Between the Lines: A Sweet Victory for Honeybees
Within a year after the EPA approved the pesticide spirotetramat, NRDC and the Xerces Society, a nonprofit that works to protect invertebrate wildlife, challenged the registration of this potentially harmful chemical. On December 23, 2009, a federal court in New York invalidated the agency’s approval of the chemical. Below, NRDC experts discuss the court ruling. For the past few years, U.S. beekeepers have, on average, lost about one-third of their bees annually. Many have lost entire populations. Although researchers still don’t understand the cause, they point to a perfect storm of pesticide contamination, parasites, habitat loss, and climate change. According to the EPA, the manufacturer’s own studies show that spirotetramat use is associated with increased mortality of honeybees and their brood. Now that the agency is redoing the registration process, it needs to take a detailed look at the environmental effects of this pesticide. When the EPA approved spirotetramat for use on hundreds of crops, it identified but ignored the serious risk of harm to bees, whose pollination is critical to our ecosystem and food supply. The lawsuit highlights the importance of considering the synergistic and long-term effects of such chemicals. In the scientific world, articles go through a peer-review process before publication to verify the quality of the work. The EPA should do the same. Public notice and comment periods are the only opportunity for all the stakeholders to review and critique the agency’s work. Without this, pesticide companies are left alone to influence the process of regulating their own products.
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Between the Lines: A Sweet Victory for Honeybees
NRDC in the News: Summer 2010
"’There’s…a right way and a wrong way of providing our nation’s future energy needs,’ said Wesley Warren, NRDC’s program director. ‘The right path is one that provides economic growth while providing economic protections.’" –From "Offshore Drilling: Impact on Americans," CNNMoney.com , April 1, 2010 "’Oil is semi-volatile, which means that it can evaporate into the air and create a heavy vapor that stays near the ground-in the human breathing zone,’ [said Gina Solomon, senior scientist at NRDC]….’I’m also worried about the cleanup workers….This cleanup needs to be done quickly, but it also needs to be done safely. Eleven workers are already dead from the explosion; let’s make sure worker and community health is protected from now on.’" –From "Burning Oil Sends Heavy Vapor Toward Gulf Residents," Grist.com , May 3, 2010 "’A lot of people think that conservation means you have to diminish your lifestyle,’ said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with NRDC who helped coordinate greening efforts for the [White House Correspondents] dinner. ‘[But] it’s a question of operating more efficiently and choosing environmentally better products.’" –From "At 96, White House Correspondents Association Goes Ecological," Politico , April 30, 2010
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NRDC in the News: Summer 2010
Letters from Our Readers: Summer 2010
Red, Blue, and Green I enjoyed "Renewable Energy Catches On in Red America," by Michael Behar (Spring 2010), but I am puzzled by people’s continuing tendency to think of one issue at a time, rather than to mobilize multipronged efforts for conservation. When choosing appropriate sites for solar panels, step one should be to ensure that no endangered species or critical habitat will be violated, and step two should be to consider local water needs, not just electricity. In areas around Tucson, where we expect to have significant water-supply issues in a few years, many people are beginning to harvest rainwater for various uses, while others are single-mindedly thinking about setting up large arrays of solar panels. If water people and power people would communicate with one another, they would realize that they could put gutters on solar panels and pipe off the rain to storage areas. In Tucson, which gets about 12 inches of rain a year, a square mile of solar panels could collect 208,529,432 gallons of water. Charles J. Cole Tucson, Arizona Although master planner Lorelei Oviatt correctly states that no condor has been killed by a wind farm, these birds are rapidly expanding their range toward the wind projects in Kern County, and the current fast pace of permitting turbines, especially on ridges and in condor habitat, increases the risk of this unfortunate event occurring. Audubon California urges Oviatt and Kern County to dedicate a portion of the tax resources from renewable energy development to a study of the cumulative impacts of all of the wind and solar energy projects in the county on birds, bats, and other biological resources as well as to a plan that can mitigate those effects. We need renewable energy, but not at any cost. We need it properly sited to minimize the impacts on wildlife. Garry George Chapter Network Director Audubon California Los Angeles, California Fuel for Thought There are a couple of points that could stand correction in "Driven," by Craig Canine (Spring 2010). Honda’s first automobile was not the N600 of 1970 (its first to be exported to the United States) but rather the S500 of 1964, a tiny sports car. And Honda’s 1984 CRX-HF was by no means the first mass-produced car capable of 50 miles per gallon. There was a raft of tiny cars available in Europe and Japan, some of which were exported in small quantities to the United States. Some of these two-cylinder, air-cooled cars could approach 60 miles per gallon under the right conditions. Jim Emerson Portland, Oregon Leftovers I’m amazed that Laura Wright, the author of "How to Wage War on Food Waste" (Spring 2010), and her husband, Peter, apparently do not possess a freezer! What’s left from our Thanksgiving bird (organic, free-range) gets segregated into white meat, dark meat, and carcass for soup, then dated and frozen in freezer bags whose crossed-out labels attest to their six or seven previous uses, ranging from blanched snow peas to leftover corn cut off the cobs from last summer’s garden to three-month-old spaghetti sauce. Likewise the whipped mashed potatoes, even though they’re not as good as the freshly made portion. The wilting greens and vegetables, once sautéed with onion and garlic, could thriftily serve as a soup base. I can’t speak to the half-used tubs of hummus; my heart is broken. But I too would toss the sour milk unless I was on the cusp of making corn bread. Anyway, the illustration is arresting. And I know the putative waste was to make a point. Maxine Kumin Warner, New Hampshire
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