Working For Jobs

By Sarah Henry

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HBO has a history of tackling important American healthcare crises. In recent years, the cable network has taken on addiction and Alzheimer’s to much critical acclaim. And now the network has turned its attention to another huge health problem: Obesity and its enormous economic, emotional, social, and health cost on individuals, families, communities, and the country at large.

As Americans have gained weight in recent years, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other obesity-related health problems have also skyrocketed. Type 2 diabetes (once known as “adult-onset diabetes”) rates are soaring among kids. And this is a generation that may well die at a younger age than their parents, largely because of medical concerns associated with excess weight.

These facts have become commonplace, to those of us who have been paying attention. Still, The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America’s Obesity Epidemic  serves as a clarion call to the country to take action – and fast – to combat this pernicious, complex problem that has myriad root causes.

Despite the familiar territory, this viewer gives the filmmakers points for framing this issue in a fresh, visually compelling way through astute story selection. The first episode recounts The Bogalusa Heart Study in Louisiana – a landmark investigation which found that cardiovascular disease can begin in childhood. And in the final installment we meet a Nashville mayor trying to help his city get healthy and a Latino community in Santa Ana, Calif., whose members spend years advocating for a play space for their children.

A film still from the Weight of the Nation HBO series.

Bigger than individuals

Some critics (including those who have yet to watch the series) worry that The Weight of the Nation only fans fear, stereotypes fat folk, and doesn’t go after the real villain in the war against weight: the food and beverage industry. But from this critic’s perspective, the program doesn’t lay shame and blame at the feet of the overweight and obese people it features. On the contrary, it presents their struggles in a sympathetic and non-judgmental light, revealing how hard the body fights weight loss despite good intentions, and how current social, economic, and government systems sabotage Americans’ attempts to stay healthy.

Yes, there is the question of personal responsibility, and the films address physical inactivity and poor diet as key contributors to this problem. But there’s also healthy discussion of factors outside an individual’s control – including genetic makeup and evolutionary biology (we’re programmed for scarcity in a time of abundance), workplace changes, fast food marketing strategies, federal farm subsidies, changes in American food culture, and the ready availability of low-cost, high-calorie food.

The series also points a finger at the global corporations that are responsible for peddling the unhealthy, highly processed foods at the crux of the problem. It’s hard to imagine commercial television, hugely dependent on advertising by the makers of such food, taking on this topic in the first place.

To produce The Weight of the Nation, HBO teamed up with some major government agencies battling this spreading epidemic — the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health — as well as the child-focused philanthropy Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente.

The series doesn’t sugar coat matters, but makes it clear that obesity-related health problems will become an unprecedented, massive crisis with dire consequences if left unchecked. It’s also incredibly expensive: At the current rate of increase, obesity-related healthcare costs are projected to exceed $300 billion by 2018.

In conjunction with the series, HBO also launched a massive social media campaign to spread the word about what can be done about these health problems and reached out to more than 40,000 community-based organizations across the country.

Take that obesity epidemic. And yet, as John Hoffman, executive producer of the series, noted in a discussion after a recent screening in Oakland: One of the first steps that might put a serious dent in this problem would be addressing government subsidies for commodity crops, which have made ingredients like high fructose corn syrup cheap, accessible, and ubiquitous. He suggested changing the date of the Iowa caucus – a step that would give this farm state considerably less political power. (Such creative thinking didn’t make it into the series. But it’s food for thought – as is the hormonal defect hypothesis, detailed in a Newsweek story last week, which argues that refined sugars and grains are the major players in a problem that no amount of dieting and exercise could correct.)

For kids’ sake

A film still from the Weight of the Nation HBO series.

People can argue whether the root problem is corporations and their lobbyists, unfair government subsidies that benefit Big Ag, or cultural forces that keep many of us eating low-nutrient, high-calorie food. But most folks can agree on this much: It’s time to help kids get healthier.

One whole hour of the four-part series is focused on children. School lunch takes a hit, as does a food and beverage industry that preys on America’s most vulnerable population. As Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, notes in one episode, food marketing to children is “powerful, it’s pernicious, and it’s predatory.”

