Published on June 11, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
Under cap-and-trade, polluters are offered the opportunity to “pay to pollute,” turning decades of environmental efforts on their head and undermining improvements in environmental health. The linchpin of these cap-and-trade schemes is “offsets,” or credits from outside the regulated industry that polluters can buy in order to keep on polluting.
Published on April 04, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
In November 2012, California’s Air Resources board auctioned off the first round of carbon permits for its voluntary cap-and-trade market, which officially went live on January 1, 2013. This initiative came out of California Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which sets a goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (a reduction of about 30 percent).
Published on April 03, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
In recent years, a push has been made to transform environmental protection around the world from regulatory regimes to cap-and-trade schemes. Under cap-and-trade, polluters are offered the opportunity to “pay to pollute,” turning decades of environmental efforts on their head and undermining improvements in environmental health. The linchpin of these cap-and-trade schemes is “offsets,” or credits from outside the regulated industry that polluters can buy in order to keep on polluting.
Published on March 04, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
Around half of the fish that the world eats for dinner comes from fish farms. Aquaculture is promoted as a sustainable way to meet rising consumer demand for seafood. But fish farming relies on small, wild fish to feed farmed fish, pollutes the waters around it with wastes and chemicals and threatens wild fish biodiversity through escapes and disease transmission.
Published on February 20, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
Around half of the fish that the world eats for dinner comes from fish farms. Aquaculture is promoted as a sustainable way to meet rising consumer demand for seafood. But fish farming relies on small, wild fish to feed farmed fish, pollutes the waters around it with wastes and chemicals and threatens wild fish biodiversity through escapes and disease transmission.
Published on January 17, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
The potential for widespread hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” threatens New York’s abundance of farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and locally grown produce and food products. Fracking is a process that the oil and gas industry uses to extract natural gas and oil from shale rock formations buried deep within the Earth. It requires large quantities of water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals, which are injected underground at high pressure to crack dense rock and release oil and gas.
Published on January 14, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has indicated that it will soon advance the regulatory application of genetically engineered (GE) salmon, which, if approved, would be the first such animal allowed into the U.S. food supply.1 AquaBounty Technologies, the creator of GE salmon, boasts that the fish's fast growth rate will increase food production, feed the world's hungry, reduce ecological pressure on wild salmon harvests, create jobs and diminish the carbon footprint of producing seafood.2 However, the science behind GE salmon does not support the hype.
Published on January 11, 2013
- Issue Briefs:
During the 111th Congress, as legislators debated ways to cope with climate change, the flaws of cap-and-trade approaches doomed the attempt to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act. A final push came in the form of a different bill. Senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins introduced S.2877, the “CLEAR Act,” which rested on a principle called cap-and-dividend. Although cap-and-dividend avoids the pitfalls of trading credits and offsets, it still relies on a market solution for pollution that upends our commitment to stop pollution and protect our families and our environment.
Published on December 13, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
The last 20 years of environmental protection have seen a steady shift away from many of the tried-and-true regulatory control approaches that force industries to implement increasingly more protective pollution abatement measures. We are witnessing a move toward market-driven off set programs that substitute trading for technology. With both air and water, industries are now being offered pay-to-pollute approaches that enable them to purchase pollution “credits” instead of working to reduce their harmful discharges. Of course, these market mechanisms come with a whole host of loopholes and liabilities.
Published on December 12, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
The last 20 years of environmental protection have seen a steady shift away from many of the tried-and-true regulatory control approaches that force industries to implement increasingly more protective pollution abatement measures. We are witnessing a move toward market-driven off set programs that substitute trading for technology. With both air and water, industries are now being offered pay-to-pollute approaches that enable them to purchase pollution “credits” instead of working to reduce their harmful discharges. Of course, these market mechanisms come with a whole host of loopholes and liabilities.
