Photo: www.chucknorris.comA lot of dreck comes across my desktop. I'm even on a list called "ennui mail," and some of it is utterly irredeemable. But still I took notice when Chuck Norris: Copenhagen Talks To Forge "One World Order" blew in.  

I especially like this bit:

In this conference, they're going to try to take our money and send it to third-world countries because of, since we spend so much oil and these other countries have suffered, then we're going to give our money to these third-world countries.

But then there's this:

"Neil, we have people here starving in our own country," Norris said. "You know, my foundation, I have families, who are making $9,000 a year -- the kids I'm teaching. Why aren't we trying to help the poverty in our own country?"

... which demands to be taken a bit more seriously.  

I mean, how can it be that Chuck Norris, for crying out loud, is trumpeting his populist, pro-poor creds as a way of opposing international climate action? And why is the U.S. climate movement not widely seen as standing up for the American poor? And why is it so damn easy to paint greens as elitists? And is it not the case that, having gotten themselves typecast as middle-cast wonks, U.S. greens are now afraid to state the obvious truth -- that it is only fair, as well as necessary, for the U.S. to pick up its share of the internation tab.

I posted the Chuck Norris question on the U.S. Climate Action Network list, which, by the way, can also engender a bit of ennui from time to time. Quick to respond was a fella who's pretty well known up in Cascadia, though he wasn't speaking on the record, so I won't ID him:

This has gone badly sideways on us. I battled a group of teabaggers at a Gore book tour lecture in Portland last week. The class undertones were brutal: well-dressed, comfortable, calm people with their $60 tix filing inside the venue; struggling, ragged-looking people outside SCREAMING about the green fatcats and their grand climate conspiracy.

In response, Paddy McCully, the Executive Director of the Berkeley-based International Rivers (who's entirely willing to go on the record) took the occasion to model a bit of snarky realism:

I think we can expect the 'why are we sending money overseas when we aren't helping the poor here' rhetoric to be seriously ramped up by the tea-baggers. It's perfect for them -- xenophobic, nationalistic, populist, self-interested, self-contradictory (they don't actually want money to be spent on the poor), anti-Obama, anti-Gore, anti-liberal elite, anti-science, anti-'pouring money down foreign rat holes,' anti-deficit increasing etc. etc.  And now Norris has caught onto it presumably Glenn Beck won't be far behind. And no amount of rational (or symbolic/emotional) argument will stop it. 

In terms of broader public messaging in the U.S. I don't think it's even worth engaging on the international financing issue. Much better to stick to green jobs, energy security, technological competitiveness, natural disasters hurt the poor etc.

Which, when to think about it, is a pretty strong claim!  Because if we don't "engage" on the international financing issue, there's basically zero chance that the international negotiations are going to pick up any real momentum anytime soon. Which, of course, means failure. Which is exactly what our friends on the lunatic right want.

Meanwhile, back in the White House, the Obama team is going to try to thread the needle. Unable to avoid Copenhagen, the U.S. is preparing a financing offer that, while entirely inadequate in global justice terms, and tragically weak in the face of the new scientific consensus, at least gets the ball rolling. Maybe a billion dollars a year in international mitigation and adaptation assistance, and maybe in a few years, if things go well, some creative international finance on top of that. Nothing much really, not anytime soon, though obviously, the tea-baggers are still going to go nuts.  

What's not obvious is what we're going to do in response.

One thing we could do is make rational arguments. They soon surfaced on the USCAN list. First up was NRDC, with "Poor energy policy and climate change hurt the poor in the U.S."  Lots of examples here, of course -- health costs, dangerous weather and storms, and failing to "tap into the green jobs potential." A nice pointer to a new study that with "strong implementation of energy efficiency measures the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) act, which passed the House in June, could create as many as 1.9 million jobs between 2010 and 2020." 

Then came Oxfam American, which noted another study, which "visually maps out climate impacts and vulnerable populations identified in 13 U.S. southeastern states (from Arkansas to Virginia)," and shows that "Acting on climate will benefit the poor in the U.S. because the poor in the U.S., just like the poor overseas, will be hit worst by the effects of climate change. Poor and vulnerable communities have little ability to prepare for and recover from climate-related disasters, no matter where they live."

Good stuff, no doubt about it. And there's no question that these arguments must absolutely be mainstreamed soon. "Green jobs" in particular, are critical, and the right knows it. Witness the sad tale of Van Jones. 

But I'm left feeling that something big is missing here. Something like populist rage. Something internationalist, but also exuberant in its eagerness to defend the not-so-rich people of the U.S. of A. Something that connects the dots, that does not hold climate protection apart, as if it were the proper concern of only those "well-dressed, comfortable, calm people with their $60 tix." 

How about a loud national movement for free public transportation, for example? One paid for by congestion pricing schemes? How about bringing back Cap and Dividend, or something like it? How about progressive tax reform designed to lift up the poor and fund the climate transition at the same time? How about Big Green starts talking about America's international responsibilities, in a way that vividly draws the link to our responsibilities to our own poor? How about we hear about unemployment in the third world from time to time? How about a new politics of solidarity, that refuses false distinctions between American needs and the needs of strangers? How about a class analysis of ecological footprints?

How about we step outside the climate sandbox, once and for all? 

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Here's the damage from a coal ash spill in Tennessee.A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. -- one of the world's largest power companies -- with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, leading to serious health problems for nearby residents.

Filed by a team of attorneys from law firms in New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, the suit alleges that between 2003 and 2004, AES Corp. and its subsidiaries dumped 100 million pounds of coal ash on the beach near the small village of Arroyo Barril and another 60 million pounds in the Port of Manzanillo near Montecristi -- and that serious health problems resulted:

Since the dumping, babies have been born with severe birth defects including missing limbs, missing organs, cranial malformations, and gastrointestinal deformities. Some of these children have died as a result of their injuries. A failed Siamese twin with two heads died shortly after birth. Many women have suffered miscarriages at various stages of their pregnancies. Today, in addition to the severe birth defects, men, women, and children of this proud and struggling community continue to suffer with respiratory illnesses and skin rashes.

The attorneys say half of the 42 nearby residents tested had unsafe blood levels of arsenic, a major contaminant of concern in coal ash. There is evidence that inhaled or ingested arsenic can injure the fetus.

A byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity, coal ash contains dangerous levels of known poisons that also include beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, and vanadium. Workers who handle coal ash at power plants typically wear respirators and other protective equipment.

The coal ash dumped in the Dominican Republic came from AES's coal-fired power plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico. According to the complaint, authorities there allowed AES to build the plant in 2002 only under the condition that most of the ash generated at the plant was deposited somewhere other than Puerto Rico. The company allegedly chose dumping the waste onto beaches in the Dominican Republic -- where some 30 percent of citizens live in poverty -- as the cheapest alternative.

The lawsuit also claims that AES and its partners misrepresented to the Dominican government the toxicity of the coal ash and how it would be handled. In 2004, that government found the AES dumping to be in violation of Dominican law as well as the international Basel Convention on hazardous wastes and pursued criminal and civil actions against AES and other responsible parties.

The Miami Herald reports that it was a contractor from Delray Beach, Fla. -- Roger C. Fina -- who hauled the coal ash to the Dominican Republic and dumped it on the beaches:

"He brings this rock ash into the country without any kind of controls or anything. A good portion of it fell to the sea,'' said Andrés Chalas, the Dominican Republic's top environmental prosecutor. "They got permissions to bring it in and said it was to do renovations of the port, but we investigated and there was no such project, not at Public Works or the Port Authority.''

Fina claims that the ash was supposed to be turned into asphalt and was never meant to sit on the beach for two years. The paper reports that after he and AES were sued by the Dominican government, the company paid $6 million to clean up the site, though contamination still remains. Fina says the case has ruined his life and left him out of work.

The lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the injured Dominicans seeks damages from AES and its companies for the human toll caused by the illegal dumping. It also seeks to compel AES to provide a comprehensive medical monitoring program for the plaintiffs during their lifetimes.

A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

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Bisphenol A, commonly abbreviated as BPA, is vile stuff--not the kind of thing a smart species knowingly introduces into its ecosystem.

And if a species were to willfully foul its nest with BPA, it would at least be wise to keep it out of direct contact with food.

That's because BPA is an established endocrine disruptor. In June, the Endocrine Society relased a statement warning of the health threat presented by BPA. According to the statement, low-level exposure to BPA adversely affects male and female reproduction, thyroid function, metabolism, and could increase obesity.

Unhappily, our species hasn't seen fit to ban BPA production. Instead, we've  ginned up a robust and profitable market for it. BPA is a building block of plastic--and modern society remains highly dependent on cheap and abundant plastic.

According to a an industry source, U.S. BPA demand is growing at about a 4 percent annual pace. In Asia, the growth rate is much higher. That's not surprising, given that BPA is commonly used in electronic gadgets, and Asia generally manufactures our electronics.

Nor have we seen fit to protect our food supply from the nasty stuff. Indeed, we literally pack food in it--BPA is a key part of the lining in cans for foodstuffs.

