Climate Change Out of USDA's Comfort Zone

Dave FisherA few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a revised plant hardiness zone map. This map is an essential tool for gardeners and farmers for planning seeding and crop-rotation schedules. The new map is more accurate — down to a half-mile square — than the previous rendition because of expanded data set available through more monitoring and a longer time frame of collected data, 30 years as opposed to 15.

Enhancing this resource for our nation’s food producers is a step in the right direction, but the expanded data set also showed that, no surprise, it’s getting warmer. Most hardiness zones in the lower 48 are now, according to the USDA, about 2.5 degrees warmer, a shift of about half a planting zone. This shift in average temperature opens the door for food growers to have a longer growing season, and to plant a wider array of crops — though I don’t think that we’ll soon have Del’s lemonade made with Rhode Island-grown lemons. Warmer air and water temperatures also provide an inroad to invasive species that previously couldn't have survived or thrived in New England’s climate.

Again, this shift in zones comes as no surprise to those of us who understand the impact of our industrialized society on the natural processes of the planet, but the USDA’s media blitz, if that’s what you want to call it, shows a disturbing lack of any mention of the greatest problem of the Industrial Age — climate change. In fact, not only does the official USDA press release not mention climate change, the language in the missive actually implies that the shift in zones is somehow due to advanced monitoring and more data.

Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005.

Seriously? The shift is a result of using better scientific methods?

Revised hardiness zones for Conn. and R.I. Click image for larger map. (Courtesy USDA)Let’s not kid ourselves. The shift is a result of the millions of tons of gases and particles that we pump into the air every year that trap heat in our atmosphere, causing the planet to warm and our oceans to acidify at an accelerated rate. How can the USDA, the overseer of an industry that recent reports show creates 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, release a map based on long-term data gathered through enhanced techniques that shows evidence of a continental shift in average temperature and not mention the root cause of the problem?

Given that, I’m offering an addendum press release for the USDA to use at their discretion:

"Advanced long-term monitoring of temperature patterns in the United States have prompted the USDA to redraw the hardiness zone map, adding two zones, and due to an upward trend in average temperatures accelerated by anthropogenic climate change — the majority of the U.S. will shift about a half-zone.

The USDA understands the impact that agriculture has on our climate, and vice versa, and is committed to helping our nation’s farms and farmers mitigate and adapt to the future climate by helping to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, transition to sustainable and restorative work and conservation practices, providing funding for prevention and removal of invasive species, and supporting regional food systems including transportation and processing concerns." 

Dave Fisher is the managing editor of ecoRI News. He gets a lot of e-mail from the USDA.

WhoNu Cookies Were Healthy? Big Food, Of Course

Joanna DetzCan a cookie be delicious and nutritious? It certainly can be marketed as such.

Case in point: Denver-based Suncor Products, the parent company and maker of WhoNu? cookies, has been promoting its oreo-esque sandwich cookies as “nutritious” with a TV ad blitz this winter.

The commercials are transparent in their messaging. Even with the volume off, it's clear from the images flashing on screen that these cookies were being equated with: A bowl of oatmeal! A cup of blueberries! A glass of milk! The takeaway: Why not eat a cookie in order get the same nutritional benefits as all these other healthy foods without eating all these healthy foods. Happy mom; smiling kids. The end.

A bit of research reveals that the basic ingredients of a WhoNu? chocolate cookie are nearly identical to those of an Oreo. Both WhoNu? chocolate cookies and Oreos contain sugar (first ingredient), corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors. The difference? WhoNu? cookies have a few vitamins and fiber thrown into the mix, plus a heap of clever branding that is sure to appeal to parents who would rather just give their kids a cookie instead of fighting to get them to eat an apple.

And so Big Food continues to infantilize Americans, presuming that children and grown-ups alike can only swallow fiber and nutrition in cookie form. Products such as WhoNu? are Trojan horses for the processed-food industry, gaining the consumer’s trust (and dollars) with nutritional claims and then unleashing the sugar and corn syrup.

Of course, false advertising is nothing new, but in the light of the current obesity crisis facing America, it seems there should be limits on this kind of marketing. However, Suncor Products recently was cleared from charges of false claims by the National Advertising Division (NAD), the advertising industry’s self-regulatory body.

In a Jan. 26 press release, NAD stated that, “the advertiser refrained from expressly comparing WhoNu? cookies to whole fruits and vegetables, did not depict actual foods on its labels but rather cartoonish sketches.”

Ah, the old "cartoonish sketch" loophole. Joe the Camel wasn’t so lucky.

WhoNu?

We should all know better. We should all know that eating whole foods are best, and that we should aim to get our vitamins and fiber from foods with one ingredient. Example: Carrot.

But companies continue to spin out processed foods and market them as good for you. And consumers continue to gobble them up. General Mills recently unleashed its "Big G" campaign, marketing a lineup of its cereals as “whole grain.” Surprisingly, this roster includes Frankenberry (third ingredient sugar), Lucky Charms (second ingredient corn syrup) and Trix (second ingredient sugar). Have a little fiber with your Type 2 diabetes, kids. Oh, and how about an a little butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) to start the day, because that’s in there too.

