This week, we want to know your views on rising energy prices. But first, last week's results:

Last week, we asked you how often you watched television. The results were widely varied. 30% watched 3-5 hours per week; 23% watched none; 19% watched 1-2 hours per week, and 14% watch 6-10 hours per week and 10+ hours per week. For the record, I do not own a TV, but I do end up watching probably 1-2 hours per week.

This week, Would you be willing to permanently accept higher energy prices (gas, heating, electricity, etc…) if it meant stopping global warming and ending America's dependence on foreign oil? Voting begins in the sidebar on the left right now!

Ah yes. Sean Hannity has cracked the case: Al Gore and his friends on the "the global warming bandwagon" are to blame for the global food crisis. Watch, and be amused:

Take a peek at Think Progress for the real story.

Seminal readers, read anything interesting today?

When Mary Gade was appointed the Midwest EPA Administrator in September, 2006 she did something that the Bush Administration obviously didn't expect — She took her job seriously.  After decades of Dow Chemical dumping its toxic products into rivers nearby its Midland, Michigan plant, including Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. Dow has been avoiding its responsibility in cleaning up dioxin-poisoned soil and sediment in the 50 miles surrounding its plant for years, and after wrangling with Dow, and getting nowhere, Gade invoked "emergency powers" last summer so that she could order Dow to cleanup three of the worst dioxin "hotspots" affected by the dumping.  How bad was it?  Well the reporting in the Chicago Tribune explains:

…all along the two wide streams that cut through this old industrial town, signs warn people to keep off dioxin-contaminated riverbanks and to avoid eating fish pulled from the fast-moving waters. Officials have taken the swings down in one riverside park to discourage kids from playing there. Men in rubber boots and thick gloves occasionally knock on doors, asking residents whether they can dig up a little soil in the yard.

In January, when Dow was trying to cut a weak deal, Gade broke off negotiations.  So Dow did what any well-connected, irresponsible corporation would do — appeal to their friends in Washington.  According to letters obtained by the Chicago Tribune in a FOIA request (though the letters were highly redacted):

Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.

How toxic is dioxin? It is measured in the trillionths of a gram because it is so potent.  It "causes cancer and disrupts the immune system, even at very low levels."  And Dow knew in the 1960s just how dangerous it was,  and yet kept dumping it all the way to the mid-1980s.  So what is the justification Dow has used for avoiding a cleanup? Somehow they assert the contamination is  not a health threat to people or wildlife.

"There is all of this mystique about dioxin," said John Musser, a Dow spokesman. "Just because it's there doesn't mean there is an imminent health threat."

Amazing how health threats are not imminent when Dow would have to pay for the consequences of its own actions.

So after doing her job and trying to get Dow to actually follow the law and take responsibility, Gade had her administrative powers taken away by the national EPA and told that she should resign by June 1st or be fired.  She resigned immediately.  Why was Gade hired in the first place if she wasn't expected to actually enforce the law?  Well in her previous life she was a corporate attorney representing companies like Dow. Both Dow and Washington were surprised when she decided to actually aggressively pursue the cleanup.

"We have a responsibility to make sure people are living in a healthy and safe environment," Gade said. "This problem has been out there for more than 30 years, and it's unconscionable that action hasn't been taken."

A couple months ago I posted about how the EPA overruled its own experts and denied California's plan to address greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Well this pattern of using politics, rather than science, to create rules and justify actions by the EPA has infected the agency to a dangerous degree, according to a new report. The Union of Concerned Scientists, concerned about how the EPA's decisions "have too often led to the suppression and the distortion of the scientific findings underlying those decisions," took on the task of investigating the treatment of EPA scientists and how their work was used. After a comprehensive survey of over 1500 EPA scientists, UCS found that 60% of the had encountered at least one instance of political interference in the previous five years. Of the scientists who had been with the EPA for at least 10 years, 43% say that the interference has gotten worse in the last half decade.

The report on the investigation, which was released last week, shows a chilling pattern of scientists' conclusions and recommendations being edited improperly, being misrepresented by EPA officials, and being changed to weaken or transform the results. The pattern of the Bush EPA was to politicize the agency rather than allow it to perform its intended functions. Other examples of the extent of this interference include:

18 percent of scientists had "personally experienced frequent or occasional edits… that change the meaning of scientific findings"

22 percent had "personally experienced frequent or occasional selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome."

42 percent knew of "many or some cases in which commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of EPA scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention"

43 percent knew of "many or some cases in which EPA political appointees were inappropriately involved in scientific decisions

31 percent personally experienced "frequent or occasional statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists' findings.