This week, another study has emerged showing that alarming levels of BPA leach out of can liners right into your green beans--and your baby formula. This one, by conducted by Consumers Reports, looked at 19 common supermarket products. "Almost all" of them showed measurable levels of BPA, CR found. Here's more:

The highest levels of BPA in our tests were found in the canned green beans and canned soup. In Progresso Vegetable Soup, the levels of BPA ranged from 67 to 134 ppb. In Campbell's Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup, the levels of BPA ranged from 54.5 to 102 ppb. Canned Del Monte Fresh Cut Green Beans Blue Lake had BPA levels ranging from 35.9 ppb to 191 ppb, the highest amount for a single sample in our test.

What does this mean? "A 165-pound adult eating one serving of canned green beans from our sample, which averaged 123.5 ppb, could ingest about 0.2 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, about 80 times higher than our experts' recommended daily upper limit." (Emphasis added.)

Endocrine disruption, meet political corruption
Of course, the Food and Drug Administration has a much more expansive take on how much BPA exposure a human body can endure without harm than Consumer Reports. An FDA advisory panel found last year that the agency's "basis for setting safety standards to protect consumers was inadequate and should be re-evaluated," reports CR. But the FDA still hasn't adjusted its policy toward BPA, and "Industry has been waging a fight against new regulations," Consumer Reports says.

Unhappily, the chemical industry exerts major influence over our guardian of food safety. In a superb, must-read, award-worthy special series published this year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel showed that for years, the FDA has "relied on chemical industry lobbyists to examine bisphenol A's risks." Sentinel journalists got hold of nine years worth of FDA emails on BPA. Get this:

In one instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's deputy director sought information from the BPA industry's chief lobbyist to discredit a Japanese study that found it caused miscarriages in workers who were exposed to it. This was before government scientists even had a chance to review the study.

Most egregiously, the agency based its 2008 draft review declaring BPA safe on two studies funded by the chemical industry. And that's not all: an industry trade group "wrote entire sections of that draft."

While FDA bureaucrats play bump-and-tickle with industry chiefs to form policy on BPA regulations, NGOs have been testing consumer food products and finding significant levels of the damaging substance. The Consumer Union study was only the latest. Back in 2007, Environmental Working Group tested 97 canned products. Over half contained significant levels of BPA.

Infant formula showed particularly poorly: "1 in 3 cans of infant formula, a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels more than 200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals." In the two years since the Environmental Working Group tests, how many people have unwittingly exposed themselves--and their children--to endocrine disruption while FDA administrators cravenly kept their mouths shut? And now that yet another set of independent tests have revealed routine BPA contamination of supermarket staples, will the FDA now act?

One hopes, with the Bush Administration out of office, that the FDA will crack down on BPA use by the food industry. But the U.S. market for the stuff is controlled by extremely powerful corporations, including Bayer, Dow, and Sabic, a Saudi-owned chemical giant. Globally, BPA is an industry with $6 billion in sales. With cash like that at stake, Bayer, et al., aren't going to merely skulk away. ""The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics--and people--the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation," reports the Journal Sentinel.

Indeed, Big Tobacco and the BPA merchants don't just share PR flacks: the tobacco companies put BPA in filters. According to the Journal Sentinel, "Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government's assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group."

Seems like a smart species would demand that those entities stop producing BPA--PR blitz withstanding. But that would entail the FDA cutting ties to industry and devoting itself to public health.

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While scientists fight over BPA studies, Congress could just act

Environmental justice leaders representing more than a dozen polluted communities from six Southern states met with Environmental Protection Agency leaders this week and asked them to take action to better protect the health of low-income communities and communities of color.

The leaders from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee met in Atlanta on Tuesday with EPA Region 4 Acting Administrator A. Stanley Meiburg to present documentation of environmental injustice and unequal protection on the part of the EPA as well as state environmental agencies. The leaders are part of a group of 36 environmental justice, civil rights, faith, and other groups from all eight Region 4 states that signed a letter [PDF] to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) asking him to press for an investigation into Region 4's environmental justice record.

Among the concerns the letter pointed to was the recent decision to transport the coal ash spilled at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee last year to a landfill in a predominantly African-American community in Alabama. It also cited instances of dioxin pollution in Florida, contaminated wells in Georgia, chemical plant contamination in Mississippi, and radioactive pollution in Tennessee.

Earlier this year, Robert J. Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University -- an organizer of this week's meeting -- issued a call for "fundamental change" in Region 4, pointing to its legacy of slavery, segregation, and resistance to civil rights and equal environmental protection. He reported on a number of harmful and discriminatory decisions in the region that have exposed many low-income communities and communities of color in the region to unnecessary environmental health risks.

Bullard noted that while people of color comprise 28.5 percent of EPA Region 4's population, they are over-represented among the region's residents living within two miles of commercial hazardous waste facilities, observing:

Many of the bad Region 4 EPA waste facility permitting and disposal decisions flow directly from backroom deals and compromises made with state and local government officials, often at the expense of African Americans and other people of color communities.

A statement about this week's meeting posted to the EJRC's website noted that many environmental justice leaders view the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry -- a division of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and EPA Region 4 as "'evil twins' that have historically provided unequal protection and a 'Katrina response' to toxic health threats to low-income and people of color communities long before that deadly storm ravaged the Gulf Coast."

This week's meeting with the EPA -- the first of its kind in Region 4 in more than a decade -- took place at the same time as the CDC's National Environmental Public Health Conference, which drew thousands of environmental health professionals, policymakers and grassroots activists to discuss public health and chemical exposures.

For a full list of the communities and organizations that were involved in issuing the call for environmental justice, click here.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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This weekend marks the twentieth annual occurrence of a vaunted celebration you’ve quite possibly never heard of: the Environmental Media Association awards. The EMAs actually do a pretty good job of attracting A-list stars, or at least A-minus, and are the original “green-carpet” event. Each year, there are a handful of honorary awards (this year’s recipients include Richard Branson and Jason Mraz) and several others given in various film and TV categories. Sometimes it can feel like a stretch: for instance, while the nominating committee must have been thrilled with the documentary selections available to them this year—Fuel, Food, Inc., The Cove, No Impact Man—when it came to TV, they were reduced to choosing episodes of such knock-your-socks-off shows as Better Off Ted and ‘Til Death.

Yeah.

But it’s fun to add some glitz to green, and I tip my newsgirl cap to the EMA for the work it’s done on that front through all its efforts, including these awards. Apparently for twenty years! Who knew.

In search of a little context, I thought I’d see who else is celebrating a “platinum” anniversary this year—since Grist has made it to ten years (tin/aluminum!), why not look to our elders for wisdom. Turns out those commemorating their twentieth include such international heavyweights as the Goldman Prize and the U.N. Environment Program’s information office, known fondly as GRID-Arendal. They also include slightly lesser, but no less fascinating, eco-lights: the National Wetlands Awards, New York City environmental-justice and health organization WE-Act, NRDC’s Southern California office, Canadian grocery company Loblaw’s PC Green product line, and ... Turtle Independence Day!

Which can mean only one thing—it’s time to raise a glass, and it’s time to vote:

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Cross-posted from Warming Law.

In an earlier post, we explored the background, context, and historical significance of the Second Circuit decision handed down late Monday in Connecticut v. AEP, in which the court ruled that a group of states and environmental groups could sue several major electric utilities for contributing to a “public nuisance” in the form of global warming. In this post, we’ll explore the various next steps and implications of this decision, and explain why it brings even a greater sense of urgency to Congress’s ongoing deliberations of climate legislation.

There are two parallel arenas in which this ruling may have consequences: the courts and the federal government. The most immediate consequences of this ruling will be played out through the courts. Now that the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has determined that the plaintiffs have standing and can bring their claim, the electric utilities could simply return to the lower court as ordered, and proceed to defend themselves against the charge that they are contributing to a public nuisance in the form of global warming.

Alternatively (and more likely), the utilities may appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. There are enough elements in the Second Circuit’s decision that vary with other federal appeals courts’ rulings (notably on issues of standing) that there is a decent chance the Court would actually hear the case, and if that happens, neither party would have reason to be overly confident. In its only other major global warming decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court ruled in favor of states and environmental groups, recognizing that they had standing and agreeing with the argument that carbon dioxide satisfies the definition of “air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act. On the other hand, Massachusetts v. EPA was decided by a narrow one-vote margin, and there is no guarantee that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is generally considered the Court’s “swing vote,” would rule again with environmentalists on this case. Also, in recent years, the Court has proven inhospitable to environmentalists who have brought claims against industry, ruling against them in all five of the environmental cases it heard last year, and in addition has been increasingly conservative in granting public interest litigants standing. Justice Kennedy swings on environmental cases, but more against than for.

(Note: One other possibility is that, before going to the Supreme Court, the utilities may ask the full Second Circuit to rehear the case en banc, which could also result in a delay of the case or reversal of Monday’s ruling.)

Without a doubt, the worst-case scenario for environmentalists here is that the Supreme Court takes and reverses this ruling -- not only eliminating its valuable precedent for future cases, but also creating new nationwide precedent that could preclude the possibility of similar nuisance-based global warming litigation (or even other types of environmental litigation) for years, if not generations, to come.

The second arena in which this decision might have an impact is, obviously, the political branches, through regulatory and legislative action in Washington. Environmentalists and industry seem to agree that the courts are not the place to develop a solution to global warming, and as other commenters have noted, this week’s ruling is certainly a prod to both the EPA and Congress to get on with regulating greenhouse gas emissions. As we explained in Part I, in the absence of action by the political branches, courts have historically stepped in and used their common law authority to address environmental problems. However, once the political branches have taken action -- such as by passing legislation addressing an issue, or promulgating regulations -- the courts’ power to adjudicate the issue outside the scope of legislation is “displaced.”