One highlight in the HBO effort is a half-hour film titled “The Great Cafeteria Takeover,” which runs on Wednesday. It chronicles the actions of a group of pre-teen reformers in New Orleans, known as the Rethinkers, who set about to improve lunch at their schools. Two other half-hour programs in the children’s’ series will debut in the fall.

Given the severity of obesity-related health problems and their rapid rise among kids, it looks like HBO won’t be the only broadcaster taking on a topic that has caught the attention of everyone from Michelle Obama to Ellen DeGeneres. The Hollywood Reporter recently announced that Laurie David, author of The Family Dinner and the producer behind An Inconvenient Truth, has teamed up with Katie Couric for a feature-length film about childhood obesity titled The Big Picture, which also promises to examine the impact of the food industry and government subsidizes on children’s health. Stay tuned.

Part one “Consequences” and part two “Choices” air on HBO on Monday, May 14. Part three “Children in Crisis” and part four “Challenges” air Tuesday, May 15.

Filed under: Corn, Factory Farms, Farm Bill, Food

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By Mary Anne Hitt

A version of this post originally appeared on Compass, a Sierra Club blog.

As the director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, I have to do a lot of traveling, which means spending more time than I would like away from my 2-year-old daughter, Hazel. Just the other day, I got home from a trip to find Hazel and her dad pretty exhausted after three days without Mom. I hope that someday, she’ll understand that I had to be away sometimes because I was working hard to protect her from the pollution that is a very real threat to her future.

For Hazel, I hope when she’s my age that the air and water are clean and safe, the mountains of her home state of West Virginia are still standing, and the threat of climate disruption has passed. I think that future is within our grasp, thanks to the work we are doing to move America beyond coal.

In the past year, we celebrated a historic victory that brought us much closer to that cleaner, safer future, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first-ever national mercury standards for coal-fired power plants. Believe it or not, while coal plants are our nation’s No. 1 source of mercury pollution, until this year, there were no national mercury standards in place for coal plants. None at all! Coal plants could just spew 100 percent of their toxic mercury into the air, which then made its way into our waterways and the fish that we eat.

These protections are long overdue, and will safeguard our families. According to the EPA, every year over 300,000 babies are born exposed to high enough levels of mercury to put them at risk of developmental problems, like lowered IQ and delays in walking and talking — problems that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Babies come into contact with this toxic mercury if their mothers eat a lot of certain species of fish, even before they become pregnant.

I was one of hundreds of thousands of moms and dads who worked hard to secure these new mercury protections, which were finalized in January. Now these safeguards are under attack, and we have to defend them.

Unfortunately, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is preparing to file a measure in Congress that would not only stop these mercury protections, but would also prevent the EPA from ever taking action on mercury again. Yes, you heard that right.

This Mother’s Day, my wish is that you will join me in taking action to defend these crucial mercury protections. I know all you moms and dads out there are busy, so we’ve made it simple for you — just click here to send a note to your senator. Our kids are counting on us, so it’s time to speak up in defense of these long-overdue safeguards from toxic mercury pollution.

Thank you. And happy Mother’s Day!

Filed under: Article, Coal

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By Daniel Klein

Asian Carp are quickly becoming the invasive species to beat. They’re taking over rivers and lakes across the country and threatening native species by competing for the plankton that forms the base of the aquatic food chain. We went out with a fisherman on the Peoria River and took some footage of his latest catch.

Filed under: Article, Food

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By Rachel Cernansky

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In most jobs, if you have to spend even part of your workday exerting yourself under the hot summer sun, you’re likely to have drinking water nearby. And, if you don’t, you probably won’t be penalized for going to find some. But for many farmworkers in California, the largest agricultural producer in the country, the freedom to hydrate isn’t always so straightforward.

Even as temperatures climb above 90 degrees F, many of the state’s 400,000 farmworkers don’t have access to shade; or the water station is too far from where they are picking a crop, and they have to put off getting a drink. And since farmworkers are so frequently paid on a piece-rate basis rather than hourly, there’s strong incentive to put off that drink, if available at all, for as long as possible.

