Web Sites of Interest (Pt. 4)

This is probably the penultimate blog in the series of sharing some of my bookmarks.   The categories in this posting are political and various (although a couple of science bookmarks have made their way into the latter category).  Part one covered climate change, economics and science; part two covered energy and part three covered human rights and radio plus video.

Further CCS Blow to Kingsnorth and Other Plants

As mentioned in our blog Blow to Emissions Claims for Kingsnorth and Other Plants, a recent report by Friends of the Earth (FOE) Denmark concluded the mitigation potential of carbon capture and storage (CCS) on coal is insignificant.

In a further blow for the claims of CCS, Emirates Business 24-7 reports that a new study by Gary Shaffer, a professor at the Danish Centre for Earth System Science (DCESS), concludes the technology will not stop global warming.

Professor Shaffer points out in the new study, published by Nature Geoscience, that storing CO2 in the ocean will contribute to acidification of the sea – with dangers that reverberate up the food chain – and it carries a higher risk of being returned to the atmosphere by ocean currents and storms.  (Our blog Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem is aimed at helping to raise the profile of the ocean acidification issue.)

Polar Bears and the US Endangered Species Act

Following a campaign (which I made a very small contribution to by signing the petition)  by the Center for Biological Diversity, polar bears were listed under the US Endangered Species Act just over two years ago.

Since then, nothing has really been done to try to help prevent the extinction of the bears.  The main threat to polar bears is the loss of sea ice due to climate change yet, bizarrely, officials declared the Endangered Species Act will not be used to help regulate the greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming and the melting ice in the Arctic Ocean.  The Center for Biological Diversity has sued to overturn the rule which does not allow the Act to be used in this way.

Water Use, Coca-Cola and India

A news item on the Planet Ark web site reported that British-based risk consultancy company Maplecroft has compiled a report which aims to alert companies to investment risks based on a “water security risk index”.

The index found that – judged by factors including access to drinking water, per capita demand and dependence on rivers that first flow through other nations – African and Asian nations had the most vulnerable supplies.

According to the news item, companies including Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Marks & Spencer, Coca-Cola and Devon Energy were among those seeking to reduce water use.

Coca-Cola, in particular, caught my eye because I recalled a campaign in India about the company’s appalling behaviour.  A quick search and I found the site I was looking for: India Resource Center.  The search results also contained an entry for Coca-Cola India with the description “Official Website Coca Cola India, the corporation nourishing [how?] the global community with the world’s largest selling soft drink concentrates since 1886.”  Hmm.

Anyway, back to India Resource Center who have long been campaigning against Coca-Cola.  The site’s campaigns page contains this description of the “assault” (their word) by Coca-Cola:

Communities across India are under assault from Coca-Cola practices in the country.  A pattern has emerged as a result of Coca-Cola’s bottling operations in India.

• Communities across India living around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola’s massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource.  The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work any more. Studies, including one by the Central Ground Water Board in India, have confirmed the significant depletion of the water table.
• When the water is extracted from the common groundwater resource by digging deeper, the water smells and tastes strange.  Coca-Cola has been indiscriminately discharging its waste water into the fields around its plant and sometimes into rivers, including the Ganges, in the area.  The result has been that the groundwater has been polluted as well as the soil. Public health authorities have posted signs around wells and hand pumps advising the community that the water is unfit for human consumption.
• In two communities, Plachimada and Mehdiganj, Coca-Cola was distributing its solid waste to farmers in the area as “fertilizer”.  Tests conducted by the BBC found cadmium and lead in the waste, effectively making the waste toxic waste.  Coca-Cola stopped the practice of distributing its toxic waste only when ordered to do so by the state government.
• Tests conducted by a variety of agencies, including the government of India, confirmed that Coca-Cola products contained high levels of pesticides, and as a result, the Parliament of India has banned the sale of Coca-Cola in its cafeteria.  However, Coca-Cola not only continues to sell drinks laced with poisons in India (that could never be sold in the US and EU), it is also introducing new products in the Indian market.  And as if selling drinks with DDT and other pesticides to Indians was not enough, one of Coca-Cola’s latest bottling facilities to open in India, in Ballia, is located in an area with a severe contamination of arsenic in its groundwater.