Ironically, that is what all parties to this litigation would like to have happen here, and that would certainly be the best outcome for environmentalists. Nuisance claims and other tort claims, just like EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act, will never be a substitute for a comprehensive, flexible, economy-wide climate bill that attaches a price to carbon emissions. Moreover, even if the courts’ authority to deal with this case is eventually displaced, the Second Circuit’s decision, if not overruled, will still hold open an avenue by which other states and environmental groups may be able to bring future nuisance claims against polluters. We’re therefore hoping that action by the political branches comes before the Supreme Court has an opportunity to review the Second Circuit’s decision in this case, leaving environmentalists with the best of both worlds: an effective climate bill, and excellent precedent to aid us in future legal endeavors.

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Cross-posted from Warming Law.

Coverage and analysis is slowly trickling in of the landmark ruling [pdf] handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit late yesterday, in which a 2-judge panel held that a group of states and environmental groups could sue several electric utility companies for creating a “public nuisance” through their emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases. This is a truly historic ruling that should be celebrated and utilized by environmentalists, but that also brings with it certain dangers. In this, the first of two posts we will be publishing discussing the implications of this case, we will address the background and context of this ruling. In the second post, we will discuss its possible impacts and what steps environmentalists should take next.

In this case, Connecticut v. American Electric Power, No. 05-5104) (2nd Cir, Sept. 21, 2009), eight states (Connecticut, New York, California, Iowa, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin), along with the City of New York and several private land trusts (including the Open Space Institute and the Audubon Society of New Hampshire), sued six electric utility companies (including American Electric Power, Southern Company, Xcel Energy, and Cinergy Corporation) seeking to abate the “public nuisance” of global warming. Plaintiffs argued that the energy companies were the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the U.S., and were collectively responsible for “ten percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from human activities.” Claiming to represent the interests of 77 million people, their environments, and their economies, and citing the harmful impacts of global warming on these interests, the plaintiffs sought to require each of the electric utilities “to abate its contribution to the nuisance by capping its emissions of carbon dioxide and then reducing those emissions by a specified percentage per year for at least a decade.”

In contemplating the impact of this case, it is useful to understand where “nuisance” litigation fits in the larger picture of climate litigation. To date, environmentalists and industry have tried to use courts in a variety of ways to bring, or block, action on climate change. Environmentalists have attempted to compel state governments as well as the federal government to regulate the emissions of greenhouse gases under several existing federal statutes, most notably the Clean Air Act, though also under the National Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. (Massachusetts v. EPA — probably the most famous global warming case to date -- represented the pinnacle of these efforts, in which a coalition of states and environmental groups convinced the Supreme Court that carbon dioxide qualified as a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act and could therefore be subject to EPA regulation without any further authorization from Congress.) Meanwhile, industry has attempted to use courts to block federal and state action on climate change, arguing, for example, that state-led global warming initiatives are preempted by federal law.

“Nuisance” cases have, in recent years, represented the third, and least successful, prong of global warming-related litigation. Several lawsuits -- including a recently-dropped lawsuit brought by California against automakers, and the Connecticut v. AEP lawsuit against electric utilities -- sought to convince courts to use their common law authority to hold emitters responsible for the tort of creating a “public nuisance” in the form of global warming.

This approach may seem far-fetched in an environmental world dominated by an alphabet soup (CAA, CWA, RCRA, NEPA, CERCLA, etc) of federal statutes, but as yesterday’s opinion effectively explains, courts have actually had a long and robust history of taking leadership on environmental issues by using their common law authority. The Second Circuit’s opinion noted, for example, that between 1907 and 1915, the Supreme Court issued four separate rulings addressing the “nuisance” of air pollution, in response to actions brought by the State of Georgia against the nearby Tennessee Copper Company. Georgia successfully argued the Company was emitting noxious emissions that were destroying plants and crops in Georgia, and in a sequence of rulings the Court created a mandate establishing the boundaries of acceptable emissions and minimum abatement requirements for the Company, finally “set[ting] definitive emissions limits, impos[ing] monitoring requirements, and apportion[ing] costs between the defendants.” Of course, decades later, the courts’ common law authority to address noxious emissions would be displaced by the passage of the Clean Air Act, yet prior to this legislation courts were responsible for assigning liability to polluters.

The story of Georgia v. Tennessee Copper mirrors precisely what is happening in this suit. Global warming has been diagnosed as a serious health and environmental risk for decades, but the political branches have not responded, making court action necessary. Despite this history, however, environmental advocates were skeptical that nuisance suits aimed at addressing greenhouse gas emissions would ever go anywhere, for several reasons:

1. The magnitude of global warming is much larger than anything courts have tried to tackle in the past using common law.

2. Conservatives have successfully raised doubts about whether global warming is even a justiciable issue, and whether courts have any constitutional role invoking their common law authority to evaluate its harmful impacts.

3. Massachusetts v. EPA, which empowered the EPA to address greenhouse gas emissions (albeit within the confines of the Clean Air Act), served to provide federal courts with an out, meaning they could claim global warming was already being addressed by the political branches of government and that they were therefore displaced from ruling on it.

Indeed, to date, the handful of global warming-related nuisance lawsuits brought in federal court have been dismissed at the district court level, all on similar grounds. (A recent status update of several common law global warming-related lawsuits can be found here.) Connecticut v. AEP in particular was dismissed by a federal judge in New York’s Southern District in September 2005 for “presenting non-justiciable political questions” that were beyond the court’s jurisdiction. Plaintiffs appealed to the Second Circuit, and were assigned a panel that included then-Circuit Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, along with two Republican appointees -- Judge Joseph M. McLaughlin (appointed by George H.W. Bush) and Judge Peter W. Hall (appointed by George W. Bush). The Court of Appeals heard oral argument on June 7, 2006, after which three years passed with no opinion. (At her confirmation hearing, now-Justice Sotomayor was asked by Senator Chuck Grassley what had happened to the “missing case.” She declined to answer, citing ABA rules for judges that precluded her from discussing outstanding decisions, though she did explain that the decision was initially delayed by one year because the panel was waiting for the Supreme Court’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA.)

Thus, yesterday’s opinion quietly emerged after more than a three-year wait, and with only two of the three assigned judges’ signatures, since Judge Sotomayor had been elevated to the Supreme Court. In a sweeping ruling, the Second Circuit thoroughly refuted the district judge’s dismissal of the case, doing away with virtually every argument put forward by the energy industry for why this case should not go forward. In the words of the Court of Appeals:

We hold that: (1) Plaintiffs-Appellants’ claims do not present non-justiciable political questions; (2) Plaintiffs-Appellants have standing to bring their claims; (3) Plaintiffs-Appellants state claims under the federal common law of nuisance; (4) Plaintiffs-Appellants’ claims are not displaced; and (5) the discretionary function exception does not provide Defendant-Appellee Tennessee Valley Authority with immunity from suit. Accordingly, we VACATE the judgment of the district court and REMAND for further proceedings.

The 139-page opinion goes on to methodically address every concern that industry raised about the courts’ taking a role in adjudicating global warming, effectively holding that while climate change may be larger in scale than past problems the courts have addressed, it is not fundamentally different from any of those problems, and there are ultimately no jurisprudential obstacles to the courts taking this on. The court further noted that while Massachusetts v. EPA may mean that court action on global warming can be displaced by regulatory action, the fact that the EPA has not yet acted on its Clean Air Act authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions means the authority of the courts is not presently displaced. The Second Circuit therefore remanded the case back to the district court, which must now determine whether the defendants in this case are in fact guilty of creating a public nuisance through their emissions of greenhouse gases, as the plaintiffs have charged.

The opinion thus opens up a whole new avenue by which environmentalists can seek to compel major emitters to modify their global warming-causing behavior and, without a doubt, this is wonderful news. But as we will discuss in Part II, rather than heading back down to the district court, industry may try to take this ruling up to the Supreme Court. If it does take this route, and the Court decides to review the case, there would of course be no guarantee that the Court’s conservative majority would agree with the Second Circuit’s ruling. For this reason, environmentalists and progressives should work quickly to take advantage of this ruling as another significant prod to get EPA, and, more important, Congress, to take action on regulating carbon emissions. The best solution here would be for EPA or Congress to move quickly and displace the courts’ role here, producing a more comprehensive solution to the global warming crisis and preserving this extremely good precedent for use on another day.

Read part II.

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Climate Citizen: Majora Carter

“Where are you from?”  I was often asked that question while growing up in Southern Indiana in the 1970s.  I didn’t look like anyone else in my white hometown and people had a hard time believing I belonged there. I hated the question, but for them it was a polite way of dealing with their confusion over how the hell a biracial Asian girl ended up in their community.

“Where are you from?” is the question I thought people were thinking when I sat through a Western Climate Initiative stakeholder meeting last spring, once again in a place where I didn’t look or sound like everyone else. Sitting next to me was a white guy in a starched, button-down shirt representing the petroleum industry.  Then there were other corporate types right out of central casting vying for their stakeholder interests. And finally a small cadre of passionate environmentalists who spoke in terms I didn’t yet understand, like “greenhouse-gas emissions,” “carbon offsets,” and “cap and trade.”     