It’s not that there aren’t laws requiring water and shade (there are), but if you’re a worker on a California farm, you’re not likely to see labor inspectors patrolling the fields, making sure all the rules are being followed and workers are safe, let alone comfortable.

Farmworker advocates have been pushing on the issue for years — public attention to farmworkers and heat safety spiked in 2008, when Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, 17 years old and two months pregnant, died from heat exhaustion she developed while working in California’s grape vineyards.

Two years earlier, her employer had received citations for exposing workers to heatstroke and not training them on heat safety, and a fine had been issued. But it was never collected, and the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) did no follow-up inspections of the company.

Now, nearly four years later, little has changed about the conditions that led to her death, nor the poorly enforced laws that enable those conditions.

Which is where the Farm Worker Safety Act of 2012 enters the picture. The law would hold growers and labor contractors jointly liable if workers are not provided adequate shade and water. What happened to Maria Jimenez was an extreme case; death from heat illness is relatively rare. But the legislation is as much about improving the quality of life for workers as it is about preventing unnecessary deaths.

Farmworkers are not only vulnerable to dehydration and heatstroke, but also to other health problems like urinary and kidney infections, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health. And if a worker happens to have diabetes, or another chronic illness, it can compound the risks that come with heat exhaustion generally.

Some crops are better than others. “When people are working, picking cherries or picking apricots or pears,” said Luis Magaña, director of the Organization of Farm Workers of California, “at least they have shade provided by the trees. And they have a chance to rest under the trees.”

But crops that grow in low-lying rows — asparagus, tomatoes, and grapes, for example — leave workers entirely dependent on shade their employers provide. (And it may not matter if the asparagus you’re eating is organic or not.)

Of course, if there’s no drinking water available, the situation is ultimately the same — shade or no shade. It doesn’t take a medical professional to know that prolonged physical exertion in extreme heat without proper hydration is asking for trouble.

Existing regulations allow farmworkers to file a complaint with Cal/OSHA if they are not provided adequate water or shade, and require the agency to send an inspector out within three days. But with about 200 labor inspectors to cover the state’s estimated 35,000 farms, Cal/OSHA does not often meet that requirement, according to farm labor advocates.

“Last year alone, UFW filed 75 complaints. In over two-thirds of those cases, Cal/OSHA didn’t send someone at all, let alone within three days,” said Giev Kashkooli, strategic campaigns director for United Farm Workers (UFW). Cal/OSHA would not confirm or deny the number of complaints filed.

Magaña said that generally, inspections at California farms did increase for about a year after Maria Jimenez’s death, because there was so much public attention on the issue. “But now, without the same publicity,” he said, “Cal/OSHA is not regularly visiting these places. Sometimes, but not very regularly.”

He added that when inspectors do show up, a farmer or contractor can often see them coming, and can use that time to prepare. He also said that because the inspections are so sporadic, employers can say the workers will be moving to another field soon, and shade will be provided there. “They can manipulate the situation very easily,” he said.

When inspectors do find situations to write up, it rarely amounts to much. “Fines are routinely marked down and often never collected,” Kashkooli said, adding that there’s no recourse for workers when Cal/OSHA does not come through for them.

UFW says that, using statistics from Cal/OSHA, at least a third of the farms they inspect are out of compliance with the heat illness regulation. “This means using conservative numbers for the number of farmworkers in the state, at least 140,000 farmworkers do not have basic things like shade or water every day they go to work,” said Kashkooli, adding that the law would “deliver fair consequences for the employers who choose to put farmworker lives at risk by not providing water and shade.”

The Farm Worker Safety Act would also establish a private right of action so that farmworkers can take their employers to court if Cal/OSHA does not sufficiently respond to their complaints — meaning workers could sidestep Cal/OSHA, which right now is their last resort for making sure the laws are enforced. Under the proposed legislation, a worker can take a problem up directly with his employer, rather than wait for Cal/OSHA to act, or more likely, according to UFW, to not act.

