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Even the Tea Party is pissed about the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’

Even the Tea Party is pissed about the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’

Denis Giles

Everybody’s gotta pitch in to bring down Hulk, er, Monsanto.

Feeling angry about the “Monsanto Protection Act”? You know, the sneakily passed piece of legislation that allows GMO crops to be planted even in defiance of a court order? Well, you’re not alone! The law is so scary that it’s inspiring outrage from the far right.

It’s always a delight to see the left and right agree on anything, and when it comes to fighting genetically modified giant Monsanto, it may well take just that kind of a passionate coalition to get anything done.

But it’s not the GMO issue that’s turning Tea Party Patriot Dustin Siggins’ stomach — it’s the precedent this could set for other corporations that might want legal immunity. From Siggins’ blog:

This all can be boiled down into a single, common phrase: a special interest loophole, and a doozy at that. We are used to subsidies, which give your tax dollars to companies to give them advantages over competitors. We are used to special interest tax loopholes and tax credits, which provide competitive and financial benefits to those with friends in Congress. And we are familiar with regulatory burden increases, which often prevent smaller companies from competing against larger ones because of the cost of compliance.

However, this is a different kind of special interest giveaway altogether. This is a situation in which a company is given the ability to ignore court orders, in what boils down to a deregulation scheme for a particular set of industries.

Great, Siggins! Now let’s skip the Kumbaya and the flag-waving, and get right to creating a broad-based coalition with the potential of defeating Monsanto, k?

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Gene discovery could breed veggies for a warmer planet

Gene discovery could breed veggies for a warmer planet

The nearly $2 billion lettuce industries of California and Arizona are likely to get mighty wilted as temperatures in those hot states continue to rise. But science is here to save the day — with GMOs.

A research team with USDA and National Science Foundation funding has identified a lettuce gene and enzyme that make the plants stop germinating when it’s too hot — so now scientists hope to tweak those lettuces to grow even when they naturally wouldn’t. Currently growers have to cool soil and seeds with extra cool water, at great expense. The study, published in the journal The Planet Cell, was a collaboration between scientists at India’s Ranga Agricultural University, the University of California at Davis, and scientists from Arcadia Biosciences.

“Discovery of the genes will enable plant breeders to develop lettuce varieties that can better germinate and grow to maturity under high temperatures,” said the study’s lead author Kent Bradford, a professor of plant sciences and director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center.

“And because this mechanism that inhibits hot-weather germination in lettuce seeds appears to be quite common in many plant species, we suspect that other crops also could be modified to improve their germination,” he said. “This could be increasingly important as global temperatures are predicted to rise.”

No word from the researchers, though, on how good that hot lettuce would actually taste. Let’s just flip nature’s off switch — what could go wrong?

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Tar Sands Blockade wins sponsorship deal from Kryptonite bike locks

Tar Sands Blockade wins sponsorship deal from Kryptonite bike locks

Disturbed by the recent tar-sands spills in Minnesota and Arkansas, Kryptonite lock company has decided to step up its efforts to protect the planet.

Today, the company offered corporate sponsorship to any of the Keystone XL pipeline protesters who raised the bar by chaining themselves to tar-sands equipment over the last year. (Needless to say, they’ve been burning through a lot of locks.)

Laura Borealis

“The people at Kryptonite have a pure passion for creating the best security in the world. And that includes creating security for the planet,” the company said in a statement. “We recognized the blockaders for their creative use of our product, and we wanted to encourage more of their important work. Plus, Kryptonite’s reinforced, anodyzed steel design resists removal 50 percent longer than competitors and is guaranteed to frustrate law enforcement.”

They may seem like odd bedfellows, but Kryptonite’s products have already helped activists disrupt energy conferences and slow down pipeline construction.

The blockade reported that they were happy to have the power of so many locks behind them. Unconcerned about backlash over a corporate sponsor, the blockade emphasized the greater good. “Kryptonite U-locks protect our bikes from being re-liberated on city streets every day — why shouldn’t they protect our planet too?” activists said in a statement.

“We will use the master’s tools to lock down the master’s house.”

No word yet on whether the makers behind Gorilla Glue might consider making a similar donation.

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Frackers dodge responsibility for earthquakes, science be damned

Frackers dodge responsibility for earthquakes, science be damned

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We’ve known for a couple of years that fracking for oil and gas has been linked to some sizable earthquakes. The shaking doesn’t actually come from the high-pressure fracking itself, but from the injection of tons of post-frack dirty wastewater into disposal wells. Only Ohio requires a risk assessment for quakes around the state’s injection wells.

