Jen's Green Journal

The 5-year old son of a friend died yesterday of cancer that began in his kidney. I would see him at our monthly get-togethers until his diagnosis 6 months ago. I remember his baby shower and playing with him as a baby, his impish sense of humor and shyness as a toddler.

Cancer for children (and apparently for adults) is on the rise. Less people are dying from cancer, but more and more people are getting it. Since we've been doing pretty well on curing a lot of cancer, it seems to me that we can afford to focus time, energy and money on prevention. Some research that I've been working on suggests that pollution and unsafe consumer products might be part of the problem and are mostly driven by profit motivations.

The question is, as a corporatocracy are we willing to make the necessary changes to protect public health at the expense of the GNP? Is the suffering and death of loved ones worth the conveniences of our modern life and the mega-profits of our corporations?

link to story on Green Commons

I enjoyed reading Part of the Plan's analysis on why conservatives are poor public "servants".

Going Green is becoming kinda trendy. That's why polluters for profit are trying to get in on the action. Buyer beware, however -- Archer Daniels Midland wants to produce ethanol by using coal-fired plants. Coal is "one of the dirtiest forms of energy".

Despite the company's attempts at green packaging, ADM is ranked as the tenth worst corporate air polluter, on the "Toxic 100" list of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency has charged the company with violations of the Clean Air Act in hundreds of processing units, covering 52 plants in 16 states. In 2003 the two agencies reached a $351 million settlement with the company. Three years earlier, ADM was fined $1.5 million by the Department of Justice and $1.1 million by the State of Illinois for pollution related to ethanol production and distribution. Currently, the corporation is involved in approximately 25 administrative and judicial proceedings connected to federal and state Superfund laws regarding the environmental clean-up of sites contaminated by ADM operations.

ADM has a lot of influence on our government, so it's unlikely that they'll do anything to fight for our environement:

ADM and its signature project have never lacked friends in high places, despite a history of price fixing scandals and monopolistic misdeeds. The Andreas family, which has headed up the publicly-traded company for decades, has cultivated bipartisan support through generous donations to both Republicans and Democrats. Since the 2000 election cycle, ADM has given more than $3 million in political contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics: $1.2 million to Democrats and $1.85 million to Republicans. These donations may have helped sustain a multitude of government subsidies to ADM, including ethanol tax credits, tariffs against foreign ethanol competitors, and federally mandated ethanol additive standards.

Read the full article.

I'm all for gas costing more if the excess is used to clean the air or build mass transit or something else that would benefit the environment. I'm not so thrilled to be paying so much just so that oil companies can make bigger profits.

More interesting oil facts found here:

$2.92.....Average retail price for regular gasoline, up 69 cents from a year ago.

$2,873...Amount average family of four spent on gasoline in 2005

$4 billion......ChevronTexaco's first-quarter profits in 2006, up 49% from 2005

1 cent...Amount of savings for consumers at the pump if we drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge

20 years..When consumers would see the penny savings

A few years back there was a citizen's initiative on the ballot to block B & C level radioactive waste from being dumped in the state. It didn't have the funds to compete with Envirocare's (the ironically named company that stores the waste for profit) media campaign and the confusion on the issue caused the initiative to fail.

Legislators took offense that the public went above their heads to create law and the very next legislative session they made the already cumbersome citizen initiative process even more difficult.

Recently, Governor Huntsman had expressed that he won't okay Envirocare's proposed expansion, and there are some in the legislature that aren't too happy about that either.

From the Salt Lake Tribune's article today, "Lawmakers ponder bill on waste":

  "The announcement made some lawmakers bristle. They don't like the fact that the governor's decision can override a majority of the Legislature, which also must approve any expansion.
    At the same time, some lawmakers say they don't want to look like they are granting the controversial company special favors if they approve a bill allowing them to bypass the governor."

I'm a big believer in checks and balances. In the first instance, Utah's citizen's attempted to check the legislative branch's tendency to side with corporate power over the health of our environment and communities. Now the governor is attempting to check that, at least in this instance. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, in this and future sessions.

