Newsletters

November 2010 - Environmental Ed., Gasification, Mushrooms

WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES !
NOVEMBER, 2010

“Because corporations must have physically impossible 'endless growth' in order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth. The only socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve."

— Adam D. Sacks

"If the physical scientists who warn about limits to growth are right, confronting the global economic meltdown implies far more than merely getting the banks and mortgage lenders back on their feet. Indeed, in that case we face a fundamental change in our economy as significant as the advent of the industrial revolution. We are at a historic inflection point—the ending of decades of expansion and the beginning of an inevitable period of contraction that will continue until humanity is once again living within the limits of Earth's regenerative systems. But there are few signs that policy makers understand any of this. Their thinking appears to be shaped primarily by mainstream economists' assurances that growth can and must continue into the indefinite future, and that the economic contraction the world is currently experiencing is only temporary—a problem that can and must be solved."
— Richard Heinberg

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION …NOW! EARTH CAN’T WAIT!

It’s said we are living in the Information Age. One can access information on just about any subject with only the click of a “mouse.” Yet when it comes to environment, that ease of access and information obtained does not translate into understanding and concern. The precarious state of our earthly environment often goes unrecognized. Most are woefully ignorant of environmental issues.

Every environmental indicator tells us we’re in big trouble here on this tiny planet, but we refuse to heed the warnings as we go about consuming earth’s finite resources at a prodigious rate and unsustainably extracting and polluting those resources that should be renewable.

With our exponentially expanding population and less developed countries frantically scrambling to live the unsustainable urban lifestyle of the developed countries, how long can earth endure?

Most of our political leaders, too busy fattening at the corporate trough, refuse to act. Many of them not only actively encourage our obscene consumption habits, but encourage exporting our ultimately unsustainable lifestyle to others countries. It is fashionable to talk of “sustainable” growth. That is impossibility. Growth cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Our environment would be much better off if the efforts expended in selling the sustainability myth were instead put into environmental education and …most important at this late date …environmental advocacy.

Our economy has become dependent on people consuming more and more. Our government has encouraged this by handing out “stimulus money” to supposedly “jump-start” the economy. Having folks spend money on goods they don’t need and that in a short amount of time will end up being trucked to a solid waste dump or incinerated is not only bad environmental policy, but bad for the economy as well. And when a prime indicator of our economic well-being is “housing starts” …something is seriously wrong.

Too late for the present generation, but there’s still time to educate those following. If attitudes and values don’t change, future generations will find themselves living in utter misery on a squalid, depauperate planet.

We elders have lost our way, but there is hope if we can rescue our children and return them to their natural environment.

Our children are growing up in a toxic, virtual world. Plugged into an artificial electronic mélange of computers, cell phones, video games, electronic this and electronic that. They spend most of their day in an artificial environment. How can they appreciate, cherish and protect the real thing if they never spend time there?

How do we extract our children from the virtual environment we’ve created and return them to their natural environment in time to save the planet?

Although more and more states are mandating some level of environmental education in their public school systems, it is way too slow. Wisconsin is the only state that we know of that has incorporated in-depth environmental education into its elementary and secondary schools. We must demand the same for all children.

Environmental education books, curriculum materials, and teacher workshops are becoming more readily available. One of the first books to address the issue and offer some solutions was, “Last Child in the Woods.”

“Last Child in the Woods,” by Richard Louv, was first published in 2005 and has recently been updated to include further actions that can be used to get kids outdoors and encourage environmental learning.

Louv writes, “Contemporary children are now paying an enormous price for the direction our corporate-driven society has followed in the last half century. Little or no knowledge of their natural environment that sustains them, increased levels of attention deficit disorder, depression, obesity, type 2 diabetes, aggression …the solution is to reconnect to the natural world.”

Universal environmental education will not only hopefully save the planet, but will help save future generations too.

THE WORD OF THE DAY IS ‘GASIFY’

Worldwide there are over 300 companies attempting modern day alchemy. Didn’t work in Merlin’s day …and it’s not working now. Maybe it will in the future.

In our little corner of the world, over the past few years, Great Point, Ze-Gen, Quantum Catalytics, Somerset NRG, Texas Syngas, and a few others we’ve forgotten…have all been mentioned in various news articles touting their particular gasification process as the solution to our energy and solid waste problems. It appears to us, however, that what these companies are really interested in are alternative energy development dollars …your tax dollars and ours.

What do they want to gasify? Usually coal, solid waste, our forests, other ”biomass”, construction and demolition material, etc. Why? Make money by making solid waste disappear and to produce synthetic gas (syngas) to fuel electric generating facilities.

Don’t tell them …like they don’t already know …but the technology they are “inventing” has been around for hundreds of years.

Folks have been gasifying coal …making gas out of coal (coal gas) …since the 1700’s. Nazi Germany turned to gasifying coal and biomass after they lost access to petroleum toward the end of World War II.

Locally, residents of Tiverton, Rhode Island, living in the Bay Street area have been fighting for years to have arsenic and other toxic coal gasification wastes removed from their yards. Years before homes were built there that area had been used as a coal gasification waste dump by a local gas company.

