The Past, Present, and Future of Environmental Justice

A celebration

This year marks a milestone for Environmental Justice in the U.S. It's been 20 years since the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ). The OEJ has been celebrating this anniversary with a series of 20th Anniversary Videos featuring stories and interviews with Environmental Justice leaders from communities, non-governmental organizations, and public institutions. Locally, we've also been celebrating the 20th anniversary of a Boston-based Environmental Justice organization - Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE). Since 1993, ACE has been both a local and a national leader for Environmental Justice, defending and promoting disadvantaged communities through a mix of legal and technical support, policy advocacy, and community organizing. Last week, ACE held a celebratory event entitled "An Evening for ACE" at the SEIU Local 615 headquarters in downtown Boston. The event brought together a panel of ACE's leaders: the original founders of ACE, Charlie Lord and Bill Shutkin, as well as the current Executive Director Kalila Barnett, former ED Penn Loh, and REEP alumnus and ACE board member Carlos Moreno. The event was moderated by Julian Agyeman. The event was well attended by longtime friends and supporters, as well as new friends and allies. A 20th anniversary is a good time to reminisce, take stock, and look to the future.

What EJ has wrought

The fundamental insight that the Environmental Justice movement has brought to environmental debates is simply this: not everyone is affected by environmental issues in the same way. This is the case for at least two reasons. Environmental burdens (and amenities) are almost never equally distributed. Since the late 1980s, a voluminous body of research has repeatedly shown that waste sites, noxious industry, and various other forms of environmentally degrading activity are often located in lower income communities and communities of color. The converse is often true too, such that the distribution of "good" things, like parks and trees, are often not in these same communities. Second, even when it appears that some environmental issues are equally distributed (at least geographically), there can still be inequity. We're all exposed to climate change, but we're not all equally vulnerable, and we're not all equally responsible.

A second big idea that EJ has drawn attention to (a public health perspective) is that "the environment" is "where we live, work and play." The environment is not just wilderness or the oceans or scenic landscapes. It is the day-to-day places occupied and used and built by people, and for most of humanity, this means urban environments. The result of this insight is "the environment" includes the environmental quality of homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods - and the infrastructure that makes human-environments function and liveable. And as the EJ movement has shown repeatedly, the environmental quality of "where we live, work and play" can vary enormously from community to community, whether we're talking about air pollution, solid waste management, access to quality schools or access to transportation. When we bring these two EJ insights together, what we have is a fundamentally social perspective on the environment - one that sees environmental quality as a reflection and a consequence of the relationships between people. Degraded environments and marginalized communities go hand in hand. Improving the environment does not just mean fixing environmental problems; it means changing the relationships between people. Improved public participation, more transparency by government and the private sector, fair and realistic opportunities for well being and economic security, and honest dialogues about social challenges, goals and needs - and of course, quality science.

Where we're going and what we need

At the ACE event, Professor Agyeman asked the panelists to talk about where they saw the EJ movement heading. What kinds of topics are drawing the EJ movement's interest now and into the foreseeable future? The panelists identified a number of topics and campaigns of growing interest: food justice, transportation justice, just sustainability, green justice, and economic justice. What's striking to me is how much more attention the EJ movement has placed on solutions-based or productive initiatives - programs to develop and promote positive or constructive change in marginalized communities and for the society at large. This is a significant change from the early EJ movement which was so focused (necessarily) on identifying problems and reacting to threats. But ACE's current ED, Kalila Barnett, struck a note of caution. She acknowledged the importance of the topics identified by the others, but she reminded us that the battles of the past are still with us. ACE and other EJ activists are still dealing with problems of localized air pollution, siting of noxious industry, waste siting, and discriminatory treatment. And while the Environmental Justice movement celebrates the anniversary of the founding of important institutions and organizations, its campaigns are still woefully under-funded. Environmental Justice has changed this country's environmental conversation, but it remains marginalized in support and funding in comparison to "mainstream" and environmental causes and organizations.

There is a lot to celebrate in the Environmental Justice movement, and there is a lot yet to be done. Leaders in the movement, like those highlighted by the EPA and by ACE, deserve our thanks and praise. For the movement to make positive change, we still need more people and organizations to step up. Thanks to those who have supported this cause and to those yet to do so. This is how we improve our environment and strengthen a movement and our society.

Recycling, Climate Change, and Youth

How young is too young to learn about greenhouse gas emissions, Life Cycle Analysis, and embodied energy?

This past Monday I had the opportunity to present these concepts to a group of 40 5th graders at Brickett Elementary School in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Their teacher, Donna Whalen, had invited me a couple months back to talk about recycling or climate change.  She and her class wanted to learn more about different environmental issues so that they could develop a public project to work on.  This was no small thing.