That old adage, "Let food be thy medicine" is being exploited by Big Food and its slick advertising buddies. In the middle aisles of grocery stores, packaged foods of dubious pedigree pronounce their healthfulness on their wrappers and boxes. Antioxidant rich! Heart Healthy! Great Source of Fiber!

The only sanctuary from all this chatter is, ironically, where the healthiest foods reside, the produce aisle. Quiet cauliflower and humble sweet potatoes don’t have the biggest agencies working to promote their health benefits. There is no TV ad campaign for blueberries. They only get a bit part in WhoNu? commercials.

Joanna Detz is the director of development for ecoRI News.

Kids First Celebrates Completion of a Mission

Dorothy BrayleyThank you for your work with me and with the dedicated staff members of Kids First during the past 15 years. Together, we have transformed the nutrition environments in all of our public schools, a feat most thought impossible — or unimportant — when we started our work in 1997.

In 15 years of service to Rhode Island children, Kids First spearheaded major nutrition changes in our greatest and most influential public institution for children, our schools.

Given Michelle Obama’s recent announcement of new USDA nutrition requirements for school meals, which mirror those that Rhode Island implemented nearly three years ago, we can all feel incredibly innovative for having figured our own way through developing, testing and cost-effectively implementing superior nutrition standards for Rhode Island’s school children.

Fifteen years ago, when I visited schools across the state, I saw vending machines filled with sugary beverages and junk food lining the halls and locker rooms of many middle and high schools. High schools sometimes had more than a 100 fundraisers centered on selling junk food in a single 180-day school year. Elementary students were offered tater tots, chicken nuggets and ice cream for lunch, birthday sweets in the afternoon and candy as a reward for good work — all in a single school day.

There was little in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the little that was available wasn’t grown in Rhode Island. All grains were highly processed and high in sugar and sodium. This was no one’s fault — it had simply become the norm for schools nationwide.

Today, however, Rhode Islanders can be proud as we walk through our schools. Together, we have accomplished much to celebrate:

• The formation of school district Wellness Committees that develop and implement locally generated solutions for improving the nutritional well-being and physical education of Rhode Island students. Due to the early success of Wellness Committees, Rhode Islanders chose to require them by passing a law in 2005.

• In 2003, the collaborative development of voluntary nutrition criteria for all foods sold and offered outside of the school lunch program during the school day. When the “Healthier Foods and Beverages in Schools Laws” were passed in 2006 and 2007, we could more effectively ask industry to stop bringing junk food and sugary beverages to our schools.

• Offering our children more fruits and vegetables, including a wide variety grown right here in Rhode Island. Kids First worked with the state Department of Education to develop and test improved criteria for school breakfast and lunch, and as a result, students were exposed to the taste of whole grains and more fresh-prepared, scratch-cooked foods with lower sodium than the processed counterparts. We achieved enough statewide support that the Board of Regents passed the Rhode Island Nutrition Requirements (RINR) in 2009.

• Implementation of a robust Rhode Island Farm to School program with 100 percent of state public school districts now serving locally grown foods.

The time has come for us to celebrate our success in improving school food environments and to finish our work by the end of this school year. Kids First began with a clear mission to help Rhode Island schools become places where our children could learn and practice healthy eating every day. In the years since we started our work, Rhode Island communities and stakeholders have taken ownership of the changes and, in some cases, continued to expand our initial work.

While everyone will not agree with me, I believe that Kids First is no longer needed to lead the charge. We have achieved our initial mission. It’s time for us to step aside so that others can dedicate themselves to the important work of sustaining our improvements and expanding them to child care and other institutions.

I ask that we never revert back to what I saw in schools 15 years ago. We need to now look to other state institutions, especially health care-related institutions, to follow the lead of Rhode Island schools by becoming places where Rhode Islanders can learn about and practice healthful eating by offering and promoting fresh, tasty and locally grown foods every day.

The Kids First team and I remain available to Rhode Island schools and agencies until the end of the current school year, June 30. Please feel free to contact us for assistance in these next five months. Stay tuned to our website as we share more details of winding down our operations, seeding other organizations with our highly dedicated and qualified staff members and finding homes for programs, such as the Rhode Island Farm to School program, that will live on elsewhere.

If you have any thoughts about how we might best complete and/or transition our work to others, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you for being with me on this fantastic 15-year journey of Rhode Island school food transformation.

To every school nurse, chef, superintendent, food service team member, farmer, principal, parent, teacher, student and community partner that helped bring us to this point, all of us at Kids First celebrate your involvement, your energy and your devotion to helping our mission succeed. Don’t stop now — continue to make Rhode Island a model for the rest of the nation.

Dorothy Brayley is founding executive director of Kids First.

Pay to Pave: A Fair Way to Cleaner Water

Chip Young“The more you pave, the more you pay.”

That slogan is the calling card of local officials who want to protect their communities from the consequences of unmanaged stormwater through a logical, equitable and affordable way to achieve the goals of flood protection and healthy waterways statewide.

We all remember too well the property damage resulting from the spring 2010 floods, and the more frequent flooding problems caused by smaller storms. Stormwater runoff is also one of the prime polluters of the state’s rivers, lakes and streams, and of Rhode Island’s No. 1 economic resource, Narragansett Bay. But unlike wastewater and combined sewage overflow that share the top polluter berth, in most communities there has never been dedicated funding to manage stormwater’s overall impact on the water we drink, and in which we swim and fish.

