Laura Flanders - Freedom of Beach: Dump 'Citizens United'

With rigged debates, pay-to-play races and a money-mad media that feeds at the same corporate trough as the candidates, what’s a person to do to send a message in today’s America?

San Francisco taxi driver Brad Newsham decided to get down and if not dirty, then at least sandy. This Saturday, with 1,000 like-minded people, he lay his body down on a San Francisco beach and spelled out “DUMP CITIZENS UNITED!” in huge human letters, complete with exclamation mark.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/17-8

Mr. President: Earth Does Not Have Forever

Listening to the US Presidential election, you wouldn't know Earth faces ecological emergencies including abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse in water, forests, and food. The United States and world are less free, green and peaceful places – largely because human growth has met ecological limits. Ongoing rollbacks of human rights and civil liberties, as well as the state of perma-war waged by drones terrorizing entire populations, is a direct result of environmental decline caused by industrial growth and the resulting scramble for oil and other resources in a globalized world.

The human family faces its greatest planetary emergency ever as Earth, humanity and all life are poised upon the precipice of total ecological, social and economic collapse. Earth's biosphere – the thin mantle of life from underground, through terrestrial ecosystems, to the top of the atmosphere – is being destroyed. Fisheries, soils, the atmosphere, forests, wetlands, water, oceans, food and other ecosystems are uniformly in decline or simply gone. Global ecological crises are destroying conditions necessary for a habitable Earth, and our descent into resource anarchy has begun.

Global change and ecological science are clear that we are near or have surpassed planetary boundaries required to maintain a livable Earth. We know with certainty that endless growth on a finite planet is impossible. Humanity powers down, abandons growth for a steady state economy, learns to live more simply – but well – and share, or the existence of all life, including our own, is threatened.

Nowhere is the utter failure of leadership on issues related to ecological sustainability more apparent than in this year's U.S. Presidential election. Drought, enhanced by abrupt climate change, has spread to 2/3 of America - threatening national and global food supplies. Where are Romney's and Obama's urgent climate change policies? And the deep insight that such rapid ecological change dramatically affects national and global security, and must be urgently and adequately addressed at once?

Lack of action on abrupt climate change is stunning. The past year's extreme weather illustrates the United States clearly faces runaway climate change and drought-caused famine – yet political and economic elite, as well as many of their fellow citizens, are too ignorant and entitled to acknowledge it and act. The US economic and political elite – by refusing to address disturbingly rapid climate change and environmental decline – have in effect abdicated.

As ecosystems collapse and abrupt climate change intensifies, the U.S. political establishment isn't even trying to put forth sustainable development and ecosystem protection policies. There is nothing exceptional to be found in such greedy, superstitious and self-obsessed environmental negligence for a percentage or two in economic growth followed by collapse. Humanity will shed many tears, bleed profusely, and die an ignoble death, from such myopic hubris.

Republicans are unabashedly ecocidal – willfully destroying ecosystems until death – and deny established ecological science. Romney's policies are a road map to abrupt climate change and ecosystem loss – and also assured further declines in justice, liberty, and equity. Economic growth based upon destroying ecosystems for temporary jobs – which is often the case, particularly with fossil fuel exploitation – is not development or advancement of any kind, as post-boom local peoples are hard pressed to survive on devastated landscapes.

Democrats spout the rhetoric of climate change science and ecological concern, and then do big business's bidding destroying ecosystems. President Obama has tepidly dished up failed progressive green hope, promising when elected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet until recently he has been unable to utter the words "climate change". Long-term fuel efficiency standards do not a sufficient climate change policy make. The Obama administration continues to obstruct international climate talks, and has been backing off commitments to mandatory emission reductions, and the 2-degree limit for warming. President Obama's continued gutting of civil liberties, and undeclared perma-war using drones, including assassinating U.S. citizens without trial, is deeply troubling as well.

It's unconscionable that abrupt climate change, ecosystem collapse, record inequity and the rollback of civil liberties are being ignored politically. To ridicule global ecological collapse is pure evil ignorance – yet, to respond that what science indicates is a global ecological emergency is "not a hoax", is also dangerously inadequate. We need detailed plans now from both candidates to dramatically reduce emissions and loss of intact ecosystems if Earth is to remain habitable.

Every day these crises remain unacknowledged and unaddressed – the entire human family and all life is closer to famine, mass death, and potentially the end of being. Ecological sustainability is not going to come from oil addicted Mitt or his party – who have long doubled down on perma-war and ecocide – so there is only the President to look to for leadership to sustain national and global ecology and peace. But Mr. Obama needs to earn our independent, progressive green votes, with specific and sufficient policy proposals that we have not yet heard.

The world does not have forever: either President Obama leads on climate change, civil liberties, and ending perma-war, or else on the big issues of survival and living well long-term, he is little different from Romney. Silence in the midst of a climate change emergency – during election season or not – is not leadership.

President Obama's lack of a detailed climate change policy - and his poor record on necessary environmental policies in general - matter a great deal. Unless he presents ambitious proposals in the closing weeks of the campaign to address abrupt climate change, restore civil liberties, and end drone perma-war, he is not worthy of progressive green support.

