Final Decision on Cape Wind Expected After Wednesday Meeting With Interior Secretary Salazar
Seriously this has taken way way way way way too long, lets hope they approve this damn thing and get it being built.
On the eve of a meeting Wednesday (January 13, 2009) on the Cape Wind clean energy project with U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Clean Power Now Executive Director Barbara Hill issued the following statement:
“The long-delayed start to the Cape Wind project is now within sight.
After nine years of painstaking and transparent review and extensive public participation under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Minerals Management Service, the verdict is clear: Federal environmental impact reviews have all concluded that the Cape Wind project will provide significant public interest benefits in terms of clean energy with what are only minor to negligible impacts.
We commend Secretary Salazar for avoiding further delays by convening this meeting in order to move Cape Wind to a final decision point. With the Salazar-imposed deadline of March 1st to conclude the ongoing Section 106 consultation under the National Historic Preservation Act, a favorable Record of Decision for Cape Wind should follow shortly after this week’s meeting.
I want to emphasize that the nature of the Section 106 consultation process is such that it is necessarily ’stacked’ and not representative of the significant public support that Cape Wind has to build the project on Horseshoe Shoals in Nantucket Sound.
As such, Secretary Salazar will not be hearing at the meeting from the many tens of thousands of Cape Wind supporters including: the 86 percent of Massachusetts residents who favor Cape Wind (see link to survey results below); MA Climate Action Network; Cape & Islands Self Reliance; Clean Water Action; Environmental League of Massachusetts; Civil Society Institute; TheCLEAN.org; American Lung Association – Massachusetts Chapter; Cape Clean Air; Boston Urban Asthma Coalition; Greenpeace; Conservation Law Foundation; Natural Resources Defense Council; Union of Concerned Scientists; Healthlink and many others. (See a link to a fuller list of supporters below.)
Moving ahead on Cape Wind will send a powerful and unmistakable message that the United States is no longer content to lag behind the rest of the world in using wind power to create new jobs, foster energy independence and reduce this nation’s carbon footprint.
Cape Wind will concretely advance the Obama Administration’s stated objectives in addressing the challenges of climate change while promoting energy security and economic development. Following this lengthy and rigorous review, approval of the Cape Wind project also will send a critical message to the clean energy sector and will help lay the strongest possible foundation for offshore wind energy development in the United States.”
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Cape Wind is poised to be the United States’ first offshore wind park. The project involves 130 wind turbine towers in Horseshoe Shoals, a shallow area in the federal waters of Nantucket Sound, and would produce enough clean power for 75 percent of the Cape & Islands energy needs.
Sietch coverage of this issue. (warning there is a lot here)
Polls: 86% of State Residents/74% of Cape & Islands Residents Support Cape Wind
Understanding Cape Wind: Answers to the 7 Most-Asked Questions
Energy Independence: Slashing the Cape & Islands Dependence on Foreign Oil (pdf)
Fact v. Fiction: Debunking the Top 10 Myths About Cape Wind (pdf)
Editorials on Cape Wind Opponents
(Columnist Yvonne Abraham, Boston Globe, June 21, 2009).
(New England political analyst John Keller, WBZ TV/Boston, January 17, 2009)
(Wall Street Journal “Review & Outlook,” January 24, 2009)
Harpooning the Fat Cat Opponents: August 7, 2007 “Daily Show” Segment on Cape Wind (hilarious)
Cape Wind Surging Forward
Cape Wind is going to be setting up a long term power agreement with NSTAR which means they will be offering clean renewable energy at the same price for a long time. While the fossil fuel prices go up and down (lets be honest, up), the wind energy will be locked in at the same rate.
A new poll out also shows that a majority of Cape And Islands residents (57%) now support the wind farm.
In other news, wind turbines don’t lower your property values, one more thing NIMBY’s were wrong about. (more here pdf)
It would seem that this thing might actually get built after all these years!