Mrs. Whalen and her industrious students are known regionally and nationally for their environmental activities. This past spring, Mrs. Whalen's 5th grade class won the Disney Planet Challenge for their project “Think Before You Idle,” which was an effort to decrease needless vehicle idling in Lynn. Their local initiative not only reduced this pernicious source of toxic air pollution near schools, it sent her and her students on a four-day trip to Disney World. Last year, Mrs. Whalen's 4th graders launched a campaign to educate residents about the need for rain barrels and convinced a local cable company to donate the use of one of its billboards to spread their message. The campaign earned them a visit by the Mayor of Lynn, and an official declaration of Monday as Rain Barrel Day in Lynn.  Two years ago, Mrs. Whalen's 4th grade class was recognized with a River Stewardship Award, and a state legislative citation, for their efforts to promote water conservation in Lynn and throughout the state. In fact, I first learned about Mrs. Whalen and her amazing students through a casual conversation with a member of the Saugus River Watershed Council during a regional climate change adaptation planning meeting convened by the Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council. This individual gushed about Mrs. Whalen and her students.

I'm not generally used to interacting with anyone younger than my cat (i.e. college aged), but this opportunity presented an interesting challenge. I could have talked either about recycling or climate change, but I offered to talk about the connections between these two important issues.

The main link between recycling and climate change is energy.  It takes less energy to make products from recycled materials than from virgin materials (a lot less in the case of aluminum).  The amount of energy expended in making products is significant because most of the energy we use (for heating, electricity, transportation, manufacturing) comes from burning fossil fuels (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas).   Using less energy means that we produce less carbon dioxide (CO₂) - the primary greenhouse gas implicated in human-driven climate change. Other greenhouse gases, such as methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O), are also reduced in certain cases as a result of reduced use of chemical manufacturing processes. Greenhouse gas emissions are the primary issue in global climate change. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have the property of allowing sunlight to enter the atmosphere (kind of like the glass of a greenhouse), while blocking (or retarding) the escape of heat back into space (kind of like a global blanket).  This "greenhouse effect" is a natural process, but human industrial activity over the past two centuries has released a lot more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than is normal (more than has been seen in 800,000 years), meaning that a lot more heat than normal has been retained in the atmosphere.  As a result, the world is warming, the climate is changing, and we are experiencing all kinds of hard-to-predict and often undesirable environmental changes.

In the spirit of show and tell, I showed and told my presentation using a few simple props: a glass drinking bottle, a plastic drinking bottle, an aluminum can, and a newspaper.  We talked about the life cycle of each of these products: how they are created (e.g. did you know plastic is made from oil and natural gas?), how they are used, and what can happen to them after we are done with them.  In each case, we identified the resource consumption (e.g. trees, minerals) and the energy use and the greenhouse gases emissions that happen in each phase of a product's life (e.g. did you know it takes 95% less energy to make aluminum cans from recycled aluminum?).  Recycling (as I showed them in a PowerPoint slide), changes the lives of these products in significant ways: reducing natural resource consumption (e.g. did you know it takes 17 trees to make one ton of newspaper?), saving landfill space, reducing energy use, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As a final exercise, we walked through the process of actually calculating the greenhouse emissions that could be prevented if their school recycled all of the glass bottles it consumed. For this last exercise, I had prepared a simple worksheet (although not so simple to produce!) that allowed them to input their own values.

I have to admit that as the day of my presentation approached, I grew increasingly nervous that my lesson plan would be too complex, or worse, too boring.  I am happy to report that my fears were groundless.  These students were really there with me the whole time.  They listened eagerly and had lots of really good, clarifying questions.  Which recycled product has the biggest impact on energy and greenhouse emissions? The least?  If plastic is made from oil, is it possible to get that oil back?  How do all those tons of gasses stay up in the atmosphere?  I was equally impressed by what they already knew - about natural resource consumption, about recycling, about pollution. When we walked through the exercise to calculate their school's greenhouse gas emissions from glass consumption, they called out the answers at each step, and even corrected me when I made a couple of mathematical mistakes. Whoa.

I feel compelled to point out that these students are from a largely non-White, and low income community. These are not privileged kids - or at least not from a socioeconomic perspective. They are, however, clearly advantaged by the quality of this teacher and this institution.

These young people (e.g. 8 - 9 years old) are also clearly capable of understanding and engaging with complex environmental topics.  They need to be.  The social and environmental challenges that face us will undoubtedly span generations, and these young people will inherit these problems, as will their children.  I am hoping that this type of education, and its level of sophistication, can become the new norm.  Understanding the importance of environmental stewardship the way we understand and teach about the importance of washing our hands - something based on decades of complex, scientific research, but in the end comes down to a simple idea: it's good for our own health and welfare and those around us.