It may be better for greens to spend time in opposition, with clear diametrically opposite Romney policies to critique and oppose. If neither Presidential candidate can present a coherent policy position on climate change, liberty, and war - much less lead on these matters - voting for "None of the Above" or for the nascent greens may well be the best Presidential voting option.

http://www.countercurrents.org/barry161012.htm

Fukushima panel chief hopes for change in Japan

The head of a hard-hitting panel that blamed cultural factors for the Fukushima nuclear disaster voiced hope Tuesday that the tragedy would help open up Japan’s system of government.

The independent commission issued a damning report in July that blamed the world’s worst nuclear accident in a generation in part on Japan’s “reflexive obedience” and ingrained collusion among industry, government and regulators.

Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor who headed the panel, visited Washington to present an English-language translation of the report, saying that he wanted to be transparent and to encourage change inside his country.

“Japan has been doing reasonably okay, but I think not really adapting to the changing, uncertain times of this global world,” Kurokawa said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

“I think we need all of the pressure for the Japanese establishment to change and adapt,” he said.

“I think it will be very difficult for Japan to change,” he said, while adding that he hoped “in retrospect, maybe 10 years from now” that the panel would be seen as a sign of change in how Japan is governed.

Read More:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/16/fukushima-panel-chief-hopes-for-change-in-japan/

Mike Adams - Don't celebrate yet, but a grassroots victory against GMO deception is now inevitable

The battle against genetically modified organisms being secretly engineered into our foods now has only one possible outcome: Victory for the People... and defeat of the corporate quack scientists and the outrageously dishonest and sinister biotech industry that has shoved GMO down our throats for a decade or more.

In terms of victory, I'm not just talking about Proposition 37, although that could very well be a turning point that accelerates the consumer victory. But even if Proposition 37 doesn't pass, the end of the line for hidden GMOs in our food is fast approaching. The word is out. People are getting informed. There's absolutely no going back to the era of "GMO ignorance," and the truth about GMOs causing cancer, infertility, organ damage and other deadly health problems is circulating everywhere.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/037562_GMO_grassroots_victory_food_labeling.html

Frackademia: Controversial SUNY Buffalo Shale Institute’s Reputation Unraveling

A storm is brewing in Buffalo and it's not the record snow storm typically associated with upstate New York. Rather, it's taking place in the ivory tower of academia and revolves around hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for unconventional gas in the Marcellus Shale basin. 

Public funding has been cut to the tune of over $1.4 billion over the past five years in the State University of New York (SUNY) public university system under the watch of current Democratic Party governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo and his predecessor, David Paterson.

These cuts have created new opportunities for the shale gas industry to fill a funding vacuum, with the SUNY system's coffers hollowed out and starved for cash. 

“It’s a growing problem across academia,” Mark Partridge, a professor of rural-urban policy at the Ohio State University, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Universities are so short of money, professors are under a lot of pressure to raise research funding in any manner possible.”

The oil industry's eagerness to fill the void for its personal gain can be seen through the case study of what we at DeSmog have coined the ongoing "Shill Gas" study scandal at the State University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo).

Among other findings, a DeSmog investigation reveals that one of the lesser-known offshoots of the Scaife family foundations, key bankrollers of the climate change denial machine, may potentially soothe SUNY Buffalo's budget woes with funding for the university-connected Shale Resources and Society Institute.

The Prelude to the Storm

A prelude for what's now transpiring occurred in Spring 2011, when SUNY Buffalo played host to the Marcellus Shale Lecture Series. Throughout the eight-part series, not a single speaker was a university-based scholar and all speakers but one were employed by some element of the oil and gas industry. The Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI) arose out of the series, as Daniel Robison of WBFO in Buffalo wrote in a recent article:

The decision to greenlight SRSI came after SUNY Buffalo hosted the Marcellus Shale Lecture Series in mid-2011...Last fall, enthusiasm stemming from the lecture series grew into informal discussions among the speakers, natural gas industry representatives and members of SUNY Buffalo’s geology department.

On Sept. 21, almost a year and a half after the completion of the Lecture Series, the UB Spectrum revealed the Series was also funded in large part by the gas industry, which gave SUNY Buffalo over $12,900 to host it. $5,000 of that cash came from the coffers of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA).

 

"If the talk series is not part of the institute – if it’s just an independent talk series – then it is unlike any such series I have ever organized or attended in that it fails to acknowledge the moneys that paid for it," Jim Holstun, Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo and the Chair of SUNY Buffalo Coalition for Leading Ethically in Academic Research, told the UB Spectrum. 

Speaking at a gas industry public relations conference thought to be exclusively "among friends" in Houston on Oct 31-Nov. 1, 2011 - the same conference where it was revealed the gas industry is employing psychological warfare tactics on U.S. citizens - S. Dennis Holbrook of IOGA of NY confirmed the SUNY Buffalo relationship. Holbrook stated that it's crucial for industry to "seek out academic studies and champion with universities—because that again provides tremendous credibility to the overall process."

Explaining that the gas industry is viewed "very skeptically" by the public, Holbrook said that to gain credibility, IOGA of NY has "aligned with the University at Buffalo (aka SUNY Buffalo)—we’ve done a variety of other activities where we’ve gotten the academics to sponsor programs and bring in people for public sessions to educate them on a variety of different topics."

