Lead Shot Still Approved for Bird Hunting

Iowa Legislature has decided that a 100 year ban on hunting Doves is long enough. Beginning Sept 1 of this year hunters will be given the legal right to kill these song birds once again.

I’m not a fan of killing animals for sport. The old argument hunters use to justify it being “it helps nature keep the population down so they don’t starve to death from over-growing their food source” just sounds so self-serving. Nature has been able to keep this ‘balance’ for millennia before man ever came onto the scene and took almost all of that food source away.

Anyway the purpose of this post lies in the shot used to hunt these animals. Apparently, lead is still being used in shotgun shells. If you have ever dissected a shotgun shell you will notice it is filled with pellets of varying sizes. About the same size and shape as bird feed and scratch that birds eat. Once the lead gets into their tiny bodies and they get eaten by birds of prey, etc and so on, you know the chain. Lead has been taken out of paint and gasoline due to its well known toxicity. Why not bird shot?

It took me by surprise to learn that lead is being scattered throughout the country side where it can be eaten by wild animals, or leeched into the waterways affecting aquatic life. To be fair to hunters, there are quite a few who are concerned enough for the environment that they will pay the extra 4 cents per shell to avoid lead. But there are many more who just don’t care. Given the fact that they eat the few forkfuls of meat a song bird provides and the lead gets into their own bodies as well as the bodies of the family, one would think this would be enough to wake them up to the fact they are poisoning themselves. Spend the extra 4 cents.

The Iowa legislature had the opportunity to ban shells of lead shot but turned it down. Why? Only they know, but lead is still being scattered about without regard to how it affects our food chain.

Just thought you would want to know.

Listen to the Children

Too often we adults shun advice from children as too naïve and not worth our time to listen to.

Here is a twelve-year-old who has something meaningful and worthwhile to say and actually says it better than most adults. She addressed the United Nations meeting in Brazil with an elegance and style far beyond her years.

Please, take the time to listen, it is only a five minute segment of her speech but in that short time she paints reality far more succinctly than any adult I know ever has.

From her we have so much to learn and just maybe we can learn to share what we have with those who have nothing.

You say you want a Revolution

Let’s clean up our land, Let’s clean up our air, Let’s clean up our water. Very lofty goals. Everyone should be involved. But what is it going to cost? Let’s face it, cost is the only factor that either prohibits us or causes us to do anything.

According to a report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the cost will be approximately $45 trillion over the next several decades.

This is the price tag placed on the necessary "energy revolution" that will be needed to greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth. More from the report: the world needs to build 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power, in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.

Now that we have a bottom line figure and a game plan we can get started, right?

Trying to get the world’s population to agree on what is necessary is not feasible. “We require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels. This is assuming that greenhouse gases (and therefore mankind) is the main causal factor of global warming. Other scientists say the increase in global temperature is a natural phenomena and cannot be avoided.

Even if the climate change is a natural occurrence, not induced by mankind, we will all benefit from participating in a revolution of such a grand scale.

We have the technology in place right now to lessen our dependence on fossil fuel. Solar technology, wind technology and even nuclear technology, all, if allowed to be put into place, will greatly help alleviate our dependence on fossil fuel which would result in drastic decreases in greenhouse gas emissions..

Why aren’t we using them? Why are we stubbornly holding on to old ways of heating and cooling our homes? Money.

It is expensive to convert our traditional methods of heating and air conditioning to less eco-damaging methods.

Even if every government on this planet would miraculously agree on a method of such a large transition, coming to a decision on who would bear the cost would require a revolution in thinking. This financial investment is more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy, 1.1% of the world’s gross domestic product.

"Carbon capture and storage" technology, allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them underground, is needed now. This would only be an initial first phase. This plan can easily be seen as necessary in order to prevent future contamination of our atmosphere while developing technology to prevent contamination in the first place. Sort of like stopping the leak in the bucket until we build a better bucket.

That better bucket will need to come in the form of solar, wind and nuclear power plants. The world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector.

This is a huge undertaking. We can’t get politicians to agree on how to best spend our tax dollars to benefit tax payers with what is left over after they distribute their windfall to special interest groups, how are we ever going to get them to think about cleaning up the environment? If we follow the established method of relying on politicians to pay for this revolution, this price tag is going to be much greater than $45 trillion.

I think we can all agree that we are on a dangerous course regardless of what is causing global warming. Our whole ideology on how we use energy to support our lifestyles needs to be re-examined. Kate of Hills and Plains Seedsavers directed my attention to a wonderful animation that so marvelously portrays mankind’s existence that I just have to share it here. It is entitled Carbon Weevils.

Our current lifestyles are not sustainable enough to promote the healthy life we all want. Greenhouse gases are a major contributing factor to rising hospital visits which in turn increases health costs and reduces quality of life. Rising demand for fossil fuel increases the price of that fossil fuel. The increasing number of food recalls is testament that mankind cannot maintain a safe food supply due to the sheer number of people to be fed. The number of starving people is rising due in part to converting food crops into fuel crops. Even though the world produces enough food to feed everyone, if it isn’t profitable to do so we won’t. Corporations will only participate if it is in their best financial interest.

We simply cannot continue on this path. Getting the world to act together in the best interest of each and every one of us will indeed require a revolution.

Is Biofuel a reasonable answer?

