Uppity Wisconsin

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull)

Milwaukee area readers may be interested in some reporting of mine concerning WE Energies' Valley coal plant and other Wisconsinites might like to hear about recent activity surrounding how Wisconsin's DNR wants to regulate nitrogen oxide emissions.

Find the story at Milwaukee Magazine's News Buzz website.

Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull)

The National Wildlife Federation has just issued a detailed and devastating report on an oil pipeline that would send tar sands oil from Canada across the nation to coastal refineries in Texas.  A pipeline expansion is also planned to  bisect Wisconsin from the northwest to the southeast along existing pipeline routes.  Here's a small sample taken from Staying Hooked on a Dirty Fuel: Why Canadian Tar Sands Pipelines are a Bad Bet for the United States:

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull)

Yesterday the EPA offered two possible ways of regulating coal ash, the toxic waste, some of it carcinogenic,  that is left after coal is burned in power plants. Pollutants include arsenic, boron, cadmium, cobalt, selenium and lead. These proposed rules will soon be available for public comment.

Though Wisconsin is among the leaders in states that recycle coal ash (some recycled uses have been questioned as polluting), coal ash ponds and landfills in Wisconsin remain possible sources of serious water pollution, even if the ponds and landfills are no longer active dump sites. Much depends on whether the ponds and landfills are lined with a "composite" of clay and a synthetic material that is most effective at preventing leaching. Many toxic ash dumps are lined only with clay, and some ash sites have no liner at all.

Cars Ride On The Backs Of Kids And Hummingbirds

... the faces of kids who had no idea what kind of energy pornography website their beautiful faces, good intentions, skateboards, bikes, and smiles would be hired off to sell cars.

Greenwashing used to be BP. Those mag and TV ads - so hip, so green. And today?

Dead in the water ? To wish. Now comes www.CleanAirTrek.com to save greenwashing from its near death experience in the Gulf.

You see, public transportation in Wisconsin is running out the clock. Fourth down came and went in April. No score and so the State of Wisconsin must turn the ball over to the car manufacturers.

Yes, to the car. That consumer of farmland, the unemployed squatter on precious downtown spaces, that indolent 20-hour a day sleeper in your household that gobbles up nearly as much green as your mortgage. The car is now promoted by the State of Wisconsin in a five-figure ad campaign promoting cars. Profits go to carmakers and road-builders and parking lot owners.

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull)

Trying to undo eight years of mostly doing nothing to protect the health and beauty of that upon which we all depend, the Environmental Protection Agency under Lisa Jackson is waking up.

Having previously ruled that carbon dioxide and five other "greenhouse gases" should be regulated as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, yesterday the federal agency issued new limits on another primarily coal-based pollutant-- sulfur dioxide.

While the new SO2 standard is not as strict as some environmentalists had hoped for, it does keep the pressure on coal-burning utilities which will be forced to add more pollution-controls and/or retire their dirtiest coal plants, significantly reducing air-pollution deaths and asthma attacks.The new limits, which are estimated to ultimately cost about $ 1.5 billion, will help to move coal out of the "cheap energy" category it has long claimed.

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull)

Officially and legally I am a resident of the State of Wisconsin as well as a loyal citizen of the United States. But for all practical, spiritual and ecological purposes I prefer to be a member of the Great Lakes Basin, a 95,000 square mile drainage area that connects at least part of eight states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York) and two nations. All five Great Lakes are found in the Basin which contains 9,000 miles of shoreline and 5,000 miles of rivers and streams: it's a pretty watery, forested, borderless world.

The Milwaukee area is located within the Basin's "Upper Midwest Forest-Savanna Transition" ecoregion which carves out a good chunk of eastern and northeastern Wisconsin, including Lake Winnebago and the Door Peninsula. A small piece of Lower Michigan, the northwestern part, also belongs to the UMFST.

While the entire State of Michigan lies within the Basin, only a relative sliver of southeastern Wisconsin does so, famously dividing the cities of Milwaukee and Waukesha in terms of water use as well as politics.

(Johnson's correct first name is Ron, not Rob. The typo has been corrected.)

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull.)

According to a fawning column by Washington Post columnist George Will, Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson, president of plastics manufacturer Pacur of Oshkosh, WI, is a student of writer Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, a book that has become a "Tea Party" manifesto of sorts.

You could, if you'd like, read all thousand or so pages of Rand's novel, but the moral of the story can be summed up as follows: unregulated capitalism is the most rational, moral way of life.

Rand's brand of morality does not allow for any merciful, religious feeling toward your fellow man or fellow creature; in fact, I think it fair to describe her philosophy as anti-Christian if by "Christian" we mean acting upon the love of one's neighbor, or as Christ puts it in the Sermon on the Mount: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

Speaking of a proper Democratic response to corporate greed and war,  NY Times columnist Paul Krugman puts it well in his latest column, the best part of which is the finale:

"So where does that leave the president and his party? Mr. Obama wanted to transcend partisanship. Instead, however, he finds himself very much in the position Franklin Roosevelt described in a famous 1936 speech, struggling with 'the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.'