Shady SUNY Buffalo Study Opens Backlash Floodgates

SSRI produced a study in May 2012 titled, "Environmental Impacts During Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts and Remedies." Calling the final product a "study" is a generous way of putting it, as we reported: all four co-authors had ties to the oil and gas industry, as did four of five of its peer reviewers. The study didn't contain any acknowledgement of these ties.

John Martin, one of the study's co-authors and one of the speakers on the spring 2011 Marcellus Shale Lecture Series, serves as the Director of the SRSI, a quarter-time gig earning him $60,000/year. He also currently serves as a Consultant at JPMartin Energy Strategy LLC, where "he has spent decades working in various sectors of the oil and gas industry," and wrote one of the first scholarly papers on the drilling potential of Ohio's Utica Shale basin. The paper helped "stimulate significant industry investment in this resource," in its early days of production, according to his JPMartin bio page.

JPMartin recently served as the peer reviewer of the just released Inglewood, CA hydraulic fracturing study, which found "no harm from the method," paving the way for a forthcoming fracking boom in the Monterrey Shale basin.

In announcing the SRSI's launch, Martin told the Elmira Star Gazette, "We're really trying to provide fact-based, objective information. We're guided by science." 

Martin's "guided by science" myth was put to rest roughly a week after the SRSI's release of its premier study, when the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) released a report of its own. PAI's report pointed to seriously - and likely purposefully - flawed methodology, writing:

[We] conducted an analysis of the report and identified a number of problems that undermine its conclusion: data in the report shows that the likelihood of major environmental events has actually gone up, contradicting the report’s central claim; entire passages were lifted from an explicitly pro-fracking Manhattan Institute report; and report’s authors and reviewers have extensive ties to the natural gas industry.

What's followed the PAI report has been nothing short of a mainstream media monsoon of stories covering the influence the oil and gas industry has over academia - pejoratively referred to by some as "frackademia" - with stories published in outlets ranging from Bloomberg, the Associated Press, The New York Times, Wired, Inside Higher Education, the Texas Observer, and in many others.

SUNY Buffalo Professors, SUNY Board of Trustees Call for Probe of Institute's Origins

Fast-forward to August 23, 2012, when 83 SUNY Buffalo faculty and staff members signed a letter calling for an independent investigation delving into the origins of the SRSI. 

Weeks later, on September 12, 2012, the SUNY System's Board of Trustees backed up the demand of these 83 SUNY Buffalo faculty and staff members, passing a unanimous resolution of their own calling for SUNY Buffalo to look into all of the details of the origins of the SRSI. 

SUNY Buffalo's Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Charles Zukoski, offered a retort of both the SUNY Buffalo letter and the SUNY System resolution, stating, "No policies were broken in the establishment" of the SRSI and that SUNY Buffalo "received no industry funding" for the SRSI.

FOIL Documents Show Deep Ties to Oil and Gas Industry, Climate Change Deniers, Rebutting Zukoski 

Two key details raise serious immediate red flags about Zukoski's claims of recieving "no industry funding."

The first: in its initial call out for funding, the SRSI stated it was seeking three-year $1.14 million corporate memberships "to create a dynamic and impactful program." Corporate members also are given a spot on the SRSI's Advisory Board, "ensuring focused alignment of purpose and deliverables," according to the funding request form. Put another way, three-year corporate memberships would yield some sort of deliverable goods for oil and gas corporations - a quid pro quo, if you will.

The second: on Sept. 13, Buffalo's ArtVoice released the fruits of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. One of the documents, dated Aug. 7, 2011, read that a "funding plan for alumni and large corporations has been in the works for two years. A pitch to alumni and corporate interests in Houston is planned for October, following on two earlier meetings there in Spring, 2011." Houston serves as the headquarters for numerous oil and gas corporations, and is a great place to go in search of funding for "frackademics."  

That same document also showed that the SRSI, as of Aug. 7, 2011, had already received money from IOGA of NY. It also states that SRSI has "good contacts with National Fuel, their wholly owned subsidiary Seneca Resources, and other resource companies involved in the [Marcellus Shale]." Beyond merely offering to fund the SRSI, IOGA of NY has also provided "organizational help," according to the document. 

IOGA's Board of Directors has representatives from Shell, Chesapeake Energy, and many other players in the unconventional gas sphere. National Fuel/Seneca "operates approximately 2,500 wells located in western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania...[and currently] owns approximately 730,000 acres of fee minerals, 260,000 acres of leased minerals and 100,000 acres of surface and timber rights throughout the region," according to its website. 

The document also reveals that the SRSI solicited funding from the Colcom Foundation, an outfit started in 1996 by Cordelia Scaife May, the late sister of Richard Mellon Scaife. She passed away in 2005 but the Foundation lives on.

The Scaife family foundations are major funders of the climate change denial machine, founded by Richard Mellon Scaife, whom the Washington Post dubbed the "funding father of the right" in a 1999 two-part investigative series.

Holstun, in an interview with DeSmogBlog, said of this set of circumstances:

In sending out the corporate appeal, the Institute promised industry contributors a helping hand in running the institute and defining its priorities, an egregious violation of academic integrity. The UB Administration are stewards of the university’s reputation. They must come clean immediately with full information about the founding, funding, and governance of the Institute. Otherwise, they are not doing their jobs, and our reputation will suffer even more.

