Great Lakes Blogger

Rachel Carson's 100th birthday and the tobacco lobby

If it walks like a rat and smells like a rat...

The piles of documents released as a result of litigation against Phillip Morris and Exxon are gifts that keep on giving for those of us interested in the process by which the Republican parallel universe has been constructed. Previous research has shown that the core proponents of global warming delusionism including Stephen Milloy, Fred Singer and Fred Seitz got their start as shills for PM, denying the risks of passive smoking. A string of rightwing thinktanks including Cato, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute helped to promote these hacks and the lies they were paid to peddle.

Now it’s turned out that one of the hardiest of parallel universe beliefs, the claim that Rachel Carson and the US ban on DDT were responsible for millions of deaths in the third world, arises from the same source.

One of the great puzzles of the DDT myth has been that it appeared to arise from pure ideological animus against Carson and the environmental movement – DDT is not patented so there were no profits to be obtained from pushing it. It turns out that the DDT campaign was pitched to the tobacco industry as a diversionary attack on the World Health Organization which was playing a leading role in campaigns against smoking.

http://crookedtimber.org/2007/05/30/ddt-tobacco-and-the-parallel-universe/

get the butts off the beaches

With Great Lakes beach season now here, the annual onslaught of discarded cigarette butts will get in the way of your walk to the water.

Since the first beach cleanup in Michigan back in 1991, cigarette butts have been the No. 1 trash item picked up by volunteers -- making up 58 percent of all litter removed from Michigan shorelines in 2007.

http://www.greatlakes.org/news/021507.asp

It's great that advocates are pursuing local bans on smoking on beaches. With the stroke of a pen, any governor of any Great Lakes state could do the same for state parks and forests along the Great Lakes. (Note: smoking could still be allowed in pavilions or away from the beach if the smoker lobby insists.) Why hasn't any governor done so? Or has one?

get your Great Lakes stories/photos ready!

A group wanting to restore the Great Lakes by fighting invasive species and preventing sewage contamination has announced the launch of the Great Lakes Story and Photo Contest.



http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6584640&nav=0Rcd

happy 50th, Mackinac Bridge

The magic of the Mackinac Bridge is probably best captured in a quote rock legend Bob Seger gave the Northern Express last fall:

“It is has become a rite of spring for me when I head north. The first nice spring day I get on my motorcycle and ride from my place in Good Hart (near Harbor Springs) and cross the Mackinac Bridge,” said Seger. “It is one of the greatest feelings in the world, going over that bridge and looking over Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Being on that bridge makes you proud to be a Michigander and proud of the thousands that built it. I hope to walk the bridge this Labor Day with my family. It is something we have never done.”

http://www.northernexpress.com/editorial/features.asp?id=2490

Well, yes, there is pride in the heroism that built that bridge. But there's also a sense of awe and wonder at the vast waters below, the meeting place of Lakes Michigan and Huron, the history and the majesty of it.

http://mightymac.org/

New Jersey 'natural capital' worth $20B a year

Interesting study. The Great Lakes states should do the same inventory of the economic value of their natural assets -- mandated by legislation, if necessary. Perhaps if we render the environment and natural resources in dollars, they will move up the priority list.

http://www.nj.gov/dep/dsr/naturalcap/

Bathtub theory of water loss gets look

We call it the "Bathtub Theory" and an international team is about to find out if it holds water. 

A few years ago, a citizen group called the Georgian Bay Association raised eyebrows by commissioning an engineering study to understand why the upper Great Lakes are shrinking.

The report identified various potential causes, including historic dredging in the St. Clair River at Sarnia and the subsequent erosion of the river channel.

http://www.nugget.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=547414&catname=Editorial&classif=

restore the clean water act

When is water not really protected? When the Bush Administration and right-wing courts say it isn't. But even they couldn't twist the language of this new bill that will once and for all affirm the intent of Congress to protect all of America's waters.

http://www.startribune.com/editorials/story/1205358.html

In other words, if you want clean, healthy rivers and lakes, you cannot pretend that marshes, ponds and creeks are irrelevant.

Lawmakers understood this back in 1972, when Oberstar was a young congressional aide who helped write the clean water bill. That law brought about an almost miraculous cleanup of the nation's lakes and rivers, and only a foolhardy nation would go back on it.

author's blood is boiling on Great Lakes toxics

Today, Mel Visser, author of the recently published Cold, Clear and Deadly, takes the floor with a plea for the U.S. and Canada to get serious about controlling global sources of persistent toxic pollutants as the key to making the Great Lakes and other northern lakes safe places for fish consumption (and other uses).

Scientists and policy makers from the U.S. and Canada recently celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Great Lakes binational toxics reduction program with a reception and dinner. I'll bet that with what they know, lake trout was not on the menu!

I may be overly sensitive here, but my history gives me a different spin on...or removes the spin from "toxics." Jim Ludwig, an ecotoxicologist and other Great Lakes scientists have influenced me deeply on this.

Pre-1993, "toxics" were the really toxic POPs (persistent organic pollutants), such as PCBs, toxaphene, DDT and chlordane, and there was great concern for them in the Great Lakes. Since then, other concerns such as habitat and invasive species have overshadowed POPs. POPs "toxics" have been replaced by "ozone and smog" toxics from the toxic release inventory (TRI) chemicals and millions of tons have been eliminated.

In the meantime, Mother Nature has purged the lower Great Lakes of a portion of their local POPs excesses, permitting the return of some wildlife.

Now the toxic strategists connect the elimination of "ozone and smog" chemicals with POPs, and take credit for Mother Nature's work. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has done all she can and global sources of real POPs are in control of the Great Lakes.

Our brilliant strategists will continue to pursue their successes by tightening down on the TRI, including more chemicals and lower quantities, dredging sediments, and pursuing 'zero discharge' and 'virtual elimination" in the Basin.

Meanwhile, imports from developing countries pour toxaphene into the northern lakes, to a point where lake trout fillets have ten times the hazardous waste level. Now the government's thrust is to remove toxaphene from the fish eating advisories. I guess they do not want us to worry.

I'm damn worried, and seeing people who are charged with protection of our water and our health continually refuse to face the real issues has my blood boiling.

More on Mel and the book here:

http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=3156

 

  

 
 

 

more on MN's landmark energy law

Much of the fine print still needs to be worked out before it's clear exactly what the bill will mean for utilities and consumers, says Rick Evans of Xcel Energy, the state's largest energy supplier. But he suspects, at the very least, achieving an 80 percent reduction in CO2 won't be a painless process.

"It is going to make a significant difference in the kinds of cars that we own and how we drive them possibly, how we use electricity in our homes, when we use it and what we can do to make serious reductions in that usage," he says. "So imagine all of the things that you do with energy everyday and think of those things changing."

A special commission is charged with offering recommendations to lawmakers for how they can achieve their carbon reduction goal. That group must report its findings to the Legislature by February. Lawmakers will then have a year to enact their official global warming law.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/05/23/energy_bill/

VHS: now in Lake Michigan

Another fine mess spreads.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Lake Michigan fish appears to have tested positive for a deadly fish virus, confirming suspicions of Wisconsin fish managers that the disease was in the lake.

The dead brown trout washed up on shore near the Kewaunee and Algoma area.