The UCS went further to illustrate its survey's findings with actual examples of political interference. The report is ripe with a number of instances in which the White House, OMB or EPA political appointees tried to influence or override the science involved in the EPA's work.

The [Office of Management and Budget] OMB has recently stepped beyond its role in reviewing the EPA's policies to review and manage the actual science underlying them…

In 2007 OMB analysts manipulated scientific knowledge about mortality arising from exposure to ground level ozone… The OMB has also interfered in the scientific basis for EPA policies on a rule regulating formaldehyde pollution from plywood plants… and a 2006 decision not to tighten the ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter…

Last week, I mentioned being of the opinion that a "solution" to a problem (e.g. crop-based biofuels in response to global warming) that creates a problem of comparable proportions (e.g. a global food crisis) is, in fact, no solution at all.

I also believe this to be true of nuclear power, yet another ill-conceived "solution" to the dual fossil fuel-shortage/climate change conundrum in which we presently find ourselves.

In fact, harnessing nuclear energy may qualify as an even stupider idea than harnessing biofuels, only because it represents humans' repeating the exact same mistakes they have made with respect to fossil fuels.

Here again, primarily for my own benefit, is a rapid review of human history: Humans discover what they believe to be an endless source of energy-intensive materials buried in the Earth, in the form of coal, natural gas, and crude oil. They begin extracting and burning these so-called "fossil fuels," slowly at first but then at an exponentially increasing pace, thereby growing a massive, unprecedented global economy. Then they realize these fossil fuels (a) are not in fact endless, and will soon run out, and (b) emit, when burned, gases with dangerous climate-warming potential, which are rapidly double-glazing and overheating the atmosphere in such a way that will soon make their planet uninhabitable.

"Shit," they say to themselves. "We're going to have to find another source of energy."

So what do they do? They look into the ground and find a different material, this time called uranium, which they again determine to be abundant in supply. They learn how to harness its energy, and when they discover it can be done without releasing any of those climate-warming gases, they cry "hallelujah!" They start extracting and using these new materials, slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly, giddy with the thought of switching their still-growing global economy over to nuclear power. (As they did with fossil fuels, they disregard the horrific environmental damage caused by uranium mining.) Humans forget, however, two important facts: (a) while abundant right now, this new material is not endless, with some predicting known resources running out in 70 years at current rates of extraction, and (b) while nuclear power plants do not produce climate-warming emissions, they do produce highly radioactive waste that can kill or mutate all life to which it is exposed for tens of thousands of years after extraction. Both the "source" and "sink" problems are repeated. Humans are back where they started — short on energy and inhabiting a profoundly polluted planet — except now nuclear weaponry is a perfected science.

I am of the opinion that a solution to a problem that creates a new problem of greater or similar proportion is, in fact, not a solution.

This most certainly applies to biofuels, one of humans most ill-conceived "solutions" to climate change to date (right up there with nuclear energy, the focus of the Seminal's special topics issue this month).

Environmentalists have warned for years that pursuing biofuels would spark global food shortages, as farmers around the world face pressure to convert their land from growing food to growing biofuels crops such as soy, corn, and sugarcane. Food shortages, they predicted, would in turn lead to rising food prices, mass hunger and starvation, and violence, on a scale that — when combined with the other negatives of biofuels — would completely negate their viability as a solution to global warming

And in what is easily the worst part of their jobs, environmentalists seem to have hit this one on the head.

Yesterday the World Bank announced that it is launching emergency measures to battle global food shortages, estimating that world food prices have increased by over 80% in the past three years and are putting 100 million people in jeopardy of starvation.

What's more, in recent weeks high food prices have led to violence in Egypt, the Philippines, Haiti, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, though many are predicting these are just the beginning.

This week, news sources around the world have reported a global food crisis. The top reasons cited for increased food prices are the following (and they are impossible to rank):

• biofuels, competing for arable land
• increased price of energy, important for agricultural inputs and transporting food
• climate change, affecting yields
• economic growth in poor countries, leading to greater demand for food and energy

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see these problems are profoundly interconnected.

Mostly for my own benefit, I'd just like to break this down. Petroleum fuels economic (and thus population) growth, but unfortunately it leads to global warming and decreased petroleum reserves. In an attempt to address both problems without compromising growth, humans start "growing" their fuel. When this seems to work, they decide to grow more fuel, taking over the land where they used to grow their food. But they forgot that (a) growing and transporting fuel still requires using conventional energy sources, and (b) with economic growth comes greater need for both food and energy, and as demand starts to outstrip supply, the prices of both skyrocket. Making matters worse is climate change, one of our initial problems, which has already started depleting crop yields and thus accelerating increases in food prices. Humans are back where they started — facing energy shortages and global warming — only now they are hungry and violent as well.