High Stakes Game in Buffalo for Future of Integrity of Higher Education Research

The SUNY Buffalo tale is merely a sequel to the controversial 2009 Marcellus Shale Coalition-funded scientific study published by Penn State University, a relationship recently terminated by PSU. The Coalition's membership list includes nearly every company involved in the fracking process in the Marcellus Shale basin.

As budgets continue to be slashed by governors in statehouses nationwide for public higher education, we can expect to see more stories like SUNY Buffalo's unfold at increasingly privatized universities nationwide. PAI demonstrated as much in a follow-up report, revealing University of Texas-Austin also serves as a "frackademia" epicenter. Mother Jones similarly revealed that the gas industry has set up shop in Ohio's universities.

The original Aug. 23 letter penned by the 83 professors raised the key question cutting to the heart of this saga, closing where this article began: "Will cash-strapped public universities, eager to curry favor with potential corporate funders who may stand to gain from certain research, surrender their historic independence in return for possible corporate financial support?" 

Time will tell.

But as Jennifer Washburn, author of the book "University, Inc." stated in a Jan. 2011 article, today's "university looks and behaves more and more like a for-profit commercial entity." 

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/frackademia-controversial-suny-buffalo-shale-institutes-reputation-unraveling-1350096975

http://www.nationofchange.org/frackademia-controversial-suny-buffalo-shale-institutes-reputation-unraveling-1350096975

Could Prop. 37 Kill Monsanto's GM Seeds?

You'd be forgiven for not noticing—unless you live in California, where you've likely been bombarded by geotargeted web ads and TV spots—but this election could spur a revolution in the way our food is made. Proposition 37 [1], a popular Golden State ballot initiative, would require the labeling of food containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients. The food and agriculture industries are spending millions to defeat it, and with good reason: As we've seen with auto emissions standards and workplace smoking bans, as California goes, so goes the nation.

At least 70 percent of processed food [2] in the United States contains GM ingredients. Eighty-eight percent of corn and 93 percent of soybeans grown domestically [3] are genetically modified. Soda and sweets are almost guaranteed to contain GM ingredients, either in the form of corn syrup or beet sugar. Canola and cottonseed oils also commonly come from GM crops. But if those stats make you want to run and examine the labels on the boxes and cans in your pantry, you're out of luck. Unlike the European Union [4], the US government doesn't require food manufacturers to disclose their use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Californians appear ready to change that: An August poll [5] found voters in the state favoring Prop. 37 by a margin of 3-to-1. And if they do approve the measure, food companies might well start disclosing GMOs nationwide, since it would be expensive and cumbersome to produce one set of labels for California, home to 12 percent of the nation's population, and another for the remaining 49 states. California voters already have a record of being leaders in food reform: When they passed a ban on tight cages for egg-laying hens [6] in 2008, the egg industry initially fought it. But by 2011, it had begun working with animal welfare groups to take the California standards national [7].

Why the push to label GMOs? After all, these crops have been marketed as environmental panaceas, and some prominent greens have been convinced. By opposing GMOs, environmentalists have "starved people, hindered science, hurt the natural environment, and denied our own practitioners a crucial tool," Stewart Brand wrote in his 2009 book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. So far, biotech giants like Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta have commercialized two main GM "traits," engineering crops with the bug-killing gene from the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and crops that can withstand Monsanto's Roundup and other herbicides. Yet GM crops' herbicide resistance has caused a 7 percent net increase in pesticide use in the United States since 1996, according to a recent paper by Washington State University researcher Charles Benbrook.

The industry swears genetically engineered foods are safe even though their potential risks have not been fully studied. Back in 1992, the Food and Drug Administration declared GM foodsessentially equivalent [8] to foods derived from non-GM plants, and it has implemented no requirements for safety testing. GMOs have been in the food supply since 1996, which isn't long enough to tell whether they are having subtle negative effects on our health. Plus, as the advocacy group Food & Water Watch recently reported (PDF) [9], long-term safety studies have been limited because the biotech industry uses its patent power to prevent independent scientists from cultivating GM seeds [10] for research purposes.

In the EU, where labeling has been required since 1997, most consumers have rejected GMOs. No wonder the GM seed industry has been shoveling cash into fighting Prop. 37.

Some independent, peer-reviewed research has suggested trouble, however. GMOs are capable of creating novel proteins that can turn out to be allergenic, as Australian scientists found [11] when they tested a pea variety that had been engineered to express an otherwise harmless protein from the common bean. A 2009 study by French researchers [12] found that rats fed Bt and Roundup-tolerant corn for three months showed declines in kidney and liver function. While such findings don't establish that GMOs are unsafe, they do leave the question wide open—and validate demands for labeling. GMOs are a "massive experiment on the American people," says Stacy Malkan, media director for the pro-labeling group Yes on 37 for Your Right to Know If Your Food Has Been Genetically Engineered [13]. "We absolutely have a right to know and choose for ourselves if we eat genetically engineered foods."

If Prop. 37 wins and the food industry eventually takes labeling nationwide, will it present a serious challenge to GMOs? One possibility is that consumers will simply ignore the labels and continue shopping as usual. Or not: A 2010 Thomson Reuters poll (PDF) [14] found 93 percent of respondents in support of labeling; 40 percent indicated they wouldn't choose to eat genetically engineered vegetables, fruits, or grains. In the European Union, where labeling has been required since 1997, most consumers have rejected GMOs, essentially killing the market for them. Hostility toward the technology is so strong that the German chemical giant BASF recently announced [15] it would stop producing GM seeds for the European market.