Most people understand why and at what level they should rightly pay for utilities such as the water that comes into our homes and out of our faucets that we use to drink, cook and bathe. Likewise, the wastewater that leaves our homes, which needs to be treated and cleaned before it is pumped back into the environment. You get your water bill, and you pay your share for what you have used each month. You get your sewer bill, and you pay for how much you have circulated to your local wastewater treatment plant.

Currently, there is no user fee attached to stormwater, which is created when it rains and washes the oil, gas and grease films off our roads, collecting with it pet waste and litter, and then flows into our waterways and aquifers with no treatment whatsoever. We ignore that process, or somehow believe it is the sparkling, pristine precipitation that Gene Kelly danced through while “Singin’ in the Rain!”

In reality, however, things aren’t right as rain. Any paved area or expanse of impervious surface, be it roads, highways or the roofs of houses and local businesses, that repels what falls from the sky during storms, is the starting point for a flow of polluted runoff. It sluices into storm drains, where it is channeled to the waters along the nearby riverbank or beach where local residents live and play.

Sometimes storm drains don’t work the way they are supposed to — they get clogged from sediment build-up, collapse because they are old and need of replacing or are undersized for the volume of runoff coming off newly developed areas. The annoyances of having to drive through a flooded street quickly become public health and safety concerns and possible litigation material, when car accidents occur or emergency response vehicles are detoured.

Local communities have begun to deal with runoff using techniques such as basins to store flood flows, capturing litter and sediment-bound pollutants before they can flow any further. To rid the runoff of its less visible elements — the dissolved pollutants and bacteria — it has been diverted to natural grassy or forest areas or manmade structures such as underground infiltrating chambers or rain gardens, where it can be naturally cleansed by the ground or recycled to irrigate a backyard garden.

That cost has generally been inserted into the local tax rate — out of sight, out of mind. But the operation and maintenance expense, such as for cleaning storm drains, both manmade and natural, or street sweeping, are parceled out on a per capita basis, not for how much each individual or business contributes to the pollution that is being fought against by city and state workers.

It does not represent, as some would have it, a new tax. It is merely a re-allocation of what is already in place in a municipal budget to those who put the greatest burden on the existing system, and incur the most cost to the community.

At a time when budgets are in tough shape, but the desire for clean drinking water and a clean environment still rank at the top of the priority list for the general public, the sense that people should only have to pay their fair share for a healthy environment is growing.

“The more you pave, the more you pay” concept is making more and more sense for communities across the United States. Owners of properties or businesses that are replete with impervious surfaces and exacerbate pollution after it rains are being charged for that waterproof ground or building cover. Homes or businesses that minimize their impervious surface area are rewarded with a smaller user fee.

Treating the processing and management of stormwater as a utility with a user fee based on paying your deserved share, just like your monthly water or sewer bill, is being implemented in states such as North Carolina, where a stormwater user fee in towns and districts is the norm, rather than the exception. A number of New England communities such as Burlington, Vt., and South Portland, Maine, now have stormwater user fees in place.

The campaign for cleaner stormwater has begun but it is not adequately funded. In Rhode Island, Middletown and Westerly have been out front in recognizing the need for funding stormwater management efforts to prevent beach closures and mitigate flooding. With assistance from the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), and with the blessings of their town officials, they are conducting studies to see if a stormwater utility makes sense. In addition to the idea of fairness, civic leaders also are aware that their local environments, featuring beaches and scenic landscapes, are an economic driver.

The DEM, partnering with the Department of Transportation, the University of Rhode Island’s Cooperative Extension Stormwater Solutions project and Save The Bay, has recently completed a three-workshop series on stormwater utilities. Topics included learning how to evaluate the full cost of managing stormwater, the pros and cons of a stormwater utility through lessons learned from the trenches, and how to encourage low-impact design and “green infrastructure” that not only save businesses and homeowners unnecessary costs, but also benefits quality of life through a cleaner environment.

A well-received workshop presentation at the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns annual conference Jan. 26 showed municipal officials how an affordable stormwater utility could benefit them even within the strictures of a tight budget, while remaining affordable to local residents.

Is such a project easy? No. Is it fair and equitable? Yes. Does it improve local living conditions and help the community economically? Yes. It doesn’t look like a difficult choice.

And the logic isn’t too hard, either. The more you pave, the more you pay.

Chip Young is a senior fellow at the URI Coastal Institute; president of the communications strategies firm CY LLC and a member of the ecoRI Inc. board of directors.

Don’t Be Fooled by False Keystone Promises

To the editor,

As a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employee, and one who spent the first 23 years of that career in marine toxicology, I feel it is necessary to communicate my experience relevant to the present national political debate issue of the Keystone pipeline.

First, you should know that part of my marine research was on the toxicity of global crude oils and dispersants to various species of marine life. In the early 1970s, my lab was filed with flasks of crude oils from all over the world. The sour crudes from Texas, Louisiana and most of the coastal Gulf of Mexico, as well as Alaska, are black, highly viscous and filled with sulfur, toxic heavy metals and highly volatile, toxic, explosive hydrocarbons — polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).

