by Jan Lundberg
Culture Change Letter #189, June 20, 2008

The empire of cheap food is crumbling

You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for petroleum-induced famine.

We have “innocently” accommodated rising population with greater and greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe limitations — major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss. The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.

We are headed for massive shortages of food and other essentials, mainly brought about by the depletion of geological fossil reserves of cheap energy and water. The situation is demonstrated regularly with easy arithmetic based on statistical indicators from the United Nations, Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, Earth Policy Institute, and numerous governments. Usually the full force of the message is offset by predictions of huge rises in future human population growth that are simple extrapolations of historical trends.

No one can say with certainty that the worst effects of today’s crisis will occur tomorrow or by any particular date. But it is irrational to assume there will only be gradual tightening of supplies until some solutions miraculously come to our aid. One ought to at least admit that one year ago few people thought we’d be going in the direction we’re going in, this fast, today.

Three days is our average food supply around the modernized world, i.e., for cities and their supermarkets. Long-term food stocks have plummeted: “Cereal stocks that are at their lowest level in 30 years,” according to Worldwatch institute in its most recent Vital Signs. This is exacerbated by increasingly weirder weather, compounded by the oil price/supply pressure on food. What can interfere with the three-day situation are truckers on strike (as in Europe), extended/repeated power outages, and the inability of the work force to commute to work.

I asked Chris Flavin, Worldwatch Institute president, about the escalating crisis that I assumed he was quite worried about. He told me on Wednesday,

“A lot will depend on the crop year and the weather. There is slack in the food supply system from meat consumption, for example. One steak’s energy requirement is the same as one gallon of ethanol. I see the glass half full and don’t have an apocalyptic view. We’re seeing fuel economy improvements and other self-correcting mechanisms. There’s $100 billion in renewable energy investment this year. We needed this crisis to start changing toward conservation. The pendulum is swinging again, as it did in the 1970s. We’re not going off the end of the cliff on peak oil. Production declines will be gradual.” I sent him my thoughts on the latter, with my thanks. I sure was surprised that he wasn’t half as worried as I am. Maybe he does not see as much of a problem the fact that the nation’s infrastructure is petroleum-based. He probably would not agree with me that the Earth is being murdered along with us human beings.

Zap! A global-warming heat wave kills many thousands in a U.S. city. Other cities take note, realizing their own cities are “like the one that got zapped last weekend.” Between the water supply problems, energy overload for air conditioning, rising prices for food, water and gasoline, people try to escape the urban heat island effect. Too many consumers stocking up and trying to split town exacerbated the tragedy.

When cities run out of food, and people want to leave en masse, they will get stuck in traffic jams the way fleeing (potential) victims of Hurricane Rita did in 2005. Will survivors be the ones who had the fullest gas tanks? Will these survivors also require guns to obtain food outside the city, whether by hunting or sticking up some hapless or well-armed locals?

Culture Change’s reports do not intend to add to hysteria. Indeed, if only there were no reason to be alarmed. But looking at our collective situation, it is difficult to see how wrenching shortages are avoidable. The consequence of reactions to these shortages will not be pretty. Without facing this, and taking action to prevent it, our Ship of Fools is on a course to hit the rocks.

Whether you are relatively “set” — with local food supply, not just money — or you are living from paycheck to paycheck and thus depend on the trucks coming into the supermarket without a hitch, you will not be immune to some interruption or limitation on the food you have probably taken for granted. As petroleum is in fast-dwindling supply and is relied upon for mass producing our food, shipping it (on average 1,500 miles for North Americans), packaging it and preparing it, we are up against a petroleum-induced famine of our own making. What evil-doer will we blame instead of ourselves?

The good news is that creative ways to obtain wild food are alive and well. Acorns and insects, however, are frowned upon — by the conventional consumer well fed for now. Is it time to stop cutting down oak trees? Poisoning snalis that are the escargot species? Wasting our nitrogen-rich urine by flushing it into our water supply instead of feeding it to fruit trees? Let us go over other options that we have:

Will we bring back the Victory Gardens through depaving and planting food in lawns? Until the food pops up for harvest, what will we eat — cats and rats? None of these sudden strategies can feed millions of hungry people in cities that don’t have pro-active leadership as yet. Yet, pedal power feeds millions in many a Chinese city surrounded by small farms. But every day the global economy plugs along, China is more fossil-fuel dependent, using far more coal than the U.S. and the U.K. combined.