I had spent most of my career fighting for economic justice, working with people of color and those with lower incomes.  Their struggle is to keep food on their tables, a roof over their heads, and access to social services, while clawing at their chance for the American Dream.  Back in the mid-1990s, I founded what became Washington state’s largest anti-poverty organization.  We mobilized thousands of people with low incomes to raise their voices for change and won significant victories.  

So why was I in this room discussing carbon emissions?  Because climate change is an economic-justice issue. Regardless of how our government ultimately decides to handle climate change policy, poor people will be affected.  They can be included in the new clean energy economy or they can be further pushed out in the cold. 

What do I mean by that?  Doing nothing on climate will only make things worse for the poor and people of color in this country.  The result of decades of inaction on this issue has already dramatically affected the lives of people: from more intense hurricanes that disproportionately hit people who cannot escape the rising tide, to the higher cost of food in a fossil fuel–driven economy, to heat waves that often trap the elderly in stifling apartments.    

Even doing something, unless done right, can be harmful. Because climate legislation is intended to provide market signals to encourage energy efficiency and the development of clean alternatives to fossil fuels, any effective legislation will necessarily result in higher prices for fossil-fuel energy and energy-related goods. Those higher prices, if left unaddressed, would hit low- and moderate-income households hardest, because necessities like gasoline, food, and home-heating costs take a much bigger bite out of their pocketbooks than those of wealthy households.  Low-income families are also less able to respond to higher energy prices by conserving energy because they do not have the capital to invest in more energy-efficient appliances and vehicles. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that without consumer relief, low-income households would see their costs increase by an average of $425 per year as a result of climate legislation.  This is money that families earning $16,000 a year simply can’t spare.  Unless these costs are offset, the purchasing power and living standards of these lower-income consumers could fall significantly over time.

Fortunately, the opportunities for people living in poverty are abundant if we design an effective and equitable climate policy.  Doing so will improve the lives of many in the U.S. and will better position the Obama administration to be a leader as our nation engages in an international discussion on addressing global warming in Copenhagen this December.   

The House of Representatives has already taken the lead by designing climate policy that would not drive low-income households further into poverty.  The bill that passed in the House established a key principle that low-income Americans as a group must be no worse off because of the higher prices associated with climate legislation.  On top of the relief all households—regardless of income—would receive on their utility bills, the House bill includes a climate rebate for families and individuals in the lowest income quintile that would compensate for increases in energy costs as well as other necessities.  These provisions send a strong message about the importance of protecting low-income households from the costs of climate legislation. The House bill takes an efficient and effective approach to making sure we reach the right people by using two existing systems:

Neither approach on its own is sufficient; however, in combination, they reach the overwhelming majority of the lowest-income households.  This direct relief must be in addition to any indirect compensation that may be provided through electric and gas utility companies.  Because the majority of the additional cost for people with lower incomes would come from areas other than home utility bills, relief solely through utility companies is inadequate.

As the Senate begins to take action on climate, it is critically important that, at a minimum, it maintains the same commitment adopted by the House to fully protect the lowest-income people from net cost increases.

In addition to protecting low-income consumers, climate change policy also provides the opportunity to make investments that can move people out of poverty.  Along this vein, there’s been a lot of attention paid to the term “green jobs” in the climate debate. And this is an exciting possibility for real change in our economy and for workers in the U.S.  However, for green jobs to live up to expectations, the jobs created must be unionized and pay a living wage, with focus on training and employing people living in poverty and people of color. 

Passing climate legislation this year is a necessary and crucial step in controlling greenhouse-gas emissions and encouraging the development of renewable-energy technologies that will create these green jobs.  As people living in poverty in the U.S. and around the globe are increasingly and disproportionately harmed by global warming, the obligation is on the democratically elected representatives in our rich nation to act with courage. 

As leaders from around the world gather in Copenhagen to tackle the challenge of reducing global-warming pollution, an important question they will want to ask each other is, “Where are you from?”  And because of the shared risks of climate change, all the answers should be identical:  “The same place as you: planet Earth.”

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Eat a slice of fresh tomato from the supermarket or at a restaurant this winter, and chances are it will have come from a field in south-central Florida, site of 90 percent of U.S. winter tomato production.

And this year, there's a fighting chance that the worker who picked it might have made something close to a living wage. That's because huge Florida farm called East Coast Growers and Packers--one of the state's four largest tomato tomato growers--has agreed to deliver a penny-per-pound raise to farm workers, representing a pay boost of about 64 percent. With East Coast committed to making sure the raise end's up in farm workers' pockets, the state's other large growers may soon follow suit.

The movement to improve conditions for Florida's pickers has been a long and difficult one. The scrappy worker-led Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has been pushing for decades to improve conditions and pay in tomato country. I visited the the area myself last spring--and was stunned to see that despite all the progress and publicity, living conditions remain dismal and pay absurdly low. Given that level of normal, everyday exploitation, it's not surprising that in extreme situations, cases of modern-day slavery regularly crop up in the area.

Years ago, the CIW realized that merely demanding raises from the area's large-scale tomato growers wasn't likely to improve conditions much. The growers themselves operate in a highly competitive market, dominated by large-scale food industry buyers like Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Those companies used their market power to keep tomato prices low--if Florida's growers don't like the prices they were offering, they could threaten to buy their tomatoes from Mexico.

Squeezed from the top by their buyers, the growers eked out profit by in turn squeezing their workers--keeping wages as low as possible.

The CIW realized that the only way to wriggle free from this double squeeze was to go around the growers and straight to the companies at the top of the food chain.

And that's what CIW did, starting with fast-food operations. Of course, the business model of the fast food industry is to buy ingredients as cheaply as possible, tweak them into products with mass appeal, and sell those products at attractively cheap prices. Profits margins are low, but great profits can be made at high volume. In other words, McDonald's might make only a few dimes off of each $3.50 Big Mac, but if you can sell many millions of them of them, you're rolling in dough.

So fast-food companies had little initial interest in complying with the CIW's request for a penny-per-pound raise. When your profitability depends on high volume and low prices, pinching pennies rises to the level of business creed.

So the CIW went to the public, methodically targeting the fast-food giants with boycotts. One by one they fell: First Taco Bell (owned by Yum Brands), then McDonald's, and then Burger King. They all eventually agreed, kicking and screaming, to pay the extra penny to tomato pickers.

Then things got weird. Two years ago, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative representing the state's industrial-scale tomato farms, balked. Perhaps stung by the workers' success and emerging sense of power, the FTGE slammed the door shut on the raise. The group announced it would impose a draconian fine on any grower who passed on the penny per pound raise.

Since then, workers have been getting the same old wage--about 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket they harvest. Adjusted for inflation, their wages have fallen steadily over the decades and remain firmly below the poverty line. The extra penny per pound paid by the CIW signees languished in an escrow account. Meanwhile, other, non-fast food tomato buyers like Bon Appetit Management and Whole Foods signed the CIW agreement. Those pennies, too, went into escrow.

And this is why the agreement with East Coast Growers and Packers is so significant. The operation is defying the FTGE and passing the raise directly to the workers. And the raise is significant. It will push the per-bucket rate from 50 cents to 82 cents--a 64 percent raise.

And with mega-companies like McDonald's directing their business to East Coast because of the deal, it seems likely that other growers will relent, too--and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange's absurd campaign to block the raise will collapse.

Meanwhile, the CIW is turning up pressure on those other huge buyers in the tomato market--the mass-scale grocery chains.

Once all workers in the area retain basic human rights including decent working/living conditions, it will be time to focus on another massive problem in Florida's vast mono-criopped tomato fields: widespread use of highly toxic pesticides.

A note on Chipotle Grill, which announced in a Tuesday press release that it had "reached an agreement with East Coast Farms, one of Florida's largest tomato growers, under which workers who harvest tomatoes for Chipotle will receive an additional penny per pound."

Chipotle had come under fire, including from me, for its refusal to sign an agreement with the CIW. While the burrito chain should be commended for joining CIW and its previuos signees' efforts to push East Coast into accepting the raise, it's puzzling that Chipotle would present this important agreement as a one-off deal between a large grower and one company. Happily, the East Coast agreement is much larger than that.

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The widely read recent Time cover story "Getting Real about the High Price of Cheap Food" is a useful complement to current discussions about our food system. It offers further evidence of the mainstreaming of ideas and practices that were considered radical or irrelevant a mere decade ago.

But the author errs by avoiding any mention of the three million farm laborers who pick our fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, this omission is not simply limited to one article. Rather the idea that farmworkers somehow exist apart from our food system routinely comes across as the conventional wisdom framing many discussions about sustainability.

The undeniable reality is that farmworkers form the base of the food industry, and their brutal exploitation dates back centuries. It is reasonable to point out that the U.S. has never fully grappled with the noxious legacies of racism, violence, and disenfranchisement that underwrote the growth of much large-scale agriculture: first in the form of chattel slavery; and later with convict labor, sharecropping, and debt peonage.

Today, migrant farmworkers are among the poorest, least-protected workers in the nation. The Department of Labor describes them as a workforce "in significant economic distress," and leading social scientists corroborate these findings. Farmworkers toil on both conventional and organic farms, often in similarly degraded working conditions.

In Florida, the poverty and powerlessness at the heart of the agricultural industry have created fertile ground for modern-day slavery. In the last decade alone, federal prosecutors have uncovered seven cases of forced labor in Florida's fields preying upon native-born and immigrant workers alike. These prosecuted cases are, as the U.S. Attorney's office says, just the tip of the iceberg.