Mother Jones digs into this story, speaking with numerous scientists who agree: Frack the earth and it will frack you back. “There is no shortage of evidence,” writes reporter Michael Behar.

Between 1972 and 2008, the USGS recorded just a few earthquakes a year in Oklahoma. In 2008, there were more than a dozen; nearly 50 occurred in 2009. In 2010, the number exploded to more than 1,000. These so-called “earthquake swarms” are occurring in other places where the ground is not supposed to move. There have been abrupt upticks in both the size and frequency of quakes in Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, and Texas. Scientists investigating these anomalies are coming to the same conclusion: The quakes are linked to injection wells. Into most of them goes wastewater from hydraulic fracking, while some … are filled with leftover fluid from dewatering operations.

Flatter states are more susceptible to fracking-related quakes — as MoJo puts it, “a stone makes a bigger splash when it’s hurled into a glassy pond than a river of raging whitewater.” (But pretty please don’t take that as an invitation to drill California to shaky bits.)

The least surprising part of all this? That the industry is reluctant to accept that it might be responsible for tearing peoples’ houses down — or at least that it doesn’t want to talk to lefty magazines about it.

Some scientists are concerned that industry and government officials don’t want to work with them on the issue.

“Nobody is talking to one another about this,” says William Ellsworth, a prominent USGS geophysicist who’s published more than 100 papers on earthquakes. Among other mishaps, Ellsworth worries that a well could pierce an unknown fault “five miles from a nuclear power plant.” …

There is “a lack of companies cooperating with scientists,” complains seismologist [John] Armbruster. “I was naive and thought companies would work with us. But they are stonewalling us, saying they don’t believe they are causing the quakes.” Admitting guilt could draw lawsuits and lead to new regulation. So it’s no surprise, says [researcher Justin] Rubinstein, “that industry is going to keep data close to their chest.” When I ask Jean Antonides, New Dominion’s VP of exploration, why the industry is sequestering itself from public inquiry, he replies, “Nobody wants to be the face of this thing.” Plenty of misdeeds are pinned on oil and gas companies; none wants to add earthquakes to the list.

Geophysicists often work with oil and gas companies, further muddying the wastewater when it comes to the fracking facts. One of those scientists, Stanford professor and industry booster Mark Zoback, tells Behar: “Three things are predictable whenever earthquakes occur that might be caused by fluid injection: The companies involved deny it, the regulators go into a brain freeze because they don’t know what to do, and the press goes into a feeding frenzy because they get to beat up on the oil and gas industry, whether it is responsible or not.”

Yum, feeding frenzy! But I think we’re hungrier for some regulation. Who has time to beat up on frackers when we’re preparing for potential seismic doom?

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Frackers dodge responsibility for earthquakes, science be damned

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Do trees fight crime in Philadelphia?

Do trees fight crime in Philadelphia?

htomren

We already know that having more trees around protects our health. Turns out those trees might also protect our wealth and safety, according to a new study from researchers at Temple University, published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

Controlling for some socioeconomic factors such as poverty, education, and density, the researchers examined crime and tree data and found that “the presence of grass, trees and shrubs is associated with lower crime rates in Philadelphia, particularly for robberies and assaults.”

Here’s where things get a little presumptuous. The authors “surmise this deterrent effect is rooted in the fact that maintained greenery encourages social interaction and community supervision of public spaces, as well the calming effect that vegetated landscapes may impart, thus reducing psychological precursors to violent acts.”

A study published in the same journal last year backs up the connection: A 10 percent increase in trees in Baltimore correlated to about a 12 percent decrease in crime. “It’s really pretty striking how strong this relationship is,” said Austin Troy, lead author of that study.

But is it truly a causal relationship?

I like trees as much as the next blogger, maybe even more, but we need to see more research before jumping to conclusions. In both studies, researchers say they controlled for socioeconomic factors, but how effectively? Do trees necessarily deter crime, or are they just one characteristic of a richer neighborhood that has a lot of things that poorer neighborhoods don’t have — like safer streets?

Whether or not trees are really crime-stoppers, civic planting projects can play a big role in improving those poorer ‘hoods. But a pro tip for the green-minded: The key to success isn’t just planting more trees. You also have to keep them alive.

And a pro trip for the crime-minded: Whatever you do, just don’t be this guy.

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Farmland prices soar — along with farm debt

Farmland prices soar — along with farm debt

While small-scale producers of fruits and vegetables are scraping by, it’s a whole ‘nother story for corn and soy farmers. (It’s always a whole ‘nother story for corn and soy farmers, really.) Well-oiled subsidies, overseas demand, ethanol like whoa, plus a drop in production thanks to the drought are all pushing crop prices up — and, in turn, prices for the land those crops are grown on.