Since there’s effectively no punishment for breaking the rules the way they stand now, there’s no incentive for following them.

What this all adds up to for the workers who produce so much of our food is a pretty bleak situation: Aside from the health risks, there are the psychological effects that come both with heat stress and with being treated so poorly on a daily basis.

There are some advocates who think better enforcement of existing laws, in the form of more inspections, is what’s necessary — not new legislation. Gail Wadsworth, executive director of the California Institute for Rural Studies, is one of them.

“Farmers are well aware of what they’re required to do, and the majority of farmers are meeting those regulations. But there’s always going to be outliers,” she says. “Enforcement, I think, is a better solution if the state legislature could be motivated somehow to increase funding to Cal/OSHA for inspections and follow-up.”

Wadsworth is skeptical, but not opposed to the proposed law. She’d like to see it effectively improve conditions for farmworkers, but she also believes those conditions are emblematic of a much larger problem: the fact that farmworkers have little power under the law and in our society generally. That they are treated so often “as tools rather than as people,” she says.

“This is a complaint we hear consistently: ‘We’re looked at as being just another tool in the field.’”

As some advocates see it, the Farm Worker Safety Act, if successful, might begin to change that.

Filed under: Article, Food, Industrial Agriculture

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By Tom Laskawy

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Photo by the Chesapeake Bay Program.

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone seems to get all the attention. Yes, the low-oxygen area that forms every year in the waters surrounding the Mississippi Delta is the largest dead zone — currently around the size of Massachusetts — but it’s not the only one in U.S. waters.

The Chesapeake Bay has a dead zone, too. In fact, it covered a third of the Chesapeake last year and continues to grow. And last month, the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science gave the Bay a D+ in its annual “health report card.”

About a year and a half ago, in response to the crisis, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in to put the states that surround the Chesapeake on a “pollution diet,” meaning the state has to keep its “Total Maximum Daily Load” — whether from agricultural, municipal, or private landowners — down to a minimum.

And where the Gulf dead zone is caused by runoff from the oceans of corn grown in the Midwestern states whose waterways drain into the Mississippi, chicken farms dominate the Chesapeake’s watershed. The Delmarva region (i.e. Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) has become one of the most intensive poultry farming regions of the country. Industry behemoths Perdue and Tyson contract with operations in the area that add up to tens of millions of birds housed in enormous facilities that generate a lot of chicken crap.

Of course, as MTV taught us Gen-Xers, too much is never enough. Grist reported a couple of years ago on a plan by Perdue to significantly increase its poultry operations in the already taxed region. As a Waterkeepers study of the issue put it at the time:

“Billions of pounds of chicken litter have flowed into the bay in the decades since international poultry conglomerates such as Perdue and Tyson targeted the Delmarva Peninsula for their multi-million-dollar operations.” The industry has been “treating the Chesapeake Bay like an open toilet.”

As you’d expect, Big Ag has reacted badly to the EPA’s attempt to address the pollution problem. The American Farm Bureau filed a lawsuit to stop it. And House Republicans attempted to defund the plan.

But it turns out Big Ag had nothing to worry about. Maryland’s Democratic governor and rising star Martin O’Malley — someone who has a significant say in any Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan — is on Perdue’s side. And it appears that his relationship far exceeds what’s typical between a governor and a large corporation. Or at least one would hope it does.

The advocacy group Food and Water Watch (FWW) has obtained 70 pages of emails [PDF] between O’Malley and Perdue officials — primarily Perdue general counsel Herb Frerichs, with whom FWW says O’Malley went to law school.

Perhaps the most noteworthy exchange between the two men revolves around a statement O’Malley’s press secretary made in an article called “Farmers want Big Chicken held responsible.” In the article he’s quoted as saying:

Industrial-scale chicken houses are a common site in Maryland. (Photo by the Chesapeake Bay Program.)

I think there’s certainly a need from everybody in the industry and on the regulatory side to work together. It certainly doesn’t do anybody any good for poultry farmers to say we own the chickens, but not the manure they produce.