No wonder the GM seed industry has been shoveling cash into the No on 37 Coalition Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme [16]. As of early fall, it had raised $32 million [17], eight times as much as the pro-labeling group. Its list of funders [18] reads like a Big Food and Ag trade group: Major donors include Monsanto ($7.1 million), DuPont ($4.9 million), Dow ($2 million), and PepsiCo ($1.7 million). The parent companies of major organic brands have also lined up against Prop. 37, including Coca-Cola (Honest Tea), General Mills (Cascadian Farm), Kellogg (Kashi), and Dean Foods (Horizon Organic). The No on 37 campaign's treasurer [19]is Thomas Hiltachk, a prominent Republican lawyer and former tobacco industry lobbyist who has served as outside counsel to Philip Morris and helped lead the failed 2010 ballot initiative[20] to repeal California's climate law.

The group's main strategy has been to portray the labeling measure as a needless burden and waste of money. An image on its website shows a farmer with his mouth taped shut and his body crisscrossed by red tape—never mind that the proposal imposes no requirements on farmers. The group has funded studies purporting to show that Prop. 37 would impose an additional $1.2 billion in annual production costs [21] on California food processors and wouldincrease household food prices [22] by as much as $400 a year.

The Yes on 37 side is playing hardball, too. By early September, it had raised $4 million [23], mostly from the pro-organic, anti-corporate Organic Consumers Fund, independently owned food companies like Clif Bar and Nature's Path, and a supplements distributor [24] run by the quackish natural-health guru Joseph Mercola. In late August, it released a 30-second TV ad[25] linking the GM seed industry to past chemical industry scandals, pointing out that Monsanto and Dow once staunchly defended infamous poisons such as DDT and Agent Orange.

If Prop. 37 passes, will it threaten the GMO giants' bottom line? So far, the market seems unfazed about the prospect of mandatory labeling. Two months from Election Day, Monsanto's share price was up more than 25 percent over last year's, significantly outperforming the broader market and showing no evidence of investors' fretting over the California ballot initiative. But Wall Street's hyperfocus on the short term sometimes blinds it to major shake-ups approaching on the horizon.

By cutting fat checks and hauling out an old tobacco hand to defeat California's labeling proposition, Monsanto and its peers are no doubt taking the long view. The US market for genetically engineered crops is by far the world's largest, accounting for two-thirds of global annual GM seed sales of about $13.3 billion [26]. This fight isn't just about keeping consumers in the dark in a single state; it's about keeping GMOs in farm fields and on supermarket shelves nationwide.

Disaster in the Making: Grave Warnings Issued That Keystone Pipeline Is Structurally Flawed

A pipeline materials engineer, who worked for TransCanada Pipeline for five years, says some of the nation's major pipeline companies are breaking the rules on pipeline safety and that National Energy Board is not adequately enforcing them.

Evan Vokes, a 46-year-old Calgary-based engineer and former TransCanada employee, has filed complaints with the National Energy Board, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA is a self-regulating professional group that represents engineers) and the Prime Minister's Office documenting repeated violations of standard safety regulations and codes.

The alleged offences include repeated violations of several sections of the nation's Onshore Pipeline Regulations (OPR-99) on issues as varied as welding inspections, the safety of materials and conflict of interest.

In addition Vokes also charges that engineers do not always make project and scheduling decisions during pipeline construction (a common lament) and that "unskilled practice by professional engineers in a hurry" is a routine problem throughout the multi-billion dollar industry.

National Energy Board investigating

In response to a Tyee inquiry the board replied that it is actively investigating the allegations. “Board Executives met with senior company representatives to describe the allegations and how seriously the board takes them." One company in particular has been asked to report on their internal investigation of allegations of non-compliance.

Added Erin Dotter, the NEB's communication officer: "The NEB investigation into this file is ongoing and we are thoroughly reviewing and assessing the information that has been submitted. It would not be appropriate to discuss this matter further while it is under investigation."

Vokes' concerns, shared to varying degrees by members of Canada's embattled pipeline industry, have already been partly corroborated by U.S. and Canadian regulatory bodies in a series of recent investigations and reports on pipeline spills.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), for example, categorized Enbridge as having a "culture of deviance" on safety matters after it investigated that company's 20,000-barrel bitumen spill on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The NTSB accused the company of taking advantage of "weak regulations" and not learning from previous incidents.

Enbridge employees also admitted to NTSB investigators that the largest oil spill in U.S. history was "a wake-up call" that highlighted problems associated with rapid growth including staff shortages "and that type of thing."

As a consequence the US Pipeline Hazardous Material Standards Administration (PHMSA), fined [4] the company last summer a record $3.7-million for a total of 24 violations of pipeline regulations jointly enforced by the both National Energy Board (NEB) and PHMSA.

U.S. regulators also caught Kinder Morgan, another big pipeline player with extensive Canadian properties as well as controversial bitumen expansion plans, violating welding codes and nearly a dozen sections of the US Pipeline Safety Regulations while building the Rocky Express [5] natural gas pipeline between 2007 and 2008. It fined the company $400,000 in 2012.

