end the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, and the President again advocated for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile, data just posted by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center indicates that this year’s summer Arctic sea ice loss may be as great as last year’s, the greatest retreat of the Polar Ice Cap yet recorded. Throughout May, Arctic sea ice melted faster than it did during the same period last year, with thinner ice and more polynyas – leads of water – that will accelerate further melting. Melting permafrost on Alaska’s North Slope is already causing problems for drilling operations, pipelines and supporting infrastructure.

Everything we does has impacts and choices have to be made. But even in tough times, why make choices with known adverse consequences we’re already living with and that will be with us for decades to come?

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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

With gas above $4.00 a gallon, increased fuel costs pushing up prices of almost everything else, and a host of other factors conspiring to challenge household budgets, nearly everyone is figuring out how to do with less of something. Leaving aside those other factors and the great distress of coping with incomes that don’t keep pace with rising costs, high prices are pushing us to make changes that we probably should be making anyway. This is the first time since 1991 that Americans’ gasoline usage has declined during what’s considered the summer driving season. Gas prices are sending more commuters than ever to buses and trains. In terms of carbon emissions, this is all good for the environment.

Yet at the same time the federal government is mailing out tax rebates hoping that we’ll shop our way to economic recovery. The success of this so-called economic stimulus depends on the buying and selling of more stuff – the traditional measure of financial health and well-being. But the buying and selling of more stuff has not historically reduced our environmental footprint. Which brings me to a dilemma I encountered researching High Tech Trash.

The high-tech electronics industry is resource intensive. Large volumes of water, energy, and materials go into making these digital devices. In the past decade the industry has been working hard, and mostly successfully, to increase resource-efficiency and reduce waste for each product manufactured. At the same time, however, most of these companies also have increased overall production. This raises some hard questions about the products’ actual environmental footprints as measured throughout the supply chain and the equipment’s entire lifespan. Are environmental efficiencies in production reducing environmental impacts throughout the product’s entire lifecycle? How do we really measure these footprints anyway? It’s very hard to know.

Which brings me back to the neighborhood gas station’s $4.23 per gallon regular and the shopping spree the government hopes I’ll be taking. How do we encourage or even compel environmentally preferable consumer choices so they’re real and possible for everyone? How do we recast our measures of economic success so that “more” is not the only trigger of rewards and financial compensation? Personally, I’m a little leery of hair-shirt sermons exhorting readers to monastic simplicity. We all want and should be able to lead comfortable lives. I can’t answer these big questions with workable solutions this morning, but since many of us are cutting our driving in half and realizing some of our extras are just extraneous, we need to take this opportunity to keep on thinking in this direction. In fact it’s imperative that we do. We can’t afford not to.

It’s trash pick-up day on my block and when I went to put some last minute items in the yellow bins at the curb I discovered that someone had cleaned up after their dog in the rain and tossed the soggy stinky mess into my front yard. That they used napkins from the deli at our neighborhood upscale market that features organic and locally sourced food only compounded my outrage, never mind that a garbage can was within easy reach. As I hosed down and bagged the offense, the phrases “Not in my backyard,” “Not in my front yard,” ran through my head. As did something Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network – a non-profit that tracks the world travels of hazardous waste – said when we were talking about electronic waste, “Humans have this funny idea that when you get rid of something it’s gone.”

Later in the morning a reporter writing a piece on e-waste called to ask what consumers should know about where electronics collected at recycling events are being sent. “Do people have to worry,” he asked, “about their used computers, TVs, and other equipment being exported to places where it will be handled under unsafe, environmentally damaging ways?” Yes, they do.

While there are any number of electronics recyclers who ensure that nothing they collect ends up in landfills, and that all materials are handled in socially and environmentally responsible ways, and many who’ve pledged not to export any equipment for processing lest it end up in rudimentary workshops, directly exposing workers and communities toxic hazards of heavy metals and degrading or burning plastics, there are still many recyclers whose practices are hard if not impossible to verify. And the e-waste continues to be sent to developing countries where it’s handled cheaply, often unsafely and where large quantities are often dumped in open landfills that are routinely burned to reduce volume.

Meanwhile, out of sight and out of mind does not mean out of our lives. The hazardous chemicals released when e-waste is burned or dumped travel. Released into the environment – into air and water – they can end up in the air we breathe and the food we eat. A lot subtler than the dog leavings chucked in my flowerbeds, but part of the same problem. That glop reminded me how much work we have to do, until it goes without saying that everything we use and throw away has consequences that affect someone’s life.

Photo: Trash bins near the bus station in Shenzhen, China where you catch the bus to Hong Kong.

This week the federal government released two reports describing the next 25 to 50 years’ expected impacts of climate change on natural resources – land, water, biodiversity – and agriculture in the United States. Led by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Department of Agriculture, National Science and Technology Council, and Climate Change Science Program, and incorporating Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change research, the reports state bluntly that increasing temperatures, rising levels of carbon dioxide and resulting altered patterns of precipitation are already affecting ecosystems across the country.

Decreased snowpack, increased forest fires, warming streams, and insect outbreaks prompted by rising air temperatures and altered weather patterns are already taking a toll on biodiversity. Many of these changes are being prompted by excess CO2 already in the atmosphere. But there also are other contributors to these changes, among them changes in land use, the nitrogen cycle, ozone and other pollutants.

Climate scientists have told me that so much excess CO2 is in the atmosphere that even if emissions stopped immediately, we’d be coping with the changes set in motion for years to come. So among what’s being researched are ways in addition to curtailing CO2 that we might be able to slow the warming trend.

In April, I spent two weeks on the USS Knorrin the Norwegian, Greenland and Barents Seas with scientists on an International Polar Year expedition called ICEALOT designed to study non-CO2 pollutants contributing to the disruptive effects of climate change. Sailing from Tromso, Norway to the spring ice edge at 80ºN on the north coast of Svalbard, and south along the Greenland coast to Iceland, scientists took the measure of the short-lived pollutants – particulates, ozone and VOCs – affecting the Arctic climate and contributing to increased rates of warming. These pollutants reflect and absorb light, influence cloud formation and air chemistry in ways that can increase atmospheric and surface temperatures. Understanding these pollutants’ behavior and contribution to warming trends should help guide strategies for reducing these impacts by curtailing emissions of nitrogen compounds, VOCs and particulates that set these processes in motion. In other words, while we struggle to turn off the CO2 tap, we may be able to help curtail impacts by shutting off the flow of other pollutants that push the cycle of warming.

What this means to me is that to slow the disturbing changes rolling out across the landscape, we’ve all somehow got to radically – and strategically – reduce all of our air pollutants, which may well mean not only changes in energy consumption but also rethinking how we make all the stuff we use.