The light, sweet crudes from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran are clear liquids in various shades of light amber, much like single malt scotch. You had to sniff the necks of these flasks directly to detect their odor.

The costs of refining — called cracking — the sour crudes are enormous, in the energy required of the process, the cost to public health from the atmospheric pollution and the expense of disposal of the extracted toxic components such as sulfur and heavy metals. Refining the sweet crudes is simple and far less onerous on the atmosphere and waste stream.

Economic analysis continues to pronounce the importation and U.S. refining of Arabian oils as a bargain no matter what we pay for them compared to the costs of refining our own sour crudes. Oil is a fungible commodity, thus, we sell most of our Alaskan sour crude oil to Japan and other Asian countries and import Arabian for our own use. If this weren’t cost effective, industry wouldn’t do it.

The recent Gulf oil spill of the Deep Water Horizon rig was light, sweet crude. That’s why the damage was minimal for the volume spilled. There is an enormous dome of oil and gas at that site. The oil being pumped in the Dakotas now is sweet crude. And Anadarko Petroleum has just announced a major find in Colorado oil shale of light, sweet oil bigger than the Saudi reserves. They will establish 250 new wells there next year. As we move to less polluting, less carbon contributing fuels, we will need this light, sweet crude to help our environment, while the nation converts.

Alberta/Calgary oil sands are perhaps the worst of the global sour crudes. I met a pilot at an Apeiron Environmental Fair a few years ago who said the cracking tower in Calgary produces a 35,000-foot aerial plume that if a plane even enters in the periphery would explode on contact. That’s how many explosive hydrocarbons are still in the exhaust of this refinery. PAHs are potent atmospheric pollutants and are classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic. Google “refinery explosions in Canada” and you will find their refineries have had several explosive accidents and serious fires, one of which almost killed an entire suburb of Calgary with a hydrogen sulfide gas cloud miles wide. Canada would love to rid their country of this refinery danger and still profit from the sale of its nasty oil.

Part of the Keystone pipeline proposed is an old one the United States used to deliver refined oil north from the Gulf. Now they propose to join it to Canada and reverse its flow southward. In order to move oil sands crude oil in the pipe, it will have to be heated, diluted with other solvents to prevent clogging and pressurized. The pipeline is proposed to be built over important farmlands and sole source aquifers in the Midwest. The state of Nebraska has issued strong opposition to its crossing fragile areas in its borders.

In my opinion, this pipeline is multiple disasters waiting to happen. The pro-oil argument is that the Gulf coast refineries have the equipment to handle the sour crudes. The environmental argument is that we should move those refineries to light, sweet crude, which we are now pumping in the United States, while we slowly convert to non-carbon energy production.

We don’t need the Canadian oil or its problems. So don’t be fooled by the claims of cheap oil and jobs. These arguments are as dark and ominous as the oil itself.

Mimi Karlsson
Retired EPA-Atlantic Ecology Division, Narragansett
Hopkinton and Little Compton

R.I. Needs Occupy Providence More than Ever

Tm Faulkner"Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered." I first heard that saying from the instructor of an accounting class I took back when I worked in the financial services sector. (Yup, I was a jolly banker for a spell, albeit a poorly performing one.) The phrase, he explained, meant that the IRS tolerated a small degree of bending the rules on tax returns, but blatantly flaunting the tax code meant trouble from the feds.

It's a great truism on many levels. "Hog-ism" implies that it's OK to do your own thing, behave a little piggy at times, but don't go crazy or there will be consequences. In order to be a responsible citizen, or farm animal, you can't have it all. As we all eventually learn, moderation and compromise lead to a longer and more fulfilling life.

Unfortunately, there are far too many hogs running wild these days, and none of them appear headed toward the slaughterhouse. In the retail sector alone, big entrenched businesses, such as Walmart, Bank of America, Dunkin' Donuts and CVS, are unwilling to give an inch in their quest for growth. Size was supposed to be a win for consumers, instead big companies have suppressed wages, reduced product quality, trashed the environment, stifled innovation, and basically turned the country into one endless strip mall.

There are few if any checks and balances to keep Big Biz in line. Not just legal ones, but consumer-driven backlash. The push back from the masses gets muted by massive PR campaigns (seen those BP ads lately?) and shills for unfettered capitalism: well-funded politicians, millionaire pundits and even Big Religion. Somehow unbridled capitalism is now integral to the American Way. It's been deftly turned on its head to champion the weak and downtrodden.

Even nonprofits, by and large, seem to shy away from corporate criticism — for the record, ecoRI Inc. has accepted money from CVS — for fear of alienating corporate donors. 

After the near collapse of the global economy and subsequent bank bailouts, it would seem logical that massive financial institutions would be a bit humbled and willing to make nice. Well, not quite. In fact, there's no fundamental change in the way national banks operate. The financial sector is simply free to glom onto the next sexy investment product, fly it to the moon and then crash it deep into the backyard cesspool — all in the name of strong and free capital markets. 

Thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, we also now live in a world where corporations are people and people are corporations. Despite recent and ancient history revealing the perils of excessive corporate influence, unlimited money now funds campaigns and politicians who advocate for fewer rules and oversight, making the tolerance for hog-ism as acceptable as ever.