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The New York Times reports on the gleeful farmers, speculating investors, and impending economic doom.

Across the American heartland, farmland prices are soaring. In places like Waco, Neb., and Chickasaw County, Iowa, where the boom-and-bust cycle of farming reaches deep into the psyche, some families are selling the land that they have worked for generations, to cash in while they can. …

Sensing opportunity, investment firms are buying, too. David Taylor, of Oskaloosa, Kan., said he was saddened to sell his family’s farm but that the prices were too good to resist. …

“I bawled like a baby,” Mr. Taylor, 59, said. His crop-producing fields sold for $10,100 an acre.

In Iowa, despite the drought last year, farmland prices have nearly doubled since 2009, to an average $8,296 an acre, far surpassing the last boom’s peak in 1979. In Nebraska, the price of irrigated land has also doubled since 2009.

That’s given farmers who’ve chosen to stay a whole lot of value to borrow against, and borrow they are. Farmers’ debt load has risen almost a third since 2007.

Regulators say it is difficult to determine exactly how much farm debt exists, because much of it involves debt owed to various vendors and suppliers.

“In so many ways, we’re blind to some of that information,” said Jason Henderson, a vice president at the Omaha branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

What banksters aren’t blind to is the potential for profit. More investors, including foreign banks, are moving in to snap up high-priced land and rent it back to farmers. The whole dynamic smacks of a bubble — one that deserves to pop, but that will make a big mess for the folks invested in it.

“There are some opportunities out there, but man, it’s tough,” said Shonda Warner, a former Goldman Sachs trader who returned to her Midwest farm roots in 2006, when she started Chess Ag Full Harvest Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in farmland. Like many other investors, Ms. Warner’s fund buys land and then rents it to farmers. As land prices have risen sharply, so have rents.

“I worry about people who are buying farmland and expecting to get big rents, $500 or even $600 in the Midwest,” Ms. Warner said. “What happens when corn prices fall next year and they can’t pay? What are you going to do? Take their television set?”

Uh, yeah, Warner, that’s exactly what the debt collectors will do. And then, ironically, those now TV-less ex-farmers will only be able to afford cheap processed foods and meat from animals fed corn and soy. Oh, I almost forgot: Happy National Agriculture Day!

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Colorado wildfires get an early start this dry year

Colorado wildfires get an early start this dry year

USAFColorado on fire in 2012.

An early start to wildfire season took northern Colorado residents by surprise late last week. Two fires broke out on Friday, fanned by unusually high temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds, which forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes. And the state has been suffering from epic, epic drought, so that’s really helping with the burning.

Reuters reports:

The early-season wildfires could be a bad omen for drought-stricken Colorado, which had one of its worst ever wildfire seasons in 2012.

All of Colorado is experiencing moderate to exceptional drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Snowpack levels in the Colorado mountains are below the annual average. The state’s high-population urban corridor and farmers on the eastern plains rely on melting mountain snow for drinking water and irrigation.

As local fire captain Patrick Love told the Los Angeles Times, “the drought that we have been in, in this portion of the state, has somewhat played a role in the dryness of all the fuels.”

The two wildfires were contained over the weekend, but the unseasonable blaze really freaked out Colorado residents who were hit with hundreds of wildfires last year, which ultimately burned out tens of thousands of acres.

Two Colorado state senators are now pushing for the state to bankroll its own aerial fleet of fire-fighting planes, as the federal fleet is aging, depleted, and often slow in responding. ”We are pushing our luck when we think that the federal government will come flying in to save Colorado when it’s burning,” Sen. Steve King (R) told 7NEWS.

Not that King is wrong per se, but we’re missing the big picture if we think that more fire-fighting airplanes and helicopters are the answer to a scorched Western landscape.

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Fastest-growing metro areas in U.S. are sprawling and water-challenged

Fastest-growing metro areas in U.S. are sprawling and water-challenged

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New York grew too, but not as much as big metro areas in Texas.

It’s time again for another fun-filled Census report on how much bigger U.S. cities are getting! Happy Monday, Southern and Western states: Y’all dominated the top 30 winning metropolitan areas, crushing the Midwest and Eastern seaboard.

“While most metro areas didn’t experience significant swings in population over the past year, several in the Sun Belt and Mountain West saw noticeable gains,” the Governing blog reports.

Here’s the thing about these Census city growth reports, though: While we at Grist like to celebrate cities, the Census doesn’t calculate urban growth. The agency looks at total metropolitan-area growth, which includes suburbs and sometimes even exurbs. And it turns out that many of the fastest-growing metros are among the sprawlingest and least sustainable.

