Dear John McCain,

Please stop using the $3 million study of Montana bear DNA to illustrate out-of-control government spending. Didn’t you claim to support basic research? And not only was the bear study good science, but the scientist running it (a former cheerleader, incidentally) can kick Sarah Palin’s moose-hunting patooty.

Sincerely,
Miriam and Eric

…you ask a spokesperson for Qualcomm whether a particular product is being produced in sustainable fashion and she says: “Oh yes, we’re in Best Buy, it’s selling in Korea. This product is very sustainable.”

<sigh>

Despite the enormous flow of money into new solar projects (the free market, trying to work), this has been a rotten 12 months for solar energy. Last year California Sen. Dianne Feinstein led the effort to increase fuel efficiency standards to 35 mpg by 2020, and in the process she dropped provisions that would have extended  tax breaks for solar and wind power development. Still, as the manager of millions of acres of desert land, companies flooded the BLM with applications to construct big solar power projects that could potentially provide enormous quantities of clean electricity for electricity-sucking SoCal, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and the rest of the region.

But today we learn that the Bush administration has placed a moratorium on all new large solar projects on Bureau of Land Management property, which, of course, means millions of acres of desert in the southwest which happen to, you know, get a lot of sunlight. They argue that they need to do an environmental assessment of the impact of large solar projects, which could take up to two years. I can’t be alone when I lean my head out the window and belt out a hearty, “AAARGH!”

OK, look, environmental assessments are a good idea. It’s good to know what damage is being done to property when you take up a new project. But this is Bureau of Land Management here, the single most extractive branch of the federal government.

Consider: Last year, Miriam went on a class camping trip to Anza-Borrego State Park, a protected piece of desert property here in southern California. But it also happens to border property managed by BLM. All night, Miriam had to listen to the roar of ATVs tearing up the desert landscape (they also were shooting their rifles in the air for no apparent reason, but that’s neither here nor there).

Hunting for more thoughts on the BLM, I contacted a friend of mine, Chris Len,  the legal director for an Oregon-based environmental advocacy group called the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, and a colleague of his, Joseph Vaile, who is the campaign director.

They told me a tale of  BLM and Kelsey-Whiskey Timber Sale. The 530 acres along the Rogue River and its tributaries in the Zane Grey Roadless Area consist mostly of  old-growth forest managed by the BLM. In 2003, the BLM proposed logging it (Vaile says logging old-growth almost never happens in the 48 contiguous states).  In this instance they did an environemntal review, and they invited, as the law requires, public comment. KSWild’s webpage says that of the 144 comments on the project, 140 opposed it, or at least proposed doing it on a smaller scale.  The BLM reviewed the project and decided instead to massively expand it. A staffer at the KSWild called the BLM to ask why they made that choice, and the person said that it was because the comments were so negative, they wanted to be able to build future roads in other areas without going through another comment process.

This is the culture of the suddenly protective BLM.

“People, like environmentalists and other groups, have been fighting them tooth and nail to get them to do environmental reviews for years,” Vaile said. “Now suddenly they think they need to review solar energy projects? Did they think of that themselves, or did someone encourage them to do this?”

Well, this is the Bush administration, right? And in the last month, the Bush administration has turned up the volume on one of its favorite songs, the “Drill in Protected Areas Waltz“.   If the solar projects in the southwest succeed in producing a lot of clean power, then there won’t be any need to drill  or off the coast of Florida, now will there? So, the cynic in me says, they ordered the BLM to create the moratorium.

Perhaps you’ll all join with me now when I say again, with feeling this time, “AAAARGH!”

[Thanks to Scott for passing on the link.]

Everyone knows about the whole Nalgene Bottles of Death, right? The Federal government came out with a report saying that a chemical from the bottles, called bisphenal A (BPA) could be harmful to babies and maybe, possibly, adults. People flipped out, bottles were pulled off the shelves, and I had to spend 18 seconds of my day to decide that I am not an infant (physically), and I shall continue to drink out of my favorite Nalgene bottle. But the furor isn’t what’s interesting about all this to me. It’s that Nalgene has been making these bottles for decades! And *now* we figure out they might be bad for us? What’s going on? Well I’ll tell you what’s going on. We don’t know squat about how plastic affects our health in this country, or really about much of anything else that we make out of chemicals. The University of California Centers for Occupational and Environmental Health recently published a report that outlines the dire state of our knowledge of chemical effects on people and the environment, and it advocates for policy solutions to fix the problem.

Some choice quotes:

Tracking data on chemical use in California is also lacking: there is no state-wide information on the volume or location of chemicals or products produced or imported, no catalogue of their commercial and consumer uses, and virtually no record of their ultimate disposal or environmental fate.

Look, I’m a reporter by trade. I’m pretty aware of how much the government doesn’t know. But seriously, we still in the midst of a nation-wide mass freakout about securing our towns and cities from the ravages of terrorists, but we don’t track the vats of chemicals that slosh around American factories and trucks? Really?

Public agencies have insufficient information to identify chemical hazards of highest priority for human health and the environment.

I thought that was what public agencies got paid to do.

Producers are not currently required to assume full responsibility for the health effects and environmental consequences that can occur over the lifecycle of their products. As a result, there is little impetus to minimize the potential hazards associated with the manufacture, use or disposal of chemicals and products.

There’s nothing new about producers not having to pay for the external costs of their products (like disposal), but I like seeing it laid out like that.

With the exception of pesticides and pharmaceuticals, laws governing chemicals in the U.S. and California generally require public agencies, not producers, to carry the burden of proof that a chemical or product causes unreasonable harm to human health or the environment before the agency can implement protective measures.

And the kicker to that last item: “the standard of evidence exceeds agency resources.” So, to sum up, we have no idea where the chemicals are, we have no idea whether chemicals are or are not safe, when we think something might not be safe, it’s up to us to prove their not safe, and finally, we can’t afford to gather the evidence to prove it.

I could go on a whole policy rant about taxes and “Starve the beast” mentalities, but that’s not really science, technology, or oysters gone wild.

The report advocates a host of policy goals, including mandatory hazard and tracking data provided by the producers, a government run green labeling program, and tax incentives for using chemicals known to be safe for people, animals, water, and the environment. Let’s hope this report gets into the right hands.

[Thanks Blogfish for pointing us to the report.]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has made some mainstream news (spoilers in the link) with the latest volume of Buffy: Season 8. Since the whole silly to-do relies on spoilers, I’m not going to launch into it until after the jump. Since I need to fill some space for layout reasons, I’ll take this moment to inform the Whedon loving geek cosmos that Joss will begin filming the pilot of his next show, Dollhouse, on April 23.

Well, plot-wise all you need to know is over there in that image. The
girl on the left is Satsu, a former slayerette. For the uninitiated, well, initiate yourself! The first three seasons of the show are really good. Isn’t that why we invented Netflix? Anyway, Buffy has always been broadminded. She’s slept with good vampires, bad vampires, soldiers, and even just a regular college Lothario. No biggie, as she might say. in the fourth season, two other characters discovered their own Lesbian identity. I don’t recall that making the NYT, not even the Books section. The show ended after seven seasons, only to be reborn as a comic, which is how we got to where we are.

I find it amazing that this story has gotten press attention anywhere outside of Whedonesque. Are we still such a homophobic society that the sexual experimentation of a TV character turned graphic novel character is worthy of the attention of the nation’s biggest newspaper? Imagine if the NYT starts reading Y: The Last Man.