The same formula for buying public opinion has succeeded in reversing conventional wisdom on the dangers of oil drilling, climate change and harmful chemicals in everyday products, all of which are backed by mountains of evidence showing enormous health and financial costs down the road.

At the federal level, it seems very little change will occur to turn the tide. Any attempt to rein in Big Money will be crushed by a well-funded marketing and news campaign that paints regulations as bad for business and unpatriotic. Just consider the coordinated outrage over the Durban and Copenhagen climate summits. Not even voluntary emission caps survived those efforts for a large-scale climate agreement.

But Big Business isn't causing all the harm. Local businesses, and dare I say the Rhode Island psyche, is a bit hardwired to resist change. Several environmental bills in the General Assembly last year were scuttled in committee after a local business — along with a strong corporate lobbyist — opposed arguments for the tiniest of restrictions on plastic grocery bags and BPA in baby bottles.

Which brings me to the Occupy movement. It took a while, but it finally caught on that growing corporate influence isn't so great for the majority of the population. Running a system that caters to investors and shareholders simply hammers a lot of the middle- to lower-income folks. In our service economy, it means there are a lot of crappy, low-paying jobs out there. Jobs that will multiply as the economy expands, but nonetheless, crappy jobs with little financial security. 

So as I surfed the Internet Sunday night, safe in my natural gas-heated, suburban home, I was feeling a bit of suburban guilt about those frozen occupiers at Burnside Park in Providence. I came across a video interview of Rupert Murdoch at the Golden Globe Awards. Murdoch, the grand poobah of hog-ism and defiler of journalistic principles, took to the red carpet with all the other celebrity doofuses, showing no ill effects of the phone-hacking scandal that even that day resulted in another high-profile resignation. Hog-ism, it seems, no longer has accountability.

Just before midnight, 14 degrees outside and windy, I visited the Occupy Providence encampment. The tents were staked down but most looked ill-suited for the cold. After looking in on a few empty dwellings, I found Steve Smith, a 20-something, one-time Massachusetts resident, out looking for spare blankets to help him through the frigid night.

Smith explained that there are 75 tents in Burnside Park, but only about 15 occupiers stay through the night when the weather gets tough. He has slept in the park most nights since the protesters moved in Oct. 15. On a rare night he stays with friends. But he's not looking for a roof over his head, nor does it seem he's there to sleep off a buzz. In fact, Smith was quite lucid when he explained he's protesting corporate greed and the meager career prospects that have ensued.

"I'm a well-qualified, educated individual," he said. "I don't know why it should be so difficult to find a job."

Whether Steve Smith gave me his real name or told an honest story isn't important. What matters on Martin Luther King Jr. Day is that this mass protest movement needs to grow and be supported. Whether it's to rein in greed or reform a lousy health-care system, or support funding for the poor and workers' rights, the Occupy movement is about the only effective national and local recourse to turn the tide against the hogs who make and shape the rules and public opinion.

There must be more bank sit-ins, pipeline protests, online consumer boycotts and other actions. Otherwise, the economy will become bloated by the next gimmick, then steamrolled into a recession; and once again crappy jobs, if any at all, will be all that remain.

Tim Faulkner is an ecoRI News reporter.

Earth’s Climate Has Put Up Its Dukes

Frank CariniWe are changing the Earth’s climate. How can we not be?

Worldwide, there are close to 810 million cars and light trucks on the road, and their engines burn a combined 260 or so billion gallons of gas and diesel fuel annually. In the United States alone, there are more than 600 dirty coal-fired power plants, including 12 in Massachusetts and two in Connecticut.

Across the globe, we annihilate old- and young-growth forests without a hint of concern about the impact on the climate or the imprint left on fragile ecosystems. Just last year, 400 acres of mostly undisturbed public land in the Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown was clear-cut to make space for prospective business tenants who may never arrive.

Economic growth supersedes biological growth. Consumption trumps conservation. Our climate is now taking the beating we have forever administered on the planet’s soil, air and water.

We ignore the fact that our behaviors are likely helping to create conditions in which plants are blooming out of season and birds are lingering before migrating south.

Those aren’t good trends; they are warning signs of problems to come. But we don’t care, as long as we can afford to fill up our SUVs, pocket super-PAC campaign donations, disbelieve the power of renewable energy and slash public transportation budgets.

It’s always about why we can’t — wind-turbine noise can be annoying; geothermal costs too much; the sun isn’t always shining; plastic bags carry all our stuff. It’s never why we should — fossil fuel is dirty, even if you don’t live in a community that is unlucky enough to house a coal-fired power plant; mountaintop mining is nasty; fracking contaminates groundwater; cyanide is used to extract metals and coal from ore.

Instead, Charlestown passes legislation to ban any size or type of electricity-generating wind turbine. A Texas Republican who is chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology launches an investigation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), claiming the agency is operating “a shadow climate service operation” without congressional approval. The president of the American Petroleum Institute — the oil industry’s top front group — warns President Obama that if he doesn’t approve the Keystone XL Pipeline there will “huge political consequences.”