Published on December 04, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
Whenever you read a report or hear on the news that the economy is growing, what you are hearing is that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing. But while GDP measures economic activity, it does not measure the distribution of the wealth created by that activity, or the quality of our air and water, or the quality of our schools. Yet, when we hear GDP is growing many of us believe that the country is doing better than it was. Given that economists, politicians and the media treat GDP this way, it is no surprise that we think this way.
Published on December 04, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
Whenever you read a report or hear on the news that the economy is growing, what you are hearing is that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing. But while GDP measures economic activity, it does not measure the distribution of the wealth created by that activity, or the quality of our air and water, or the quality of our schools. Yet, when we hear GDP is growing many of us believe that the country is doing better than it was. Given that economists, politicians and the media treat GDP this way, it is no surprise that we think this way
Published on September 26, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
Despite the alarming water crisis the world is facing, private interests are polluting, exploiting and selling water — a resource essential for all life. A 2009 publication, sponsored by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and several for-profit multinational companies, predicted that by 2030 global freshwater demand would exceed available supplies by 40 percent. In addition to the increasing pollution and overuse of the available freshwater supply, climate change will exacerbate water shortages worldwide. In fact, a UN-Water report said, “…climate change is expected to account for about 20 percent of the global increase in water scarcity.”
Published on June 06, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
New drilling and fracking techniques have made it possible to extract oil and natural gas from shale and other dense rock formations that were previously inaccessible. While such drilling and fracking has been a boon for the oil and gas industry in the United States, it has been a nightmare for Americans exposed to the pollution that accompanies shale development. The expansion of modern drilling and fracking across the country has caused widespread environmental and public health problems and created serious, long- term risks to underground water resources, all of which affect farming and our food.
Published on May 15, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
From the Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles County, the oil and gas industry has been fracking in California without clear regulatory oversight for many years. Now, the next generation of drilling and fracking involving much more fluid and chemicals injected at much higher pressure, and creating much more waste, pollution and risk — has arrived on the West Coast.
Published on February 17, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
The British company Oxitec has released millions of genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands, Brazil and Malaysia. Now Oxitec wants to release its mosquitoes in the Florida Keys in 2012.
The company claims these altered mosquitoes will battle dengue fever. However, basic safety questions remain unanswered.
Published on February 07, 2012
- Issue Briefs:
During the global food crises of 2007–08 and 2010–11, which saw skyrocketing commodity prices, agribusiness companies gained massive profits. Pro-biotech interests — particularly industry giant Monsanto — have since launched a variety of public relations strategies, including advertising campaigns and a series of reports touting the benefits of transgenic agriculture to farmers and the environment. Analysis conducted jointly by Food & Water Europe and Food & Water Watch finds that the Monsanto-funded reports use questionable methods and present misleading assessments of the impacts of genetically engineered crops.
Published on December 13, 2011
- Issue Briefs:
Sludge is the solid remnants of the wastewater treatment process. Wastewater treatment facilities, most of which are publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), are able to remove many of the bacteria, viruses and chemicals that end up in sludge. POTWs serve approximately 75 percent of the U.S. population. Yet these facilities do not have enough money to purchase the technology needed to remove all of the prescription drugs and chemicals that enter the wastewater stream every day from our household and personal care products.
Published on December 08, 2011
- Issue Briefs:
Gas drillers use a water-intensive process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract natural gas from shale. The process injects millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, under high pressure to crack the rock formation to release natural gas. Private water players can make money on both ends by selling water to drillers and then treating the wastewater.
Published on November 16, 2011
- Issue Briefs:
The Gulf of Mexico is known for fishing — vacationers flock to the coasts to charter a boat for a day of recreational fishing or just to dine in restaurants serving up the commercial catch of the day. But behind the stories of landing a monster fish and melt-in-your-mouth grilled filets, a battle is being waged to determine if the Gulf’s fishermen and charter captains will remain an independent and integral part of southern coastal culture, or if they will instead lose their way of life in the rush to transform our fisheries into corporate-dominated markets.