O’Malley sent a series of messages to Frerichs walking back those comments, and letting he and his colleagues know he had “no intention of revisiting co-permitting” — the latter being the state’s attempt to make poultry processing companies responsible for waste management by farmers.

O’Malley then follows up to make sure all is well. He is so deferential to Frerichs, it’s hard to remember who’s the elected official and who’s the constituent. The emails read:

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 7, 2010 at 7:53 PM

Were you ok with that message I sent to you?

Frerichs -> O’Malley, August 8, 2010 at 6:42 PM

Not sure at this point. I have been witness to some back and forth emails over weekend and need to see how people feel tomorrow and what will work best.

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 8, 2010 at 7:53 PM

Hmmm. Let me know

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 9, 2010 at 2:47 PM

How’s my message doing? (It wasn’t that long…)

Frerichs -> O’Malley, August 10, 2010 at 4:24 PM

Sorry for delay. My conclusion is that letter will not be helpful. Jim [Perdue] took this very personally.

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 10, 2010 at 4:33 PM

So what am I supposed to do? Just leave it alone? Call him, what?

I have to believe this isn’t normal.

But it isn’t just over PR that O’Malley gives Perdue authority. The company apparently also gets to give direction to Maryland’s Department of Agriculture:

O’Malley -> Frerichs, November 5, 2011 at 7:19 PM

What is it about the Secretary of Agriculture’s job performance that you find lacking?

Frerichs -> O’Malley, November 6, 2011 at 7:22 AM

I just feel like I’m trying to push a bunch of stuff and I don’t see him around. He’s not as strong as his counterparts in DE and VA. I work w all three.

O’Malley -> Frerichs, November 6, 2011 at 10:01 AM

I’m guessing you don’t have the personal email of governors of DE or VA, so let me know when Buddy [Earl “Buddy” Hance, Maryland Secretary of Agriculture] can/should be doing more to help you push stuff. I’m serious. I’ll have him call you monday.

It’s not uncommon for state governments to be rife with corruption — both because relationships between representatives and business interests are often very close and because state politics aren’t under the same media microscope that federal politics are.

That said, there’s no indication of financial corruption here — although the Baltimore Sun reports that Perdue did shift its contributions around the time of these emails from the Republican Governor’s Association to the Democratic Governor’s Association, which O’Malley chairs. Still, O’Malley has a good excuse for his frequent interactions with Frerichs: They’re buddies!

But he appears to have lost sight of whose interests he was elected to serve. Because, right now, O’Malley seems to be Governor of the State of Perdue.

So if Maryland becomes a major foot-dragger in implementing the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan, or works to exempt the poultry industry from doing its part, there will be no reason to wonder why. It’s just friends helping friends.

Filed under: Factory Farms, Food, Food Safety

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By Grist staff

This year marks the 10th anniversary of our Ask Umbra advice column, and to celebrate, we’re pulling one particularly poignant question or tidbit of eco-advice out of the archives each week. Recent news has us thinking about something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Without further adieu, here’s an old but ever true dilemma from a partygoer in Utah:

“My wife and I have made great progress in simplifying our lives … We’re just wondering what we might give as wedding gifts to children of our friends in order to be in line with our goal yet not seem ‘weird.’ Any ideas on this subject?”

Read on for Umbra’s ideas. Her advice on gifts for gay couples might surprise you. 

Find more of Umbra’s pearls of wisdom here.

Dearest readers, don’t be fickle:
Please give Grist a dime or nickel.
Then, because you’ve been so nice,
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Grist is saddled with a curse.)

Filed under: Article, Green Living Tips

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By Twilight Greenaway

Still on the fence about trying some edible insects? This video from Quest might just give you the nudge you need. In it you’ll meet several entomophagists (bug-eaters), including Monica Martinez of Don Bugito, a taco stand we covered last fall.

You’ll also hear compelling evidence for insects as one answer to feeding a growing population. As one scientist puts it: “Cows and pigs — they’re warm-blooded. When they eat, they have to actually waste a lot of energy producing heat. Insects are cold-blooded. I mean that in a good sense. They don’t have to maintain their body heat, so when they eat they don’t have to waste energy, they convert that into protein.”