The Food Project 20th Anniversary Gala

On Wednesday evening Neenah and I attended The Food Project's (TFP) 20th Anniversary gala "20 Years of Growing Together". It was a spectacular event. It was held at the WGBH studios in Brighton and the venue was packed with TFP staff, supporters, and guests, and food stations featuring locally grown cuisine (a good portion grown by TFP youth) prepared by some of the area's top eateries. The gala was a celebration of TFP's accomplishments and growth, and an invitation for continued support of this amazing organization.

The guest speakers for the event were Gordon Hamersley, one of the most respected chefs in Boston, and Frances Moore Lappé, author or co-author of 18 books including Diet for a Small Planet. However, I have to say that our emcee, Robert Lewis, Jr., VP for Programs at The Boston Foundation, really made the event. Toward the end of the night he acted as the auctioneer, helping to auction off a variety of donated items and services, from catered dinners prepared and served by TFP youth, to a beautiful quilt. Two things really struck me: One, I had never seen a man speak so quickly and think even faster on his feet. Two, the level of bidding quickly rose well beyond anything I would have imagined, and I think I wasn't the only one who kept stock still for fear of signaling a bid. But it was fun to watch and gratifying to see individuals with the means and desire to support The Food Project. Of course, TFP relies not just on big donors for support. This organization needs the support of many people, at all levels, to keep doing its work for another two decades.

Since 1991, The Food Project has engaged high school students from diverse neighborhoods across the greater Boston area to grow sustainable food, and through this activity, engage in both social and personal change. The youth who participate are placed in unusually responsible roles where they learn about the land, each other, and the environmental and social justice issues challenging our society - and ways to personally and collectively facilitate positive change. Food from the farms is distributed through TFP's community supported agriculture programs and farmers' markets, and donated to local hunger relief organizations.

TFP is an unusual organization that operates at the nexus of environment, youth, and community. I have been a member of the Board of Trustees of this organization for more than two years now, and I invite you to learn about this wonderful organization and its good works. You can learn more at http://thefoodproject.org/. To contribute to or get involved with the The Food Project, visit http://thefoodproject.org/get-involved.

New England Environmental Justice Summit

On Saturday, June 9 I attended the first New England Environmental Justice Summit, which was convened at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was a day-long event to connect community activists and residents, environmental justice advocates, lawyers, and policymakers from all six New England States who are interested in the environment and public health in low income communities and communities of color. This was a significant event to create a regional consciousness and network around environmental justice in New England. This event was two years in the making and credit goes to the core partners who pulled it off:

• Norbert Kovacs, Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice
• Sheri Neely, Fairfield County Environmental Justice Network
• Staci Rubin, Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE)
• Steve Fischbach, Rhode Island Legal Services

The day started off with a hearty breakfast, a welcome from youth organizers, and then opening comments from two officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Curt Spalding, Administrator for EPA's New England Region (Region 1), and Lisa Garcia, Senior Advisor to the Administrator for Environmental Justice. The EPA speakers affirmed their support for environmental justice work, citing a number of national initiatives (Plan EJ 2014, Partnership for Sustainable Communities, Healthy Communities Map (EJView Mapper) and local accomplishments (Fairmont Line in Boston), and assured everyone that environmental justice is EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's top priority.

Energy Justice

After the opening comments, I attended the workshop on "Fairness & Energy Justice." Facilitator Rev. Bob Murphy from Cape Cod introduced us to the concept of "energy justice" and asserted that "Energy is a human rights issue." The goal of energy justice, he explained, is "to provide all people, in all places, with an adequate supply of energy that is safe, affordable, and sustainable." Energy, like most basics in life (i.e. food, clothing, shelter), is both vital and dangerously scarce for low income households and communities. Lack of access to safe, affordable, and sustainable energy creates all kinds of hardships: hypothermia in the winter, hyperthermia in the summer (not just uncomfortable, but deadly for the very young and old, as well as those with chronic diseases), and of course, economic strain.