Yet there are hopeful signs amidst this dire human rights crisis, as well as important opportunities for sustainable agriculture advocates.

The Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is leading a strategic, broadly supported reform effort. To improve tomato harvesters' wages and working conditions, the CIW has forged innovative accords with Whole Foods Market and Bon Apetit Management Company, as well as the world's four largest fast-food companies (Yum Brands, McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway). The agreements harness the purchasing power of large buyers to raise the harvesting wage floor, create a structural voice for workers in the industry, and establish market consequences for growers who use forced labor. These companies deserve credit for exhibiting leadership on an issue of pressing importance.

Foodie darling Chipotle, however, steadfastly refuses the historic opportunity to partner with the CIW. The company has instead opted for a go-it-alone approach to address farmworker exploitation. This deserves scrutiny. In an industry with such an overwhelming imbalance of power between employer and employee, farmworkers are uniquely situated to identify the root cause of the problems they face and advance practical solutions. Their participation at all levels is vital to any meaningful change.

Human rights are integral to real sustainability. It is past time to bring farmworkers in from the periphery of these discussions, particularly when the abuses in question are so flagrant and systemic. Any honest reckoning with our food system - from magazine articles to supply chain purchasing policies - must treat farmworkers as indispensable partners worthy of a seat at the table.

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People often ask me what the environment has to do with poverty and why communities of color are getting so active in the fight against climate change.

Earlier this week, Green For All released a video that gets to the heart of the matter.

A New Sound communicates both the pain of the old economy and the promise of a new and clean one. It is a moving depiction of why we need an inclusive green economy -- one that builds safer streets and cleaner communities. 

It illustrates why we need a vibrant movement for change and opportunity.  It is why we need a new sound.

Watch the video and share A New Sound.

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Timothy DenHerder-Thomas (left) and fellow "solutionaries."Photo: Summer of Solutions blogFossils like Washington Post columnist George Will may think that "the Mall does not reverberate with youthful clamors about carbon." But that's because a growing number of young people are engaged in less-visible efforts at the grassroots level. It's not their parents' activism -- with all the marching, chanting, and sign-waving that entails -- but by focusing on the work on the ground, some young activists are achieving the kind of change that can't come from political rallies alone.

Timothy DenHerder-Thomas, just a few months shy of graduating from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., with an environmental science degree, is busy coordinating the second Summer of Solutions, a project that he and fellow student activists in the Twin Cities began last year. Now expanded to nine cities across the United States, S.O.S. gets young activists working on sustainability projects in local communities. Many of these projects are centered around energy efficiency and home weatherization, green jobs education, and community gardening, and all have the goal of becoming self-sustaining.

"We saw that lots of people usually sort of drop off the scene during the summer because they go get a different job or that sort of thing," said Matt Kazinka, a junior at Macalester and another coordinator of the program. "We decided we wanted to make an intentional space for us to work on some projects that we had already started."

Kazinka, DenHerder-Thomas, and some of their peers came up with the idea for S.O.S. and created a nonprofit called Grand Aspirations to support their work. So far all of their funding has come from small-scale, local grants and individual contributions, DenHerder-Thomas said, just enough to provide cost-of-living stipends to those working on S.O.S. projects full-time during the summer. In some cities, like Omaha, S.O.S. participants live and work together, but levels of involvement across the country vary, with many students finding time to donate to S.O.S. between other projects and jobs. DenHerder-Thomas estimates that, including part-time volunteers and some older folks, up to 150 people across the country are involved, mostly in communities where they either grew up or now attend school.

"A huge idea behind the organization is that people in different locations know better what will work in their area, in their local community," said Abbie Plouff, another part of the national coordination team. A student at Hamline University in St. Paul, she joined the organization this year.

Although work is tailored locally, S.O.S. wants successful projects to be replicable. "The projects and programs that we set up via Summer of Solutions, be they in the Twin Cities, or in Austin, Texas, or in Corvallis, Ore., can also work as models that other communities can then hook into and look at and use," Plouff said.

As part of a movement in which small-scale efforts can feel like mere drops in the bucket, these students have a refreshing clarity of vision when it comes to their role in problem-solving. They don't expect to change the world by taking shorter showers. But they also don't underestimate the potential of smaller projects to grow into big changes.

"The vision and purpose behind Summer of Solutions is that it's very much connecting the local and the global," said DenHerder-Thomas. "It's linking people on the ground, in their communities, with models and ways of thinking that can change the way the whole thing works ... We're going to try this here, and other people around the country are going to do similar things, and then we're going to talk, and figure out how to make it into a larger solution."

A new kind of activism

DenHerder-Thomas, Kazinka, and Plouff think of their work as "solutionary" -- taken out of the negative context of what's wrong and put into the positive context of what can be done about it. That means, as Kazinka eagerly pointed out, that "it's really, really fun."

"It feels real," he said. "It feels like you're making an impact, because you are."

The type of work these "solutionaries" (as they call themselves) do can be hard to pin down, DenHerder-Thomas said, maybe because youth today are starting to see a range of progressive issues as more integrated than they've traditionally been imagined. "We definitely feel that the work we're doing is environmental," he said. "But it's also about economic recovery, and it's also about energy security, and it's also about creating social justice in the midst of a recession."

DenHerder-Thomas, Kazinka, and Plouff all trace their involvement in the environmental movement to the discovery of its intersections with other progressive causes. "You can work for social justice through working for environmental justice," Plouff said. "Environmentalism ended up being my home because it's the most holistic thing that I could think of to work on."

DenHerder-Thomas grew up in a low-income community in Jersey City, aware from an early age that there was something dysfunctional about the way his world, with its "poverty and pollution and intolerance and cultural fragmentation," was structured. "It was never really defined as environmental to me until later, because I never really had exposure toward things that would more typically be called nature," he said. But a few years ago, just before he went off to college, the pieces started to come together. "Communities all over the planet are really being depleted, and a lot of their economic and social systems being corroded, by the way we do development, which is based on the way we use energy," he said. He began to see clean energy solutions as "ways to revamp our economy around social justice."

Kazinka had the same realization when he saw Van Jones speak at Power Shift 2007, a youth climate summit he attended. "Seeing how he framed the green economy as an opportunity to create social justice and economic opportunity through environmentalism ... really was just a moment where it all came together for me," he said. "All these things that I've been interested in are one."

Summer of Solutions lives as an example of how environmentalism has moved beyond the domain of tree-hugging hippies and nature enthusiasts, and why, as a result, pigeonholing a new wave of young environmentalists as such is no longer an effective opposition tool. To that end, Plouff said she's very conscious of avoiding "traditional in-your-face activism," instead focusing on meeting people in the middle, and listening to what they have to say.

"Listening is really huge," she said, "because people want to know that you care and that you're not just kind of filing [away] the information that they're giving you, or just completely disregarding it. So trying to cultivate deep relationships with people even if they don't agree with you in a conversation -- I think that's really important."

For example, Plouff explained, when fighting a coal plant, "know who you're talking to," and emphasize to community members worried about job losses that renewable energy resources can not only replace the coal jobs lost, but create additional ones.

As for the future of their work, the solutionaries are more realistic than optimistic, but always hopeful.

"Transition will happen. That isn't really optional," said DenHerder-Thomas. "If you have an unsustainable society, that means it will not be sustained. It won't continue in its current form. Something will change ... The question is always, How bad is it going to get in the meantime?"

Summer of Solutions just hopes to help positive change come before things get too much worse.

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Winning the clean energy race: a new strategy for American leadership

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus, discusses the Green the Block partnership. In the background (L-R) are Dept. of Energy Undersecretary Kristina Johnson, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. Kate Sheppard / GristEnsuring that low-income communities and minority youth benefit from green jobs programs is the goal of a new partnership between the White House and two grassroots organizations -- Hip Hop Caucus and Green For All.

Two Cabinet members and leaders of the grassroots groups unveiled the Green the Block initiative Tuesday at a White House press conference, describing the partnership as as both a campaign and a coalition that is designed to build political support for greening efforts in low-income and minority communities..

"The 20th century was defined by civil rights and The 21st century will be defined by clean energy," said Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus. "Future generations will measure us by our success in transitioning from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy, and in the process building opportunity and prosperity for our most economically disenfranchised communities."

"We have to convince our generation that this truly is our lunch-counter moment of the 21st century," said Yearwood, referring to the sit-ins held at segregated diners during the Civil Rights era.

The initiative will officially kick-off with a day of service on September 11, 2009 -- part of the White House's already announced United We Serve program. The Green the Block website has more information on local initiatives taking place around the country.

"September 11 is about bringing people together to recognize that change happens not in the corridors of Washington, DC, but it happens in the streets of Detroit, Cleveland, San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and cities across the country," said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of the Oakland-based group Green for All.

The cabinet members -- EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan -- touted some of the investments that the Obama administration has made to assist low-income Americans through greening efforts. In the economic stimulus package, $14 billion is designated for housing upgrades, including $5 billion to make low-income housing more energy efficient. Noting that the government currently spends $5 billion a year providing monetary assistance for energy bills to low-income households, Donovan said investments like those in the stimulus plan will help offset costs for families and the government in the long run.

Jackson noted the EPA's Tuesday announcement of $61 million for brownfields revitalization efforts. The funds will go toward job training programs.

