From the Express Tribune in Karachi, an ongoing plague, easily prevented:
As more polio cases surface, Centre unhappy with Sindh’s performance
As the 25th case of polio is reported in Sindh, the federal government has expressed dissatisfaction with the provincial government’s efforts to eradicate the virus from the province.
In a follow-up meeting with provincial authorities on Wednesday after meeting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad, State Minister for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination, Saira Afzal Tarar, expressed her concerns over the rise of polio cases in Sindh.
The meeting which was attended by top officials of the province, except for the health minister and his secretary, briefed about the routine and special campaigns in the province. Sources at the meeting claim that the minister was displeased with how the routine polio drives were being conducted by the provincial health department. According to the minister, in certain districts there was only six per cent coverage, while in a few others it went as high as 29 per cent. She claimed that the polio virus could be eradicated completely if the provincial government would perform its duties properly. She added it will be impossible to overcome this situation without the exact data which will have to be provided by the provincial government.
The San Jose Mercury News covers residual poisons:
Fire retardant chemicals found in small group of Californians
The study, while small, offers the first glimpse of how these chemicals, which have been shown to cause cancer, neurological diseases and developmental disorders, have been absorbed into people’s bodies simply by sitting on a couch or breathing in dust, and offers a strategy for state and local bio-monitoring programs to test larger populations, experts say. The better people’s exposure to these harmful chemicals can be tracked, advocates say, the better experts can understand how they make people sick, offering more ammunition for legislative change to regulate toxic chemicals.
The findings also underscore the possible consequences of a California law passed in 1975 that set fire safety standards that effectively required furniture manufacturers to inject flame-retardant chemicals into all upholstered furniture sold in the state for the last 40 years. The bill was revised Jan. 1 to remove the flame retardant requirement, but some experts caution that Californians will be dealing with the public health fallout for several years.
The study, by Silent Spring Institute, an environmental nonprofit in Massachusetts, and university researchers in Belgium, found traces of a chemical that has been named a carcinogen on the state’s Proposition 65 list in 15 out of 16 people from Richmond and Bolinas, who had their urine and homes tested for chemicals in 2011.
From the Guardian, mutilation:
India mass sterilisation: women were ‘forced’ into camps, say relatives
Brother-in-law of one victim says women were ‘herded like cattle’ after 12 die and scores injured following botched operations
Relatives of the 12 women who died after a state-run mass sterilisation campaign in India went horribly wrong have told local media they were forced by health workers to attend the camp.
More than 80 women underwent surgery for laparoscopic tubectomies at a free government-run camp in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Saturday. About 60 fell ill shortly afterwards, officials said. At least 14 were in a very serious condition by Wednesday and the death toll was expected to rise.
“The [health workers] said nothing would happen, it was a minor operation. They herded them like cattle,” Mahesh Suryavanshi, the brother-in-law of one casualty, told the Indian Express newspaper.
Such camps are held regularly across India as part of a long-running effort to control population growth.
And as we expected, via the Guardian, killing tomorrow’s kids for today’s profits:
Republicans vow to use expanded powers to thwart US-China climate deal
Obama’s opponents looking for ways to undermine bold climate change strategy that could bring about drastic reduction in carbon emissions
Republicans promised on Wednesday to use their expanded power in Congress to undermine Barack Obama’s historic deal over carbon emissions with China on Wednesday, claiming Beijing could not be trusted to see through its side of an agreement that would ultimately damage the US economy.
The hard-hitting response from top Republicans to the historic deal between the US and China – the world’s two largest emitters – foreshadowed an expected collision with the White House over climate climate change that looks set to define Obama’s last two years in office and could shape the 2016 presidential elections.
That fight will encompass top-line carbon emissions targets set by White House, rules implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will reduce pollution from power stations and a looming and totemic decision over the Keystone XL pipeline.
We’ll let Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles have the last word:
The Los Angeles Times covers a success story:
Water conservation efforts pay off: U.S. usage lowest in decades
Americans recently passed a milestone when federal officials reported that water use across the nation had reached its lowest level in more than 45 years: good news for the environment, great news in times of drought and a major victory for conservation.
What was surprising in the U.S. Geological Survey report released last week was how little of the 13% decline in national water usage was due to the public cutting back.
In drought-stricken areas, such as California and other states across the West, consumers are used to frequent warnings about the need to save water. Dry public fountains, limits on lawn watering and official requests for shorter showers have all been aimed at reducing water use at a time when reservoirs are shrinking and streams are running dry.
But it turns out that the public reduced water use by only about 5% from 2005 to 2010, the most recent period measured by the USGS.