Giant Organic Livestock Operation Decertified By USDA, More Legacy Of the Shameful Bush Administration
First off let me say, I have long been dubious of so called factory farms, going organic. It just seems silly to think that you can have massive meat production (and lets not mince words thats what they do, produce meat, not cows), without harming the environment. I mean cows got to eat, and they crap, and they fart, all of which has been shown to have a massive impact on our world. Moreover it is inefficient, you can feed far less people with a pound of meat than you could with all the grain it took to make that pound of meat. I am happy the USDA has finnaly started to crack down on these fraudulent claims. Remeber the next time you go to the store and see the words “organic” slapped on some beef even if they fed that cow nothing but totally organic food, let it roam around in the woods all happy like, didn’t use a drop of hormones, didn’t feed it nothing but antibiotics, and killed it using the latest in cruelty free methods, it STILL is bad for the earth, and is STILL inefficient to eat meat. Do yourself a favor, eat more veggies.
In an investigation and legal case that dragged on for almost four years, one of the largest organic cattle producers in the United States, Promiseland Livestock, LLC, was suspended from organic commerce, along with its owner and key employees, for four years. The penalty was part of an order issued by administrative law judge Peter Davenport in Washington, DC on November 25.
Promiseland, a multimillion dollar operation with facilities in Missouri and Nebraska, including over 13,000 acres of crop land, and managing 22,000 head of beef and dairy cattle, had been accused of multiple improprieties in formal legal complaints, including not feeding organic grain to cattle, selling fraudulent organic feed and “laundering” conventional cattle as organic.
“We are pleased that justice has been served in the Promiseland matter,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute. Scrutiny from Cornucopia, one of the industry’s most aggressive independent watchdogs, was part of the genesis for the comprehensive USDA investigation and subsequent legal proceedings.
Promiseland became the focus of Cornucopia’s investigation into giant factory farms, milking thousands of cows, that were allegedly operating illegally. Promiseland sold thousands of dairy cows to giant factory dairy farms owned by Dean Foods (Horizon Organic), Natural Prairie Dairy in Texas and Aurora Dairy based in Colorado. Aurora and Natural Prairie supply private-label, store-brand milk for Wal-Mart, Costco, Target and major supermarket chains such as HEB, Safeway and Harris Teeter.
“It appears that it was the investigation into improprieties by Aurora that finally led to the hammer coming down on Promiseland” Kastel observed. Aurora operates five dairies in Texas and Colorado and was found by USDA investigators to have “willfully” violated 14 tenets of federal organic regulations in 2007. However, Bush administration officials let the $100 million corporate dairy continue in operation under a one-year probation.
“It’s sad that the civil servants at the USDA, who had recommended Aurora be decertified, were overruled” Kastel lamented. “They should have been banned from organic commerce the same way Promiseland, and its owner Tony Zeman, now have been”
Although Cornucopia has praise for the professionalism of law enforcement agents at the USDA, and the career staff at the National Organic Program (NOP), who carried out the Aurora and Promiseland investigations, the farm policy research group has harshly criticized past management at the USDA which allowed Promiseland, and Aurora, to operate illegally for years.
“From formal legal complaints that we filed, Bush Administration officials at the USDA were alerted, starting in January 2005, to the alleged improprieties by massive factory farms masquerading as organic” said Will Fantle, Research Director for The Cornucopia Institute.
Documents secured under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by The Cornucopia Institute indicate that the initial investigation was squashed for political reasons by Dr. Barbara Robinson, who until recently directed the USDA’s organic program.
“It is inexcusable that these improprieties took place for so long and that justice was delayed” said Gary Cox, an attorney who represents Cornucopia. “Ethical organic dairy farmers have been placed at a distinct competitive disadvantage and consumers were obviously taken advantage of”
An investigation by the Office of Inspector General at the USDA, focusing in part on the relationship between Robinson and prominent agribusiness lobbyist and lawyer Jay Friedman, was profiled in a July 3 Washington Post story. Friedman, in addition to representing Aurora and Dean Foods, also was the lawyer for Promiseland when they were targeted by the USDA for investigation.
New documents made public have prompted Cornucopia to prepare additional legal complaints asking the USDA to focus attention now on Quality Assurance International (QAI), the certifier for Promiseland when many of the alleged abuses took place.