U.S. regulators aren't alone in finding routine violations of code. A 2009 National Energy Board investigation on the death of an electrician at an Enbridge pump station found violations of construction codes and concluded [6] "the safety culture at Enbridge Kerrobert [pump station] was not adequately developed."

NEB made pipeline safety top priority for 2012

Unlike its U.S. counterparts, which have long records of public transparency, The National Energy Board did not begin posting its safety and environmental actions till the fall of 2011. Since 2008 the Board says it has issued 24 Safety Orders against on pipelines owned by Enbridge, TransCanada and Kinder Morgan. None are available on its website.

But the spotlight on pipeline safety has not just fallen on Enbridge, which is now under regulatory scrutiny for its proposed Northern Gateway project as well as another spill at a Wisconsin pipeline in 2012.

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board, the nation's version of the NTSB, is investigating Houston-based Spectra Energy, which operates 2,900 kilometres of pipeline in British Columbia for two separate 2012 incidents: a sour gas rupture as well as an explosion at a natural gas compressor station that injured two workers just north of Fort St. John, British Columbia.

TransCanada, another big pipeline player and Vokes' former employer, has also been in the headlines. The first phase of TransCanada's controversial Keystone XL pipeline leaked 14 times in just two years and the company has now been ordered by the National Energy Board to investigate Keystone's pumping stations in Canada.

Last year a 50-foot section of TransCanada's brand new Bison gas pipeline also blew up in Wyoming due to mechanical damage caused by the improper laying of pipe in the ground. That accident forced a month-long closure.

Although the National Energy Board officially declared [7] pipeline safety its top priority in 2012, Canada's federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has raised serious issues about the board's accountability and enforcement practices.

Tracing Enbridge's learning curve

The Commissioner reported [8] in 2011 that the NEB often identified problems on its 71,000 kilometres of interprovincial pipeline system, but rarely followed up: "there is little indication that the Board takes steps to ensure that the identified deficiencies are corrected."

In fact many of the problems that Enbridge experienced during the $800-million Michigan debacle, the largest onshore oil spill in U.S. history, were flagged by an NEB inspection audit in 2008 that found multiple problems with the company's program for maintaining pipeline integrity. (Because Enbridge operates lines that are intercontinental, it is jointly regulated by the NEB and US PHMSA.)

Although the NTSB flagged the NEB 2008 inspection audit of Enbridge's Canadian operations as an example of the company's poor learning curve, the audit does not appear to be available on the NEB's website.

The audit found, among many other safety failings, that Enbridge's "assessment process and data for determining the crack and corrosion in-line inspection frequency required improvement to prevent failures from reoccurring."

Canada's Commissioner of the Environment also found that Canada's national pipeline regulator did not properly monitor emergency procedures manuals and failed to communicate deficiencies in a timely manner: "We have concluded that the Board's oversight of companies' emergency procedures manuals is deficient," went the report.

According to the Auditor General The NEB had but a budget of $7 million and a staff of 63 to check on regulatory compliance on some of the world’s longest pipelines in 2011.

Since then the NEB has tried frantically to catch up with rapid pipeline infrastructure growth and a doubling of pipeline incidents or what the board calls [9] "an increased trend in the number and the severity of incidents being reported by NEB-regulated companies."

Engineers have 'duty of care': whistleblower

The board reports that it now has a staff of 80 including 35 qualified engineers to enforce the law and will increase inspections from 100 to 150 a year thanks to additional federal funding of $13-million provided this year. Incredibly, it is only now developing a program to fine pipeline operators for non-compliance of regulations.

In 2009 the NEB took on the responsibility of looking after an additional 24,000 km of pipeline owned by Nova Gas and formerly monitored by Alberta's regulators. It did not increase staff at the time.

Meanwhile the office of pipeline safety of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which has fined offenders for years, has issued alerts, held workshops and given presentations on what it calls new construction "challenges" facing pipeline builders across the continent.

PHMSA presentations [10] include graphic illustrations of cracked pipelines and clearly show a rising incidence of problems related to bad welding practices and improper coating of pipelines.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which investigates accidents, also reports [11] worsening pipeline trends too.

Since 2002 this federal agency has recorded a near doubling of pipeline incidents from an average of 95 a year to 161 incidents in 2011. The federal investigator partly blames the combined effects of the rapid pipeline growth, the conversion of oil to gas pipelines, better reporting, and an aging infrastructure. It is also studying other factors.

All pipelines contain flaws as they are not ideal but the codes set a standard for accepatable risk tolerance. But the most recent issue of the magazine Pipeline International highlights [12] many of the issues raised by Vokes such as the importance of pipeline integrity management. Such a process should allow operators to routinely check that their pipeline networks operate in a safe, reliable, sustainable and optimal manner.

But if neglected and unused, even the most expensive and "high tech" systems or tools will fail warns the magazine article. And if these systems are not properly enforced, adds Vokes, low probability events on pipelines can become catastrophic problems and headline makers.

The Tyee took a copy of Voke's assorted documents to an experienced engineer who has worked in the oil patch for 40 years and here's what he said.

"This man knows what he is talking about and knows his codes and jargon and metallurgy. The industry is moving too fast and doesn't have the people and experience to manage its safety systems."

