What Supreme Court ruling on GMO crops means

Yesterday, the Supreme Court made its first-ever ruling on genetically engineered crops. Agribiz flaks and environmentalists are arguing over just how pro-corporate the ruling — which lifted an injunction against the USDA from allowing limited plantings of Monsanto's Roundup-Ready alfalfa before filing a complete EIR — was.

One thing's for sure: GMO crops continue to expand in the U.S., despite persistent and widespread public discomfort.

Agribusiness giant Monsanto is the main purveyor of genetically engineered seeds. Alfalfa is the fourth crop it has introduced in "Roudup Ready" format — engineered to withstand application of the company's own herbicide, Roundup. Crops that survive weed-killer are gross enough, but consider, too, that with every seed Monsanto sells it boosts demand for its toxic product and exerts significant control over how farmers farm, because Monsanto bull-doggedly defends its patent on Roundup Ready seeds.

To wit, U.S. farmers spent about $17 billion on seeds last year, 56 percent more than they did in 2006, according to the USDA. Since 2000, the number of independent seed companies has shrunk by two-thirds to just 100.

If you don't pity the poor farmer, think of yourself. More than 90 percent of U.S. soybeans are Monsanto's TM. 85 percent of cornfields planted are also genetically engineered, courtesy of Monsanto.

The company uses its patent to block researchers from studying the crops' potential effects on human health, but it can't hide the growth of superweeds that are immune to Roundup, forcing farmers to use even more toxic herbicides in 22 states, including California.

The USDA was found to have illegally approved Roundup Ready alfalfa, a finding that even the corporate-friendly Supreme Court — which included Clarence Thomas, once Monsanto's house counsel, who declined to recuse himself — didn't question. But the high court did grant the USDA authority to approve limited use of the crop before its final EIR has been filed.

The USDA continues its love affair with GMOs, saying on Monday that it was on track to approve the crop in time for next spring's planting.

Posted By: Cameron Scott (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | June 22 2010 at 11:49 AM

Top 10 environmental stories of 2009

The environment is a single system—something which can easily be lost given our focus on national and state borders and the boundary between water and land. That interconnectedness makes the case for an annual roundup of the most important developments affecting the planetary ecosystem.

10. California land conservation deals. Here's a case of the silver lining: As real estate prices plunged, conservation groups found they could afford to buy wild lands to preserve them. The long fought-over Franklin Canyon was snatched from the jaws of development, and a deal was finally struck for the natural Eden along the Sonoma coast. Sierra meadows were secured to unite protected parcels, and the waterways of Shasta Big Springs Ranch were set aside to help revive salmon runs.

9. "Climate Gate." This story was mostly a Balloon Boy tale: no there there (TGL has debunked it in two recent posts). But it revealed the lengths to which climate deniers continue to go to seed doubt about the climate which is already changing. Yet, to poke holes in the details of climate science by resorting to crime, exaggeration and drummed up media blitzes, like Balloon Boy's father, is essentially to concede the basic point: Science provides ample evidence that the planet is changing, and common sense dictates that we get off our duffs and do something.

8. Asian carp knocking at the door of the Great Lakes. This has been a dramatic but under-reported story. In the 1970s, Southern Fish farms imported the voracious Asian carp to clean up the muck in their ponds. The population took off and made its way up the Mississippi River watershed. The fish are now at the very gates to the Great Lakes, where they would likely wipe out huge swathes of the native fish population in the largest fresh water system on Earth. The Mississippi and the Great Lakes are not naturally connected, but a canal was built to facilitate shipping: In other words, this problem is 100 percent of our own making. Environmentalists and the state of Michigan want to see the canals shut to keep the carp out, and the case heads to the Supreme Court in 2010.

7. Battle over gray wolves. The wolves of the Rocky Mountains have been the focus of another great battle. Based on what court rulings have dubbed insufficient science, the Bush administration took the gray wolf off the endangered species list. The Obama administration surprised environmentalists by okaying the move. Two states have conducted wolf hunts, killing many wolves that generally live in Yellowstone National Park and have been the subjects of groundbreaking studies of the long-misunderstood species. A suit charging the government with delisting the wolves illegally will be heard in federal court in early 2010.

6. California water deal. Our great state has serious liquidity problems, in more senses than one. Although it didn't fix our budget problems (far from it), 2009 brought an historic deal that will begin to bring our water woes under control. But many important issues, including agriculture's unchallenged claim to the lion's share of the precious liquid, remain unresolved, so much work remains.

