Environment Memo

Pledging has an important history. For example, those ascribing to the Sullivan Principles pledged to not invest in South Africa during the days of apartheid.

Bear with me. Now, Americans for Tax Reform have their “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” which gets a lot of press these days because most Republican candidates have signed it.

Here’s an idea: how about a pledge to NOT accept money from ANY special interests, but ONLY from individuals in certain small amounts. Can’t we all agree to get the money out of politics?

Climate Progress has the story, also pointing out how Perry’s main contributor is the oil and gas industry.

A factory costing $1.2 billion to build in Dalian, China  is going to be relocated, after protests by

tens of thousands of students, white-collar workers and other residents of the affluent coastal city

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Wow, we see in the NYTimes, with respect to the DOE’s efforts to examine health effects of hydrofracking:

“It would be good to see the subcommittee make recognition of the strong state regulatory system,” said Erik Milito, upstream director at the American Petroleum Institute.

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This talk about building libertarian countries at sea has me wondering about law enforcement. They might not need armies, but they’ll likely need police.

Years back, a friend of mine suggested we see the movie, Barquero, which was not one of the best movies I’ve seen. Basically, things go to hell in a handbasket when the

barge operator, Travis, refuses to be bullied into providing transport for the gang

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So they want to create

floating libertarian countries in international waters

They’ve been looking at configurations, it seems. Ship, barge or semi-submersible? No self-respecting libertarian, with billions to donate, would go for something as prosaic as a barge, would they? Give me Verne’s Nautilus, dammit!  But that’s just me.

Still in all, nitty gritty factors such as water and sewage treatment don’t seem to have been examined yet by these pie-in-the-sea utopians. Being libertarians, maybe they won’t treat the sewage… they are trying to avoid pesky regulations, after all. But they will have to think about water for drinking. Surely they don’t want everybody puking over the side with some sort of nasty enteric disease. Wouldn’t look good at all.

As the report says,

As of last week, all that remained of the lake was a small pond a few feet deep, Cruz said. There were thousands of dead fish, he said, but no sign of life.
…
…  may not be a sign of the End Times, but probably is the end of a popular fishing and recreation spot.

Calling it “radioactive water” at Fukushima really does readers a disservice, because not only is it incorrect, it omits important implications of the problem.

Water is H2O, right, as we all know (I hope).  So H2O is only radioactive if one of the hydrogens or the oxygen atom is a radioisotope. What we have at Fukushima is water that is polluted (or contaminated) with radioisotopes. These radioisotopes don’t go away when the contaminated water is treated, they just are moved around and/or concentrated., and they still must be dealt with. Where they go following treatment of the water (or movement of the water, as with the leaks) is the key issue to follow.

But WSJ is not alone. For example, NPR reports that
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So, it’s official, there was a melt-down at Fukishima, although they are mincing words:

Japanese authorities have admitted the possibility that the fuel suffered “melt-through” …

Some are calling a “melt-down” something different than what I’m used to, as in the wikipedia entry:

Nuclear meltdown is an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating.

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