Added the reviewer: "The regulators haven’t caught up with the right standards and we don't have the senior expertise to oversee some of these issues. Vokes is raising significant issues for the industry."

The issues are significant enough that that Alberta, home to 400,000 kilometres of pipeline, has contracted [13] a Calgary engineering firm to do an independent analysis of pipeline safety and integrity after a series of high-profile oil spills this year.

"There is only story here," adds Vokes who is pleased that the NEB is taking his allegation seriously. "It's what the NTSB report called a 'culture of deviance' and a lack of accountability. And that’s the whole thing," says the engineer.

"When you sign onto engineering ethics you have a duty of care to the public before you do to your employer."

In response to recent pipeline incidents the Canadian Energy Pipelines Association (CEPA), a lobby group for the nation's powerful pipeline builders, launched an "Integrity First" campaign last August. An industry press release says that the industry needs "to do more to reduce the frequency and impact of pipeline events."

According to CEPA its members operate and monitor 110,000 kilometres of pipelines or what it calls "energy highways" that carry nearly $60-billion worth of hydrocarbons every year.

Canada's petroleum industry wants to double the nation's oil pipeline capacity from 3 million to 6 million barrels over the next two decades.

Read more.. http://www.alternet.org/environment/disaster-making-grave-warnings-issued-keystone-pipeline-structurally-flawed

World Food Crisis, Impact of US Drought

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) announced on Thursday that world food prices rose in September. After experiencing the most widespread drought in 50 years, corn and soybean prices in the US soared to record highs over the summer. Compounded with the droughts in Europe and central Asia, there has been concern about possible food shortages, raising fears of renewed crisis.

An ear of corn from a Missouri farm from 2011, left, compared to one from this year. Photo by Dilip Vishwanat for The New York Times The FAO's price index—a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities—rose 1.4 percent to an average of 216 points in September after remaining stable at 213 points in August. FAO's index remains below February 2011's peak of 238 points, when high food prices fueled the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, but, according to Reuters, "current levels are very close to those seen in 2008 which sparked riots in poor countries."

"Prices are remaining high... prices are sustained, it's highly unlikely we will see a normalization of prices anytime soon," FAO senior economist Abdolreza Abbassian toldReuters. "Volatility is not going to go away, if anything it may even intensify further in coming months," he said.

The FAO also predicts a decline in global cereal production this year. According to the government, drought in the US has left half of the nation's corn in "poor to very poor condition."

A government survey (pdf) last month estimated a national average yields of 122.8 bushels of corn per acre, the lowest in more than 15 years, and a 15 percent drop in soybeans yields.

In addition to the global impact on food prices, rural farmers in the US have been devastated. The waning supply means higher prices, which benefits grain farmers for the short term. However, it is not such good news for livestock farmers who depend on those crops to feed their animals.

The New York Times reports on some of the individuals who have had to sell off significant numbers of livestock in anticipation of the diminished returns next year. Missourians Theresa and Carl Bettles—whose 130 cows and crops produced a quarter of their average annual yields—are anticipating a $40,000 drop in earnings. The drought has forced them to dip into a retirement fund to pay their daughter’s college expenses.

“If it’s doing this for the next two years, I can’t see us being able to keep going,” Theresa said.

According to Abbassian of the FAO, there is a ministerial meeting that goes beyond the G20 Summit to be held on October16 to discuss food prices.

Nestlé: Malevolent Corporation Capitalizes on Global Water Crisis

I have just returned from a week in Switzerland to promote the right to water and to challenge the giant Swiss bottled water giant Nestlé. My visit was arranged by Franklin Frederick, an activist and leader in the global fight against Nestlé Waters, who is originally from Brazil, but now lives and works in Switzerland. Franklin is an extraordinary man. He is fiercely committed to global water justice and has been a thorn in the side of the water privateers for years. I also reconnected with Rosmarie Bar, a former Green Member of the Swiss Parliament and former senior member of the Swiss development network, Alliance Sud. Rosmarie and I worked together to form an international group called Friends of the Right to Water and worked for many years to lay the groundwork for the recognition of this right at the UN.

I spoke at the universities of Bern and Lucerne and in a beautiful 500 year-old church located in the heart of Bern. In the magnificent wood paneled Swiss Parliament, I also met with a delegation of MPs from every party who are committed to protecting public water and the human right to water. In all these venues, I met wonderful, committed people working for economic and social justice.However, it is very clear that Nestlé is a powerful presence in Switzerland and its influence in the halls of power goes deep. Everyone I talked to said so in one way or another. Switzerland has no law limiting political donations from corporations, or requiring transparency in campaign financing. Given that the marketing department of Nestlé has a larger annual budget than the World Health Organization, it is widely understood that the company has great political influence.

Of special concern is the partnership that the Swiss Federal Agency for Development and Cooperation - SDC - has entered into with the company. Nestlé is a charter member of the newly formed Swiss Water Partnership, along with civil society groups and aid agencies, that will advise the Swiss government on water policy in the Global South. The stated desire is to come to a set of “shared values” so that governments, NGOs and the private sector are promoting common policies and world views when giving aid money for water development, or what the SDC calls “speaking with one voice.” But what is this voice?