Jackson also touted the climate and energy bill that passed the House in June as another potential means of growing the green economy and creating new jobs. Green for All's Ellis-Lamkins praised the House bill for including provisions that help ensure jobs will be created in low-income and minority communities, which include local hiring requirements and devotes a portion of pollution permit revenues to job training programs. She said it will be important to get these communities engaged in the debate as the bill moves in the Senate, in order to ensure that this type of provision is included in the final bill.

"If communities of color aren't engaged, you won't see provisions like that," said Ellis-Lamkins.

Video: Green jobs adviser Van Jones talks about green jobs efforts and how the Obama administration can work with underserved communities to ensure they have access to the benefits and opportunities of a clean energy economy.

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On July 13, Chipotle Mexican Grill announced it was throwing its marketing weight behind Food, Inc., a documentary that takes a highly critical look at the food system.

The fast-food chain would be sponsoring free screenings of the film at 32 theaters nationwide. It would also be distributing material promoting the film at all its restaurants--thus exposing people in search of a tasty burrito to a film quite different from the super-hero blockbusters that get promoted in typical fast-food chains. In addition, there'd be a Chipotle-related "bonus feature" in the film's upcoming DVD.

The Chipotle/Food, Inc. tie-up caught my eye, because just a month before, a group of food writers and activists signed a letter to Chipotle CEO Steve Ells sharply criticizing the chain for its inaction on farm worker rights. The two signees who topped the list were Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner and co-producer Eric Schlosser, who is also prominently featured in the film. (I signed the letter as well.)

The letter was written on behalf of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farm-worker-led group that has been fighting to improve sub-poverty wages, dismal living conditions, and sometimes outright slavery in Florida tomato country--source of 90 percent of the winter tomatoes consumed in the United States. The CIW wants Chipotle to commit to pay an extra penny per pound for tomatoes, in an arrangement that would ultimately deliver the hike directly to workers. Chipotle claims it supports the penny-per-pound principle, but refuses to sign an agreement with the CIW.

Off-screen drama at a Food, Inc. showing."We view the CIW's struggle for dignity as a non-negotiable part of the struggle for a sustainable food system," the letter states. "Therefore, we strongly urge you to enter into an agreement with this worker-led organization that has been fighting tirelessly to improve conditions in tomato country since 1993."

When Chipotle announced it was sponsoring Food, Inc., I assumed an agreement with the CIW was imminent. In its uphill fight to get decent wages for tomato pickers, the CIW has won agreements from some of the most profit-focused companies in the food industry, including Burger King, McDonald's, and Yum Brands, owner of Taco Bell. More recently, two sustainability-minded companies--Whole Foods and Bon Appetit Management--have signed agreements with the CIW. Surely Chipotle, which strives to serve "food with integrity" and has a history of working with mid-sized sustainable farmers, couldn't be far behind ... right?

But then I checked the CIW's Web site --and it turned out there was just as much distance as ever between the farm-worker group and the burrito chain. (Ironically, the Mission-style burritos served by Chipotle probably evolved from a hearty lunch staple developed for Mexican farm workers in California's Central Valley in the 1950s.)

I found that activists from a CIW-allied group, the Campaign for Fair Food, had been attending the Chipotle-sponsored free screenings and handing out copies of the letter signed by Kenner and Schlosser. They held up a banner reading "Food, Inc.: great film/Chipotle: Don't believe the hype."

Chipotle clearly resents such critical statements at events designed to demonstrate its sustainability cred. At one of its screenings in Denver, Chipotle employees barred people from the Campaign for Fair Food to speak after the screening--overturning an arrangement that had been made with Food, Inc's public-education campaign.

I asked Chipotle communications director Chris Arnold about the incident. He referred me to Matt Cowal of Magnolia Pictures, which is distributing the film. "What happened with the Campaign for Fair Food was a mixup," he told me. "The Chipotle screenings and what we're doing with our social-action partnerships were always meant to be separate initiatives. Chipotle was under the correct impression that their screening was intended to be exclusively for their guests and what happened was a scheduling error on our part."

In other words, people wanting to discuss the CIW issue aren't to be given stage time at the Chipotle-sponsored Food, Inc. screenings. Damara Luce of Just Harvest USA tells me that after the Denver screenings, Chipotle representatives were equally inhospitable to CIW allies at showings in Kansas City, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

So what gives? How did a film made by Kenner and Schlosser end up being sponsored by a company being called out by Kenner and Schlosser? I contacted all the principal actors in this drama to find answers.

Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner

Standing with the farm workers
Schlosser and Kenner, for their part, stand by their support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. As the film's co-producer and director, they have limited say over how it's marketed and distributed. Those decisions ultimately lie with the film's production company, Participant Media, and its distributor, Magnolia Pictures.

Participant declined to comment for this article. Cowal of Magnolia Pictures told me he was unaware of the situation in Florida's tomato fields when he linked up with Chipotle, which he called a leading player in the movement to reform the food system. "They're doing a lot of great things around sustainability," he said. He added: "We do hope something positive will come of this--that it [the controversy] will inspire Chipotle to rethink their position on the Coalition."

As for Schlosser and Kenner, as you might expect from writer/filmmaker types, they have strong opinions. Schlosser wrote the following in an email:

I like the food at Chipotle. I think their efforts on behalf of sustainability, animal welfare, and the misuse of antibiotics are terrific. But I care more about human rights than any of those things.

If Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, and McDonald's can reach agreement with the CIW, I don't see why Chipotle can't. It will not cost much--and it will help to end human trafficking in Florida.

Although I'm grateful for the support that Chipotle has given to Food, Inc., my views haven't changed since I signed that letter.

Kenner took a similar position in a phone conversation. He said he admires Chipotle's commitment to sustainability--in fact, he seriously considered featuring it in Food, Inc. as an example of a large player that's "moving in the right direction." "I don't regret that they're sponsoring the film," he emphasized.

But he made clear that he disagreed with the company's position on the CIW. "The film is really about fair food," he said. "People are aware that animals are being abused [in the food system]. There's a lot less consciousness about workers."

In fact, just as Kenner nearly included a section on Chipotle, he also seriously considered honing in on the situation in Immokalee. If the film hadn't ended up shining a light on harsh working conditions in the pork-proccessing industry, "we would have gone to Immokalee and told that story."

"I was hopeful that by associating itself with a film that promotes workers' rights, [Chipotle] might be inclined to sign with the Coalition," he said. "And now I'm not confident they will."

He repeated: "Frankly, I don't understand their position."

In the heat of the grill
So what exactly is Chipotle's position on Florida's ruthlessly exploited tomato-field workers? (I visited Immokalee myself last spring, and filed two reports--here and here.)

First, a little setup. Florida's tomato pickers are currently locked in a battle with the area's farm owners over the penny-per-pound raise the CIW wrung out of McDonald's, Burger King, and Yum Brands. The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange is refusing to pass on the raise to workers, whose real wages have plunged to well below poverty level in the past two decades. So the CIW is locked in a bitter fight with the Growers Exchange.

Whole Foods and Bon Appetit recently intervened by signing on to the CIW's penny-per-pound pledge, while also working with the Coalition to identify sustainable tomato growers who pay their workers decently. Chipotle has chosen to chart its own path--it has set up its own escrow account to hold an extra penny-per-pound for workers. And, like the CIW, it claims to be looking for growers willing to pass it on.

"We are escrowing a penny per pound for any tomatoes we buy from Florida, with that money earmarked for the farm workers," Chipotle's Arnold wrote in an email message. He continued:

But we would rather have that money get to the workers rather than simply amassing in an escrow account. That is why we are working (with assistance from the CIW) to try to find growers who will actually pay the additional money to the workers, rather than support the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange in blocking payments to the workers.

That last bit doesn't make any sense to me. If they want to help break through the Growers Exchange and get the workers their much-needed raise, why not join McDonald's. Burger King, Whole Foods, etc, and work hand-in-hand with the CIW?

I asked CIW staffer Greg Asbed about the situation. Why aren't Chipotle's efforts sufficient? "Chipotle has made no commitment, signed no enforceable agreement, behind their decision to pay the penny per pound." he wrote in an email. He added:

All our agreements, from Yum Brands to Bon Appetit, are signed, enforceable agreements with no fixed term for the penny per pound-- and so the agreement to pay the surcharge is not dependent on the whim of the company. Chipotle, on the other hand, could rescind its decision to pay the penny more tomorrow (even assuming they are really paying it today) and we would have no recourse but to protest.

Asbed also points out a stark contrast in Chipotle CEO Steven Ells's approach to food issues. "Ells is clearly, for whatever reason known only to him, far more comfortable walking arm in arm with a small farmer than embracing farmworkers leading the fight for human rights in the fields," Asbed wrote. "And that disparity, that contradiction, is what is so very wrong about Chipotle and its efforts to position itself at the forefront of the sustainable food movement."

Ironically, by embracing Food, Inc., Chipotle is highlighting the whole vexed issue of how America treats the people who harvest and prepare its food--which is exactly what Kenner intended the film to do in the first place.

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People celebrated its centennial last week by jumping into the policy debate over global warming. Delegates at the storied civil rights organization's annual meeting in New York voted to adopt a resolution supporting clean energy development, curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, and policies to foster green collar jobs.