5. Beginning of the end of mountaintop removal mining? In September, the EPA ordered increased study for all mountaintop removal coal mining permits, citing possible violations of the Clean Air Act. Whether the nation continues to draw its power from coal or not, mountaintop removal is egregiously destructive and should be outlawed. Coal activists have sensed the increased momentum, organizing highly effective protests—sometimes with the help of celebrity scientist James Hansen and outright celebrity Daryl Hannah. Indeed, it's been a bad year for coal power in general: No new plants were built, and a controversial coal-friendly transmission line was cancelled just this week. A West Virginia study also showed that coal costs communities more than it gives them in jobs, striking a major blow to the industry's last great talking point.

4. EPA to regulate chemicals. While less dramatic, the EPA's move to regulate chemicals will have a greater impact on most of our lives. The vast majority of chemicals are regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which is such a weak law that the EPA hasn't even been able to ban asbestos. In San Francisco in October, EPA chief Lisa Jackson announced that the agency would be revamping the law. TGL offered a primer on what it will mean to consumers. Meanwhile, concerns about BPA continued to grow with study after study showing their harmful effects, particularly to babies and fetuses. And our chemical policy isn't entirely in the clear: The FDA is tasked with regulating BPA, for reasons that aren't entirely clear. That agency has repeatedly deemed the stuff safe.

3. Progress toward cap-and-trade legislation. The House passed historic (though flawed) climate legislation six months ago. The Senate's Republicans have thus far buried the bill in the Senate, but Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is backing a compromise bill. The EPA's finding that carbon dioxide jeopardizes human health also threatens the Senate with executive action should the body fail to act. Most Americans support the legislation.

2. Copenhagen talks. On the one hand historic—if only because the United States agreed to do something—and on the other, tragically insufficient, the Copenhagen talks were good drama, complete with leaked documents and plenty of finger pointing. The real outcome is this: It will have to be average citizens, not heads of state, that bring about real action on the climate. Welcome to the next decade.

1. Climate change. It's no longer an abstract threat; the planet is changing dramatically, refusing to wait for governments to get their acts together. The '00s were the hottest decade on record. The sixth great mass extinction is already underway, and several species—including polar bears, Adélie penguins, and the humble pica are already being decimated. Studies show that all species will have to shift their habitats rapidly northward and/or to higher elevations; those that can't will become extinct. Ice outside the Arctic is melting faster than previously expected, threatening to make predicted sea level changes look like child's play. Sea level along the East Coast is already rising significantly. Shifts in the ice are also affecting the building blocks of the marine food chain, which could mean nothing short of oceanic collapse. The increasing acidity of the ocean as a result of CO2 absorption also poses a serious threat to coral reefs, which provide habitat for a quarter of all marine life.

Posted By: Cameron Scott (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | December 31 2009 at 11:01 AM

Enviros: Worst. SCOTUS session. Ever.

The New York Times puts it this way:

"The Supreme Court heard five environmental law cases in the term that ended Monday, and environmental groups lost every time."

Among the court's rulings: the Navy can use sonar off California's coast; companies have narrow liability for toxic spills; the EPA can consider cost in determining how much to protect wildlife. Most egregious of all: a mining company can dump 200,000 gallons of toxic slurry a day into an Alaskan lake without violating the Clean Water Act, even though the action is expected to kill virtually all of Lower Slate Lake's aquatic life [ed. note: ?!?].

The Times, like the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin (who wrote The Nine), attributes the marked decline in the respect shown for environmental law to the influence of Chief Justice John Roberts.

Obama nominee Sandra Sotomayor is unlikely to shift the court on environmental issues. But, fortunately, there's some hope that a House bill introduced by Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Dave Reichert (R-WA) would overturn the court's death sentence for Lower Slate Lake.

Posted By: Cameron Scott (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | July 06 2009 at 12:19 PM

So What About The Whales?

The battle over the Navy's use of sonar pits the neocons against the environmentalists, and it turns out they're more similar than you might think.

It's worth noting that the Supreme Court decision did not in fact weigh the Navy's needs against the risk to whales. It rather deferred to the military, saying its claims to need the sonar should be taken at face value. Strangely, conservative head justice Roberts did question the Navy's own acknowledgment that its exercises would kill 170,000 marine mammals, suggesting that there was no evidence that sonar harmed the animals.

