We're Not in Kansas Anymore

Roderick Bremby is the newest ecological hero.  On October 18, he used his authority (as Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment) to reject an air permit for another giant coal-fired power plant on the plains of southwestern Kansas.

The most remarkable aspect of Bremby's decision was that he based it solely on the carbon dioxide that the proposed coal burning would emit.

As reported in the New York Times and on the front page of the Washington Post, Bremby declared:

"I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing."

Were administrators like OSU President Ed Ray listening?

Based on his approval of the new natural gas power plant for the OSU campus, it seems that Ed Ray is no Roderick Bremby.  Even as the evidence piles up about the tragic impact of burning fossil fuels, and as the International Panel on Climate Change issues its most dire warning ever, construction continues on the white elephant known as the OSU Energy Center.

Go Beavers!

There's a large sign at the entrance to the construction site on 35th Avenue that lists the names of those responsible for the boondoggle.  I suggest we hold them accountable for their folly.

Back in Kansas, a spokesman for Sunflower Electric Power Company said that Governor Kathleen Sebelius had implied that those who burn fossil fuels are not moral stewards of the land.

An icon of the energy ethic at Oregon State University is a bank of giant blazing lights over an empty Reser Stadium.  Perhaps we can click our ruby shoes and bring moral stewardship back to campus.

Enemy of Precaution

Next Thursday, on November 15, Gary Marchant will give a lecture in the auditorium of the LaSells Stewart Center.  He will offer his views on laws that govern genetically modified food.  Marchant's presentation is part of the Horning Lecture Series of the History Department.

Marchant is a law professor at Arizona State University.  He used to represent the auto industry in litigation about air quality standards.  Now he is an outspoken opponent of the legal application of the Precautionary Principle.  In 2005, Marchant wrote Arbitrary and Capricious with Kenneth Mossman, an ASU Professor of Health Physics (a field that primarily trains scientists to work in the nuclear industry).  In an article for Legal Times, the authors wrote:

The idea is flawed in theory and practice, and the enshrinement of the precautionary principle sets Europe down a path that will wreak havoc on the economy ...

Would that be a bad thing?

The Precautionary Principle is a pillar of the social movement for ecological awareness.  It stipulates that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to humanity or nature, and there is insufficient proof that the risk is in the public interest, then the action or policy must not be allowed.  The principle is the antithesis of the hyper-masculine agency of modern industrialism — concisely summarized by Nike advertisers whenever they tell us to just do it.  In other words, "damn the torpedoes" or the risk of ecological disaster; "progress" demands that we push ahead and let our grandchildren deal with the fallout.

The Precautionary Principle is similar in some ways to the ancient teachings of Lao Tzu — who counseled his followers on the wisdom of inaction in the service of maintaining harmony.

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.  Through this I know the advantage of taking no action.

Indeed, the quest for harmony lies at the core of the emerging ecological counterculture.  But this worldview of caution and deliberation is intolerable from the modern industrial perspective — which seeks the power to control and rearrange the entire world.

Arizona State University is the home of the Biodesign Institute.  The Director of that organization is George Poste — who has a very interesting resumé.  Among his many dubious distinctions, Poste serves on the Board of Directors of Monsanto — the infamous biotechnology giant that produced Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and now produces tons of Roundup-Ready seed for industrial agriculture.  Farmers across the country have seen Franken-pollen blow into their fields and contaminate their crops with the altered genes from Monsanto laboratories.  The long-term effects of such genetic alterations in the wild are unknown.  Thus, the corporate giant has thrown the Precautionary Principle to the wind.

Monsanto is also the corporation responsible for pushing recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) into the dairy industry.  When two Florida reporters tried to warn the public about the use of rBGH on dairy cows, Monsanto and Fox Television colluded to suppress the information.  Station managers ordered the reporters to lie to their viewers to protect Monsanto.  After the reporters refused, Fox fired them.  The ensuing court battle revealed the unethical lengths to which Monsanto will go to bloat its bottom line.

Meanwhile, the ASU revolving door involves even more than academia and corporate boardrooms.  Guy Cardineau, a professor at the Biodesign Institute was recently appointed to the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Marchant cheered the political implications in a press release about the appointment.

The reception for Gary Marchant in Corvallis suggests that Oregon State University employs administrators and professors who have a poor view of nature.  The unrestricted release of engineered genes into the biosphere is a prime example of reckless irreverence for the mystery of life.  The risk is especially high because the recombinant DNA processes cannot control where a foreign gene sequence lands on a chromosome when it is blasted into the nucleus of a host cell.  The dangerous assumption of agricultural biotechnology is that gene expression is independent of the chromosomal neighborhood.  While that hypothesis remains unproven, the enormous risk of uncontained genetic experiments is an externalized cost for corporations like Monsanto.

When an academic institution offers a platform to a leader in the corporate legal maneuvering against precaution, while offering no similar forum against biotechnology, one might be tempted to excuse the single instance as a harmless oversight.  However, the Food for Thought Lecture Series has offered a strong and persistent bias in favor of agricultural biotechnology.  Outreach in Biotechnology is supposedly "a program to communicate factually and contextually accurate information."  That claim may be sufficient for lawyers, but the public presentations either ignore opposing arguments or offer mischaracterizations (i.e. straw men) that are easily dismissed.  Opponents are derided as uninformed or unscientific — a blatant distortion — and the rhetoric is riddled with the usual hubris.

The bottom line is that Oregon State University is abusing the public trust by providing a propaganda service for the biotechnology industry.  Large corporations serve the interests of their stockholders, which is usually not the same as the public interest.  Even though much of the university's work is funded by private endowment, the university remains a land grant institution — which means that OSU has a campus and considerable political clout that have been endowed by the citizens of Oregon.  At a minimum, the university is ethically obligated to use its resources to serve the interest of those citizens.

A Question of Power

Oregon State University is the home of research on many aspects of the impact that humans have on nature — including climate change.  It would seem logical for the university to put the results of its own research into practice.

However, the university has begun to build a new power plant that will burn natural gas — a fossil fuel in limited supply that is a major contributor to global warming.  The administration even touts this "energy center" as an example of how it is leading the way toward a sustainable society — because it would emit 38 percent less carbon than the current power plant.

Is that really the best we can do here?

Eskimos are falling to their deaths through the Arctic ice, because the modern industrialized world is pouring at least ten times too much carbon into the atmosphere.  Furthermore, there is a delay between carbon emitted today and the ensuing increase in global temperatures for our children and grandchildren.  Armed with such findings from their very own professors and students, how is it that OSU administrators can tell us in good conscience that a mere 38 percent reduction — installed at a time when better alternatives exist — is such good news?

Like many problems of large scale, climate change is complex.  As scientists like Paul Ehrlich and Donella Meadows explained many years ago, the primary human variables that affect the environment are population, affluence and technology.  Therefore, it is the affluence and technology of the modern industrial world — particularly the flagrant consumption of fossil fuel that OSU continues to embrace — that is a major factor in the continuing erosion of the biosphere's ability to support diverse life.

There are also severe implications for human culture — especially for those with the least power to correct the problem.  Such cultures also tend to be among those with the lowest affluence.  So it seems fair to ask whether the vanishing Inuit village would draw any solace from the knowledge that those who indirectly destroy their way of life are working hard (with considerable fanfare) to stop such irresponsible behavior in a few decades.

What's wrong with this picture?