Canada is praised for backing out of the Kyoto Protocol, the goal of which is to lower greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The decision of the (Canadian) government to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol should be applauded. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a life-giving essential component of our atmosphere that exerts little influence on Earth’s climate. Other governments should wise up and follow the example of Canada and shun this wasteful, no-good, economy-killing, and completely unnecessary international agreement supported by so-called environmentalists, alarmist scientists and rent-seeking politicians,” gushed Craig D. Idso, a senior “environment” fellow at The Heartland Institute.

The Chicago-based nonprofit, which is financially backed by ExxonMobil, among others, incessantly undermines scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that global warming isn’t occurring and, further, that warming would be beneficial if it did happen. In the 1990s, this same institute worked with Philip Morris to question the link between secondhand smoke and health risks.

The United States never joined the now-crumbling coalition to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, fearing the nation’s “job creators” would throw a temper tantrum.

Meanwhile, 2011 goes down — for now — as the 11^th-warmest year on record; of the 10 warmest years on record, nine have occurred since 2000; each successive decade since 1950 has been warmer than the previous; and the unusually mild temperatures across several regions of the country, including New England, during the past few months are disrupting the natural cycles that define the winter landscape, according to NOAA’s Climate Monitoring Branch, which likely will be investigated for saying so.

NOAA officials monitoring the Earth’s climate also said this past June, July and August saw more warm temperature records tied or broken than any other summer in the past decade. More than 26,500 record warm temperatures were set in the United States in summer 2011. By comparison, fewer than 3,500 record low temperatures were set — the fewest of any summer in the past decade.

Farmers are wondering when to plant. Municipal planners want to know whether groundwater will stop flowing. In Texas, this past summer will go down in history as the warmest summer on record in the Lone Star State. In fact, NOAA officials said Texas experienced the warmest summer for any state going back to when instrument records began in 1895. Oklahoma came in second, with both states beating records set during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” era.

Texas governor and presidential punchinello Rick Perry responded by holding a day of prayer for rain. Then in early August, as Texas continued to sizzle, Perry told CBN News that he prays for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to roll back emissions and air-quality standards.

“Frankly I pray for the president every day. I pray for his wisdom, I pray that God will open his eyes,” Perry told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I wish this president would turn back the health care law that’s been passed, ask that his EPA back down on regulations that are causing businesses to hesitate to spend money.”

It didn’t rain, and the Texas Forest Service recently said the drought may have killed as much as 10 percent of the state’s trees — some 500 million.

Providence resident Frank Carini is the executive director of ecoRI News.

Let’s Get Defensive and Feed the Hungry

Kyle HenceNEWPORT — There’s a full plate in front of me. I’m 5 years old. I’m picking at peas with my fork as I peer up — my mother hovering over me. “Remember the starving children in Africa!” she beseeches. It’s a distant concern become cliché. However, what was once abstract and far away is today far more immediate. Starvation still ravages Africa, but now the hungry are our neighbors.

“It is hidden in a lot of ways; it could be your next-door neighbor and they are really struggling and you wouldn’t know it,” said Marilyn Warren, executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center.

A recent sign at the corner of Connell Highway and West Main Road in Middletown. (Kyle Hence/ecoRI News)Last year, the Center served more than 60,000 meals to individuals and families from throughout Newport County. Warren estimated that all six Newport emergency food pantries and agencies served more than 200,000 meals — 200,000 meals! — to the needy who come from as far away as Tiverton, hungry. These numbers are growing into what Warren called a “stark reality.” This, in the city of magnificent mansions, summer home of super yachts and on an island with a thriving defense economy.

“We have seen a 20 percent increase monthly, but that’s the tip of the iceberg,” Warren said.

During Thanksgiving weekend, the Center served 5,910 meals. From Christmas through New Year’s, it served another 7,214.

Down the street on Bowen’s Wharf, the Seaman’s Church Institute opened its doors Thanksgiving Day and Christmas as it does every year. The Comfort family — mother Peggy, father Lyn and daughter Kim — have prepared holiday meals at the waterfront charity the past two years. I asked Kim Comfort if the numbers were up this year. “Oh my God, almost double,” she replied.

The King Center is one of about 250 agency programs that are part of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank’s statewide network (pdf). With a concentration of six programs in the City-by-the-Sea, if you are hungry in Newport County — Jamestown, Little Compton, Middletown, Portsmouth, Tiverton and Newport — you are likely to turn to one of the following food pantries or meal sites: the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, The Salvation Army, East Bay Community Action, St. Joseph’s Church, Community Baptist Church and the Newport Residents Council on York Street in Newport Heights.

In Rhode Island, there are 181,000 people living in households with incomes below 130 percent of the federal poverty level, according to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank’s 2011 Status Report on Hunger (pdf). These are Rhode Island’s poor. They also are our neighbors and co-workers, and the reality is that during the coming year they, and their children, will often go without a meal.

What was once known more harshly as “hunger” is now dubbed “food insecurity.” In Rhode Island, those missing meals or at risk of doing so rose from 10.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent in 2010. During the past four years, the number of people served at emergency food pantries increased by 58 percent, and today these programs serve 60,000 meals each month across the state.

Facilities are working ever harder to keep up with the growing need. Their goal: to reduce what they call “the meal gap.” In 2011, despite all state, federal and private assistance, the meal gap in Rhode Island was 34 million meals.