We heard from three speakers on different energy justice issues. Judy Diamondstone and Scott Guzman from Worcester Energy Barnraisers talked about their organization's work to promote environmental sustainability as well as social and economic justice though collaborative home energy efficiency projects. Their modus operandi is an energy barn-raising - an event where the community gets together and spends the day working to weatherize a house, making it more energy-efficient. They've modeled their work on that done by HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team) in Cambridge. It's worth noting that Massachusetts already has a state ratepayer-funded program in which utilities collect a fee from all customers in order to fund energy efficiency upgrades and weatherization projects. Through the MassSave program, homeowners can get a free "energy audit" and qualify for a variety of free or subsidized efficiency and weatherization improvements: CFL bulbs, door sweeps, weather stripping around windows and doors, insulation of walls. The problem is that the contractors for this program will not work on homes that are complicated by "pre-weatherization" issues: where there is knob and tube wiring, a dirt basement floor, asbestos, or mold. These "pre-weatherization" issues are common in old homes throughout New England, and especially so in lower income homes. The result is that households that could use this help the most are essentially shut out of the benefits of this program (which, it should be remembered, they have paid into through their utility bills). Judy and Scott argued that advocates need to promote funding to address these issues so that these program benefits can be realized for those who most need them. Worcester Energy Barnraisers attempt to fill this gap in Worcester by doing work that MassSave contractors will not.

Other issues stymie these public programs for weatherization. The households most in need of weatherization (to save money, improve their quality of life, and promote energy sustainability) are renters. However, renters have little incentive or authority to invest in a building that do they do not own. Landlords often have little incentive either, especially if energy costs are passed on to renters. Advocates who work on these energy justice issues suspect that, as a result of these and other barriers, the benefits of rate-payer funded energy efficiency programs are being largely or entirely captured by middle and upper-middle income homeowners. This is a potentially serious and regressive public policy problem. However, the data to evaluate the situation are hard to come by. Utilities and contractors that implement these programs have been reluctant to share their data.

Dan Gilbarg of the Coalition for Social Justice and Coalition Against Poverty (CSJ & CAP) spoke about his organization's work with with the Green Justice Coalition to push utilities and the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Advisory Council to create a publicly accessible database that would allow the public, and especially energy justice advocates, to monitor how these public energy efficiency programs are being implemented, who is benefiting, what neighborhoods are or are not being served, etc. There is a bill pending in the state House Ways and Means Committee to create such a database. I and my student Adam Kohn (who just graduated) have been working on this very same issue, interviewing Massachusetts community organizations involved with energy issues to understand their energy data needs and barriers to energy program implementation. I will post more on our work later.

Dan was joined by Kate Archand, a community activist from Brockton, Massachusetts, who spoke about her organization's efforts to prevent the siting of a fossil fuel-fired power plant in Brockton. Citing a report by Dr. Danny Faber at Northeastern University, Kate pointed out that Brockton is the 9th most environmentally overburdened state in the Commonwealth and one of the top four in terms of asthma rates. The fight over this power plant has been going on for more than five years at this point, and has drawn in numerous community and environmental justice organizations from around the state. CSJ & CAP, in collaboration with StopthePower, have worked to keep residents in Brockton informed about the positions of their elected officials regarding the power plant."

The state of environmental justice

After the morning session, Danny Faber reviewed the current environmental justice issues facing Massachusetts and the country. He argued that the GOP has launched an unprecedented attack on environmental policies, regulations and institutions, and the movement for environmental justice itself. At the same time, the forces that create environmental injustices are still at work, targeting and exploiting communities that are fragmented by race, ethnicity, and language. Drawing largely on his 2005 report, Unequal Exposure to Ecological Hazards, he rattled off a variety of statistics about the very inequitable distribution of environmental burdens in Massachusetts. Although inequitable burden is the quintessential environmental injustice, Faber asserted that the goal of environmental justice is not for everyone to be polluted equally. Rather, it is to prevent anyone from being polluted. He argued that environmental justice communities need to align themselves with all communities, including more privileged communities, in order to make headway. This is a positive argument that he makes eloquently in his 2008 book Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice. I reviewed this book for the Northeastern Geographer. As I noted in the review, Faber's message is positive, but it is still problematic because he essentially asks the environmental justice community to abandon its focus on institutional discrimination and to focus instead on a class-based, political economic identity.

Safe Housing

After lunch I attended the afternoon workshop "Healthy Housing: A Way to Connect Rural & Urban EJ." This workshop was led by Laura Brion, Childhood Lead Action Project in Providence, Rhode Island, Mary Sliney, from the The Way Home in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Meghaan Tollman from Visible Community in Lewiston, Maine. They each talked about their program work, which revolved largely around safe and affordable housing issues in urban communities: lead contamination, dealing with bed bug infestations, support for immigrant residents, dealing with city government and landlords. The take-home message was about the value of community organizing as an effective and efficient way to deliver services, to educate community members, and of course, to mobilize residents for policy and political action.

Community and Government dialogue

Following the afternoon workshop, everyone reconvened in the main hall for a government and community dialogue. Federal (EPA, HUD, FEMA) and state government representatives sat on the platform along with a group of community representatives to discuss questions from the community. The questions were overly general, as were the answers. It is clearly important for the community to have informal and safe settings to interact with government officials and kudos to the organizers for arranging this opportunity. There is still a lot of distrust and misunderstanding and I could hear it from the community members and activists around me. A lot of work to do still.