Progress has been illusory in the last half century, but the period has been ballyhooed as amazing. “…the amount of grain produced per person grew from 285 kilograms in 1961 to a peak of 376 kilograms in 1986.” Since then it has gone down to 350 kilograms. China’s is 325 kilograms, the U.S. enjoys 1,230 kilograms, and in Zimbabwe — which Richard Heinberg told me is a guide to U.S. society after petrocollapse — is just 90 kilograms per capita. [Worldwatch, 2008] Can the most modern in the world really conserve the Earth suddenly?

There’s no let-up on the horizon, but people fervently hope for relief, as sure as tomorrow’s newspapers will be printed. As sure as the July 4th fireworks will be another display of our powerful continuity. Is this “Summer Driving Season” our last hurrah? Meanwhile, people are hurting in the pocket book, and are buying less stuff because of the oil price trend. So they look to blame someone, such as OPEC, the major oil companies, George Bush, take your pick. Some await Barack Obama to take over the White House and cleanse us of our woes, but even he says that community action is where it’s at.

Clearly, a half trillion dollar war on Iraq was not what our finances needed. If all that money had not been wasted, oil prices and food would be cheaper than they are. But what about the trickle-down of those corporations profiting off the war? Surely those billions for the contractors, and the fat salaries for those Americans so welcome in the Land Between Two Rivers, aided our economy. Or did they? The war profiteers and their friends in the corporate media expect everyone to buy capitalist theory. But wouldn’t you rather have had the half trillion bucks go to more livable conditions in our towns, such as community gardens, extended hours for libraries, better pay for teachers, and preventive health care? Thought so.

Unfortunately, our socioeconomic problems are too deeply rooted in disastrous treatment of Mother Nature, for even radical changes in federal spending priorities to get us out of this. So, the big one is coming. Looking at the fundamentals of our society and how it has changed from The Great Depression of the 1930s, we are in for something much worse than those days when the family farms were intact. What is implied for the big one on the horizon, according to optimistic activists such as Joanna Macy and David Korten, is “the great turning.” Doesn’t sound too scary, so I hope they’re right. They will be right, but they seem to skip the unpleasant bit about collapse.

The empire is crumbling, but first we must go through end-stages as the Romans and others had to: increasing debt, falling agricultural output, over-extended military, growing urban population without much productive purpose, etc. But we’re the good guys! — we call our empire’s philosophy “Democracy,” and we are so clever with science. Really, though, we’ve simply done better at distracting the populace and giving them the carrot more often than the stick, apparently. This translates to consumer freedom through more goods. The Big Gulp drink in disposable plastic — who could ask for more? We have had none other than The Empire of Cheap Food. Cheap in the sense that cancer can be had at lower prices than previous generations had to pay. Also, subsidized petroleum (to this day as well) jacked up the food supply and the human numbers.

It’s amazing how really intelligent people can be in dreamland over the possibility of positive change coming to the rescue. It’s not just limited to the technofix. It’s the general idea that people “are becoming more aware,” or “there are more and more people getting into organic gardening, CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), permaculture” and the like.

To get an indication of which may be more valid — (A) the trend for salvation as indicated by the growing phenomenon of gardening as noted by the New York Times last week, or (B) the inexorable, accelerating crunch of dwindling resources for too many people no matter how positive they may feel now — let us consider the result of a test on the community level.

This was very recently done in a most aware and progressive place. The population is small but well educated, oriented to be sensitive to world affairs, affluent, and active for local improvements. Sustainability is a goal in the eyes of many.

Here’s what was found from a survey of small and/or organic farms: no labor-help is needed at the beginning of the summer, nor for the whole summer long. Not even free help, volunteering. The farms’ production are set and unchangeable, apparently. Too bad, when the amount of food imported from afar is about 95% of what is eaten. One would think that at a time of rising food prices and the awareness of the global energy picture, such as peak oil, and when climate change makes the growing of food far more chancy, there’d be a discernible interest in upping the output and adding to community involvement of local farming. But the fact that people are (1) not anticipating any more demand for local and organic food this year, compared to last year, and that (2) there is no apparent need to gear up for greater production, seems ominous. It seems to indicate that there needs to be a raving crisis to get people to change their habits and plans.

