two good articles today

Well, good is not necessarily the correct word, but interesting, infuriating or important may actually be better for this one. The Union of Concerned Scientists ran a little bit of a survey with the EPA. Just to see really how much current policy is dictating what data they are putting out, how the finding may have been edited by current administration, etc. It turns out to be quite a bit. Coming from someone in a scientific field, I am completely unsurprised by these findings, but at the same time can tell you that nothing is as frustrating to a scientist than someone coming in and manipulating your data to say what they want it to, or to challenge your assessments with no scientific evidence on the contrary. We currently have political officials with no scientific background coming in and changing scientific findings to match what they want, and this is not the first time I have heard of this sort of censorship going on under the current administration. This stuff is bad and really needs to stop.. Anyway, the article says it all better than I can, definitely a good read.

The second article is a study performed by the Environmental Defense Fund. The basic rundown is that they wanted to find out what it would actually cost our economy to put a cap on carbon emissions with a cap and trade program. What they came up with was approximately 1% of the GDP... hardly the crippling cost that we have been led to believe. The other important tidbit is that it will become more and more expensive to perform the longer we wait. So lets get it done already.

Get rid of your Nalgene bottles

If you haven't already, get rid of all your Nalgene Bottles. You know the popular clear hard plastic bottles that seemingly EVERYONE has and carries around with them. These plastics contain what is being described as a very harmful ingredient called Bisphenol A (BPA). I read an article about this several months ago in the Green Guide, and at the time it was becoming a hot issue, with cities like San Francisco banning it. Also, at the time, the people at Nalgene were defending their product and playing the there is not enough evidence to say our products are unsafe card. I recall going to their webpage at the time that I read this and they even had a special link to their own information on BPA, claiming their products were safe and all studies to that point where inconclusive.

Well, now that Canada is planning a ban, and the National Institute of Health is saying it is toxic, they are phasing it out over the next few months and offering many non-BPA alternatives. It would seem to me that they saw these bans coming a while ago.. They did offer some alternatives before, but they were not marketed nearly as much as the Polycarbonate bottles that everyone knows so well. That may just be the cynic in me, but if they DID see this coming and planned accordingly, how on earth do they explain the continued sale of a product that they knew would be classified as unsafe in the near future?

There is also a huge buzz going about where they are using these plastics in baby bottles. The green guide has also hit on this as well (in 1999!!), but it is back in the news because of these most recent studies. How is this for a response from a plastic company representative, "There is nothing new in this report," said Steven Hentges, executive director of the American Plastics Council's Polycarbonate Business Unit. "The data that is presented has been known for years and, most importantly, data of that type has been reviewed by government agencies around the world in their comprehensive reviews on BPA and, in every case, they reach a conclusion even after considering this kind of data that polycarbonate baby bottles are safe for use."

Basically there is no ban yet, but many producers admit they are BPA is unsafe, but they downgrade the amounts that are leached and they plan to keep selling them anyway. I personally really wish we would remove the phrase "safe level" from our vocabulary. If we know something is unsafe... why have ANY of it?

top 20 bills in NC Assembly - Part 4 (#1-5)

Part 4 (#1-5) of the top 20 bills in the NC general assembly

This is it.. the final part. Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 if you haven't yet.

And on we go.

5. Senate Bill 1493/House Bill 1232 - Fund State Water Infrastructure Commission
The State Water Infrastructure Commission would of course identify the state's water needs and develop plans to meet them. Then monitor the implementation of the plans.

4. House Bill 1179 - Clean Cars Program/Funds
This would establish a low emissions vehicle program in North Carolina. This would basically adopt the low-emissions vehicle program that they have in California for the state of North Carolina, effective for cars sold after 2009 model year. There is a lot of info included in this bill, so if you are interested I recommend reading up. Needless to say, any bill that will require the phase out of vehicle emissions is a good thing.

3. Senate Bill 927/House Bill 1073 - Green School Construction Loan Fund/Program
This basically allows for schools to get no interest loans for the purpose of green constructions or renovations. With the number of schools going up in the state every year (especially Wake County) there is no reason why they shouldn't be building as green as they can, and this would help them cover a lot of those costs.

2. Senate Bill 1522/House Bill 990 - Land and Water Conservation Bond Act of 2007
This one looks to have been sat on a bit, but there is no reason to think we couldn't get it moved back up and pushed through. It would authorize the issuance of bonds, provided passing of vote to address the statewide needs of land conservation, Water Quality protection and Historic preservation. We are talking about a lot of money here (up to $1 Billion), that is needed in a bad way for conservation around the state. I can only hope that this one gets revisited.

1. Senate Bill 634/House Bill 557 - North Carolina GREEEN Act
This act is to grow a renewable and energy-efficient economy in North Carolina by establishing a Green Business Fund to be administered by the state energy office to provide seed grants to develop North Carolina's green economy. This version of the bill allows for $15 Million a year to be divided between Bio-fuels, Green Building and general Green Entrepreneurship. This one is important to me for clear reasons, but not only because I am trying to start a green business. I think becoming a leader in this industry can pay huge dividends for this state in the future.

With elections coming up, etc. it is on all of us to make sure the folks running know what we think is important and the type of things we want them to work on for us. All of these bills may not work out in these particular iterations, but we can at least draw some attention to them. Check out the state board of elections for info on all the candidates. E-mail them, call them, whatever. but let them know what you want. Maybe something can eventually get done.