Home, Sweet Home
When American Municipal Power announced last fall that it had canceled plans to build a new coal-fired power plant in southeastern Ohio, NRDC and its allies rejoiced. For senior attorney Anjali Jaiswal, who had helped devise the legal strategy to fight the proposed plant, it was a particularly meaningful victory. She spent much of her childhood in Ohio — "I love Cleveland!" she readily exclaims — and the battle over the power plant represents what she values most about environmental law: the ability to make real change in her own backyard. Jaiswal’s affinity for protecting the places she has called home bodes well for the planet: she’s had a lot of backyards in her 35 years. Jaiswal was born in India, but her family moved to the United States when she was just 3 years old, first to Dallas and then to Akron, Cleveland, and San Diego. By the time she was in high school, the Jaiswal family was settled in the Los Angeles area. Since joining NRDC in 2001, Jaiswal has fought and won many local battles. First based in the organization’s Southern California office, she worked to protect and improve water quality in rivers, streams, and coastal areas, waging battles that yielded immediate, tangible results. Jaiswal and other members of NRDC’s California staff have also successfully advocated for upgrades to a sewage treatment plant on the central coast, where sea otters in Morro Bay were being sickened by the discharge of dirty water. She waged legal battles to strengthen water pollution controls and to stop dairies in Southern California from dumping waste into the Santa Ana River. In the Sacramento area, she helped win the fight to require that irrigation projects leave more water in ecosystems, shielding endangered fish populations from further degradation. "We said, ‘This is the law, this is the science. You have to rule for us,’" she remembers. "It was a lot of sleepless nights and hard, hard work, but we won." Last year, as Jaiswal was immersed in state and local legal offensives, a colleague approached her about trying international work. "I was conflicted," she says. "I really like working on local issues as a litigator." But as she heard more, her choice became clear. NRDC was looking to start an initiative in India, through which it hoped to bring clean energy and efficiency technologies to a country undergoing tremendous development and modernization. As the country of her birth, it was a place full of import for her. She said yes. Jaiswal had visited India several times as an adult. In 2005 she took a leave from NRDC and spent three months in New Delhi working on pollution control through the Nehru Fulbright Indo-American Environmental Leadership Program. She was gratified by how easily her knowledge transferred to a new setting, allowing her to help with a campaign to improve sewage treatment near the Ganges River. "I knew what sewage plants looked like, their operation, their energy issues," she says. "I knew about compliance and enforcement." She also knew the country on a personal level, having visited relatives in her father’s village in Gujarat, India’s westernmost state, which shares a border with Pakistan. Her experiences there gave her a snapshot of the broad challenges India faces. One evening, she and a cousin walked out into the tobacco fields surrounding the village. Her cousin wanted to show off the village’s new power plant — a sign of progress. Jaiswal couldn’t help but see the environmental repercussions of the emissions spewing from the towering smokestacks. India and the United States have two important things in common: they have large English-speaking populations and are democracies, making collaboration easier than in other rapidly developing countries, such as China. Though NRDC’s work in India is full of potential, Jaiswal says, the challenges that lie ahead are significant: some 80 percent of the infrastructure the country will need by 2030 has yet to be built, and the number of motor vehicles on the road is expected to quadruple by 2020. The environmental ramifications of India’s path forward will be felt around the world. Jaiswal and Jacob Scherr, director of NRDC’s international program, launched the India initiative last June. Their goals include fostering U.S.-India cooperation on clean energy and climate, strengthening environmental compliance and enforcement, and incorporating energy-efficiency standards into building codes to reduce carbon emissions. "One of the great challenges in India is that there are laws on the books that are not implemented or enforced," Scherr says. "Anjali is in an excellent position to explain how we handle these problems in the United States and to translate her experiences to meet the needs in India." Jaiswal sometimes thinks back to her father’s village in Gujarat. The memory she recalls is a hopeful one — that of a relative proudly leading her up to the roof to show off a new possession, the village’s first solar cookstove.