The video takes us into the kitchen of a serious bug connoisseur as she prepares roasted figs with sautéed grasshoppers and bee larvae (the “bacon of the edible insect world”) — and manages to make the dish look surprisingly appetizing.

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Filed under: Food, Sustainable Food

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By David Roberts

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This house is extremely efficient.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we passed a rule mandating that all new federal buildings had to be carbon-neutral by 2030? The feds buy and build a lot of real estate. An effort to wring fossil-fuel energy out of those buildings — by increasing their efficiency and supplying them with renewables — would seriously bolster domestic markets for efficiency and distributed energy. Beyond that, it would serve as a proving ground and an example for the communities where those buildings are located. It would be galvanizing.

“But,” you’re protesting, “we would never do something so radical. Germany might. Denmark, maybe. Not us.”

Hark! I say to you. Hark to this sh*t: We do have such a rule! It was passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush! It’s on the books, the law of the land. Specifically, it is Section 433 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It says that new federal buildings, or major renovations ($2.5 million or more) of federal buildings, must reduce their consumption of fossil-fuel energy (relative to a similar building in 2003) 55 percent by 2010, 80 percent by 2020, and 100 percent by 2030. (It hasn’t been funded yet, so that 2010 target is, er, no longer operational.)

It’s an audacious goal, basically Architecture 2030′s “2030 Challenge” put into law.

“Holy crap,” you’re saying, “if we have a law that awesome, surely come powerful constituency must be trying to screw it up!”

Right you are. On April 12, representatives from the American Gas Association (AGA) and the Federal Performance Contracting Coalition (FPCC) met at the White House with administration officials from DOE, CEQ, and OMB. At that meeting they offered this issue brief [PDF], which called on Congress to “substantially modify or eliminate EISA section 433.” You can bet that issue brief hit all the relevant congressional offices as well.

Less than a month later, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) of the House Appropriations Committee offered an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2013 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill that would “prohibit funding” to implement Section 433.

What is motivating this stealth attack on one of the few genuinely ambitious energy laws in the U.S.?

For the AGA, it’s pretty simple: no fossil fuel means no natural gas. They don’t even make any bones about it. This is what it says in the brief:

The mandate runs counter to the Presidential position on natural gas as part of an “all of the above” energy strategy: President Obama has recently stressed the need for development of “every available source” of American energy in the most recent state of the union address. This mandate would halt the pursuit of increased use of natural gas to support the national priorities of helping to improve our economy, reduce environmental impacts and secure our nation’s energy future.

First off, the mandate would “halt the pursuit of increased use of natural gas”? Seriously? The feds own about 1 percent of the nation’s building stock. I’m pretty sure the booming natural gas industry will survive.

Second, this makes it pretty obvious that the natural gas industry does not see itself as a “bridge” to a clean energy future, as so many others do (or claim to). The AGA doesn’t think we should stop burning fossil fuels, even if that’s an option! Shockingly, it is in favor of the federal government using a lot of natural gas. Bridge, schmidge.

But why is the FPCC against this? As Martin Pederson says:

FPCC members include: Ameresco, Chevron, Constellation Energy Services, FPL Energy Services, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Lockheed Martin, Noresco, Pepco Energy Services, Schneider-Electric, Siemens Government Services, Inc., and Trane/Ingersoll Rand. There’s no surprise in seeing the likes of Chevron here (they are, after all, in the business of selling fossil fuels), but there are a couple of surprises. Schneider-Electric has actually signed onto the 2030 Challenge. Johnson Controls has a Zero Energy Buildings Whitepaper featured on their website. Many of the other companies are prominent in the field of energy efficiency.

What gives?

Good question.

The rest of the issue brief mostly consists of whining that the targets can’t be met. It cites a few big power-plant projects and one 11-story building renovation it claims the rule will prevent, but as Ed Mazria of Architecture 2030 notes, there’s a way to get a waiver under Section 433 if the “requirement would be technically impracticable.”