Meanwhile, with a 100-year flood on the Iowa corn fields — where erosion on monocropped, depleted soil killed by petroleum pesticides and fertilizer and mechanical tilling — we are in for a hell of a summer. Is your food secure? Are you gardening, saving seeds, and protecting precious land and water?

The food price increases have something to do with oil prices that have doubled in a year. And the oil prices have something to do with peak oil. And peak oil has something to do with wasting the Earth headlong into deprivation and ecological destruction. And it’s about civilization as a runaway train. If you don’t agree with the metaphor, just try getting off. Crash must come, and come it will, and soon. I hope I’m wrong that: You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.

That would be our concern when the price of oil can skyrocket (which it is already doing) — if we were prudent. The price of oil is far too low when there are still countless people driving cars unnecessarily. Apparently these drivers don’t find global warming to be as a big deal as “the economy.” Because it’s money, and only money, that can change some people — until they find they cannot eat their money.

Where I sit, the plants are crying out: It’s near 100 degrees Fahrenheit two days in a row in bone-dry San Francisco. It’s the wild deviations from the averages that are deadly to life.

Charles Biderman, TrimTabs 06.23.08, 7:00 PM ET
Stratospheric crude oil prices precipitated by speculation are wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy.

Based on income tax withholdings data from the Daily Treasury Statement, the wages of all U.S. workers on payrolls were unchanged on a year-over-year basis in the past two weeks (Friday, June 6 through Thursday, June 19) and rose 1.1% year-over-year in the past four weeks (Friday, May 23 through Thursday, June 19). Both of those growth rates are well below the 2.8% year-over-year in May, and they are consistent with an economy that is contracting sharply.

As long as oil prices stay above $120 per barrel, the economy is more likely to slow than strengthen, and companies are not likely to announce much float shrink. With real wages falling, large numbers of jobs being shed, gas prices exceeding $4 per gallon almost everywhere and home prices falling about 1% per month nationally, this year is going to be tough for American consumers.

Believe it or not, there is plenty of oil in the world. What is in short supply are investors willing to go short oil futures. The open interest on oil futures worldwide is 2.6 million contracts. With oil prices at $135 per barrel, each contract is worth $135,000. To control $135,000 of oil, investors have to put up no more than $10,000.

A hefty $1.3 billion per month flowed into commodity trading advisers (CTAs) in the first four months of this year, and $700 million per month flowed into commodity exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the first five months of this year. Those amounts do not even include investments through other vehicles by hedge funds and pension funds. The latest issue of Barron’s reports that $55 billion flowed into commodity investments in the first quarter of 2008, and probably at least one-third of that amount was directed into long-only investments in oil.
Special Offer: Making big money on oil’s highs? What do you buy? RIG? XLE? PBR? Click here for daily updated buys and sells in energy and metals with a free trial of Professional Timing Service.

In any case, if half of the $2 billion per month inflow into CTAs and commodity ETFs were used to go long oil futures, it would be enough to go long 100,000 contracts, which is equal to 4% of the open interest on oil futures. In other words, open interest would grow roughly 50% per year just from inflows into CTAs and commodity ETFs.

What is happening now is not demand destruction, it is a financial disaster. The U.S. consumes 21 million barrels of per day. At $135 per barrel, the U.S. spends $1.0 trillion per year on oil, which is equal to 15% of the $6.8 trillion in take-home pay of everyone who pays taxes. If oil prices rose to $200 per barrel, the U.S. would spend $1.5 trillion per year on oil, which would be equal to 22% of take-home pay. Moreover, those percentages of 15% and 22% do not even include the cost of coal or natural gas. In other words, the U.S. will be broke long before oil prices hit $200 per barrel, and the rest of the world would be sure to follow.