Here is the original:
Home, Sweet Home
NRDC: Why Insects Matter
NRDC’s Science Center is led by Gabriela Chavarria, an expert on bees who earned her doctorate in entomology under E. O. Wilson . She works to protect insects — particularly bees-by fighting to remove toxic chemicals from the environment. What can the average citizen do to protect bees? The next time you walk out into your backyard, look around. Insects are the little creatures that run the world. Bees pollinate many of our crops, yet they continue to be threatened by pesticides and other toxic chemicals. We tend to be afraid of bees, but 95 percent of them do not sting. If you find a bee’s nest, don’t knock it down. Find a local beekeeper in the yellow pages and call to report the hive. Beekeepers are increasingly interested in collecting feral hives to breed more robust and genetically diverse bees. You can also go to beesafe.org to learn more about taking other actions to protect bees. Where is the scientific consensus on what’s happening to honey bees? Scientists studying colony collapse disorder argue that a combination of factors could be causing bees to abandon their hives, including pesticide exposure, invasive parasitic mites, a nutritionally inadequate food supply, and severalviruses that targets bees’ immune systems.. NRDC is working to curb the use of the worst of those pesticides. Which pesticides should we try to avoid in our own gardens? Well, avoiding all pesticides is best. If you do use a pesticide, don’t use them in combination. The additive effects can be especially harmful. And it’s important to read labels and instructions on the products you do buy. Not only do you want to avoid the nastiest chemicals, you also want to avoid over-spraying. You don’t need to empty the whole can at once. If you read the label you will see that a small spray is plenty. Some pesticides are more toxic to bees and other beneficial insects than others. Four groups of chemicals are particularly harmful, so home gardeners should try to avoid them. They include clothianidin (commonly used on corn and canola), dinotefuran (used on cabbage, bell peppers, cotton, grapes, and melons), imidacloprid (used on cabbage, pumpkins, cotton, blueberries, citrus, grapes, and melons) and thiamethoxam (used on bell peppers, cotton, cantaloupes, cherries, pears, strawberries, watermelons). What is NRDC doing to try to curtail the use of pesticides that are harmful to bees and other beneficial insects? We’re trying to keep the worst ones off the market. About two years ago the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the use of a new type of pesticide, spirotetramat, which was marketed by Bayer under the trade names Movento and Ultor and interrupts the process of cell division in insects. Bayer applied for approval to use spirotetramat on crops including apples, pears, peaches, oranges, tomatoes, grapes, strawberries, almonds, and spinach. Beekeepers and scientists have expressed concern over Movento’s potential impact on beneficial insects such as honeybees. The pesticide impairs the insect’s ability to reproduce and the EPA’s review of Bayer’s scientific studies found that trace residues of Movento brought back to the hive could cause significant mortality in honeybee larvae. The approval process went forward without the advance notice and opportunity for public comment that is required by federal law and the EPA’s own regulations so NRDC filed suit. In December, a federal court in New York invalidated the approval and the ruling went into effect on January 15, making future sales of spirotetramat illegal. Sounds like we won’t have to worry about dousing backyard bees with spirotetramat. Any other tips for protecting bees at home? Do your best to turn your garden into a safe haven for insects. Use native plants that bloom throughout the growing season. That creates a healthy buffet of diverse nutrients for local pollinators. Creating nesting sites — remember that 95% of bees don’t sting! This is safe! — and water sources is also important. Avoid planting flowers that carry the label “Pollen Free”: the amount of pollen flowers produce is minimal, and believe me they are not the ones responsible for most allergies. Usually wind pollinated plants are the ones that trigger allergy symptoms since they produce massive amounts of pollen. Bees come to your garden to eat, so make sure you have some pollen for them. NRDC scientists have put together a series of additional tips and guidelines to help gardeners get started.
More here: NRDC: Why Insects Matter
Driven
Keeping Us Safe from Toxic Chemicals
Of the nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market today, only 200 have been tested for harmful effects. On September 29, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson released a set of principles that will guide the much-needed reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 and increase public confidence in the safety of chemicals that are produced and used in the United States. Principle #1: Chemicals should be reviewed against safety standards that are based on sound science and reflect risk-based criteria protective of human health and the environment…. The process of risk assessment has a checkered history. Some chemicals have been bogged down in the process for decades, despite clear evidence that they are dangerous. Meanwhile, people are still being exposed and harmed. We should have a quicker pathway to reduce human exposures to the most hazardous chemicals. Principle #3: Risk management decisions should take into account sensitive subpopulations, cost, availability of substitutes, and other relevant considerations. The requirement to consider costs could be a stumbling block to protecting sensitive groups, such as children. Other health laws, such as the Clean Air Act, explicitly state that health comes first. It’s okay for the EPA to consider costs, but an analysis that pits children’s health against economic interests would be a real mistake. Principle #4: Manufacturers and EPA should assess and act on priority chemicals, both existing and new, in a timely manner. There are dozens of chemicals we already know are bad for the public, the environment, or both. Think asbestos. For a long time, the EPA has been unable to ban most of its uses because of hurdles in the law. The EPA needs to be able to restrict or eliminate the use of chemicals that a lot of people are exposed to and that we know are dangerous. Principle #5: Green chemistry should be encouraged and provisions assuring transparency and public access to information should be strengthened…. Currently, there are no incentives for chemical manufacturers to develop so-called green chemicals — chemicals that are designed to be nontoxic to our health and to the environment. To create these incentives will be good not only for the economy but also for public health.
Continue here: Keeping Us Safe from Toxic Chemicals