The top three metro winners for population growth from July 2011 to July 2012, according to the Census, were car-dependent areas with water problems: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas; Houston-the Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas; and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif. Shouldn’t-even-exist Phoenix, Ariz., is No. 7 for big growth; Las Vegas, Nev., is No. 20. City growth is great, but not when it’s really sprawl, which is what happens most of the time when metro areas expand.

Governing has a rad interactive map of all this data. Go play. Then maybe compare cities that are growing with cities that have a lot of cyclists, are plagued by food deserts, and have high costs of living.

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Bottled water doesn’t actually come from where you think it does

Bottled water doesn’t actually come from where you think it does

Are you still hung up on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s post-State of the Union weird water flub? Well, Peter Gleick sure is. The author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water (and the underhanded liberator of those climate-denying documents from the Heartland Institute) has been researching bottled water for years, and after Rubio’s odd moment with a bottle of Poland Spring, Gleick saw his chance to finally nail Poland Spring bottler Nestlé on where the water actually comes from.

A “distinct character profile” and not quite 1/3 legit? Sounds Rubio-appropriate. Mother Jones reports:

In researching the book, Gleick said he found that most of the companies that he talked to were cagey about their water sources. “They don’t like to advertise that fact, and there’s no legal requirement that they say on their label where the water comes from,” he says. As a result, despite spending $11 billion a year on bottled water, most Americans don’t know much about the origins of these beverages.

There are a few rules that bottled-water brands have to follow, however. In order to be called “spring water,” according to the EPA, a product has to be either “collected at the point where water flows naturally to the earth’s surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source.” Unlike the term “spring water,” other terms like “glacier water” or “mountain water” aren’t regulated and “may not indicate that the water is necessarily from a pristine area,” according to the EPA.

Gleick found that only about 55 percent of bottled waters are actual spring water. The other 45 percent of brands is mostly treated tap water. Aquafina, PepsiCo’s bottled water brand, and Dasani, which is Coke’s, are from municipal sources. …

The murky facts around bottled-water sources prompted the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to survey the industry’s overall transparency and disclosure and issue a report card. Researchers found that 18 percent of bottled-water brands give zero information about where they come from. Thirty-two percent of the 173 bottled-water brands failed to disclose information about their treatment procedures or water purity on the label.

In 2012, according to Gleick, Americans drank more bottled water than in any year before. Sure, you can make a lot of cool stuff out of all the detritus resulting from our bottled-water culture, but let’s just stick with the Nalgene, ok? Oh god but please, please wash it once in a while.

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Protesters target firms angling for a piece of pipeline profits

Protesters target firms angling for a piece of pipeline profits

Tomorrow marks the start of a week of actions and information sessions nationwide aimed at throwing a monkey wrench into the Keystone XL pipeline construction. There are 24 planned events across 20 cities.

Tar Sands Blockade

Want to march and chant? Want to dance? Want to learn how best to lie limp in front of a bulldozer or U-lock your neck to a piece of heavy machinery? (Protip: A little Maalox and water will wash that pepper-spray out right quick.) Rallies, protests, flash mobs, trainings, and Idle No More round dances will take place from Seattle to Washington D.C., rain or shine. The whole effort is spearheaded by the tireless folks at Deep Green Resistance and the Tar Sands Blockade.

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This week of protest is coming together just as new data bolsters a longstanding critique of the pipeline-to-be: That we’re not even going to use the oil it’s carrying here anyway. The Wall Street Journal reports that “much” of the tar sands oil that would be pumped through the pipeline from Canada to the Gulf would not contribute to U.S. energy independence — it would be exported.

Oil Change International, a nonprofit advocacy group that opposes the pipeline, presented new data Thursday showing how Gulf Coast refineries, especially those in Texas, have in recent years become major exporters of refined products.

The group says the Texas Gulf Coast refiners that would be the main recipients of Keystone-shipped crude already exported more than 60% of the gasoline they produced, 40% of their diesel output and 95% of their petroleum coke in 2012. It based its numbers on U.S. Census Bureau data. …

Refiners agree figures show the Gulf area exports a lot of its output, but say that is no reason to shun Keystone XL. “The Gulf Coast is long on refining capacity and short on demand. Exports will continue with or without Keystone XL,” said Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero Energy Corp. …

Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, said the company doesn’t refine or market the oil it ships and can’t control what might happen with exports.

Shorter TransCanada: “It’s not our fault that we’re profiting off this toxic stuff, that’s just what we do! We can’t control it.” Shocking, I know.

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