Another way to put the oil crisis into perspective is to compare increased spending on oil to inflows into savings and investment vehicles. For every $60 per barrel increase in the price of oil, the U.S. spends an additional $450 billion annually, or $38 billion per month, on oil. In the past twelve months, the inflow into savings and investment vehicles–bank savings, certificates of deposit, retail money market funds, and all long-term mutual funds–was $744 billion, which is $296 billion more than the additional money the U.S. would spend each year on oil if the price of oil rose by $60 per barrel from its current level.

From April through June, the inflow into savings and investment vehicles was $35 billion per month, down 43% from $61 billion per month in the same period last year. In other words, the U.S. will generate almost no savings if the price of oil stays at $135 per barrel. If the price of oil rises even modestly from its current level, the U.S. will be operating at a deficit.

If regulators raised the margin requirement for oil futures to 25% from no more than 7.5%, the oil market would crack. Unfortunately for oil users, regulators are unlikely to boost the margin requirement, unless outside pressure becomes unbearable, because the income of commodity exchanges and traders would plummet.
Special Offer: Which energy stocks are the best investments now? Stay informed with a free trial subscription of Block Traders’ Oil and Gold Monitor.

But there are two other solutions to the oil crisis.

The first is requiring major players in the oil futures market to disclose their total positions of all kinds in crude. Given the importance of oil to the U.S. economy, everyone should be able to know who is going long crude oil in a big way. Institutional owners must report what stocks they own at least semiannually. Why should they not be required to report the amount of crude oil they are long?

The second solution is for oil consumers to make a concerted effort to go short oil futures. The U.S. government has been spending $280 million per month, pumping 70,000 barrels of oil per day into salt caverns. Instead of buying oil, why not go short 35,000 contracts monthly at $8,000 per contract, in other words selling high the crude we bought relatively low? What if other major crude oil users also went short oil futures each month? What if the Japanese government, airlines, trucking companies and utilities spent several billion dollars to go short oil futures each month until the oil market came to its senses?

It is insane for the world to go broke while oil traders and a handful of gangsters who control their national oil production make huge fortunes.

· Speech to US Congress will also criticise lobbyists
· ‘Revolutionary’ policies needed to tackle crisis

* Ed Pilkington in New York
* The Guardian,
* Monday June 23, 2008

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the “perfect storm” of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.”

He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated. Hansen’s speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public’s attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding “it is time to stop waffling”.

He will tell the House select committee on energy independence and global warming this afternoon that he is now 99% certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already risen beyond the safe level.

The current concentration is 385parts per million and is rising by 2ppm a year. Hansen, who heads Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, says 2009 will be a crucial year, with a new US president and talks on how to follow the Kyoto agreement.

He wants to see a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, coupled with the creation of a huge grid of low-loss electric power lines buried under ground and spread across America, in order to give wind and solar power a chance of competing. “The new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy’s decision to go to the moon.”

His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. “The problem is not political will, it’s the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It’s the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it’s intended to work.”

A group seeking to increase pressure on international leaders is launching a campaign today called 350.org. It is taking out full-page adverts in papers such as the New York Times and the Swedish Falukuriren calling for the target level of CO2 to be lowered to 350ppm. The advert has been backed by 150 signatories, including Hansen.

By Carola Hoyos and Javier Blas in London

Published: June 20 2008 22:02 | Last updated: June 20 2008 22:02

Western countries have upgraded the food and fuel crisis into a national security concern as they fear record high energy and agriculture commodity costs are destabilising key developing regions of the world.

The concerns come as the world suffers for the first time since 1973 from the confluence of record oil and food prices. Corn, soyabean and meat prices jumped this week to all-time highs, while oil prices hit a record of almost $140 a barrel.

This shift toward a national security concern will become apparent at Sunday’s oil meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where ministers are expected to warn that developing countries are cracking under the burden of record costs.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and the only country able to raise output, has recognised the danger after developing countries, including US-ally Pakistan, pleaded for a reprieve from oil payments.

Morocco was forced last month to ask for an $800m loan from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to cushion the impact of oil and cereal imports.

One Washington official said: “What we have been watching is behaviour [that indicates] China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam [and] Malaysia simply can’t bear the burden on the central budget and that the medium to long-term confluence of oil and food prices is just too much.” He added: “It is leading to a real security issue where the streets are talking to the president.”