Updates on the status and upcoming activities of this New England Environmental Justice coalition can be found at neej.wikidot.com and on New England Environmental Justice Forum on Facebook.

Counting Trees

On Friday morning I attended an informational session on the current tree inventory that is being conducted for the City of Chelsea. The inventory is being led by the Urban Ecology Institute (UEI), though it includes a variety of other governmental and non-profit participants. The tree inventory is a count of street trees only, although aerial imagery is being analyzed at the University of Vermont to calculate total canopy coverage for the whole city. The survey is not complete yet, but preliminary results seem to show that Chelsea is seriously lacking in tree coverage - about 9% of the city's area is covered by tree canopy, compared to Boston's average of 29%. It is worth noting, however, that East Boston (where this author lives) had a calculated tree canopy coverage of only 6% when Boston's tree inventory was completed in 2006. The lowest in the city.

The vegetative cover in urban areas is vitally important for the healthy functioning of the city itself (i.e. mitigating storm runoff, moderating temperature extremes, reducing air pollution), as well as quality of life issues. Interestingly, the analysis for Boston, and the soon-to-be-released report on Chelsea, reveal the potential for a substantial increase in vegetative cover.

In 2007, the City of Boston announced a plan to plant 100,000 trees by 2020 with the goal of increasing the city's canopy coverage from 29% to 35%. While ambitious, it seems that Boston's goals are quite tame in comparison to other cities' tree planting programs.

The tree survey of Boston, and the one going on in Chelsea, are focused on street trees. However, according to UEI's John Walkey, Director of the Sustainable Cities program, street trees represent only 8% of the city's canopy coverage. The rest is on private property. This presents an interesting problem for devising policies to increase canopy coverage.

Food, the Environment and Justice

This year's theme for Earth Days at Salem State College was "Food, the Environment and Justice." It was a timely theme. Debates over the impacts of ethanol fuel production on food availability and habitat around the world, the threat of hunger from sky rocketing food prices, anxiety over genetically modified organisms, increasing concern over globalized food distribution networks with minimal accountability and maximum distance, have made food a prominent concern within environmental and political and energy and economic debates, to name only a few domains.

The Earth Day celebration is nearly four decades old now, and it has served as an opportunity to celebrate the importance of a healthy Earth. At SSC, Earth Day has also served as a unique opportunity to bring the academic community together around a common cause. On Monday, April 14, 2008, over 100 students displayed 80 posters on an incredible array of topics. Equally impressive, we had 32 faculty from 10 different disciplines acting as poster judges, as well as over 30 members on the non-campus community. For the second year in a row, Earth Days at SSC also featured a juried art exhibit - hence the killer tomato.

The next day Professor Jamie Wilson and I hosted a viewing of the documentary King Corn on Central Campus. Student attendance wasn't as good as we would have liked, BUT we had unexpected visitors. Becky Ellis, the aunt of Ian Cheney (co-producer and co-star of King Corn), came to the viewing with a friend. She lives in Marblehead. Very pleasant woman. We had a great discussion after the film. She suggested that we contact Ian because he lives in Boston. Excellent idea.

Touring Our Backyard

For the fourth year in a row, students from Renaissance College at the University of New Brunswick and students from the Department of Geography at Salem State College came together for a common experience. This year it was Salem's turn to host a visit for our Canadian colleagues. And this year, our group was taken on an Environmental Justice tour of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Roseann Bongiovanni, Chelsea City Councilor and Associate Executive Director of The Chelsea Collaborative, acted as our guide and host.

Chelsea is less than 15 miles from Salem, but it might as well be on the other side of the country. Chelsea is a small city - only 1.8 square miles - but this small city shoulders a heavy burden for the region.

Chelsea is host to over 70% of New England's heating fuel, 100% of the jet fuel for nearby Logan International Airport, a literal (uncovered) mountain of road salt for over 200 New England cities and towns, oil storage tanks holding 22 billion gallons of oil, and countless other environmental insults. Chelsea is a lower income community with a large population of immigrants and minorities. The concentration of environmental burdens and the lower socioeconomic status of its residents are not random coincidence. This is a pattern repeated throughout the country.

Roseann led our busload of 40 students and faculty throughout the city while she narrated about the social and environmental challenges that this small city and its residents have faced, today and in the past. But it hasn't been all woe and disappointment. In fact, Chelsea residents have been increasingly active in taking control of their city. The Chelsea Collaborative has organized the community to demand more responsible behavior by its corporate neighbors, and pushed for fairer treatment by those who would otherwise take advantage.