Roberts' decision is not unlike U.S. courts' acceptance at face value of the Bush administration's favorite court maneuver: the state secrets privilege, which they take to mean that judges are not even allowed to consider the evidence for fear of revealing state secrets and thereby harming national security. (I've written about use of this claim here.) The privilege was established by the case United States v. Reynolds, which serves as reminder enough for why it shouldn't be used: The military was sued by widows of victims of a plane crash who wanted to know what their husbands were doing aboard the aircraft. The government successfully avoided revealing anything about the crash. When the information relating to it—the so-called state secrets—was declassified 50 years later, it became clear that the military was simply trying to cover up the aircraft's shoddy maintenance record.

In the comments on the Chronicle's and L.A. Times' articles on the decision you see similar absolutism at work. AJ Watts wrote on the Times site:

I ask all of the naysayers which is more important and which would you choose in a life or death situation....a whale or or child or a grand-child (or another close relative)?

Many environmentalist commenters were just as absolutist. Permeant wrote on SFGate:

The pervasive destruction of wildlife is truly a human sickness. Some day soon there may be no wild animals, nor sustainable wild habitat. We may find at that point that the Earth is rather sad and unlivable. I'm guessing many already do.

Both types of comment are frequently echoed. But shouldn't the Supreme Court be able to go beyond these absolutes? After all, the choice really isn't between one whale and one child. The decision is how to regulate the Navy's use of sonar low-frequency sonar, which it claims to need to track silent submarines.

Here's Susan on the Times site:

It would seem that the Navy could train elsewhere during a season when a lot of whales are present. Would the data not be the same? Some sort of compromise could be reached that would benefit both whales and humans...We don't have to always kill our wildlife to carry on with our lives.

And then there are a few souls who ask what seems like an important question that got no attention that I know of in the Supreme Court decision: Which of our "enemies" has silent subs?

Here's Nigel, on the Times site, who claims to be Navy personnel:

What people don't understand is that America is the only country that has nuclear subs that run silently these days. All other countries have subs we can hear with conventional sonar. The public isn't being told the truth - that these exercises are unnecessary. This is a Neo-Con give-a-way just like the "missile defense shield". The tragedy is that the marine mammals are going to suffer needlessly.
Sign me,
Navy personnel

Candi, on SFGate, says that the Russians have silent subs which they could sell to "Iran, China Venezuela, Indonesia." I don't know who's right (Update: The Navy claimed China has operational silent subs, and N. Korea and Iran may or may not), but it's fascinating that just a few commenters thought to address this issue. We've become so locked into our fixed positions: national security at all costs, or environmental protections at all costs. But, as Heehau wrote on SFGate:

who is going to attack america using submarines? it's that likelihood that needs to get weighed against the likelihood of hurting whales and dolphins.

Some "national security" respondents seemed determined to invent unnamed enemies. Here's Whale Hatter [sic?]:

FOR ALL YOU PEOPLE THAT ARE SAYING THAT WE SHOULD STOP THE NAVY FROM USING SONAR. PACK YOUR BAGS NOW, BECAUSE YOU WILL BE LIVING WITH THE FISHES WHEN WE GET HIT FROM A TERRIOST ATTACK.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST IS NOT OUR ONLY THREAT.

No Terrorists wrote:

Since we don't eat whales or use their oil anymore what do we need them for? What we DO need is the Navy protecting our children from the terrorists. Thank God the supreme court can see through the tree huggers BS and keeps us safe!

Now, China or Russia might have nuclear subs, but I can assure you that terrorists do not.

Like many under-40 environmentalists, I think that the movement has failed thus far because the prospect of a planetary meltdown is just too scary for people to believe, and too overwhelming for them to act upon if they do. Yet, the very conservatives who call environmentalists whiners and fear-mongers are drawn to the same emotional notes. The difference seems to be that their call to action involves anger instead of compassion, which has seemingly made it more successful.

What do you think?

Posted By: Cameron Scott (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | November 13 2008 at 11:14 AM

Supreme Court Will Hear Sonar Case

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the government's appeal of February's circuit court ruling that the Navy cannot use sonar in its training exercises off the California coast when marine mammals are nearby.

The Navy admits that its use of sonar would "significantly disturb" approximately 170,000 marine mammals, but insists that it cannot conduct realistic training exercises without it. The Department of Defense has relied on an exemption to environmental laws for "military readiness" to continue using sonar.

The NRDC, which brought the suit against the Navy, pointed out that the court had recently rejected a similar claim from the administration that the military's need to hold "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay trumps the detainees' right to due process. "We expect that the Supreme Court will again hold that the military must obey our nation's laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act," an NRDC lawyer said.

A poll on the LA Times website shows 75 percent of readers siding with the whales over the Navy. Share your opinion in the comments.

Posted By: Cameron Scott (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | June 24 2008 at 09:57 AM