The last nuclear power plant in California, vulnerable to earthquakes and priced out of the energy market by cheaper renewables, is slated to close in three years.
But now both Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration, citing the specious notion that nuclear power is needed to help address the climate crisis, are poised to give the plant’s owner billions of taxpayer dollars to keep it open. It’s a really bad idea.
Many decades ago, my mother-in-law set an example I aim to follow: As an activist challenging certain government policies, she centered all her work on a foundational question: Is it good for the children?
Now I’m doing the same, working through a group in the San Francisco Bay area to raise awareness about ties between childhood diseases and pesticides and the growing economic and social burdens we all bear from overuse of these chemicals.
In 2012, The American Academy of Pediatrics urged policymakers to do more to protect children from pesticides. Yet, a decade little, our regulators have virtually ignored this plea.
Our food supply needs pesticides – it’s as simple as that. Without access to these tools, US and global agriculture could not sustainably feed the world. Furthermore, attempts to do so would likely lead to environmental catastrophe. It is true that some production methods, such as organic, may use fewer pesticides than conventional agriculture—although, even organic producers can and do use some pesticides. However, contrary to popular belief, pesticides are responsible for significantly improving environmental outcomes in agriculture.
A 2021 meta-analysis found conventional crops averaged a 25% greater yield than their organic counterparts, with cereal crops reaching a 30% average yield gap. This means if we were to switch our entire food production system to organic, we would need to put at least 25% more land—hundreds of millions of acres—into agricultural production to feed the planet’s existing population, to say nothing of a rapidly growing global population. Pesticides also make possible many important conservation practices used by farmers, such as cover crops and no-till soil management. These pesticide-supported practices sequester carbon in the soil, reduce soil erosion, minimize nutrient losses to rivers and streams, among other benefits.
In September 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood amid the devastation of a wildfire that ultimately burned more than 300,000 acres, incinerated entire towns, and killed 16 people. His voice hoarse in a ghastly gray air, the governor spoke angrily.
“This a climate damn emergency,” Newsom said. “Mother Nature bats last and she bats 1,000. The debate is over around climate change.” Newsom said the state’s ambitious goals for slashing greenhouse emissions were “nice,” but not enough: “We have to step up our game.”
California has long been lauded as a leader in the fight against the most severe harms of the climate crisis — and rightly so. On multiple fronts, the state has been outpacing its neighbors for years in pursuing a range of protective strategies.
In June, Newsom signed a state budget allocating $54 billion — more than a sixth of total spending — to programs to “protect Californians from the impacts of climate change, help forge an oil-free future and tackle pollution.”
But while the talk is strong, the implementation is not and the disturbing fact is that California has fallen well behind on achieving its climate goals.
Earlier this month, a court decision about a chemical called glyphosate garnered headlines in newspapers across the country. And rightly so: glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. The pesticide is sprayed on roughly 285 million U.S. acres, and is so popular globally that it is the world’s most widely used herbicide.
For decades, Monsanto and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have assured us that glyphosate herbicides are safe. But those assurances have increasingly come under challenge by evolving science.
By Scott Faber
America’s infant formula shortage has raised urgent questions about the safety of our food supply. Most Americans believe America has the safest food supply in the world. But, the tragic failure to address contaminated infant formula as well as a hard-hitting investigation about the failures at FDA’s food safety division has revealed dangerous holes in our food safety net.
By Lisa Linowes
There is no question that the iconic North Atlantic right whale is at the brink of extinction; fewer than 370 remain on planet earth. Any additional negative impacts on the whale could easily spell its doom.
By Jon Heylings
From 1986 until 2008, I worked as the lead scientist on a project aimed at creating a “safer” paraquat-based weed killing product for what was then known as the ICI Central Toxicology Laboratory, which became part of Syngenta AG in 2000.
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