The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (15 page)

If oceanic fish farms that grow carnivorous
fish such as salmon [53] and shrimp are considered they have many
of the same problems caused by over crowding as their land based
cousins. Generally the fish pens are located in estuaries that are
important spawning and growth areas for wild juvenile fish. They
are also frequently established in prime habitat locations where
the large fish like to congregate. Further problems arise from the
highly concentrated captive fish populations in these areas which
become heavily contaminated by feces and rotting fish food that
falls to the bottom polluting the environment and depriving the
wild fish populations use of these spaces. The farmed fish have
also become incubators of diseases and pests such as sea lice which
attach themselves to the fish and gradually eat them. In order to
control the frequently occurring diseases in these facilities large
quantities of antibiotics are used in the same way as in land based
CAFO's. As a result of the frequent widespread usage of antibiotics
in these operations, experts in the medical community are
expressing concerns about the likelihood of the production of
antibiotic resistant microbes. The appearance of resistant microbes
can render these important therapeutic agents ineffective for use
in the human population. The fish that are used in fish farming are
specially bred for commercially desirable traits. The traits that
are being fostered in these fish reduces their viability in a wild
environment. They are not the same as wild fish. When the fish
farming industry was becoming established they were questioned
about the potential of farmed fish escaping and genetically
contaminating wild stocks. The industry responses indicated that it
would not be a problem, but guess what, the wild fish populations
are being genetically contaminated by escapees. Recently Atlantic
salmon farms were started in the Pacific Ocean with the same
assurances, guess what, these fish escaped too. [54] Another
problem is that carnivorous fish require other fish to eat, for
example, it takes 3 kg of food to produce 1 kg of salmon.

53. Salmon are the most prevalent of the
farmed oceanic carnivorous fish, more recently cod and blue fin
tuna are also starting to be farmed by the Norwegians and
Australians respectively.

54. It should be noted that the Atlantic
salmon are much different than the Pacific salmon, it is unknown
what effects the introduction of these foreign fish will
produce.

Now people are fishing for the smaller fish
to feed to the farmed fish further depleting food sources both for
human beings and the wild fish populations. Much of the small fish
such as sardines and pilchards that are used to produce fish meal
for the carnivorous farmed fish is currently caught off the west
coast of Africa. The people who live in these areas are desperately
poor and have relied upon these small fish as an important dietary
resource. The African fishermen use traditional small boat fishing
methods that can not compete with large state of the art ships
equipped with the latest fish location and capturing technology.
Thus, a local resource that was sustainably fished and provided
much needed food in Africa has been co-opted to provide an
inefficient source of food for upscale western and Japanese
consumption.

Why have CAFO's made their appearance in
recent decades when traditional farming practices have existed for
thousands of years without them? The reason is that it is supported
by subsidies that favor large industrial agribusiness. For example,
much of the cattle in the US is finished in feed lots (generally
smaller animals are purchased from starter operations) where they
are fed food principally composed of field corn which is also a
subsidized crop. Excessive amounts of corn is not good for cattle
since their digestive systems are adapted to eating grasses (they
can only survive on a diet of corn for about 3 months), however, it
does make them gain weight rapidly. As a result of over crowding
and the type of diet used in these facilities they have a high rate
of illnesses. In order to keep them from succumbing to these
illnesses their feed is laced with antibiotics, again medical
experts are warning that this will produce antibiotic resistant
strains of microbes. These operations are also the beneficiaries of
petroleum subsidies, it takes 284 gallons of oil to support a cow
that is raised this way. We went from having a system of animal
husbandry where the cow would be left out to graze by themselves
often times on marginal grassland unsuited to crop production, to
one that consumes huge amounts of food produced on prime
agricultural land (most of the crops grown in the US are used for
animal feed). Essentially what has been accomplished is a switch
from a solar powered food system to a fossil fuel powered means of
food production that increases pollutants and health risks!

Mining
: In general mining is
characterized by extraction of the nonrenewable resources for metal
ore, coal, gems, and salts. [55] The process of mining usually
produces large excavations, toxic byproducts such as mining
tailings and processing agents which are frequently stored in
retention basins similar to the ones described for CAFO's. These
residues of the mining process generally produce large scale
environmental degradation that is costly to mitigate. As much of
these costs as possible are externalized by the owners to fall upon
tax payers and also members of the surrounding communities who
often have to live and deal with the engendered environmental
problems. For example, if hard rock mining for minerals are
considered, in the United States the owners of the older mines are
long gone leaving the entire clean up costs to the taxpayer. More
recently the government has required these companies to post bonds
for anticipated clean up costs, however, the assessment of the
clean up costs are left to the mining companies. At the present
time, the clean up bonds are generally under funded by 1 ½ to 2
times and 10 times if acid [56] is being produced by the
percolation of water through the defunct mine. The current tab that
US taxpayers will have to pay is $12 billion for the clean up of
mine residues.

55. If the final condition of nonrenewable
depletion of the mined resource is considered, this concept can be
extended to other resources such as soil, plant, animal and marine
organisms, for example, the passenger pigeon was hunted to
extinction and was “mined out” or the desertification of a once
productive area.

56. Sulfuric acid (battery acid) is a strong
acid which is formed in the mine and drains out into the water shed
producing severe environmental problems such as large kills of
aquatic life.