Martin Bartenstein, Austria’s economics minister who is travelling to Jeddah, said on Friday that the risk of social tension caused by high oil prices driving inflation to double digits will be a main tenet of his argument.

“It is very high on our agenda,” said a senior diplomat from a larger European nation.

Senior active and former US, European and United Nations officials said they had met US White House staff on the issue for briefings having been prompted in part by the unrest that toppled Haiti’s government and more recently after several Asian countries risked popular anger by cutting fuel subsidies.

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet. Posted June 18, 2008.

Meet the man who got rich by popularizing bipolar disorder for children. Congressional investigators and the NY Times expose the scandal.

What Dick Cheney is to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, psychiatrist Joseph Biederman is to the explosion of psychiatric medications in American children. Recently, Biederman was nailed by congressional investigators and the New York Times for overestimating just how greedy an elite shrink is entitled to be. Beyond a peek into the corruption of psychiatry at its highest levels, the scandal is an opportunity to reconsider the Big Pharma financed view of why kids become disruptive and destructive.

On June 8, 2008, the New York Times reported the following about Joseph Biederman: “A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful anti-psychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given congressional investigators.”

Due in part to Biederman’s influence, the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003, and as Bloomberg News reported (September 2007), “The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for anti-psychotic drugs.”

Pediatrician and author Lawrence Diller notes about Biederman, “He single-handedly put pediatric bipolar disorder on the map.” Biederman has been in a position to convince many doctors to diagnose bipolar disorder in children and to medicate them with anti-psychotic drugs. In addition to being a professor at Harvard, Biederman is also chief of research in pediatric psychopharmacology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which publishes more than 30 papers yearly on psychiatric disorders. And Biederman himself has authored and co-authored approximately 500 articles, 70 book chapters, and more than 450 scientific abstracts, as well as being on the editorial board of many professional journals.

Biederman (and two of his colleagues in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School who received an additional $2.6 million from drug companies from 2000 to 2007), by failing to report income from drug companies while at the same time receiving federal funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), violated rules designed to police conflicts of interest, according to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley concluded, “Obviously, if a researcher is taking money from a drug company while also receiving federal dollars to research that company’s product, then there is a conflict of interest.” In one example, Biederman neglected to report his 2001 income from Johnson & Johnson (makers of the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal); Johnson & Johnson reported to Grassley that it had paid Biederman $58,169 in 2001.

In addition to his popularization of bipolar disorder for children, Biederman is one of the most significant forces behind the commonplace diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Congressional investigators also found that Biederman conducted studies of Eli Lilly’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drug Strattera that were funded by NIH at the same time he was receiving money from Lilly that exceeded the maximum amount permitted.

NIH rules state that researchers cannot take more than $20,000 in payments from a drug company whose drug they are funded by NIH to research and that researchers must disclose any payment received from a drug company of $10,000 or more. Apparently, for drug researchers taking federal funding from NIH, there is no law against being on the take from drug companies, but there are rules against greed.

Mental health treatment in the United States is now a multibillion-dollar industry, and all the rules of industrial complexes apply. Not only does Big Pharma have influential psychiatrists such as Biederman in their pocket, virtually every mental health institution from which doctors, the press, and the general public receive their mental health information is financially interconnected with Big Pharma. The American Psychiatric Association, psychiatry’s professional organization, is hugely dependent on drug company grants, and this is also true for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and other so-called consumer organizations. Harvard and other prestigious university psychiatry departments take millions of dollars from drug companies, and the National Institute of Mental Health funds researchers who are financially connected with drug companies.

The corporate media, dependent on drug company advertising, occasionally reports on egregious scandals, but the corporate media is generally timid in reporting the big picture of how drug companies spread around millions of dollars to make billions of dollars.

There are certainly many troubled and disruptive American children who are sometimes extremely destructive to themselves or others. However, any attempt to understand these kids will be corrupted by financial dependency on drug companies, which have a vested interest in viewing all attentional, emotional, and behavioral difficulties as diseases that can be fixed with drugs.