Last year, Energy Management Inc. (EMI) proposed the construction of a diesel-fired peaking power plant in Chelsea - across the street from the Burke Elementary School complex which houses four schools and more than 1,300 students. Aside from insult, the irony/hypocrisy of this proposal is that EMI has simultaneously been struggling to locate the nation's first offshore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod and Nantucket. While the nation's wealthiest (e.g., Kennedys) have raged against the installation of renewable, clean energy, Chelsea gets an old-fashioned fossil-fueled power plant. However, Chelsea residents did not take this lying down. After months of aggressive and strategic organizing and demonstrating, EMI was forced to withdraw its proposal (see "Power Plant Withdraws, City Cheers," Boston Globe 11/18/2007).

While Chelsea remains a largely industrial and working class city, changes are afoot. Roseann arranged for our group to visit the Forbes Park project (still under construction). Blair, the project developer, conducted this leg of our tour. Forbes Park will be a 'green' loft community built atop what used to be an old lithograph factory. Complete with its own wind turbine, restored marshlands, and naturally insulated lofts (no need for air conditioning), it promises to introduce a new level of sustainable development. Of course, these lofts will be largely out of reach for most Chelsea residents - prices beginning in the $300,000 range. Students picked up on this issue fairly quickly.

When the tour was complete, we headed back to Salem to regroup and discuss what we had experienced. Students had been previously assigned to various stakeholder groups (i.e., developers, government officials, community residents, etc.) and were asked to consider Chelsea's issues from their respective positions. The discussion was interesting - students picked out the complicated, seemingly intractable issues facing the city. However, finding problems is always easier than finding solutions. It's important to remember that despite numerous obstacles, residents have battled the odds and made progress. This is one of the things that made our tour particularly powerful - not just an exposure to depressing problems in a marginalized community, but a tour of an ongoing project to make things better.

The Artwork of Science

On Tuesday, March 18, 2008, our own Dr. Stephen Young opened a unique art exhibit entitled "Earth Exposed" at the Winfisky Gallery at Salem State College. The exhibit features a wide array of aerial and satellite-based imagery of the earth, from urbanized, coastal Salem, to the so-familiar arm of the Cape, to dendritic patterns of a delta in southeast Asia.

But these are more than simply pictures from high up. These are uniquely strange perspectives of the familiar. The images range from panchromatic black and white, to wildly bright and bold pinks and purples and fuschias. These are not the hues of the landscapes we know. Rather, this is the earth through the eyes of instruments that record what human eyes could not otherwise see - invisible brightnesses and energies that reveal natural forces and processes that are no less real for having been missed before. And this is where science meets art. Within science, these images are important for the data they contain, for the information that can be gleaned. But they are beautiful too. The familiar is made exotic and alien. The organic fluidity and symmetry compel the viewer to think he is looking at some kind of organism. Maybe he is.


On December 24, 1968, astronaut William Anders snapped a photo of Earth from lunar orbit and changed history. The photo, entitled "Earthrise," was described by photographer Galen Rowell as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Indeed, this one photograph of a planet has often been credited with altering the consciousness of an entire world. It was hard to believe that all of human history, and all humanity's future, rested on something so fragile and small. This iconic image offered a warning and hope of unity in tumultuous times.

Since that time, there have been significant advances in technologies that have allowed us to acquire so many more images of Earth. You might expect fascination to wane. But it hasn't. The "Earth Exposed" exhibit was well attended by students, faculty and administrators, as well as members of the community. The imagery is still fascinating and compelling.

But it's worth remembering that this kind of imagery, and this exhibit in particular, is not simply about abstracted beauty. There is a message here, and there is information with very practical and immediate relevance. The "Bye Bye Salem - Hello Salem Harbor Islands" series is a deceptively benign set of panchromatic aerial images of Salem and its harbor. But what these images show in stark black and white is the gradual disappearance of Salem beneath a rising ink black ocean. This is the message and the warning of our times, once again communicated through imagery.

Biofuels Are No Free Lunch

It appears that the promise of biofuels for curbing carbon dioxide emissions and weaning America off of its dependence on foreign oil has some complications. Many of these complications have to do with the the interdependencies of a globalized world, and they have to do with the hard lesson that solutions to one problem often create other kinds of problems, or simply shift the original problem somewhere else.