Nestlé was one of the first companies to commodify water. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, seeing what it did to the groundwater supplies of the surrounding regions, the company bought up huge quantities of mineral water deposits in Switzerland. Nestlé is the biggest bottled water company in the world and is scouring countries all over the planet for new supplies of water.

Nestlé has consistently promoted public-private partnerships whereby private water companies run water services on a for profit basis. Company head Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, referred to often in the Swiss media as the “Water Man,” repeatedly promotes the full commodification of water (although after much criticism, now admits that the poor need some water too.) He has proposed setting aside 1.5 per cent of the planet’s water for human rights, the rest going into the market. Nestlé also promotes GMO crops, which are voracious users of pesticides.

So these policies are the ones that the company will promote to the Swiss government in its development work. It is a travesty that this is the water face to the world of Switzerland. The country has one of the finest public water systems anywhere. SDC defends this partnership and publicly states that a key goal is to promote the interests of Swiss water companies abroad.

But what does Nestlé know about delivering water and sanitation services? Nothing! It is involved with this partnership to gain credibility and to have the Swiss government open doors to new private water markets in the developing world. It is the same reason the company is deeply involved with the funding arm of the World Bank. In fact, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe chairs a new advisory board called the 2030 Water Resources Group that helps set policy models and priorities for water and sanitation programs around the world.

This is a disaster in a world where demand for water is outstripping supply at an accelerating rate. As Wenonah Hauter from Food and Water Watch says, Nestlé’s goal is to shift government policy away from providing public municipal water supplies to people, and toward a dependency on bottled water to provide basic drinking water. And of course, it is about capitalizing on the global water crisis.

It is time to call out Nestlé and the governments that partner with them. I will return to Nestlé’s home base again soon where we will shout out against this malevolent water hunter.

BOLIVIA GIVES LEGAL RIGHTS TO THE EARTH

Developed by grassroots social groups and agreed by politicians, the Law of Mother Earth recognises the rights of all living things, giving the natural world equal status to human beings.

Once fully approved, the legislation will provide the Earth with rights to: life and regeneration; biodiversity and freedom from genetic modification; pure water; clean air; naturally balanced systems; restoration from the effects of human activity; and freedom from contamination.

The legislation is based on broader principles of living in harmony with the Earth and prioritising the “collective good.” At its heart is an understanding that the Earth is sacred, which arises from the indigenous Andean worldview of ‘Pachamama’ (meaning Mother Earth) as a living being. An initial act outlining the rights – which was passed by Bolivia’s national congress in December 2010 and paves the way for the full legislation – defines Mother Earth as a dynamic and “indivisible community of all living systems and living organisms, interrelated, interdependent and complementary, which share a common destiny.”

Bolivia’s government will be legally bound to prioritise the wellbeing of its citizens and the natural world by developing policies that promote sustainability and control industry. The economy must operate within the limits of nature and the country is to work towards energy and food sovereignty while adopting renewable energy technologies and increasing energy efficiency.Preventing climate change is a key objective of the law, which includes protecting the lives of future generations. The government is requesting that rich countries help Bolivia adapt to the effects of climate change in recognition of the environmental debt they owe for their high carbon emissions. Bolivia is “particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” according to an Oxfam report in 2009, with increasing drought, melting glaciers and flooding.

On the international stage, the government will have a legal duty to promote the uptake of rights for Mother Earth, while also advocating peace and the elimination of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Following a change in Bolivia’s constitution in 2009, the law is part of a complete overhaul of the legal system. It represents a shift away from the western development model to a more holistic vision, based on the indigenous concept of Vivir Bien (to live well). 

The proposal for the law states: “Living Well means adopting forms of consumption, behaviour and and conduct that are not degrading to nature. It requires an ethical and spiritual relationship with life. Living Well proposes the complete fulfilment of life and collective happiness.”

Unity Pact, an umbrella group for five Bolivian social movements, prepared the draft law. They represent over 3m people and all of the country’s 36 indigenous groups, the majority of whom are smallscale farmers with many still living on their ancestral lands. The bill protects their livelihoods and diverse cultures from the impacts of industry

Undarico Pinto, a leader of the social movement Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, said: “It will make industry more transparent. It will allow people to regulate industry at national, regional and local levels.”Signifying a fundamental shift away from exploitation of nature, the draft law referrers to mineral resources as “blessings” and states that Mother Earth, “is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos.” 

A Ministry of Mother Earth is to be established to promote the new rights and ensure they are complied with. But with its economy currently dependent on exports of natural resources, earning nearly a third of its foreign currency – around £300m a year – from mining companies, Bolivia will need to balance its new obligations against the demands of industry.

The full law is expected to pass within the next few months and is unlikely to face any significant opposition because the ruling party, the Movement Towards Socialism, has a considerable majority in parliament. Its leader, President Evo Morales, voiced a commitment to the initiative at the World People’s Conference on Climate change, held in Bolivia in April 2010.  

The Law of Mother Earth includes the following:

The right to maintain the integrity of life and natural processes.

The right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

The right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration.

The right to pure water.

The right to clean air.

The right to balance, to be at equilibrium.

The right to be free of toxic and radioactive pollution.

The right to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities

The law also promotes “harmony” and “peace” and “the elimination of all nuclear, chemical, biological” weapons.