Rand Paul: Mountaintop Removal Is Just "Missing a Hill Or Two Here and There"

Hot off his revival of the Senate tradition of filibustering for hours and hours over the administration’s foreign, and possibly domestic, drone strike policy, Rand Paul took the number one slot as their presidential choice in 2016 at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in DC last week.

When he speaks about mountaintop removal, Paul couches his approval of the mining practice in terms of property rights, which are, along with their ideas of “small government” and their views of the U.S. Constitution, one of the sacrosanct components for the libertarians' utopia. For Paul, if a coal company owns land, they can mine it any which way they want to. Of the destruction of Kentucky’s landscape caused by mountaintop removal, he goes on to say, “I don’t’ think that anyone is going to be missing a hill or two here and there.” And that’s pretty much it, when it comes to Rand Paul’s take on mountaintop removal.

            It makes my head spin that anybody who talks like this could be seriously considered for any public office, let alone the presidency of the United States. Is it that Paul has been so blinded by the vacuously constructed Ayn Rand view of the world that he simply believes that one of the most destructive mining practices the world knows is allowed because a coal company owns a plot of land? Or is Paul simply using the rhetoric of one of the extreme ends of the GOP to give cover to the mountaintop removal mining companies?

            A lot of folks at CPAC want him to be the next president. How crazy is that?

Just "missing a hill or two here and there." The mining operation close to Whitesburg, Kentucky, the state that Rand Paul represents in the Senate. photo from mountainroadshow.com

Testing Methods For Eradicating Algerian Sea Lavender

More on the Algerian sea lavender project at Dog Beach. We’ve gotten the area of infestation mapped. Yesterday we started a project to see the effectiveness of differing eradication methods. We chose three methods: pulling the invasive plants out by hand, scraping them from the landscape with garden tools, and “solarization,” covering the plants with black plastic to deprive them of sunlight.

            Solarizing was the easiest method, just spreading the plastic out over the sea lavender. The other two methods took a lot more time, about 20 minutes to scrape a 6 x 6 plot and about twice as long to hand pull a plot of the same size.

About 75 percent cover by Algerian sea lavender

Nonnative and invasive species are big problem worldwide. They reduce species diversity and can affect crop yields. The continental United States has been invaded by more than 1,500 nonnative plants. Florida and California share the distinction of having the most nonnatives, with each state plagued with about 1,000 unwelcome taxa from around the world.

            As you can see from the photograph, the Algerian sea lavender really takes over. The plots we treated were about 75 percent covered with the unwelcome plant. It pushes out native pickleweed (Salicornia virginica), as well as rare and endangered species like grab lotus (Lotus nuttallianus). Stay tuned for updates on this project.

Algerian sea lavender removed by scraping

A plot being solarized to kill the Algerian sea lavender

Freedom to Farm Act: Shielding Slaughterhouses and Meatpacking From Public Scrutiny

This sounds like something out of a country with a “Ministry of Truth.” And these developments are also nauseating.

            In an effort to keep the eyes of the public out of their slaughterhouses, meat processing plants, and over-crowded feed lots, the meat and dairy industries are pushing legislation in several states that would make it a crime to notify the public as to what actually goes on in the production of our food. Bills circulating in the state houses of Indiana, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania would make it a crime to take videos at agricultural facilities. Similar legislation is being proposed in California and several other states. The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a business backed conservative “think tank,” is providing much of the push for these laws.

            These “Ag Gag” laws are in response to academics, journalists, and activists who have shown us slaughterhouse conditions that would be recognizable to Sinclair Lewis, who chronicled his experiences in the meat packing yards of Chicago just over a century ago. Modern day men and women in the mold of Lewis have taken videos of cows being cruelly prodded with forklifts and veal calves being skinned alive. New School University assistant professor of politics Timothy Pachirat spent several years working in modern slaughterhouses and meatpacking in Omaha, Nebraska. Without the veneer of fiction that Lewis used in “The Jungle,” he describes the conditions of modern slaughterhouse work and his often stomach-churning experiences with his recent book “Every Twelve Seconds.” The book’s publication prompted the Iowa legislature to pass and the governor to sign HF 589, which makes it a criminal offence for a journalist or activist to get a job at a slaughterhouse or other agricultural facility with the intent of exposing the conditions of the places that bring us much of our food.

            In the last 30 years our food has become less safe to eat. Meat processing is now performed on a grand scale, with hundreds or thousands of pigs or cows being processed at the same time. The tainted meat from one animal now has the ability to taint thousands of pounds of hamburger or sausage shipped to dozens of states. You would think that this would prompt greater scrutiny by our government for the safety of our food, but budget cuts to the FDA that started with the Reagan administration have lead to fewer FDA workers inspecting more and more food.