“This is not the first time QAI has been suspected of incompetence or improperly accommodating corporate agribusiness” said Fantle. The Robinson, Friedman and QAI connection is part of an investigation by the USDA’s Inspector General. QAI also certifies portions of Aurora’s operation and Dean Foods’ corporate-owned industrial dairies.
“However grim it sounds, this investigation and the legal proceeding illustrate that if organic stakeholders are persistent, the system works” Kastel said.
Cornucopia and other organic policy groups have been delighted by what they have called a “decisive shift” that has taken place since Obama administration officials have taken over at the USDA and its organic program.
At a recent industry meeting in Washington, D.C., Miles McEvoy, USDA Deputy Administrator and the new director of the National Organic Program, stated emphatically that we were now entering the “age of enforcement” at the NOP.
“We started asking for new management at the organic program in 2004″ said Kastel. “We had suggested that they go outside of the Department to gain the needed expertise from someone who was universally respected by participants in the organic industry. We couldn’t have asked for a more qualified candidate than Mr. McEvoy”
In addition to investigating QAI, Cornucopia has formally asked USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to reopen the Aurora matter, alleging that the consent agreement allowing their probation included illegally favorable provisions. The farm policy group also asked that complaints involving Dean Foods and its Horizon label, which had languished under the Bush administration since early 2005, now also be actively investigated by the new administration.
“We think that organic consumers and the family farmers who have built this industry have good reason to be optimistic and confident that from this point forward, when they see the organic seal on a product, they know that the public servants in Washington share their steadfast desire to maintain the integrity of the organic label” Fantle stated.
The USDA’s decertification order can be viewed here (pdf)
It appears that QAI, the certifying agent, did not act in the Promiseland matter until they were compelled to do so by USDA investigators, even though court records indicate that QAI had reported they knew of “significant audit trail deficiencies” as early as 2005.
“If I’d been guilty of just one of these ’willful’ violations, my farm would’ve been shut down in a New York minute” said Bruce Drinkman, a farmer from Glenwood City, Wisconsin and board member of the Midwest Organic Dairy Producers Alliance.
“Rumors swirled for years about shady practices by Tony Zeman” said Bill Welsh, long-time Iowa organic livestock producer, Cornucopia board member and former member of the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board. “Many of the major players that bought meat and dairy replacement animals knew very well what the allegations were and chose, during a period of time when supply was extremely tight, to look the other way. I’m sure there’s some heavy soul-searching going on right now”
At the time the legal action was finally brought against Promiseland, in June 2008, Cornucopia and other industry observers were highly critical that the Bush USDA only asked for a suspension of Promiseland, and its owner Anthony J. Zeman, in lieu of requesting a permanent decertification of the operation. The USDA and the administrative law judge both found Zeman and Promiseland had “willfully” violated federal law.
In addition, the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 gave the USDA the right to fine operators like Zeman up to $10,000 per incident for willful violations of the law. They could have levied millions of dollars worth of fines but failed to do so.
“Enforcement actions of this nature should serve as a strong deterrent to other industry scofflaws” said Kastel. “We lament the failure of the past administration to aggressively carry out the will of Congress in this regard”
“Like Al Capone, they didn’t actually convict Zeman and Promiseland of actually cheating in organics” Kastel said.
Promiseland was found guilty of not allowing USDA investigators to audit and inspect their financial and organic operating records. “The “audit trail” is the backbone of organic certification” said Fantle. “Obviously, they had something to hide”
Al Capone was not convicted of murder or racketeering but rather of federal tax evasion. He also died of syphilis in prison…
Livestock Accounts For Whopping 51% of Green House Gas Emissions World Wide!
Holy crap…literally. The environmental impact of the life cycle and supply chain of animals raised for food has been vastly underestimated, and in fact accounts for at least half of all human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs), according to Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, co-authors of “Livestock and Climate Change” (pdf) in the latest issue of World Watch magazine.
A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions (which is more than cars) are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry. But recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.