“How do we reach these people and say it’s OK to come?” This, Warren said, is the challenge she and her colleagues in Newport and across Rhode Island are facing as the meal gap grows. It’s a daunting one.

Local resident Jennifer Pine is a mother of three, ages 2, 4 and 9. Her husband, Sgt. Joe Pine, a Newport native, has served 16 years in the Rhode Island National Guard and just re-upped for another six. He also works full time as a civilian technician with the Army. Health issues have prevented Jennifer from working. Financially strapped with only one income and growing health-care costs, the family turned to the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — formerly called food stamps — for assistance.

“You would think that a military family would be able to get food assistance,” she said. But through repeated appeals over two years, the Pine family has been denied.

One day about a year ago, she accompanied her disabled aunt to the King Center food pantry. Every month since she has counted on the agency to avoid skipping meals. Three bags of groceries picked from the pantry shelves provide a week’s worth of meals for the Pine family.

“Thank God for the food pantry. I had no idea it was here.” She said. “We would be in big trouble if it wasn’t for them. They’ve been so good to us.”

According to the latest census data, more than 47 million Americans live in poverty. As this number grows, so does the U.S. hunger problem — a tragic largely hidden reality across this country. Our system, what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” while creating the world’s most powerful nation, militarily, is failing to adequately feed millions of its own. While more people than ever eat better than kings of old, there are far too many who eat like paupers.

Early last year, the state Senate established a new Defense Economy Planning Commission. Sen. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-District 13, Jamestown and Newport, laid out the stakes: “The defense industry is critical to our state’s economy. Is has an economic impact of $1.75 billion and employs more than 16,000 people in the state. On Aquidneck Island alone, 11,000 people, both military and civilian, are employed by the defense industry, with an annual payroll of more than $900 million.”

The stark reality is that despite all of Aquidneck Island’s weapon systems wizardry and hundreds of millions of defense dollars flowing into our local economy, there are growing numbers of hungry, our neighbors, veterans, and even our local servicemen and women and their families, turning to Marilyn Warren and volunteers like the Comforts who serve real needs in these dire and difficult times.

With this crisis growing, can there be any doubt we must begin to divert the money spent on fighting foreign wars, and re-examine our priorities? These dollars would be better spent building a truly sustaining and restorative local economy that, as one goal, focuses on our healthy agriculture sector, turning, for example, food waste into the “black gold” of compost.

That way we can help turn hunger, at least its current scale, into a distant memory.

Hunger isn’t far away across an ocean in an unknown land. It’s just down the street, around the corner. So let us shift our money now. The food will follow. As will real security and a different sort of thriving economy.

Middletown resident Kyle Hence is an ecoRI News reporter.

Rhode Island, Let’s Give Up Bottled Water

Frank CariniCollectively, we Rhode Islanders can put a stop to bottled water at local environmental meetings or help curtail this doozy:

The Danone Group, a French multinational company, sells its plastic bottle-encased mineral water, Evian, in an aluminum aerosol mister so consumers can conveniently “refresh” their faces. This spray that “you can feel good about using” comes in different sizes — your spray needs likely dependent on your face size — with the 1.7-ounce, palm-size mister selling for about $6. At that price, a half-liter plastic bottle of Evian would cost $55, or about $427 a gallon, noted author Charles Fishman in his 2011 book “The Big Thirst.”

According to promotional material from the Danone Group, “Evian Mineral Water Spray is sealed at the source. It cannot be contaminated, and will never leak. What’s more, Evian is propelled by environmentally safe nitrogen, won’t harm the ozone layer, and it’s recyclable. Evian Mineral Water Spray — serious skin care provided by nature.”

We gobble up this marketing b.s. and buy tap water in a can to spray on our pampered faces. It’s no coincidence that Evian is spelled “naïve” backward. We are green — and not in a good way — about the importance of water. We take it for granted.

In his excellent book, Fishman notes there’s a facility near an aquifer on the isolated north coast of Fiji’s main island that fills more than a million plastic bottles of FIJI Water a day. This water is trucked and shipped all over the world. Meanwhile, as these plastic bottles filled with water from an island aquifer are loaded onto cargo ships so thirsty Providence residents 8,000 miles away can avoid the bubbler, more than half of Fiji’s citizens lack access to safe, reliable drinking water.

Americans drink a combined billion bottles of water a week. The three largest brands of bottled water — Nestle Pure Life, Coke’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina — are municipal tap water, repurified and sold back to us in plastic bottles. We keep buying it, even in Providence, where a 2009 study by the Environmental Working Group found our capitol to have some of the best tap water in the country.

In fact, tap water is more closely regulated and monitored than bottled water, although that fact is lost in the marketing of bottled water as a cleaner, healthier alternative to the tap.

In 2011, the Environmental Working Group analyzed the labels of 173 bottled-water products and company websites to determine if companies disclose information on where water comes from, how or if their water is treated, and whether the results of purity testing are revealed. Researchers also followed up by calling dozens of bottled-water companies to find out which ones willingly tell consumers what’s in their bottles. Half of the products surveyed failed the group’s transparency test — 18 percent didn’t say where their water comes from and another 32 percent didn’t disclose any information on treatment or purity of water.

Tap water, however, is regularly tested and consumers can find local water information online.