Our Buy Nothing Day anti-consumerism caroling went well yesterday, other than a not having a very big turnout. Deanna of Dee's 'Dotes has photos her husband took here.

We weren't the only ones protesting at the Gateway on Black Friday. Animal rights activists were protesting J.Crew's use of fur and there was a Christian fundamentalist street preacher passing out literature there with his two kids. He agreed with our message of toning down consumerism for the holidays, but someone that had talked to him said that he was a big supporter of Bush since Bush's such "a good Christian."

The Gateway is an outdoor mall/condos/offices project in Salt Lake City built by the Boyer Company. It was a very controversial project of mostly middle to high end retailers and restaurants that is likely responsible for helping to drain the life out of downtown's Main Street.

What was interesting at the protest was finding out what part of the multi-block project we could legal protest on. It seems that the sidewalks that run through the Gateway are private property, which leaves the narrow streets that run through it and a few feet at the corners as the only public property. That puts pedestrians not wishing to walk around the huge complex at a disadvantage if they do anything that mall security would find disagreeable.

Salt Lake isn't a stranger for selling away public property rights, as it sold the Mormon church a whole block of Main Street back in 1999 for $8.1 million. The church built a plaza on the site disrupting traffic flow and restricting behavior to Mormon standards for pedestrians who don't want to add to their walking time and distance by walking around it.

I find the trend to privatize sidewalks in Salt Lake City to be a bit disturbing. There may not be too much of it going on right now, but this trend could lead to very little rights for pedestrians in the long run. I hope we never see the day where we have to pay tolls or have shopping validations to walk through these privatized zones.

Thanksgiving is over and the day after Thanksgiving is usually a day for shopping gluttony, unless you celebrate Buy Nothing Day! There are two events that I'm aware of for Buy Nothing Day in Utah:

The Gateway: Meet at Cup of Joe, 333 West 200 South, at 11 am. We will proceed to the Gateway Center where we will engage in the boisterous and joyous (and sometimes off-key) singing of Buy Nothing Day Carols!

Download carols here (there will be carol handouts available at the event as well).

Walmart Protest: Walmart Supercenter 5496 South Redwood Rd, Noon to 1 pm. UTJwJ activists will join with women, environmentalists, other unionists and concerned citizens who are fighting to make Wal-Mart a responsible corporate citizen. Sponsored by Utah Jobs for Justice.

Buy Nothing Day background info here. Photos from past Salt Lake Buy Nothing Days here.

Less than 2 weeks until Buy Nothing Day, the counter culture answer to the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving.

Buy Nothing Day is a great opportunity to reflect on our consumption and consumerism, and even just possibly the true nature of Christmas (despite the cliche).

The radical cheerleaders and other activists and like-minded folks will be participating in a Buy Nothing Day carol singing at the Gateway shopping center in Salt Lake City. Anyone who will be in or near Salt Lake City is invited to participate. Details can be found here. At that link you can also download the carols we'll be singing, but if you don't we'll have handouts with the lyrics on them at the event.

I participated in this a couple of years ago and had a blast. I love participating in creative protest and this one is especially fun.

Buy Nothing Day events are happening around the world. Adbusters has a lot more info here on the why and where.

Every so often (and getting more frequent), I have to write letters and emails to save organic standards. Sadly, it's time to do this again. Here's the latest attack on our right to organic food and something you can do about it.

Having to go through this effort every few years to fight the corporate food producing giants' attack on my food options is getting extremely annoying. But until we stop electing politicians from the two corporate parties (with a few exceptions), we will likely face many attempted "sneak attacks" like this one in our legislation.

From Organic Consumers Association

"Now, large corporations, such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods--aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and members of the Organic Trade Association, are moving to lower organic standards by allowing Bush appointees in the USDA National Organic Program to approve a broad list of synthetic ingredients and processing aids that would be allowed in organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board’s (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will have near total control over what can go into organic foods and products."