Reviewing both direct and indirect sources of GHG emissions from livestock, the study finds that previous calculations have both underestimated and overlooked certain emissions sources as well as assigned emissions they deem to be livestock-related to the wrong sectors. The authors locate these discrepancies in previous analyses of livestock respiration, land use, and methane.
Based on their research, Goodland and Anhang conclude that replacing livestock products with soy-based and other alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change. “This approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations—and thus on the rate the climate is warming—than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”
Basically stop eating meat (and fish) if you really want to make a big change in stopping global warming. It is a simple and easy step you can take that will have far reaching consequences.
Next Time You Shop At Trader Joe’s Think About This
There are a certain kind of people in most large American Cities. They are progressive, they think gay people should have equal rights, they have fun hair, they wear eco-sourced clothing, they probably ride a bike or take public transportation, they buy organic food, they voted for Obama, or Kucinich, they are either non-religious, or go to a Unitarian church, they buy local produce, they shop at places like Trader Joe’s, or Whole Foods (when they are not buying local organic from the farmers market). I like to think that I am one of these people, but I am not. I simply don’t have the disposable income. And that is the real problem, to be this good to the planet you have to have some money, not a lot mind you, but a little more than most.
The problem is that where there is smoke there is fire, and where there is money there are scams. Green washing has run rampant in this country. People truly want to do good by the planet, and advertisers are taking advantage of that desire to sell them crap wrapped up in a “green” disguise.
One of the worst (in my opinion) has always been Trader Joe’s. Next time you walk into this upscale shop-a-torium take a look at what they offer. Almost every single thing in the store (even down to a lot of the produce) is in multiple layers of fancy packaging. They offer an array of things imported from all the corners of the earth. Almost everything in the store is processed, packaged, ready to eat, or from 1000’s of miles away from where you are.
And now it has come out that the fish they sell at the stores is on the so called “red list” (Red List Seafood Sales: Greenpeace surveys found Trader Joe’s sells 15 of the 22 red list seafoods: Alaskan pollock, Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sea scallops, Chilean sea bass, Greenland halibut, monkfish, ocean quahog, orange roughy, red snapper, redfish, South Atlantic albacore tuna, swordfish, tropical shrimp and yellowfin tuna.). Basically humans have been so efficient at harvesting fish from the ocean that we are on the brink of wiping out a large number of species of them. Trader Joe’s blissfully continues to sell these fish species, all while putting forth this aura of eco-goodness.
Greenpeace has gotten involved with their “Traitor Joe” campaign. See how Trader Joe’s ranks here. (pdf)
Ahoy!
Traitor Joe here. I’m up to my eyeballs in red list seafood. My stores have so many red list fish on ice, that I’d bet there aren’t any left in the oceans. Seafood gets red listed if it’s fished using methods that harm ocean habitats or other critters, or because there just aren’t that many of the fish around anymore. But have I helped save them? Heck no!
Greenpeace released the third edition of their supermarket scorecard and Trader Joe’s came in at the bottom of the list again (17out of 20). Ouch! In fact, this is the third time Trader Joe’s scored as the worst of the national supermarket chains surveyed about sustainable seafood. Just call me your one-stop-shop for ocean destruction.
If ocean destruction bothers you, and you want Trader Joe’s to get out of the business of trading red list seafood, then visit my website traitorjoe.com, and do something about it. Send a singing fish telegram to Trader Joe’s and tell them to stop destroying the oceans and passing the guilt onto their customers.
But, I hope you won’t, though, because that way I can keep confusing my customers, all while turning a profit.
From the bottom of the barrel,
Traitor Joe
It would seem to me that the basic premise of Trader Joe’s is a good one, we DO WANT stores to cater to green desires. We most certainly want them to sell us sustainable products, and do the best they can for the world. We should pour money into the coffers of places that can provide sustainable goods and services. However what we can not let stores do is PRETEND to be green, simply to take our green. If we discover for instance that a certain store is pretending to be all green and lovely, but is actually helping to depopulate our oceans, well it’s time to stop giving them our money.
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