Banner at Coca-Cola Museum Photo: A. Samulon/India Resource Center

Back in July 2007, the India Resource Center reported on an announcement by Coca-Cola that they were investing in a water conservation project.  The report mentioned that:

“the Coca-Cola company has an extremely unsustainable relationship with water, a precious and increasingly scarce natural resource.  The company’s insatiable thirst for water – the company used 290 billion liters of water in 2006 alone, enough to meet the entire world’s drinking water needs for 10 days – does not even begin to tell the whole story.  The Coca-Cola company converted two-thirds of the freshwater it used into wastewater.  The company used the vast majority of the freshwater it uses for cleaning in its production process, and the result is that the Coca-Cola company is a champion of turning perfectly fine (and increasingly scarce) freshwater into wastewater.”

In April 2010, the India Resource Center reported “It is only a matter of time before the Coca-Cola company will be held financially and criminally liable for their operations in water-stressed areas in India, Coca-Cola shareholders were told today at the company’s shareholder meeting in Atlanta.”

An India Resource Center news item in early June 2010 stated “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez singled out Coca-Cola and Pepsi among transnational companies that would have their water use reviewed by the government as part of a widening state control on the economy.”

David M. Davison

Web Sites of Interest (Pt. 3)

Part three of my irregular series sharing some of my bookmarks – this time the categories are human rights and radio plus video.  Part one covered climate change, economics and science whilst part two covered energy.

E.ON’s CO2 Pipeline Plans from the New Kingsnorth

Village Voices is a community newsletter for Hoo and Chattenden sponsored by E.ON and, as you would expect, often contains a PR piece about Kingsnorth.

The current issue (June/July 2010) of Village Voices describes how “plans for a carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline from the proposed new cleaner coal-fired [are they moving away from the phrase “clean coal”?] Kingsnorth power station to the North Sea have been progressing since E.ON submitted environmental scoping reports to Medway Council in March.”

Exisiting Kingsnorth Power Station

E.ON’s plans are part of a vision for Kingsnorth to be the gateway to carbon capture and storage (CCS) development in the UK, enabling the future development of a CCS cluster in the south-east.

Ed Walker, E.ON’s project development manager, believes their plans for Kingsnorth represent the best opportunity to provide industrial scale evidence of the viability of CCS and the role it could play in meeting the UK’s future energy needs.  There are just a few problems with Mr. Walker’s belief and here are some examples:

• even if you accept the need for CCS with fossil fuels, surely the best way to provide evidence of its viability is to retrofit it to an existing plant?  After all, we keep hearing how important existing plants are to the world’s energy needs and how they must stay in use so need CCS;
• the government expects its CCS demonstrations to last 10-15 years (capturing only about 25% of the CO2 for a 1,600MW power station) and, in a 2006 press release, E.ON stated it expected first power to be produced in four to five years – assuming E.ON started construction in 2010, it would be 2024-2030 before the possibility of “proving” CCS works but the report Zero Carbon Britain 2030 – A New Energy Strategy shows how we can be zero carbon (without using CCS with fossil fuels) by 2030;
• a recent report by Friends of the Earth (FOE) Denmark has shown the mitigation potential of CCS on coal is insignificant – please read our Blow to Emissions Claims for Kingsnorth and Other Plants blog for further details; and
• there is no such thing as “clean coal” and “cleaner coal” just refers to a small reduction in the CO2 emissions – please read our Kingsnorth blog for an overview of the report Coal’s Assault on Human Health by the Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Our Kingsnorth blog referred to above also provides a short list of issues with CCS (not least of which is the fact that to deal with climate change, the CO2 will need to be stored for thousands of years and how can demonstrations lasting 10-15 years prove storage is safe for thousands of years?)

It should also not be forgotten that the present CO2 concentrations are just under 390ppm and the safe upper limit is considered to be 350ppm, therefore, we need to move urgently to sources of electricity which are zero carbon rather than “low carbon” or “lower carbon”.  The need for urgency and zero carbon rules out nuclear and “cleaner” fossil fuels through CCS as they fail on both counts.

David M. Davison

Medway City Campaign Petition Form

Trish Marchant says: my Medway City – Can We Decide Please? blog provides an excellent introduction to the campaign.  If you would like to collect signatures for this campaign, please download and print the form from here then send it back to us at the address on the bottom of the sheet.

An online petition was launched on 1st June to complement the paper version. To sign the online petition (if you have not signed the paper version), please visit:

www.ipetitions.com/petition/nomedwaycitywithoutconsultation.