            Exposing cruel or unsanitary conditions at a slaughterhouse or stockyard should make lawmakers and policy makers take notice, passing stricter food standards or providing more food inspectors, but in true “ignorance is strength” fashion, states are giving greater cover to meat and dairy producers to operate without public scrutiny. Adding to this Orwellian scenario, some of these laws label those who expose the dark underbelly of producing pork bellies as terrorists. That’s right. Taking a video of unsanitary meat processing puts you in the same league as Osama bin Laden.

And while we see less and less of how our food is produced, more people will get sick and more people will die from food poisoning. Thanks a lot, Ministry of Truth!

Eradicating Algerian Sea Lavender in San Diego

I know I post a lot here about news stories, but I thought I would start including some of the things that I’m involved with on a personal level as well. Here goes.

I’ve volunteered with the San Diego River Park Foundation for a number of years now. And I’m really excited about this latest development, at least as far as my involvement with the organization goes. I’ve been working with a couple interns on an infestation of Algerian sea lavender (Limonium ramosissimum). This is an invasive of Mediterranean origin that plagues California estuaries from here in San Diego up the coast to San Francisco.

As an exotic or invasive, it hasn’t been around a very long time, so strategies for eliminating it have yet to be developed. Our first step has simply been to figure out exactly where it is. So far Winnie and Kayla, the two interns, have mapped out where the sea lavender is growing. They are also investigating strategies that have been used to eliminate similar exotics and exotic plants that are found in similar estuary environments.

Where the Algerian sea lavender has encroached in the estuary of Dog Beach at the mouth of the San Diego River

Weaker Standards For Selenium on the Horizon For West Virginia: House Passes Law Allowing For Weaker Standards Today

Well, it looks like West Virginia will be changing the standards for selenium in its rivers and streams. The West Virginia House of Representatives approved the legislation that would allow for weaker standards today. The bill has the votes in the State Senate, and Governor Earl Tomblin has said that he will sign the legislation.

            Even considering the state of politics in the Mountain State, it’s at least somewhat surprising that the bill received no opposition in the House, passing with a vote of 99 to 0. Isn’t there at least one representative in West Virginia who is not totally beholden to Big Coal? Not one representative to consider the health of his constituents or the life in the streams and rivers of his state?

            Of course the anti-environmental rhetoric that has been fueled by big business and the GOP crops up in this debacle and makes one’s head spin. The West Virginia House Judiciary Chairman, Tim Miley, said the bill should be passed “so that the coal industry is not crippled.” It's hard for me to think of an industry that has been able to eviscerate the United Mine Workers union and rip off the tops of hundreds of West Virginia’s mountains with impunity as being crippled.

            Miley referred to “punishing fines” on the coal industry for violations of existing selenium standards. Well, a fine is intended to be punishing. That the coal companies have been allowed to pay such small fines for serious violations of safety and pollution for too long is the real crime.

Snowquester Hits DC, Global Warming Hearings Cancelled, Irony Abounds

As the Snowquester has hit Washington, offices in the nation’s capitol have been closed, and much of the business of government is being postponed until the snowplows and warmer weather make the streets and sidewalks passable.

            And the winter storm has forced the cancellation of Congressional hearings on global warming. For most folks, this is amusing irony. But of course there will be those, like the Fox News and the Heartland Institute, who will play this up for all it’s worth. Just wait and see.

Big Coal Wants Weaker Selenium Standards For West Virginia's Waters

A coal industry sponsored bill in West Virginia, considered by that state’s House of Representatives, would allow West Virginia to disregard federal recommendations and set its own standards for the amount of selenium that can be released from coal mines.

            Selenium occurs naturally in the environment. A little bit of it is very good. Your body uses trace amounts of the element to make antioxidants, which can fight off cancer. The thyroid gland also uses selenium. There are foods rich in selenium. Bacon has lots of it, so does shrimp. Like a lot of things, you can also get too much selenium. Too much selenium can give you bad breath. Much more can cause kidney and liver problems. Too much selenium can kill you, too.

            Selenium affects animals as well. A 2010 study of the streams of West Virginia, mandated by state legislation, concluded that high levels of selenium were associated with deformities of fish larvae. In some streams that had high selenium levels, 20 percent of some fish species had deformities.

            Most likely because of the recent lawsuits it has faced over selenium pollutions, the coal industry wants to disregard the science and allow for much higher selenium concentrations in the waterways of West Virginia. Looking at the scars of the land in West Virginia from surface mining, it’s hard to believe that the coal companies need to have the rules that allow for their large-scale mining operations weekend even further. But that looks to be the case here.