The allegedly imperiled projects are a red herring anyway. The vast majority of federal buildings are one- or two-story housing structures. The vast majority (95.7 percent) of the non-residential buildings it owns are three stories and under. As Mazria says, “there are numerous low-cost solutions for dramatically reducing energy consumption in single story and low-rise buildings: daylighting and ventilation strategies, natural heating and cooling systems, and high-performance products, fixtures, and equipment, to name just a few.”

And energy use in these buildings doesn’t have to be eliminated — the buildings do not have to be “net zero energy” like, say, passivhaus standards would have it. They just have to be carbon-neutral. They can provide their own energy with on-site renewables (or combined heat and power, as long as it uses biomass instead of natural gas). And if they can’t do that, they can buy clean energy from utilities. (Fifty percent of electricity consumers now have that option; presumably the number will be far greater by 2030.) Presumably over the coming 18 years, these options will expand and evolve.

There’s no denying that Section 433 represents a stretch goal. Striving to reach that goal would involve lots of groping about and most likely some failures. But much would be discovered and achieved. Much momentum would be built. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing. We need more stretch goals on the books if we’re ever going to get on the path to serious climate solutions.

The few good laws we do have deserve better than to be quietly assassinated through backroom lobbying and obscure amendments.

Filed under: Article, Climate Policy, Energy Efficiency, Energy Policy, Infrastructure, Politics

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By Greg Hanscom

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As you may have heard, President Obama is being cagey about whether he’ll attend the Earth Summit in Rio next month. You know, it’s just the FUTURE OF THE PLANET that’s up for discussion. Nothing big. Maybe he’ll go. Maybe not.

As it happens, we were in the same situation 20 years ago, as the 1992 Earth Summit approached and George Bush Sr. was giving it the old, “Well, maaaaaybe…”

Back then, a group of the major, mainstream environmental groups in the U.S. rallied for the cause. To convince Bush he should attend, they enlisted none other than Darth Vader. Well, his voice, at least – the actor James Earl Jones. They made the spooky film clip below, replete with — is that the Pony Express or the Horsemen of the Apocalypse? — and then ran it in movie theaters around the country. Jones did the voiceover. Need I even tell you that Bush Sr. decided to attend?

In my research into the 2012 Earth Summit, I’ve noticed very little action from the major U.S. greens. A handful of them, including EarthJustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, and the Pew Environment Group, have been involved, along with groups focused on clean energy, sustainable agriculture, and other issues, but where’s the old guard that sponsored the Darth Vader ad two decades ago? I decided to do a little poking around.

In the credits, the Darth Vader clip lists seven green groups: The National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, the Earth Day Network, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network, and NRDC. I spent some time poking around each group’s website, and reached out via email and phone to see what they’re doing for Earth Summit 2012. Here’s what I found:

Audubon Society: The website of this bird conservation stalwart featured stories about Burmese pythons in the Everglades and how to “celebrate Mothers Day with puffins,” but I could find no mention of the Earth Summit. I sent an email to three staffers and received only this reply, from Taldi Walter, the group’s assistant director of government relations: “Nothing on my end.”

Defenders of Wildlife: This national nonprofit’s website included information about saving wolves and sea turtles, but nothing about the Earth Summit. In response to my query, Cindy Hoffman, vice president of communications, sent me links to several helpful sites, but said, simply, “Thanks for reaching out. No, we are not involved with the summit.”

Earth Day Network: Most of this group’s website is focused on, you guessed it, Earth Day, but some digging around unearthed this page with some useful background about the Earth Summit and mention of the group’s Women and the Green Economy campaign. The big “GET INVOLVED” button on the page just sends you to a general signup page, however, with no further information about the summit. A network spokesman promised to set up an interview with the group’s president, Kathleen Rogers.