Dale Charles of NAACP's Arkansas chapter was a leader in getting the climate change resolution approved by the civil rights organization.Photo courtesy Dale Charles"This is a policy that was passed unanimously at our convention," said Hilary O. Shelton, the director of NAACP's Washington, D.C., bureau.

According to Shelton, the association will be making climate change policy a priority in coming weeks and months, at both the grassroots and federal levels. "With this new resolution, this gives us even more emphasis to push our units to be more actively engaged," he said, by getting educated on the issues, meeting with legislators, writing op-eds for local newspapers, and more.

With about twice as many blacks as whites out of work across the nation, 25 percent of the nation's 41 million blacks living below the poverty line, and 20 percent lacking health insurance, issues like rising energy costs, curbing air pollution, and creating green collar jobs are not abstract issues.

"African Americans have been disproportionately affected by pollution, from water, to toxic waste being dumped in our communities, to air quality," said Dale Charles, president of the NAACP's Arkansas chapter, whose Little Rock branch sponsored the climate change measure. "This resolution will help establish policies to eliminate or slow down that process of putting those types of elements in our environment, where our people have to live and our children have to breathe."

NAACP is taking on global warming in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation. When it comes to climate change, this 73-year old, 4-million-member strong bastion of the mainstream environmental movement is better identified with polar bears stranded on melting icebergs than with communities of color fighting against air pollution, or for jobs programs.

But there's no inherent contradiction in the alliance, said Marc C. Littlejohn, NWF's manager of diversity partnerships. "Communities of color are normally, when it comes to global warming, the first and worst impacted."

Colombia Law professor Ted Shaw noted that the NAACP is hardly new to tackling environmental issues. "The NAACP has been involved in environmental justice issues," said Shaw, who litigated such cases during his 20-odd years with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a separate but allied organization. "This is ratcheting [that] up."

Judging from some of the coverage of last week's convention in the mainstream media, there is a widespread debate that the NAACP's political relevance may be fading. "A century ago, when the NAACP was founded, black America was under siege -- lynchings were common, race riots had rocked major cities and Jim Crow segregation was being codified throughout the South. Today, all of that is fast-receding history," wrote Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. "Some critics have wondered whether there is still a role for an organization like the NAACP."

Shaw said he thinks the association, which has a membership of just over half a million, can still have a lot of influence when it wants to.

"I think that the membership, the level of consciousness of the membership, is probably similar to the consciousness of most Americans" about global warming, he says. Some people think it's a significant problem, and some people don't. But "when the NAACP as an organization decides to make this priority," says Shaw, "the rank and file members will have a much higher consciousness of it, and will get behind it.

"I'm not telling you that this is the 1960s, and it has the prominence it had in the civil rights movement," Shaw said. "But it's a group that periodically flexes its muscles -- and it can be formidable."

Dale Charles is confident that the association can have a big impact on climate legislation. "NAACP, through its hundred years of advocacy, our longstanding work in human rights and civil rights -- we have a track record, the ability to mobilize people across the country and address certain issues and make our voices heard," he said.

Charles would like to hear some raised voices when it comes to targeting federal recovery dollars to jobs for African Americans. "In my state we're going to spend millions on highway construction," he said. "We don't have black firms big enough to bid on those projects. So none of that money is going to come back to the black community."

Obama needs to wake up to this situation, said Charles. "Right now it seems to be that the same people who had control of the money before are going to have control of this money," he said. "It's not going to trickle down to Main Street the way Barack Obama intended. Green jobs won't get to African Americans if business as usual continues."

Shelton agreed. "When we talk about climate change, we also have to talk about how strategies, programs, and initiatives that are being implemented to address problems of climate change are also very sensitive to the issues of people who live on Back Street" but aspire to become solid middle class residents of Main Street. "Those are NAACP's constituents," he said.

Until people perceived the living-wage job opportunities inherent in transitioning to a low-carbon economy, said Shelton, conservation issues were often framed as having to give something up. "Are you going let a company come in that was going to pollute the air, pollute the ground, and probably pollute the water? But they're going to bring 400 new jobs that pay a living wage? That was the framing: you sacrifice for a clean environment and don't have jobs, or you have the jobs and sacrifice the environment?"

But now the solutions to climate change and to African-American poverty are coalescing. "Now, we can say yes to the creation of new forms of energy, jobs that maintain those new forms of energy, yes to clean air, yes to jobs that pay a fair wage and include health insurance," Shelton said.

Green collar jobs will include manufacturing jobs in hybrid automobiles and renewable energy, as well as weatherizing homes and other skilled service professions, Littlejohn said. But equal priority must be given to cultivating new generations of black professionals, "getting college students to invest in jobs that are going to be more productive or innovative for clean energy: engineering, architecture and LEED certification."

The NAACP's resolution urges lawmakers "to ensure that the response to climate change can take a higher ground than business as usual - one that ensures that we capture real public benefits from the new energy economy."

Given the iffy prospects for strong carbon-capping legislation in the Senate, the time has come for a more colorful grassroots climate coalition.

"I'm happy that this is not an issue that people will continue to see as one of these white liberal causes that doesn't connect to their lives," says Shaw. "Because this issue is connected to all of our lives. Climate change doesn't know anything about segregation."

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Environmental advocates gathered at the North Carolina legislature yesterday for a press conference and prayer vigil asking the governor to create a task force to study and take action on health problems associated with industrial hog farms.

The action came the same week new findings were published about the critical role hogs played in creating history's deadliest flu, and the day after the Obama administration announced that it wanted to ban the routine use of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of curbing the spread of dangerous bacterial infections that have been linked to hog farms and that kill 18,000 people a year in the U.S. -- more than AIDS.

But North Carolina lawmakers' reaction to the protest suggests it won't be easy to win change in a state where Boss Hog rules.

On July 14, about 30 people gathered outside the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh to announce they had sent a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) asking her to convene a task force examining the environmental, human health and economic impacts of industrial production of swine and other livestock.

"We're here today to elevate the concerns we have, outside the legislative building where people have the power to change things in our state," said Lower Neuse Riverkeeper Larry Baldwin.

Of particular concern is how the waste from these operations is handled -- by piping it into what are known as "lagoons." These stinking, open-air cesspools hold the animals' feces and are frequently sited within smelling range people's homes, schools and churches. They are concentrated in rural eastern North Carolina, part of the Black Belt region with a high percentage of African-American residents.

"People are eating cheap because North Carolina communities are getting dumped on," the N.C. Environmental Justice Network's Naeema Muhammed said at the press conference. "It's time for North Carolina officials to listen to the people. We must no longer be a sacrifice zone."

Organizers handed out copies of the July 6 letter calling on Perdue to assemble the task force. Advocates see it as a way to bring together experts from different fields -- public health, environment, economy, industry -- to examine adverse health effects from CAFOs and consider replacing open-air lagoons with more advanced waste treatment technology. The letter states:

The issues that need to be addressed by the Task Force include, but should not be limited to, the areas of asthma, chronic respiratory conditions, methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and now the swine flu (H1N1) and other emergent diseases. As a factor in our human health concerns, the Task Force also needs to address the issue of groundwater contamination, as many residents in close proximity to these facilities depend upon well water for their household uses. And finally, the impact that animal waste is having on water quality and fishery habitat will need to be addressed also, as this is both a health and economic concern.

The protest in Raleigh comes amidst growing attention to the link between hog farms and human disease.

This week, for example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published new findings that hogs played a key role as what the Associated Press called "an influenza mixing bowl" in the pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Scientists studying the genetic origins of the flu found pieces of the 1918 virus had been circulating in hogs and humans as far as 15 years before the pandemic broke out and was not a more recent bird flu strain as previously thought.

Concerns have arisen during the current H1N1 pandemic over the role CAFOs played in the strain's development. There were reports that the disease first emerged in a Mexican community where a subsidiary of Virginia-based Smithfield Farms operates massive hog farms, and scientists reported tracing the virus's genetic origins to a 1998 outbreak at an industrial hog facility in eastern North Carolina. But as we have reported, more recent research suggests the 1998 virus was not a direct predecessor to the current H1N1, and there is also evidence that the current strain was circulating in Mexico months before it was discovered near Smithfield's operations.

Federal government takes action

In a recent op ed, epidemiologist Dr. Steve Wing with the University of North Carolina acknowledged that the role that industrial hog operations played in the current H1N1 pandemic is still unclear -- but he also pointed out that their damaging impact on human health and the environment are well known and include air and water pollution as well as dangerous microbial contamination that can be spread by workers, birds and insects.

His own research has found the likelihood of in-school exposure to air pollution from swine CAFOs in North Carolina is greater in schools with higher concentrations of low-income and nonwhite students.

At this week's press conference, Wing spoke about how CAFOs contribute to the problem of antibiotic-resistant infections by routinely administering the drugs to animals to promote growth. Meanwhile, recent research has found that hog farms are a source of a potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant staph infection that can be spread by consumers simply handling contaminated meat, with five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana testing positive for MRSA, according to a recent study.

"In North Carolina, migratory geese land on lagoons and become colonized with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and can carry it great distances," Wing said, adding that researchers in Maryland also discovered bacteria from hog chicken farms in cars following livestock transport trucks on the roads.