And the accompanying chart on water use by sector:
A less salubrious water story from Grist:
California drought leads to a black market for water
The drought in California is bad — so very bad, in fact, that it’s created an illegal gold rush: Poachers are siphoning off fresh water with plans to sell it to the highest bidder.
If that sounds apocalyptic, it kind of is. While the State Water Resources Control Board has 22 employees tasked with investigating such crimes — “illegal diversions,” they’re called — there’s yet to be a concerted statewide effort to track (let alone control and punish) water theft. In some rural areas, wells are running completely dry; local law enforcement thinks the desperation drives theft, and they’re scrambling to keep up. Reports the National Journal:
Officials complain that the penalty for getting caught may not be sufficiently strict: Mendocino County counts water theft as a misdemeanor. County Supervisor Carre Brown considers that a slap on the wrist. “To me this is like looting during a disaster. It should be a felony,” Brown said. …
Another water story, at the source, via NHK WORLD:
Global warming blamed for more rain in Japan
Japanese weather researchers say Japan has experienced heavier hourly rainfalls due to global warming.
The Meteorological Research Institute analyzed the heaviest hourly rainfall recorded in more than 980 locations across Japan between 1978 and 2013.
Researchers learned that the maximum hourly rainfall intensified by about 13 percent in the past 35 years.
Annual rain tends to intensify when temperatures, including water temperatures, are high.
From the Guardian, monetizing nature:
Peru’s forests store more CO2 than US emits in a year, research shows
Carbon mapping by the Carnegie Institute for Science reveals nearly seven billion tonnes of carbon stored in Peru’s rainforests, in a technique that could help preserve such stores to reduce carbon emissions
Peru, the host for December’s UN climate change summit, stores nearly seven billion metric tons of carbon stocks, mostly in its Amazon rainforest. That’s more than US annual carbon emissions for 2013 which were calculated at 5.38 billion tons, the new research by the Carnegie Institute for Science (CIS) shows.
Home to the second-largest area of Amazon rainforest after Brazil, Peru is to date the most accurately carbon-mapped country in history thanks to high-resolution mapping which provides a hectare-by-hectare look at its carbon reserves, it was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The research by CIS’s Greg Asner means Peru now knows precisely how much carbon it is storing in its rainforest and where that carbon is being kept out of the atmosphere, allowing the country to negotiate a fair price for its reserves on the global carbon market.
After the jump, fracking disillusion in Old Blighty, Tar Sands pipeline litigation, a renewable breakdown Down Under, a European biking bonanza, on to Fukushimapocalypse Now! with official regrets, a gubernatorial nuclear dump demurrer, and objections to the restart of another nuclear power plant, plus that Colorado carbon tax on pot. . .
From the Guardian, diminished expectations:
Shale gas unlikely to make the UK energy self-sufficient, says report
Fracking’s potential has been ‘overhyped’ by politicians and shale gas will not reduce energy prices or reliance on gas imports, says UK Energy Research Centre
Politicians have overhyped fracking’s potential and the prospect of shale gas making Britain self-sufficient in gas again is far-fetched, according to government-funded researchers.
The UK became a net importer gas in 2004 as North Sea production declined, and the coalition has heavily promoted shale gas on the grounds of energy security and economic growth. David Cameron says the UK is “going out all for shale” and on Wednesday the government announced the first ‘national shale gas colleges’.
But a new report by academics at the Imperial College-based UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) says significant shale gas production in the UK is unlikely to get underway until next decade and will not reproduce the American ‘shale revolution’ that has put the US on course to energy self-sufficiency.
Tar Sands litigation from EcoWatch:
Groups Sue U.S. State Dept. to Stop Alberta Clipper Tar Sands Pipeline
Yesterday the Washington Spectator ran an investigative piece tearing the veil of secrecy from the Alberta Clipper pipeline project, a plan by Canadian mining company Enbridge to build a pipeline nearly equal in length and capacity to the Keystone XL to transport tar sands crude oil to the Gulf of Mexico for refining and exporting. With the U.S. State Department’s cooperation, Enbridge found a loophole to circumvent the legal approval process needed to cross the international Canadian/U.S. border. And, by keeping a low profile, it managed to avoid the public outcry that has stalled Keystone XL for six years.
That period of operating off the public radar may be coming to an end. Today a coalition of eight environmental, conservation and indigenous groups announced that they have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State John Kerry in a Minneapolis federal court. The suit charges that approval was granted despite lack of public notice or the legally required review of environmental and public health impacts. The groups filing the lawsuit include White Earth Nation, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Honor the Earth, National Wildlife Federation, Minnesota Conservation Federation, Indigenous Environmental Network and MN350, being represented by the Vermont Law School Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic. Their intention is intended to force the State Department to reverse its approval and ensure that a full environmental review takes place.