The Wilderness Society: The website for this most crunch-tastic of green groups headlined actress Wendie Malick and her fight to protect wild “pockets of wonder,” and the mama duck who is nesting in the planter outside the organization’s Washington, D.C., offices. There was nada about the Earth Summit on the site. I asked Senior Communications Director Kitty Thomas if the group was doing anything for the Earth Summit and she replied, “I checked and it looks like we aren’t.”

Sierra Club: This venerable green giant is doing more to engage with the Earth Summit than any other of the groups I talked to, save NRDC, but you’d never know it from looking at its website, which featured links to videos of celebrities talking about their “favorite piece of America” and Mother’s Day specials from the gift shop.

Justin Guay, with the club’s international program, told me the group is focusing its limited resources on promoting clean energy access for the world’s poor – a major priority for the UN. The club has spearheaded two letters from business representatives and environmental groups asking the World Bank to commit to funding clean energy, and will hold a side event in Rio advocating for solar and other clean energy sources in the developing world.

I also spoke with Quentin James, national director for the Sierra Student Coalition, the club’s youth arm. James told me the coalition had just selected a group of delegates that will attend the summit, but could not offer a clear agenda beyond “trying to make sure that young people’s voices are heard on all the issues.” He also said they’d be pushing for action on climate change, but discussion of the climate is all but verboten at the official Rio talks — it has its own set of international summits, the most recent of which was held in Durban, South Africa, this past December.

Rainforest Action Network: This group’s website boasted of a stunt in which activists used a banner to “rebrand” the Bank of America football stadium in Charlotte, N.C., “Bank of COAL” (Buuuurn!) and a campaign to save the Sumatran orangutans. I could find no mention on the site of the Earth Summit, nor even the current shit storm brewing over Brazilian rainforest protection. A query for more information got no response.

NRDC: I happen to know that NRDC has been working fervently behind the scenes during the lead-up to the Earth Summit, but there was no mention of that on the group’s homepage, which featured a pop-up ad for “Green Gifts for moms and Mother Earth” with pictures of cute animal babies and their mammas. Nor could I find the Earth Summit on the “issues” page. There was no mention on the “policy” or “international policy” pages. Nada on the “act now” page. To find any mention of the Earth Summit, I had to dig into the staff’s numerous blogs. Sort by “issues” and you’ll find, in the long list, “Race to Rio.”

There you have it: For even the most active of these traditional American Big Green groups, the Earth Summit isn’t frontpage news. For most of the old school greens, it’s not news at all.

Jacob Scherr, NRDC’s director of global strategy and advocacy, who is heading his group’s Earth Summit work, assures me that even though the summit gets little love on the website, his efforts are receiving solid support from inside. He has a team of about 20 people working on the summit.

But what about the rest of the old guard? Several of them, including NRDC, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club signed a letter in September 2009 urging President Obama to support holding the Earth Summit, and Scherr tells me he is optimistic that more U.S. green groups will get on board as the meeting approaches. But time is running short.

I can think of a couple of reasons that U.S. environmental groups aren’t rallying this year the way they did back in 1992. International climate talks have bogged down. In a world where massive corporations dwarf many nations, the UN doesn’t have the gravity it once did. And unlike in 1992, which spawned major agreements on climate, biodiversity, and other issues near and dear to greenies’ hearts, the focus in Rio will be on spreading the green economy and making good on past promises.

Nonetheless, their silence is notable. These are the groups that know how to call out the cavalry – or the Horsemen of the Fucking Apocalypse if necessary – when the need arises. So far, I’m not hearing any thundering hooves, and neither, I promise, is President Obama. When I last checked, this petition asking him to attend the Earth Summit had garnered a pathetic 321 signatures.

The Earth Summit, for all its flaws, is a huge opportunity for greens. With climate change pushed to the side, discussions will be focused on spreading renewable energy and creating sustainable cities and food systems – the issues that are energizing a new generation of activists. World leaders will be in attendance – presidents and prime ministers, plus mayors of major cities bigwigs from the business world. Young people will be there in force. One would think that the old guard of American Green might at least pretend to be interested.

Find more of Grist’s coverage of the Earth Summit here.

Filed under: Cities, Green Jobs, Politics, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Food

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