Remember Molten Metals back in the 1990’s? They said they could gasify anything in their “proprietary” catalytic reactors. Lots of gullible locals lost beaucoup bucks investing in that “research and development” gasification project until it went belly-up!

Here’s a recent gasification article from The Herald News by reporter Charles Winokoor:

Frank Campbell said it’s beyond his comprehension how the state can let Taunton wither on the vine in its bid for a gasification-based, trash-to-energy facility that is green, clean and job-creating.

“None of this makes sense to me. I’ve been in this business for 28 years, and this is the first time I’ve seen something like this,” Campbell, president of Interstate Waste Technologies Inc. in Malvern, Pa., said Friday night.

Last March, Taunton’s city council voted for contract negotiations with Campbell’s business to finance, develop and build a large waste-elimination facility — one that will not violate the commonwealth’s moratorium on new incineration plants — and provide a safe place for surrounding communities to dump their trash.

One of those communities, Fall River, has already pledged support for the project.

Mayor Will Flanagan, in early September, told the council and its committee on solid waste that Fall River will “support and hopefully lend assistance to you.”

Saturday night, he reiterated his previous statement, saying that Fall River’s city dump on Airport Road, located on land the city does not own, could very well be forced to close down within three years.

“Yes, I support Taunton’s efforts. We have to find a place to dispose of our trash, especially since our landfill is becoming filled to capacity,” Flanagan said.

Time running short for city
That sort of sentiment is important to Taunton’s mayor Charles Crowley. If a trash-to-energy facility is built on a designated 36.3-acre parcel adjacent to the Myles Standish Industrial Park, the city stands to collect millions of dollars in tipping fees, or royalties, from surrounding municipalities.
Crowley and his administration have been pursuing a waste-management plant since he took office in 2007.

Taunton’s 76-year-old landfill on East Britannia Street has already been ordered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to close by the end of 2013.

That date could be extended until March 2015 if the local Board of Health’s three-member board of directors approves extending the city-owned site from 200 feet to 220 feet above sea level.
Crowley has found himself in something of a cat-and-mouse game with state environmental officials and Gov. Deval Patrick in seeking their collective permission to begin the process of applying for permits that will make construction of the facility a reality.

The mayor has said that he’s received positive feedback from key officials at the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which includes the Department of Environmental Affairs.
In a March 22 letter to Crowley, MassDEP commissioner Laurie Burt lauded the city for proposing a facility that would result in 50-60 percent “up-front recycling” of waste, while at the same time producing a byproduct of salable ethanol.

When it became clear the ethanol market would not provide IWT the longterm financing it needed for the $400 million model, the city decided to pursue a more expensive prototype, one that would produce electricity as a byproduct.

That $800 million project would be the first of its kind, in terms of scale, in the United States. Similar gasification facilities now exist in Japan and Europe.

An informative article that names the players, but unfortunately the reporter failed to ask Campbell, Crowley, and Flanagan the questions that matter
--------
Appears that Frank Campbell is very limited in the “comprehension” department. Instead of whining to the press, he might be better served by explaining his “waste elimination method,” that he’s attempting to sell to the good citizens of Taunton, to those that doubt his claims.

Frank says his project is “green, clean and job creating.” Apparently that’s all it takes to get an imprimatur from Crowley and Flanagan?

Okay Frank, how “green”, how “clean”, and how many jobs will be created by your Interstate Technologies Taunton incinerator? And what will those jobs pay?

Also, in the above news article, is another example of Fall River’s Mayor Flanagan not knowing what he’s talking about:

Saturday night, he (Flanagan) reiterated his previous statement, saying that Fall River’s city dump on Airport Road, located on land the city does not own, could very well be forced to close down within three years. “Yes, I support Taunton’s efforts. We have to find a place to dispose of our trash, especially since our landfill is becoming filled to capacity,” Flanagan said.

Whoa, Will! Fall River does not have a “city dump.” Just another in a long list of environmental blunders Fall River has made and continues to make. Fall River sold its dump to a local good-old-boy many years ago. Fall River’s …and much other solid waste …goes to Allied Waste’s Mount Trashmore towering 350+ feet above Fall River’s municipal water supply.

To sum up, there are many ways to gasify stuff. They ALL leave behind “residuals” and they ALL produce external gas emissions. Massachusetts is part of the New England Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a compact requiring reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

That reduction can’t happen if Massachusetts falls victim to gasification, as presently designed, by gasification industry promoters and their ilk.

Hopefully Massachusetts will continue to turn thumbs-down on gasification. Incineration …by any other name …is still incineration!

OUTDOOR STUFF -

Anyone out hiking this month notice the large fruiting of Amanita muscaria mushrooms? That's the mushroom one often sees ...with a red cap with white spots ...in children's book illustrations. Often there's an elf or fairy close by. We don't have the red variety here. In our neck of the woods the muscaria is always yellow or yellow-orange.

Nature is all around. Here's a quick cell phone photo, taken on the run, of an inner city red tail hawk dining on an urban pigeon on County Street in Fall River's Lafayette Park. Stay alert and observant!