The link between CAFOs and dangerous infections has gotten the federal government's attention. On Monday, the U.S. House Rules Committee held a hearing on the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would phase out the non-therapeutic use of certain antibiotics in animal agriculture. In written testimony, the Food and Drug Administration's principal deputy commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, expressed support for the legislation's aims and also said farmers should not be allowed to use antibiotics in animals without veterinary supervision, the New York Times reports. The bill has the backing of the American Medical Association but is opposed by politically powerful farm organizations including the National Pork Producers Council.

But while the federal government is taking action to better regulate industrial livestock farms, North Carolina's leaders do not appear to be ready yet to confront the health problems associated with the operations.

Following the press conference and a group prayer in which Halifax resident and Concerned Citizens of Tillery member Claude Ford asked that "we might work together to get the job done," the participants headed inside for a meeting of the state House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where they expected to hear from Dr. Jim Merchant, who had come all the way from Iowa to testify.

A UNC grad who teaches in the University of Iowa's department of occupational and environmental health and is former dean of its College of Public Health, Merchant served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, a joint project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Pew Commission studied CAFOs and recommended solutions to their myriad problems in its landmark report titled "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America."

The protesters sat through an hour-long discussion about an unrelated matter to hear Merchant's testimony -- only to have the committee adjourn the hearing before giving him a chance to speak.

Don Webb of North Carolina's Alliance for a Responsible Swine Industry said he was upset but not surprised.

"I can't believe the rudeness and disrespect afforded a distinguished gentleman like Jim," Webb said as lawmakers gathering up their things and filed out. "But I'm used to things like this happening in the General Assembly because of the power of pork."

Indeed, a recent report from the campaign finance watchdog group Democracy North Carolina detailed that power in numbers, finding that  the N.C. Pork Council PAC contributed a total of $187,000 to state candidates during the last election cycle, while its political allies at the N.C. Farm Bureau PAC contributed another $222,150 -- among the most generous and influential of all the state's PACs.

But advocates are trying to counter pork power with people power: They've launched an online petition encouraging Gov. Perdue to launch the proposed task force on hog farms and are asking supporters to sign it.

"Here in the General Assembly they make laws that control what man can do," Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance said as the hearing room emptied. "There are other laws that govern what nature does. And when man's laws are in conflict with nature's, we all lose."

(This report originally appeared at Facing South.)

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan last week to dump 3 million tons of coal ash that spilled from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee in an impoverished, largely African-American community in Alabama -- and the decision is sparking resistance among local officials and residents who don't want the toxic waste.

The district attorney for Perry County, Ala. -- where the privately owned Arrowhead landfill that's getting the ash is located -- said yesterday the federal government's decision to bring the waste to his community was "tragic and shortsighted" and would endanger generations of residents, the Associated Press reports:

Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson said he would monitor the lengthy disposal process to make sure the landfill operator and the federal utility comply with environmental regulations.

Jackson said he doesn't know if anything can be done to block the shipments, however.

"We're looking at every option, talking to different groups," Jackson said.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management defends the decision, and some Perry County officials say it will bring millions of dollars in payments and about 50 jobs to the area.

Coal ash contains significant levels of toxic pollutants including arsenic, lead and mercury as well as radioactive elements, but it is still not regulated by the federal government as hazardous waste. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said her agency plans to release a proposed federal rule for the waste by year's end.

In May, Facing South broke the story that TVA's decision to primarily consider two landfills for dumping the ash -- in Perry County, Ala. and Taylor County, Ga. -- raised environmental justice concerns because of the social vulnerability of the communities targeted.  

Georgia's Taylor County is an agricultural area where almost 41% of the population is African-American and more than 24% of residents live in poverty, according to census data. Alabama's Perry County -- part of the historic "Black Belt" -- is 69% African-American with more than 32% of its residents living in poverty, making it one of the state's poorest counties.

TVA reportedly considered moving the coal ash to two communities in eastern Tennessee that are predominantly white and with lower poverty levels, but the company sought regulators' approval only for the Georgia and Alabama sites. TVA's announcement regarding the Alabama landfill's selection said the choice was made after an evaluation process involving more than 30 companies.

In a letter to Facing South following publication of our May report, Peyton T. Hairston Jr., TVA's senior vice president for corporate responsibility and diversity, took issue with the story:

To write that TVA has made decisions on where to transport ash from the Kingston coal spill based on the racial composition of a community is simply wrong.

For the record, the story did not say TVA made its disposal decision because of the community's racial composition. But the effect is the same: TVA -- with EPA's approval -- has chosen to move toxic waste from a predominantly white and relatively well-off community in Tennessee to a poor and majority-black community in Alabama.

Meanwhile, Perry County District Attorney Jackson is not the only Alabamian raising concerns about the dumping decision. The Tuscaloosa News editorialized against the move in a piece titled "Coal ash dump site in Alabama not welcome":

Why is it that the cheapest, politically easiest option for dumping this toxic waste is to put it in a poor, rural county in Alabama's Black Belt?

Local residents are also voicing opposition -- some in creative ways. When TVA held a public meeting last month in Harriman, Tenn. to discuss the ash disposal plans, Perry County resident Betsy Ramaccia showed up wearing a protective suit and breathing mask to denounce the decision as "an environmental injustice and a social injustice," WVLT-TV reports. To view the segment, which was produced before EPA approved the disposal decision, see Jonathan Hiskes' recent report here at Grist.

And residents of Uniontown, the community closest to the Alabama landfill, got an opportunity to speak their piece about the dumping plans via www.ashholes.org, a website created by Project M, a socially responsible design firm that's also behind the innovative PieLab community space in nearby Greensboro, Ala. It features a short video of Uniontown residents, including the man in the still shot above, delivering a simple message to the EPA administrator.

"Lisa Jackson, will you protect us?"

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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Kingston, Tenn., coal ash spillThe Environmental Protection Agency is still figuring out what to do with the millions of tons of coal ash that spilled through a broken levy levee in eastern Tennessee last December. But it looks like much of it may be shipped to Perry County in central Alabama, where residents are none too excited about the prospect of their county becoming “The New Ash Hole of Alabama.”

Alabama activist Betsy Ramaccia, dressed in a haz-mat suit, handed out fake newspapers with that slogan at a Tennessee Valley Authority meeting in Tennessee last month. And the Web site www.ashholes.org has a simple, direct, and powerful video of Perry County residents asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to protect them from the toxic elements in fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired electricity plants.

The short clip is worth a view. Knoxville’s WVLT TV also has a solid report on Ramaccia’s work and the environmental questions surrounding moving the spilled ash.

"It's an environmental injustice and it's social injustice," Ramaccia told WVLT about shipping the waste to Alabama. "We're concerned about a new group of citizens about to be affected by this ash spill."

Perry County is 69% African-American, and more than 32% of its population lives in poverty, Sue Sturgis reports. She wrote that earlier plans to ship the ash to Pennsylvania were nixed because of worries it would contaminate groundwater.

(Hat tip to Ramaccia for pointing us toward the videos.)

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A new report from an engineering firm hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority identified factors behind last year's disaster that unleashed more than a billion of gallons of toxic ash from a massive storage pond at the federal company's Kingston plant in eastern Tennessee.

It claims that the disaster was a one-of-a-kind event -- but skeptical coal ash watchdogs are calling for a more thorough investigation by federal authorities.

"This type of explanation sounds eerily familiar," says Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. "When 125 people were killed in the Buffalo Creek coal slurry disaster of 1972, the coal company made the same claims, calling the event an 'act of God' to avoid liability, despite the fact that the dam failure was clearly caused by poorly constructed and inspected impoundments."

Commissioned by TVA and conducted by the Los Angeles-based engineering giant AECOM, the report says that the Kingston spill was caused by a combination of factors. They include the high water content of the wet ash, the increasing height of the ash pile, the construction of sloping dikes over the wet ash, and the existence of an unusual bottom layer of slimy ash and silt.

According to TVA Chief Operating Office Bill McCollum, the combination of conditions that contributed to the disaster was "unusual."

"No other ash pond in the TVA system was built like Kingston," he says.

But it's unclear whether there are other ash ponds in the United States afflicted with similar problems. Earlier this month, it came to light that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has identified 44 coal ash waste disposal sites so hazardous that if they were to fail like the one at Kingston large numbers of people could die. But while the agency has reportedly notified first responders about those hazardous sites, it is refusing to share their location with the public due to security concerns.

Evans points out that the AECOM report did not examine what role TVA's negligence may have played in the spill. Nor does it consider whether the dumping of millions of tons of toxic coal ash in similar facilities across the country is a "recipe for disaster."

"TVA's self-serving version of the truth won't suffice," Evans says. "We need an immediate investigation by the relevant federal agencies with expertise in dam safety and hazardous substances, namely FEMA's National Dam Safety Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This week marked the six-month anniversary of TVA's disaster in eastern Tennessee's Roane County. The incident, which occurred in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2008, unleashed a six-foot wall of toxic muck that completely destroyed one nearby house, left three others uninhabitable and contaminated nearby water supplies.

To date, only an estimated 3% of the spilled ash has been cleaned up. The waste was initially sent to landfills in predominantly poor and black communities in Perry County, Ala. and Taylor County, Ga. as part of a pilot test project. TVA has since announced that it plans to dispose of most of the ash at the Perry County site, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.

Earlier this week, a public meeting about the ash cleanup plans in Harriman, Tenn. drew protesters from Perry County, Ala. who objected to the disposal plan.

"We don't believe that it's right for something that toxic to be dumped on people who don't even know it's happening," protester Betsy Ramaccia told WATE news.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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