There are several commonsense nondisease reasons why children become troubled and behave disruptively and destructively. For more than two decades, I have worked with annoying, disruptive, and destructive children. Many of these children had been previously diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, and other serious psychiatric diagnoses, and they were routinely given a variety of drug combinations. Their parents most often reported that drugs were prescribed after being questioned by doctors about symptoms but without any exploration of reasons as to why their children were behaving as they did.

In America’s assembly-line medicine, drug prescriptions are routinely written without any exploration of commonsense reasons as to why a child might be behaving problematically. Is the child resentful over a perceived injustice? Is the child experiencing deep emotional pain? Is the child simply bored? Does the child feel powerless? Does the child have low self-worth because a lack of life skills and thus behaves immaturely so no expectations are placed on him or her? Is the child starving for attention? Has the child lost respect for his or her parents because these adults have not acted like adults? Has the child’s basic physical needs — such as proper nutrition, physical activity, or sleep — not been met? Routinely, few if any of these areas are explored before a prescription is written.

One of the most common reasons that children behave problematically is that well-meaning parents are having difficulty relating to their child’s personality. Perhaps the parents are, by nature, compliant and conformist, and their child has a nonconformist and rebellious temperament. Good parents feel guilty when they have difficulty relating to their child, but all of us — including doctors — are human, and we all need to admit our limitations. The reality is that children who feel that nobody “gets them” are more likely to be troubled and disruptive. In another era, if a parent had difficulty relating to his or her child, there would more likely be at least one grandparent, uncle, aunt, friend, or other adult in the community who could easily relate. In our increasingly disconnected society (see Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone for a detailed picture of the destruction of American community), there are increasing numbers of children without even one adult who they believe relates to them.

Moreover, as society demands increasing machinelike efficiency, more of us — children and adults — will not be able to fit in; but a corporate media cannot confront a corporate culture that produces widespread painful alienation, which in turn creates a variety of attentional, emotional and behavioral problems. The corporate media may at times report on egregious corruption of an individual or an institution, but it does not ask this question: In an increasingly homogenized and standardized society, should we drug those who do not neatly fit in — or should we consider transforming such a society?

How Green is DuPont’s Replacement for Teflon Chemical?
By Olga V. Naidenko, PhD, and Renee Sharp
Environmental Working Group, June 2008
Straight to the Source

In 2006, under pressure from the U.S. EPA, DuPont and 7 other companies promised to phase out by 2015 a cancer-causing chemical called PFOA, used to make Teflon and also found in grease-resistant coatings for food packaging. In its place, the chemical industry is pushing new, supposedly “green” food package coatings.

But an investigation by Environmental Working Group (EWG) finds no evidence that the industry-touted replacement chemicals being rushed to market are safer — and plenty of evidence that DuPont and other manufacturers are continuing a decades-long pattern of deception about the health risks of PFOA and related chemicals.

Like PFOA-based coatings, the new compounds are also made from, contaminated with, or break down into perfluorochemicals (PFCs), including new coatings for household products like stain-resistant fabrics and carpet, waterproof clothing, and food packaging. Like PFOA, they persist in the environment and can cross the placenta to contaminate babies before birth. But unlike PFOA – for which there are dozens of peer-reviewed studies showing links to cancer, reproductive problems and immune disorders – for the replacement chemicals there are almost no publicly available data on their health risks, leaving in question whether food packaging and other PFC-containing products are any safer.

EWG’s investigation is the first review of health data and industry greenwashing since the phaseout agreement was announced. We examined federal reports on food packaging toxicity; industry-funded health studies in Environmental Protection Agency files; and company e-mails unearthed in a lawsuit over PFOA pollution of drinking water near a DuPont facility in West Virginia, and found:

* Despite agreeing to phase out PFOA, DuPont and other makers of perfluorinated chemicals continue to maintain that it is safe. A DuPont press release from March 2008 said “. . . PFOA exposure does not pose a health risk to the general public. To date, there are no human health effects known to be caused by PFOA.” This is not only contradicted by the EPA Science Advisory Board’s 2005 finding that PFOA is a likely human carcinogen, but by DuPont’s own scientific advisors. In 2005, in response to a similar statement by the company, an ethics advisor on DuPont’s Epidemiology Review Board wrote: “The claim of no health effects is not supported by available facts (factual inappropriateness) … Such a statement is misleading, whether intentionally or not, and it is unacceptable to mislead in this way (moral inappropriateness).” In fact, to date at least 10 studies of people show significant health risks of PFOA, including elevated risk for obesity, heart disease, endocrine disorders, and infectious diseases in a study of 4538 children younger than 10 years of age living near a DuPont plant in West Virginia.
* From January 2007 to April 2008, chemical manufacturers reported to the EPA 19 studies on PFC chemicals that showed “substantial risk” to human health or the environment under section 8(e) of the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA). The health effects reported in these studies of anonymous PFCs include the deaths of laboratory animals as well as damage to the liver, thyroid and prostate. Yet under EPA regulations shielding confidential business information, in 17 of 19 cases the exact name of the chemical is not identified and in 13 of 19 cases the manufacturer is not identified. This information is secret not only from the public, but from health officials in states, like California, that are considering laws to ban PFCs in food packaging. These reports are doubly troubling: Not only is information being hidden that is important to public health, but by their own admission companies are finding substantial health risks for chemicals they may well be using as PFOA replacements.
* From 2005 through November 2007 FDA approved 8 new food packaging fluorochemicals that may replace older, PFOA-contaminated or C8-based PFCs. These approvals were granted with no public record of any health risk assessment from exposures to the contaminant residues and breakdown products of greatest concern, according to documents EWG obtained from the Food and Drug Administration. Since that time FDA has approved 2 additional substitute chemicals, and DuPont has announced that its new PFOA replacement, the CapstoneTM grease-proofing chemicals, will be available for packaging products beginning in 2009. This dramatic shift in the market and in human exposures has occurred with no public assessment of the safety of the replacements.
* A similar pattern of unproven claims and secrecy is found in reports filed by chemical makers on the progress of the PFOA phaseout. Since the phaseout is voluntary, EPA has no authority to verify claims of reduced PFOA use or releases. Some companies report little or no progress. Others claim significant reductions, but again hide the details as confidential business information. Worse, the industry’s claims that the phaseout will eliminate PFOA by 2015 are shattered by the fact that no company from China, the third-largest producer of packaging in the world, is a party to the agreement.

The industry’s contention that its PFOA replacements are safer rests on two atoms of carbon. PFOA is sometimes called C8 because it has 8 carbon atoms. A key replacement chemical, perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), contains 6 carbon atoms and is often called C6. The chemical industry would have us believe that the removal of two carbon atoms removes human health risks.

On April 23, 2008, a scientist representing the Telomer Research Program, a chemical industry group that includes DuPont and other PFC makers, testified before the Health Committee of the California State Senate against a bill to ban both PFOA/C8 and PFHxA/C6 in food packaging. He repeated the claim that PFOA is not harmful to humans, and that a ban is is not needed because of the voluntary phaseout program. He also repeatedly described C6 as an example of the “green chemistry” approach the state is developing to encourage the production of safer alternative chemicals:

[The bill] would derail a promising example of green chemistry at work . . . [B]y targeting perflourinated compounds with chain links of 6 or higher in this legislation, the bill would frustrate the conversion from the C8 based products, that are the source of the PFOA, to a set of effective C6 based compounds whose breakdown products are much, much less toxic and don’t have the same persistence issues that PFOA and some of the C8s have. . . . [O]ur companies are addressing the concerns about PFOA; we’re aggressively doing so. And we believe the proposed legislation would actually do harm to an effective green chemistry strategy for reducing the concerns about this chemical. (Lawyer 2008)

This is greenwashing – claiming environmental benefits for a product that’s little better than its replacement – at its worst. PFOA is so remarkably persistent in the environment and broadly toxic to living organisms that using it as a bar against which to judge “green chemistry” is like calling anything under 200 miles per hour a safe speed limit. For C6 replacements, the full extent of the public record on their safety consists of a PowerPoint presentation delivered by Asahi Glass Company to the Environmental Protection Agency. Public records show that DuPont, Asahi, and Clariant are all shifting from PFOA to C6 chemistries despite an absolute dearth of public safety data, and despite the fact that on 3 critical counts, C6 may be as great a concern as PFOA:

* C6, like all the other PFCs, is extraordinarily persistent in the environment (NAS 1972).
* C6 is potentially 3 to 5 times more toxic than C8 to aquatic organisms (Asahi 2006).
* C6 crosses the placenta to contaminate children before birth, according to an EWG study of umbilical cord blood from 10 newborn babies (EWG 2005). While many studies of thousands of people by CDC, industry, and academic university researchers show that PFOA contaminates nearly the entire U.S. population, industry has failed to publish even a single study of C6 in people. EWG’s tests of cord blood show it to be potentially as great a concern as PFOA.