Biofuels - fuels derived from plant products such as corn, soy or palm oil - have a lot going for them on the face of it. With minimal processing, most vehicles can run on gasoline or diesel that has some proportion of vegetable-derived fuel, such as ethanol. Ethanol has been particularly important as a replacement for the fuel additive MTBE, which while increasing fuel efficiency and reducing air pollution, has the annoying habit of contaminating vast areas of surface and groundwater. MTBE was itself originally a replacement for lead in gasoline. Lead is bad. Of course, lead itself was originally added to gasoline in order to increase octane and reduce engine knocking, and interestingly, to help gasoline compete with ethanol as a viable fuel! That's another story (see "The Secret History of Lead," The Nation Mar 2000), but it brings us back to ethanol.

The initial (and ongoing) excitement around the potential for biofuels led the U.S. Congress to pass The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which, among many other things, requires a dramatic increase in the mixing of biofuels with gasoline sold in the U.S., and a tripling of domestic production of biofuels by 2012. The European Union (EU) similarly set a target of getting 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants. For both the EU and the U.S., biofuels offer a way of reducing dependence on foreign oil, reducing air pollution, and reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (which contributes to global climate change).

A number of things have turned up to dampen some of the initial enthusiasm for biofuels as panacea. Recent studies by leading academics and scientific organizations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have found that increasing production of biofuels may actually contribute more to the release of carbon dioxide and lead to worsening environmental damage. Specifically, if one takes into account the full energy-intensive process of modern agriculture, refining of the fuel, and transport, then biofuels may be no better, and in some cases, even worse, than conventional fuels. At the same time, incentives to grow more crops for biofuel production mean that more land must be brought into production. Bringing new land into farm production often means habitat loss, and habitat loss is second only to climate change as a leading environmental concern (see "Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat," NYT Feb 8, 2008).

What's particularly interesting to me, however, is the way increased production of biofuels ramifies throughout the world. The push to produce biofuels has greatly increased the value of the crops used to produce biofuels, many of which are also food crops. This may be good for farmers, both here and abroad, because it means more income for a commodity in higher demand. However, the farmer's gain may be the consumer's loss. Higher food prices are particularly hard on poor people who must inevitably spend a greater proportion of their income on food than the more privileged. This is what is known as a 'regressive' economic impact. Increased food prices are a serious reality (see "A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill," NYT Mar 9, 2008; also see "Surging costs of groceries hit home," Boston Globe Mar 9, 2008).

The relationship between biofuel production and food is particularly striking in less developed countries. The soaring price of palm oil has hit the poor in places like India, Malaysia, and Indonesia particularly hard. Palm oil is a significant source of calories and nutrients for the less wealthy in tropical parts of the world, and it is one of the most costly. Palm oil is also one of the most sought after sources of biofuel and the most productive. An acre of palms produces 8 times as much oil as an acre of soy. Palm oil prices have increased by 70% over the last year. The increased price and the resulting diversion of palm oil from food to fuel has meant higher prices and less availability. The economic incentive of palm oil production has also encouraged growers to bring more land into production, which has meant an accelerated rate of deforestation in tropical parts of the world (see "A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories," NYT Jan 19, 2008). Loss of tropical forest threatens wildlife, such as Orangutans in Borneo (watch "Palm oil demand threatening wildlife," BBC Mar 2006).

Environmental changes in tropical parts of the world are not just a threat to the non-human environment; they also threaten the livelihoods of people dependent on natural resources. Human rights and environmental advocacy groups issued reports showing that indigenous groups in Indonesia are being negatively impacted by the expansion of palm oil farms, both through loss of forest and expropriation of land (see "Biofuel demand leading to human rights abuses, report claims," The Guardian Feb 11, 2008). The EU has taken both environmental and human rights issues surrounding biofuel production quite seriously. It is seeking to encourage the use of "sustainable" biofuel production (see "EU promises sustainable plant fuel," BBC News Jan 14, 2008).

To be fair, the negative news about biofuel does not necessarily mean that it is a lost cause. In fact, there is considerable room for improvement through increased technological efficiencies as well as decisions about which plant products to use (e.g., non-food plants). Clearly, however, biofuels are not a panacea, because there is no such thing as a panacea. On a more positive note, however, the negative attention to biofuels has highlighted global interdependencies, which involve not just markets, and environmental conditions, but also social conditions and issues of justice. These are the things with which a more globalized, and globally aware, world must contend.

This Blur's For You

Since 9/11, security has become the watchword of the nation, though the initial hysteria has begun to abate somewhat. However, one of the ongoing casualties of the crusade for hyper-security has been access to once-public information. Maps and mappable information have been primary targets. The blurred image comes from Google Maps, and is an apparent attempt to hide the Salem Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant in Salem, Massachusetts. This is not unusual. In fact, one Wikipedia entry has managed to create a lengthy list of sites throughout the world that appear to have been censored by Google Maps - blurred or conspicuously missing imagery (see "Satellite map images with missing or unclear data"). Google has been largely silent about this practice in the U.S., though some governments (e.g., India) have been very public about asking Google to blur images of sensitive sites. At least one local politician in New York is also calling on Google to blur aerial imagery of sensitive military and government sites. There is also evidence that Google may be altering aerial imagery of sensitive commercial sites, such as areas where genetically modified crops are grown (see "What Google Won't Map," Gridskipper).

