One of Lenore Skenazy’s readers, a kindergarten teacher in Wisconsin, says the list of things not allowed in the classroom without a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) at her school includes dish soap and baby wipes [Free-Range Kids; MSDS for dish soap from lakeland.edu and for baby wipes from schoolhealth.com]
Posts Tagged ‘environment’
Environment roundup
- Doughnut oil and the environment: NYT misses a story of unintended consequences [Ira Stoll, SmarterTimes]
- N.C.: “Guy Who Runs Wilderness Camp Told to Install Sprinklers, Use County Approved Lumber” [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
- “With Proposed Policy Change, EPA Fully Embraces Role of ‘Environmental Justice’ Advocate” [Cory Andrews, WLF]
- “While the taxes… are irritating, what has really killed my interest in expanding in California is the regulatory burden.” [Coyote on SLOLeaks blog; another California Coastal Commission horror story]
- Natural crop breeding = safe, biotech-assisted breeding = unsafe? Tale of the toxic potato teaches otherwise [Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing] (broken link fixed now)
- Peak Oil? Welcome instead to Trough Oil, as titanic new fossil fuel supplies begin coming online [Andrew Sullivan]
- Deregulation of accessory dwellings is a reform both free-marketeers and New Urbanists in search of density can get behind [David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington]
OMG NYT OKs GMOs
“[T]here is no reliable evidence that genetically modified foods now on the market pose any risk to consumers,” says an editorial in, of all places, the New York Times. [“Why Label Genetically Engineered Food?“]
And while on the subject of publications outperforming expectations, Slate features a sober look at “cancer clusters,” with George Johnson reviewing a new book on the Toms River, N.J. episode.
Maryland roundup
- Legislature won’t pass dram shop liability, lawyers ask Maryland high court to do so instead [Frederick News-Post]
- In St. Mary’s County, new visitor rules for elementary schools ban hugging or giving homemade food to any but own kid [Southern Maryland News]
- Progress: Maryland Senate votes to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana [NBC Washington]
- If it’ll take $1 million for Somerset County (pop. 26,000) to cut stormwater nitrogen runoff by 145 pounds, how’s it going to manage to cut 37,000 pounds? [AP]
- “Fracking Moratorium Falls One Vote Short of Passing Key Senate Committee” [Chestertown Spy] “Bill was more about preventing fracking than studying it.” [@ToddEberly]
- Department of Truly Dreadful Ideas: Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery) continues to push bill to establish state-owned bank [Baltimore Business Journal]
- Website attacking Montgomery County’s Valerie Ervin has some union fingerprints [WaPo] Sen. Brinkley blasts union bill to make all Md. teachers pay agency fees [Maryland Reporter]
- Video interview with Hudson attorney George Ritchie on Waterkeeper v. Hudson Farm case [Center Maryland, earlier]
- Added: “Md. Senate votes to outlaw smoking in cars with young children as passengers” [WaPo just now]
CEQA and California’s “reputation as a lousy place to do business”
A highly placed Democrat in Sacramento is acknowledging the problems with the state’s environmental-review law, which empowers complainants to stop, slow down or drive up the cost of new development projects. Among those who’ve learned to turn CEQA to their own uses: NIMBY-minded neighbors, business competitors seeking to hobble rivals, and unions looking for a shakedown tool. [Los Angeles Times]
Environment roundup
- Judge Kozinski, writing for Ninth Circuit panel, declares Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s harassment of whaling ships to fall under piracy law as covered by international treaty [Trial Insider, Julian Ku, Kevin Jon Heller, Eugene Kontorovich and more and yet more, SSCS’s black skull flag via Wikipedia]
- California Assemblyman Mike Gatto [D-Silver Lake] introduces AB 227, which would reform notorious Prop 65 by giving business 14 days to fix lack of warning before entitling lawyer to bounty [his blog, Dem caucus, Burbank Leader]
- Unintended, unsanitary consequences of plastic bag bans (Ramesh Ponnuru/ Bloomberg) And theft too? [Seattle Times]
- Writer who joined the circus for several days reports on Ringling Bros. elephant controversy: [Bill McMorris/Washington Free Beacon (quotes me), earlier]
- Study finds new CAFE fuel economy standards far less efficient than taxes in promoting conservation [Alex Tabarrok]
- Now Mark Bittman is being alarmist about cosmetics [ACSH, background]
- Overcriminalization looms large for Gulf Coast outdoor businesses, says TPPF’s Vikrant Reddy [FoxNews]
Next, Col. Sanders’ grandkids bankroll PETA
Report: Rockefeller family foundations have given millions to anti-fossil-fuel activist Bill McKibben [Vivian Krause, Financial Post (Canada)]
Indiana: “Couple Faces Jail Time For Nursing Deer Back To Health”
“The Indianapolis Star reports that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources wants to prosecute Jeff and Jennifer Counceller for taking care of an injured deer that showed up on their doorstep.” [CBS Cleveland via Amy Alkon, Dan Mitchell] A while back I wrote about the case in which a Virginia family got in trouble with the feds after their 11-year-old rescued a baby woodpecker in their back yard and cared for it for a day or two before releasing it.
Plastic bag bans: $87,000 per seagull saved?
Media coverage of a new Jonathan Klick-Joshua Wright study has focused mostly on the evidence that reusable grocery bags are high-bacteria environments and likely vectors for foodborne illness, but Robert Anderson notices another striking conclusion: “The authors estimate that the additional deaths from the plastic bag ban value each saved animal at $87,500.” That estimate includes only actual deaths from foodborne illness, and not the cost of nonfatal illnesses. [Witnesseth]
Sensational new fraud allegations in Chevron-Ecuador case
Roger Parloff at Fortune on eye-popping new allegations in a case we’ve been following for a long time (e.g.):
In Manhattan federal district court this morning, Chevron filed the declaration of a former Ecuadorian judge, Alberto Guerra, who describes how he and a second former judge, Nicolás Zambrano, allegedly allowed the plaintiffs lawyers to ghostwrite their entire 188-page, $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron [in the Lago Agrio environmental litigation] in exchange for a promise of $500,000 from the anticipated recovery.
The bribery charge is completely new, and the ghostwriting charge is more sweeping and better substantiated than before.
Since some readers may be having a hard time keeping all the case’s scandals straight, here’s a précis. Chevron has now presented evidence of two distinct, large-scale, ghostwriting frauds which, among other problems, it maintains, taint the Ecuadorian judgment.
Complicating Chevron’s claims of vindication — and opening an avenue for the plaintiff’s camp to argue against giving any credence to the new allegations — the oil company acknowledges that it has made and intends to go on making payments of “living expenses” to the former Ecuadorian judge, now resident with his family in the United States. Read the whole thing here.
More from Kevin Williamson at National Review Online:
Curious fact: As a senator, Barack Obama did see fit to intervene in the Chevron case — on the side of the Ecuadoran government. After meeting with an old basketball buddy — the abovementioned Mr. Donziger, who stands to make billions of dollars as the plaintiffs’ attorney in the case — Barack Obama wrote a letter to the U.S. trade representative arguing that Ecuador’s actions should not be held against the regime when negotiating trade privileges. Donziger, with the help of a $10,000-a-month lobbyist, also got Andrew Cuomo to threaten to intervene in the case, even though the jurisdiction of the Empire State stops well north of Ecuador.
Yet more: Daniel Fisher, Forbes.