Avoiding bottled water is one way we can take better care of water resources, locally and globally. The Ocean State should be at the forefront of a “Just Say No to Bottled Water” movement.

Instead of making individual New Year’s resolutions that will likely be broken by February, ecoRI News challenges all Rhode Islanders to get off bottled water. Stop handing out pallets of it at every road race in the state. There’s plenty of better ways to rehydrate runners without giving them water in a throwaway plastic bottle with a massive carbon footprint.

Panelists don’t need a bottle or two placed at their seats before a talk at the University of Rhode Island or Brown University about climate change. A pitcher of water and some glasses work just fine.

The state’s legion of outstanding environmental nonprofits shouldn’t be offering water in individual plastic vessels. No one is going to suffer from dehydration during a workshop, monthly meeting or holiday social. Rhode Island features plenty of drinking foundations and glass pitchers to handle any thirst.

We challenge our elected officials to stop spending about $18,000 annually to provide bottled water at the Statehouse. Thirsty senators and representatives can bring a reusable mug to work and fill it with renowned Providence tap water.

In fact, we challenge all state agencies and institutions to stop the unnecessary purchase of water in plastic bottles, unless in an emergency or if there are special health circumstances.

Frank Carini is the executive director of ecoRI News.

R.I. Public Schools Flunk Recycling Test

Frank CariniThe amount of recyclables, most notably copy paper and plastic bottles, carelessly tossed in the trash by Rhode Island’s public schools and needlessly buried in the ever-shrinking — and quite stinky — Central Landfill is appalling.

Homeowners, it seems, are the only ones expected — or encouraged — to follow the state’s mandatory recycling laws. Due to ignorance and lack of enforcement, most Rhode Island residents who live in apartment buildings are essentially forced not to recycle. Few restaurants and many other business fail to recycle properly — a lack of accountability allows the problem to continue.

It’s a shame so few schools in the state’s 36 public school districts offer students much in the way of recycling or composting education. Far too many districts make no attempt to recycle. Some even use the blue and green bins as trash buckets.

Providence’s Nathanael Greene Middle School, for example, lines these clearly marked recycling bins with plastic bags labeled with a “City of Providence” seal, according to longtime school librarian Sarah Morenon. These bags end up in a school Dumpster.

“We’re teaching the students that the blue and green bins mean nothing,” Morenon said. “Most rooms only have green and blue bins for trash. The metal trash bins have disappeared.”

Rhode Island’s 282 public schools generate a massive amount of recyclable material — much of which is never used again, as little of it is separated before it ends up in the back of a truck.

“There’s 40 schools in Providence and huge palettes of paper,” Morenon said. “Almost none of it gets recycled.”

Morenon should know; she’s been the Nathanael Greene Middle School’s de facto recycling coordinator since the mid-1990s. She briefly tried being responsible for the entire building, but with 900-plus students and 80-plus teachers the task would make anyone neurotic. She now only obsesses about recycling properly in the school’s library.

She brings home the bottles and cans she collects in blue bins and adds them to the stash she leaves curbside. She dumps the paper she collects in the library’s green bins in one of the six green totes the school provides for paper recycling. Morenon often finds Styrofoam coffee cups, plastic bottles and other misplaced items in these totes, which collect only a fraction of the recyclable paper generated at the Chalkstone Avenue school.

“The importance of recycling needs to be institutionalized,” Morenon said. “It needs to be part of the school’s culture. It needs to be part of the curriculum … part of the science unit early on in education.”

It’s not. Most likely because it doesn’t appear on a standardized test. This lack of recycling awareness and missed teaching opportunity, however, isn’t isolated to the Nathanael Greene Middle School. It’s a problem statewide, despite the fact that in 1986 Rhode Island became the first state to pass mandatory recycling legislation.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has no system in place to monitor the recycling efforts of Rhode Island’s 36 school districts or offer guidance on how to do it. That responsibility falls to each district, according to Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the commissioner’s office.

New department regulations do require recycling during school construction. For example, “all new construction and major reconstruction projects shall meet applicable local ordinances for recycling space and provide space within the building that is dedicated to the separation, collection, and storage of materials for recycling, including, at a minimum, paper (white ledger and mixed), cardboard, glass, plastics, aluminum cans, and metals,” according to regulation 1.04-3 Miscellaneous Construction Requirements.

Meanwhile, shoddy recycling practices continue at the state’s many old schools that haven’t experienced substantial renovations during the past four years.

At last month’s Sustainable School Summit, Education Commissioner Deborah Gist addressed the attendees. She said, “Sustainable schools, or green schools, are excellent environments for students and great investments for our communities. Green schools provide plenty of light and excellent air circulation and climate control. They are high-quality learning environments. Green schools save taxpayer dollars — through economies during construction and through long-term savings on energy and utility costs. Green schools can also serve as models for student explorations in science, ecology, engineering and other career and technical fields.”

This exploration in science and ecology, and teaching students the importance of recycling, shouldn’t be the sole domain of fancy, LEED-certified, newly built or remodeled public schools. These practices would work just as well at the 82-year-old Nathanael Greene Middle School.

Frank Carini is the executive director of ecoRI News, and he wonders if the Styrofoam plates used in the Nathanael Greene Middle School cafeteria fit into the green-school model.