I'm sure we all get the point. If we should take anything away from this week's news, it is that biofuels are not a solution to climate change. Not only do they exacerbate it by consuming fossil fuels, encouraging carbon-emitting deforestation, and perpetuating a false sense of economic growth, but they are creating a whole new crisis of global proportions

Most children can identify over 1,000 Corporate Logos but fewer than 10 native plants and animals. In the country of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Teddy Roosevelt, this is not acceptable. This problem stems primarily from a lack of adequate funding for environmental education, as provided by No Child Left Behind. Another problem with NCLB is the emphasis on math and reading, which has the effect of shortchanging environmental education.

To follow-up on Ian's post from earlier today, check out who won this year's Foolies, awarded by the Energy Action Coalition "in recognition of the world's biggest contributors to our global addiction to fossil fuels".

Don't miss the lifetime achievement awards toward the bottom. Bush and Cheney make quite an award-winning duo!

Representative Ed Markey (D-MA), as Chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, called for this week's hearing on "Drilling for Answers on Oil and Gas Prices, Profits, and Alternatives," to question the chief executives of the major oil and gas companies on gas prices and other topics. Some things we learned:

• When asked by Markey how much ExxonMobil invested in researching renewable energy last year, Senior VP J.S. Simon mentioned $100 million for Stanford to study the subject. ExxonMobil's profits last year — $40 billion.
• The total profits from the five major oil companies in 2007 was $123 billion, and they still got an $18 billion tax subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer. The House of Representatives has twice passed bills to revoke these subsidies but they have gotten in the Senate. The panel warned the Committee of the dangers of "raising taxes" on an industry that helps drive the economy and employs so many people.
• Jay Inslee (D-WA) asked the witnesses if they or anyone in their companies participated in Vice-president Cheney's secret Energy Task Force meetings, they all said "No" except Robert Malone, Chairman and President of BP America who said he did. Inslee asked for, and Malone agreed to provide any documents he has regarding those meetings. Weren't from the Administration that these meetings even took place? When the Committee gets those documents, that should be interesting.
• Under questioning from Inslee, ExxonMobil's Simon stated that there are other ways, other than research funds into clean energy, to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, such as making the use of oil more efficient. Then Inslee asked how these alternatives would be discovered — invoking the premise that maybe the "oil fairy" would provide them.
• Inslee also read the conclusions from a study out of Stanford that reported the U.S. could replace all on-road vehicles with battery electric vehicles powered by 71,000 to 122,000 Five-Megawatt wind turbines (less than the 300,000 airplanes built in WWII) and by using these vehicles could reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by 25.5%.
• When asking Simon whether this is where a greater portion of their profits should go rather than ExxonMobil's current "pathetically small research budget", Simon argued that ExxonMobil is doing a lot, that Inslee would be impressed to learn about their "Global Climate and Energy Project," and said that he thought Inslee would find it "quite significant." The problem: Inslee mentioned that the Committee actually did ask ExxonMobil to provide information on the investments they were making in this area, and they refused to give it.

It seems that every week the agency officially known as the Environmental Protection Agency acts more like the Environmental Polluters Agency. The EPA under the Bush Administration has focused on weakening regulations, over the objections of experts, and defending those who believe that saving the environment is simply bad economics.

Easing Proposed Smog Rules

Every five years the EPA is supposed to revise its limits on smog-forming ozone depending on whether current standards are adequate. About a year ago the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee unanimously recommended that the standard for ozone be lowered to 60 parts per billion, but certainly no more than 70 parts per billion. Ozone, which is formed by certain pollutants released by industry and motor vehicles, is a major factor in respiratory illnesses. So the EPA, being pressure by the White House, especially the Office of Management and Budget, forced the EPA to have limits at 75 parts per billion. Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post has done the best reporting on the topic, and she examined memos and documents that showed that the White House was annoyed that they couldn't use costs as a factor when determining the acceptable levels. She notes the consequences of the different standards:

EPA and other scientists have shown that ozone has a direct impact on rates of heart and respiratory disease and resulting premature deaths. The agency calculates that the new standard of 75 ppb would prevent 1,300 to 3,500 premature deaths a year, whereas 65 ppb would avoid 3,000 to 9,200 deaths annually.