This is the petition text:

“Medway Council have decided to apply for city status for the Medway Towns and villages and rename us all Medway City. They have yet again failed to properly consult with the residents, they have not explained the pros and cons of becoming one city and they have not disclosed the costs that a change to city status will incur.

“We the undersigned petition Medway Council to carry out a referendum to ask the people of the Medway Towns if they wish to be renamed Medway City, or to keep their town and village names and instead reinstate city status to the historically named City of Rochester.”

Looking over Temple Marsh, Strood downstream towards Rochester Bridge and Castle. On the Strood bank we see boats (including the one which appeared in Channel 4's 'Grand Designs') moored in Temple Creek.

Oppose an Elected Mayor for Medway

Trish Marchant says: Medway Council are asking residents to decide whether they want an elected Mayor or a Ceremonial Mayor.  An elected mayor would be voted for by the electorate at the same time as the local elections.

We oppose the imposition of an elected Medway Mayor, we oppose the concentration of power in one individual, we oppose the loss of democratic representation of our elected councillors in favour of that individual, and we oppose the increased costs that the additional bureaucratic burden and salaried position will incur.

Residents wishing to submit responses via Medway Council’s web page have until Wednesday, 30th June 2010.

Experts Demand European Action on Plastics Chemical

Earlier this week, the Planet Ark web site reported that a group of 60 scientists and health campaigners from 15 countries told the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in an open letter that they feared exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) could damage health, particularly amongst vulnerable groups such as babies and pregnant women.

BPA is a chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics and found in plastic food and drink packaging such as baby bottles and sports bottles.  BPA is also found in canned food and drinks and storage containers as an epoxy resin.

Some scientific studies have linked BPA exposure to higher risks of health problems such heart disease, breast cancer and diabetes.

Regulators in Canada and the United States are beginning to take action on BPA exposure, with Canada planning to ban its use in baby bottles, but, as yet, there has been no similar action at an EU level.  Some European countries – Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden for example – have made unilateral moves ahead of the EFSA review.

Breast Cancer UK launched a campaign in December 2009 calling for a ban on the use of BPA in baby bottles

Back in November 2009, the Ecologist published an article, FSA ‘ignoring’ evidence on baby bottle chemical bisphenol-A, about how health campaigners had criticised the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for dismissing evidence about the impact of BPA on human health, particularly younger children.

According to the Ecologist’s article, an FSA spokeswoman said:

“The European Food Standards Agency (EFSA) has said it will be looking at bisphenol-A again because of pressure from two European member states – Denmark and Belgium.  We don’t know what this will entail – if another review of the evidence then there won’t be much new to consider that has come to light since 2007″

The same article, however, reports that Clare Dimmer, the Chair of Trustees at Breast Cancer UK, said:

“A significant number of studies on BPA have been published since 2007 [my emphasis] that point to potential adverse health effects from BPA, but the FSA point about a lack of scientific evidence is disingenuous as there is over a decade’s worth of scientific evidence on the low dosage effects of BPA that they just ignored [my emphasis].”

David M. Davison

PS Yesterday the Ecologist published an article, A guide to plastics in the kitchen, which, amongst other things, lists the safer plastics and the plastics to avoid (which includes BPA).

A Very Different Posting

Whilst flicking through an old copy of Resurgence the other night, I came across a poem I thought worthwhile sharing – if you are like me and find poetry is not normally to your taste, please continue reading.

The poem was written by Tamsin Ireland, age 14, from Kingswood School, Bath and described by Resurgence as “innovative”; the poem also won the 2009 Young People’s Climate Change Conference competition.  You could say the poem is two in one – definitely inspirational (which is why I thought it worth sharing).

We have to see things the right way round
There is no hope
It is not true that
It is always possible to get out of bad situations
We must acknowledge that
We have made many mistakes
Although in the past
We knew the consequences
We didn’t change then even though
The air grew thicker and
Made the seas rise
Because of our lack of care in 2009 we
Have nothing left
It is wrong to believe that we
Can make a difference as individuals
All around the world people should know that we
Cannot bring back what we had
Even though we
Made an effort
As people together we
Became less and less powerful
The droughts, the hurricanes, the floods
Grew larger and larger
And our will to make things right
Disappeared completely before 2020
Selfish attitudes
Make things difficult for future generations
Some ways we found to create energy did not
Ensure that our children can live as well as we do
We must
Turn Things Around

Now please read the poem from the bottom up.

David M. Davison