“This lawsuit challenges the State Department’s illegal approval of Enbridge’s tar sands expansion plans,” said Sierra Club staff attorney Doug Hayes. “Rather than stick to its ongoing review process that the National Environmental Policy Act requires, the State Department green-lighted the expansion before the process is complete.”
A renewable breakdown Down Under, from BBC News:
Talks on renewable energy break down in Australia
Negotiations to establish a bipartisan commitment to renewable energy in Australia have collapsed.
The opposition Labor Party has walked away from talks with the government about generating 20% of the country’s power from renewable energy.
Labor environment spokesman Mark Butler said Labor rejected the government’s plan to dramatically cut the target.
The collapse in talks comes ahead of the arrival of world leaders in Brisbane for the G20 summit.
A European biking bonanza from the Guardian:
Europe’s cycling economy has created 650,000 jobs
Cycling industry employs more people than mining and quarrying with potential for a million jobs by 2020, says new study
Europe’s cycling industry now employs more people than mining and quarrying and almost twice as many as the steel industry, according to the first comprehensive study of the jobs created by the sector.
Some 655,000 people work in the cycling economy – which includes bicycle production, tourism, retail, infrastructure and services – compared to 615,000 people in mining and quarrying, and just 350,000 workers directly employed in the steel sector.
If cycling’s 3% share of journeys across Europe were doubled, the numbers employed could grow to over one million by 2020, says the ‘Jobs and job creation in the European cycling sector’ study which will be published next month.
On to Fukushimapocalypse Now! with official regrets with Jiji Press:
Records Show N-Safety Authority’s Regret over Fukushima No. 1 Plant Power Loss
A former senior official of the now-defunct nuclear regulatory agency showed his regret over the failure to prevent the power loss at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant when the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, according to a government panel’s investigation records disclosed on Wednesday.
Tetsuya Yamamoto, then safety screening head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in an interview with the government investigation panel that although advance measures to prevent a power loss could have been taken, the agency failed to prepare for such an event, according to the records posted on the Cabinet Office’s Web site.
“It’s my biggest regret,” he said.
A gubernatorial nuclear dump demurrer from Jiji Press:
Fukushima Governor Opposes Call for Waste Disposal
Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori voiced opposition Wednesday to a proposal for concentrating in his prefecture the disposal of waste contaminated with radioactive substances from the March 2011 nuclear accident.
“The government has already adopted the basic policy by a cabinet decision,” Uchibori, who was elected governor of the northeastern Japan prefecture in late October, said at his inaugural news conference. He was referring to a cabinet decision that contaminated waste should be disposed of in the prefectures where it was generated.
The town government of Shioya, Tochigi Prefecture, south of Fukushima, has opposed construction of a final disposal facility for such waste in state-owned land in the town, selected by the national government as a candidate site for the facility. As an alternative, the town proposed that disposal should be concentrated in areas around Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Objections raised, with NHK WORLD:
Residents object to NRA go-ahead for Sendai plant
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has accepted a formal objection by some 1,400 people across the country against its permission to put the Sendai nuclear plant back online.
The NRA gave the go-ahead in September for the plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan. Its safety measures were judged to comply with the authority’s requirements.
The agency said on Wednesday that the objectors include residents near the plant and that they demanded that it withdraw the permission.
And to close, a pot tax in Boulder from Grist:
Getting stoned in Boulder will now come with a carbon tax
I hate to harsh mellows, but most pot is grown indoors, which means farmers need to bathe the plants for hours in lights bright enough to mimic the sun. Producers also often run electric air conditioners, ventilators, and filters to keep the chronic chill and pure. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council says it takes about 141 kilowatt-hours (kWh) to grow an ounce of dank — enough electric energy to keep a volcano vaporizer blazing buddha for nearly two months non-stop.
Sure, this power consumption gets pricey, but slinging weed is profitable enough that growers rarely worry about fat utility bills; the produce of a single plant can earn as much as $6,000. If only there were some way to make energy users pay for the pollution associated with producing that power. Like carbon pricing!
Boulder ganja growers will soon have to pay 2.16 cents per kWh as an additional fee to atone for their climate impact, reports USA Today. If all costs are passed on to the consumer, that means an extra $3 per ounce, or about 5 cents to offset your carbon footprint every time you and your homies curl up a J bar. And the money goes toward helping growers reduce their electricity use, according to the original article.