Truly green chemistry is sustainable chemistry with products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. Much remains unknown about C6, but what is known – that it is bioaccumulative, persistent and crosses the placenta to pollute human blood – is enough to disqualify it as green chemistry. Promoting a PFOA replacement that raises such serious safety concerns while simultaneously withholding critical toxicity data violates the spirit of the PFOA phaseout agreement and undermines the credibility of the entire industry.

More at: http://www.ewg.org/node/26642

Saturday, June 21, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Friday easily approved a compromise bill setting new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from the government’s terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping on phone and computer lines in this country.

The bill, which was passed on a 293-129 vote, does more than just protect the telecoms. The update to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an attempt to balance privacy rights with the government’s responsibility to protect the country against attack, taking into account changes in telecommunications technologies. “This bill, though imperfect, protects both,” said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and a former member of the House intelligence committee.

President Bush praised the bill Friday. “It will help our intelligence professionals learn enemies’ plans for new attacks,” he said in a statement before television cameras a few hours before the vote.

The House’s passage of the FISA Amendment bill marks the beginning of the end to a monthslong standoff between Democrats and Republicans about the rules for government wiretapping inside the United States. The Senate was expected to pass the bill with a large margin, perhaps as soon as next week, before Congress takes a break during the week of the Fourth of July.

The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after the Sept. 11 attacks without permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the special panel established for that purpose under the 1978 law. Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against the telecommunications companies by groups and individuals who think the Bush administration illegally monitored their phone calls or e-mails.

The White House had threatened to veto any surveillance bill that did not also shield the companies.

The compromise bill directs a federal district court to review certifications from the attorney general saying the telecommunications companies received presidential orders telling them wiretaps were needed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. If the paperwork were deemed in order, the judge would dismiss the lawsuit.

It would also require the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

Critics of the bill say dismissal is a foregone conclusion.

“These provisions turn the judiciary into the administration’s rubber stamp,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. She opposes the bill.

Opponents of immunity believe civil lawsuits are the only way the full extent of the wiretapping program will ever be revealed.

Key senators voiced strong opposition to the compromise, although they’re unlikely to have the votes to either defeat or filibuster the bill. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned the immunity deal. He said that nothing in the new bill would prevent the government from once again wiretapping domestic phone and computer lines without court permission.

Specter said the problem is constitutional: The White House may still assert that the president’s Article II powers as commander in chief supersede statutes that would limit him actions.

“Only the courts can decide that issue and this proposal dodges it,” Specter said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California disputed that, saying FISA would from now on be the authority for the government to conduct electronic surveillance.

“There is no inherent authority of the president to do whatever he wants. This is a democracy, not a monarchy,” she said.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, said in a statement that the compromise accepted by the House was an improvement over the bill he had opposed last year.

“Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the president’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over,” Obama said. “It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay.”

Some civil liberties and privacy groups are also opposing the bill. They object not only to the immunity provision but to what they consider the weakening of the FISA court’s oversight of government eavesdropping. For example, the government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if “important intelligence” would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it. But if the court objects to how the government is carrying out the wiretap, it could be weeks before those methods are changed or stopped.

“What we have here is the opportunity for the government to commit mass untargeted surveillance,” said Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

Opponents also contend the privacy of Americans who communicate with people overseas is not adequately protected. The bill would allow the government to tap the foreigner’s calls without court approval, and critics contend that innocent American conversations can be swept up in that.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment bill also would:

–Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.

–Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop, without court approval, on an American’s calls or e-mails.

–Require the government to protect American information or conversations that are collected when in communications with targeted foreigners.

–Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.

–Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.

–Prohibits the president from superseding surveillance rules in the future.