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Roosevelt turned corporate opposition into a badge of honor: 'I welcome their hatred,' he declared. It’s time for President Obama to find his inner F.D.R., and do the same."

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull)

If you want to find out about coal pollution in Central Wisconsin,  a good source is The San Francisco Examiner and the Associated Press.

It seems that a big, new coal-fired power plant near Wausau was belching a thick, dark smoke which is usually a sure sign of pollution, particularly particulates. (The Wisconsin DNR was looking the other way. Heck, it's just some smoke.)

When the Sierra Club pointed this smokestack pollution out, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. said the smoke was not as it appeared, that the apparent pollution was just an illusion, for the alleged pollution was being controlled. (This is the same fine corporation that was fined in 2006 for withholding  pollution-control information from state regulators.)

The 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that they, too, could see the dirty smoke and that the DNR and the power utility should also be able to see it if they looked closely enough at the stack and the Clean Air Act.

What the judges couldn't see (most people can't) is the nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide that the Sierra Club wanted tougher controls on, too.

Pollution? What pollution?

If we can't see it, it isn't there.

Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull at kaufmansgull.com

Back in 2003 when WE Energies proposed building two new units of coal-fired power in Oak Creek, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin called for a "vigorous debate" but also said "We do not have the luxury of just saying no to new transmission and new power plants." End of debate, at least at the State Capitol.

In January of 2004 the Wisconsin DNR approved an air pollution permit for the plants, essentially abdicating its role as the primary protector of Wisconsin's natural resources. Abundant electricity became a resource more important than clean air and clean water.

Today we in Southeastern Wisconsin have dirty air (the NWS issued an air quality watch for today and encourages all of us to "practice energy conservation"), too much electric power, and higher electric bills because we have to help pay for the building of the coal plants.

Though he's not running for re-election, Wisconsin Gov.  Jim Doyle felt it necessary to defend his recent decision to offer shipbuilder Marinette Marine about $50 million in tax incentives should it win a big Navy contract to build combat ships. Doyle's op-ed appears today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In recent days, Gov. Doyle, a Democrat with little to lose, has made some rather unenlightened, un-progressive moves. Vetoing bills to allow small dairies to sell unpasteurized milk and to require state buildings to adopt green building standards while not vetoing a bill that allows the turning of garbage into power to count as the state's share of "renewable" energy.

Wisconsin is giving $45 million in bond money it recently received from the federal government to a maker of wind-turbine blades  to help it set up a factory in Wisconsin Rapids, reports Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel. The new wind power factory could create about 600 non-polluting, non-violent jobs, a welcome and refreshing use of state and federal money. Energy Composites, which makes, among other things, sulfur dioxide scrubbers for coal-fired power plants, is a smaller, local corporation now employing 67 people.

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a new report yesterday on just how dependent Wisconsin and many other states are on imported coal.

As a state, we pay $853 million annually, and that does not include the amount for the coal to fuel WE Energies' new Oak Creek coal plants. WE Energies spent $313 million for coal in 2008, the most of any utility in the state.

Wisconsin ranks 5th for the amount of coal we use as a percentage of our power: 68%.

The money leaves, while much of the pollution hangs around in our air and water.

The scientists suggest we spend our money on reducing our electricity use by at least 1% per year. The best states have learned to conserve 2% annually. We can also increase our meager clean power percentage goals.

The massive oil-rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico is getting all the press, but another oil-related, on-going environmental disaster is occurring in Canada's Province of Alberta with help from some Wisconsin corporations. Oil sand mining, as it's known, is one of the ecologically worst forms of resource extraction.

Canada is by far our largest single source of oil, about 20% compared to Saudi Arabia's 12%, and the Alberta oil sands produce about 50% of Canada's exported oil. Some of that Alberta oil is processed at a Murphy Oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin.

According to Canada's Pembina Institute, when the bitumen deposits are near the surface, such mining requires the clear-cutting of pristine boreal forest, and so far about 600 sq. kilometers (about 231 sq. miles) have been cleared for mining.

Oil sands exist in an area in Alberta about the size of the State of Florida, and 60% of this land has already been leased to oil companies.

Greenhouse gas emissions are 3.2 to 4.5 times greater per barrel of oil from oil sands production.

How much is war worth? At what price jobs?

These days, "job creation" or "saving jobs" is used to justify all sorts of destructive activity.

Those in Wisconsin who do not support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those of us who do not support war at all, now must watch as $85 million of public money may well be spent to support the wages of war.

Gov. Jim Doyle has announced the state will provide $50 million to shipbuilder Marinette Marine if it wins a Navy contract to build high-speed combat ships and agrees to state incentives. This comes after Doyle said last August that Oshkosh Corp. will receive $35 million from the state of Wisconsin after the corporation won a big contract to build combat trucks for the Army.

$250,000 of the $50 million of state aid will come from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College to provide an "on-site training facility" for the shipbuilder. Surely there is a better, more humane way to spend scarce education dollars.