It's difficult if not impossible to know what kinds of geographic data have been censored or even deemed censor-worthy, either by government or other institutions. In July 2006, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP),which provides the framework for how all levels of government and the private sector will manage the protection of the nation's critical infrastructure and key resources. An important part of this framework is the designation of what actually constitutes "critical infrastructure." In fact, it wasn't long before DHS came under withering criticism by its own Office of Inspector General, as well as Congress, for the NIPP's overly expansive definition of "critical infrastructure." As Senator Barbara Boxer of California put it, "I would love to provide protection for every activity in America, but the reality is that we need to set priorities" (see "DHS Officials Quarrel Over Internal Report," RCR Wireless News 07/24/2006).

The lack of a coherent national policy has not stopped government agencies from implementing their own ad hoc procedures. A recent report by NPR featured the struggle between a computer consultant and the state of Connecticut over access to GIS maps of water and sewer systems in the towns of Greenwich and Stamford (see "Security Officials Seek to Block Some Online Maps" NPR 10/8/ 2007). Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission ruled that such data were too sensitive, and that the towns could only release maps without sewer and water systems, fire hydrants and man holes. Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the state's GIS dissemination agency MassGIS has implemented minimal security protocol around certain GIS data sets. Users wanting to download GIS data of large hazardous waste generators must first fill out a request, which includes detailed contact information, before being sent a link to enable download of the data.

MassGIS's approach is not too different from policies set in place by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII), which FERC defines as "existing and proposed systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, the incapacity or destruction of which would negatively affect security, economic security, public health or safety, or any combination of those matters." That's about as specific as they get (see "FERC Tries to Strike a Fine Balance," Electric Utility Week 11/13/2006). Moreover, FERC allows utilities - whether private or publicly owned - to define for themselves what should be classified as CEII when those entities submit required documentation and information. This loose discretion, and the overzealous application of the CEII designation, actually worked against FERC and the energy industry in at least one case. California officials recently nixed a $700 million liquefied natural gas terminal proposed by Sound Energy Solutions (SES) because neither FERC nor SES were forthcoming with all of the information needed to complete the final Environmental Impact Report (see "Long Beach LNG terminal dead in water after officials end environmental review," Gas Market Report 01/26/2007).

It's worth remembering that there is social value, including safety and security, in public access to information about critical infrastructure and even hazardous or dangerous facilities. Some of the most important laws and traditions around public access in the U.S. were founded specifically on concerns about safety and security. In December 1984, a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India blew up, releasing a deadly cloud of methyl isocyanate gas that killed over 20,000 people in the surrounding community, and permanently maimed up to 100,000 others. It was (and still is) the worst industrial disaster in history. A host of factors were involved in the making of this catastrophe, but one of them was the complete ignorance of anyone outside of the plant about what was going on inside the plant (including local officials). A sister facility in Institute, West Virginia experienced a comparatively minor incident at about the same time (sending 134 people to the hospital), but the horror of Bhopal had already set the world on edge. In the U.S., the federal government and the public were still reeling from the drama at Love Canal and the discovery of previously uncounted and hidden sources of hazardous chemicals throughout the country. As a result, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986, which established requirements for emergency planning and reporting on hazardous and toxic chemicals. This legislation required facilities storing or handling potentially hazardous materials to report this information to State Emergency Response Commissions, Local Emergency Planning Committees, and local fire departments. In addition, it created a toxic release inventory (TRI) system that enabled the the tracking and monitoring of chemicals and facilities throughout the country. The TRI and other EPCRA provisions have been some of the most important tools for researchers as well as public health and safety officials. An enormous volume of environmental health and safety research and planning has relied on regular access to mappable TRI data. More importantly, this legislation recognized and institutionalized the right of communities and the public to have access to information about activities with health and safety implications.

On the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy in 2004, two EPA officials reflected on the evolution of incident prevention and response at chemical facilities over the last two decades. They argued that Bhopal and 9/11 were the transformative events, both of which highlighted the issue of safety and security, but with diametrically opposed results (see "The Post-Bhopal and Post-9/11 Transformations in Chemical Emergency Prevention and Response Policy in the United States"). It is an odd twist of circumstances that public disclosure, once touted as the mechanism to promote safety and security, could so quickly be relabeled as a threat to security.