Ethanol works. It has been used on farms to power tractors and other farm equipment for many generations. But jumping on the bandwagon for the opportunity to tell big oil where to stuff it is a luxury we cannot afford.

Higher food prices.
Corn for ethanol brings a higher price for the farmer than corn for food and so from an economical standpoint it makes sense to sell more corn to ethanol producers than to food producers.

Diverting corn from making food to making ethanol will translate to higher food prices for all of us, whether we individually use ethanol or not. The federal government has begun paying out subsidies for corn-for-ethanol and now we are going to be stuck with it.

The increase in the number of acres to produce this corn will mean the loss of acreage for other food crops because it doesn’t pay as well as corn.

One of the dangers of maintaining a mono-cultural is that if anything comes along that adversely affects that crop then we will lose everything. And now that we are going to have two industries depending on one crop the results will be devastating.

Just to keep this pursuit of ethanol going, farmers will need to grow more corn to attempt to meet the demand for ethanol production while at the same time maintaining the demand for food production.

Food prices have already jumped a startling 75 percent since 2005. This is a direct result of ethanol subsidies, which have dramatically driven up the price of corn and other grains. Another, more long term, effect is that rising demand for meat in China and India, will push up demand for more feed grain. The combined strain on the farmer to produce higher yields to feed animals, people and cars is going to create a market collapse.

The farmers, right now, are ecstatic over the rising prospect of increasing their income. The rest of us, especially those on fixed incomes, will inevitably be forced to further stretch their already strained food budget.

And what will happen when the point is reached, and it will, when we have to choose between feeding our cars, our animals or feeding ourselves?

None of these concerns has addressed the damage that increased corn production will have on the environment.

More fertilizer production.
Corn is what is known as a heavy feeder. It requires a lot of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, much more than almost any other food crop and it doesn’t absorb as much as other crops so the fertilizer has a higher runoff rate. Currently, the nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This fertilizer runs off into the water table, on towards the Mississippi River and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico where it contributes to a growing “dead zone”. This dead zone is a 7,900-square-mile patch that depletes oxygen and is suffocating fish, crab and shrimp. Fishermen have to sail further out to sea to get a decent catch and this leads to higher fuel bills which, as always, comes down to higher consumer prices.

More pesticide production.
Another environmental factor to consider is the increased production of pesticides and their effects on the animal kingdom, including humans. The U.S. has come a long way toward finding alternatives to the traditionally used more toxic chemical pesticide. But foreign countries are not as regulated with nearly as much zeal.

More and more, our food crop is coming from the rest of the world. China is the largest producer of apples, with nearly 41 percent. With the recent recall of toys made in China due to the use of tainted chemicals it does not take much imagination to realize that China has a lot of chemicals to use up and they are willing to use them regardless of how the U.S. protests their use.

Higher subsidies for farmers.
The increase in subsidies to farmers to produce more corn costs the American taxpayer $9.4 billion in 2005. That figure is double what it was in 2004 which almost doubled the previous year which almost doubled 2002. Farm subsidy formulas are a complicated matter and the numbers and reasons are overwhelming. But the bottom line is we will end up paying more in future years, and the trend backs this up. These figures are just for the production of corn.
http://farm.ewg.org/farm/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=corn corn sub…cost the…

Once this kind of money begins flowing through the hands of politicians, it is going to be very problematic in halting, or at least slowing down, the demand for ethanol production. Lobbyists get paid big bucks to make sure that flow does not stop, whether it benefits the country or not. These subsidies need to be redirected towards a more environmentally sound answer to the use of petroleum.

Bottom line.
All of this gobbling up of extra land and extra money, and all of this extra production of chemical fertilizer and chemical pesticides results in producing a gallon of ethanol that requires more energy than the ethanol saves as a replacement for gasoline.

Alliant Energy Corp. - disingenuous environmentalism

Alliant Energy Corp., a utility holding company based in Madison, Wisconsin, “has been quietly nurturing a side business called WindConnect, which offers expertise to help get wind-energy projects built. It is Alliant ’s fastest-growing non-utility business and is their most in-demand of their services.

WindConnect gets involved in measuring wind speeds, designing projects and assessing their environmental impact, along with meeting with land owners, contracting with construction crews and building access roads, said Frank Greb, WindConnect vice president and general manager. “When the business started in 1999, the primary focus was building substations and helping developers connect their wind facilities to the electric grid; therein, the WindConnect name. We have grown way beyond that, ” Greb said.

WindConnect, actually a subsidiary of Alliant’s RMT subsidiary, has been involved in more than 30 wind-power projects around the United States, including projects in New York, California, Washington, New Mexico and Wisconsin - the company claims it has been involved with.

WindConnect earned revenues of $44 million in 2005, $64 million in 2006, and expects to top $150 million this year. Overall, Alliant reported $3.4 billion in total revenue in 2006.

The story isn’t all good. Alliant is currently planning to build a new coal-fired power plant. Ow! Bad news for the environment. I was going to suggest this might be a good company for investing in but this coal power plant just took it off the table. How can they pretend to be for the environment and then build one of the biggest reasons we are in this mess?

This just proves once again that the environment is not a good enough reason for energy companies to pursue any technology. They only respond to market pressures.

The company is publicly traded on the NYSE, stock symbol LNT.