The strategy the mine owners have employed to
evade clean up costs is to award themselves with dividends in order
to remove any accessible cash, shift any other valuable assets into
other businesses they own, and then declare bankruptcy. For
example, Galactic Resources located in Colorado was gold mining
using a method to produce gold by employing the heap–leach
technique which uses cyanide to extract the gold from the ore. The
highly toxic byproducts this process produces including cyanide
residues are stored in retention basins. According to the estimate
made by Galactic Resources for the cost of clean-up they provided a
$4.5 million clean–up bond. Eventually their heap-leach retention
basin overflowed causing wide spread damage to the surrounding
areas. The cost to the Government was $180 million for the clean
up. The government sued Galactic Resources who declared bankruptcy
in 1992 following the pattern described above. The Government did
manage to recover an additional $28 million from the bankruptcy,
leaving $147.5 million for the taxpayer to pay and a degraded
environment for the surrounding communities. The Indians in the
United States have emerged as a formidable counter force to
forestall this type of exploitation by the multinational mining
industry. In 1975 Exxon tried to establish the Crandon zinc –
copper mine using the heap-leach method in Wisconsin near the
Chippewa Indian reservation which is located a mile down stream on
the Wolf river, one of the few remaining pristine rivers. The river
is the source of water needed for the growth of wild rice, which is
an important source of food and also for the Chippewa's cultural
activities. The Chippewa resisted the establishment of the Crandon
mine and Exxon shelved the project in the mid 1980's. In 1993 Exxon
returned along with their Canadian based Mining partner Rio Algon
to establish the mine. However, by 1993 the Chippewa along with the
other nearby Indian tribes (Menominee, Pottawatomie, and Mohican)
had become much more savvy when dealing with the government and
news media as a result of the Indian rights movement. They also had
established tribe owned gambling establishments which provided the
financial resources to contest the issue. While the mining case was
wending it's way through the courts, the Indians received
clarification on their treaty rights which granted them the power
to classify water and air purity according to EPA standards. [57]
The tribes promptly classified these resources to the high EPA
purity levels which precluded the establishment of a mine upstream
from the reservation which would have degraded their water to a
lower standard. They also formed alliances with nearby non-tribal
communities, environmental organizations, unions, and the sport
fishing groups who realized that if the mine became operational it
would have severe negative impacts upon the fisheries. Exxon/Algon
tried to outmaneuver the local opposition by hatching a secret deal
in 1996 to allow mining with the town board of nearby Nashville
which was illegal. [58] They also sought to influence the state
legislature by utilizing the largest business lobby and hiring
James Klauser a well connected former Exxon lobbyist to undermine
the tribes treaty rights. Another maneuver they tried was to offer
the tribal leadership money to “lease” the tribes treaty rights.
The Nashville Town board was replaced in 1997 and the mining
agreement was rescinded in 1998. This wasn't the end though; the
legal battles continued until 28 October 2003 and the courts found
in favor of the Indian Tribes. The Chippewa and Pottawatomie Indian
tribes also jointly purchased the 5000 acre mining site for $16.5
million and divided ownership between the two tribes to preclude
any future mining on the site concluding the 28 year struggle.

Coal mines in the United States are currently
producing around1 1/8 billion tonnes of coal each year, almost all
of which is consumed to produce electrical power. [59]

57. The treaties between the US Government
and the Native Americans does not grant mineral rights to the
tribes.

58. Closed meetings are illegal.

59. In 2005 coal produced 40 % of all
electricity produced world wide (7,344 TWh, a TWh is 1trillion watt
hours of electricity). To produce this electricity 7,856 billion
tonnes of CO2 was produced, 30% of CO2 emissions. An additional
3,124 billion tonnes of CO2 were produced by its use in industry,
transportation,space heating, and agriculture bringing the total to
41 % of CO2 emissions world wide.

The combustion of the coal produces a number
of toxic waste products and fly ash. Mining of coal is also highly
destructive to the environment. It produces large scale
environmental disruption from the excavation process, tailings, and
large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane.

The pollutants produced by coal are comprised
of acids, particulate matter, heavy metals such as mercury,
selenium, cadmium, lead, arsenic, and the gasses carbon dioxide,
methane, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The sulfur dioxide
after it enters the atmosphere is comprised of particulates and
also is transformed into sulfuric acid by coming into contact with
the moisture and oxygen present in the air. The air born Nitrogen
oxides combine with volatile organic compounds to form
particulates, smog, and ozone. In the 1950's researchers
established the linkage between coal combustion emissions and
increased rates of mortality which from that time until several
decades ago was about 50,000 deaths / year with an additional 5,000
deaths /year as a result of the inhalation of particles in mines
which produced the incurable and often fatal black lung disease.
According to a paper published in 2011 by Epstein et. al., of the
Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global
Environmentxl the number of fatalities has dropped to around 24,000
/ year [60] as a result of the addition of 105 scrubbers. In this
paper the externalized costs being picked up by the public are
estimated and totaled then added to the cost of electricity to
arrive at what the actual costs / kilo watt hour (kWh) is. Since
this is the latest comprehensive peer reviewed body of information
currently available I will quote their summary of the findings
[61]:

Category.........................................................Estimated
Costs in 2008 (USD)

Land Disturbance Carbon &
Methane.......................$2.2 Billion

Public Health Burden in

Appalachian
Communities.........................................$74.6
Billion

Fatalities Among the Public due

to Coal transport by
RAIL..........................................$1.8 Billion

Emission of Air Pollutants from
Combustion.............$187.5 Billion

Mercury
Impacts.........................................................$5.5
Billion

Subsidies.....................................................................$3.2
Billion

Abandoned Mine
lands...............................................$8.8
Billion

Climate Contribution from
Combustion.....................$61.7 Billion

Total: $345 Billion

If these costs were added to the amount
currently being charged for electricity it would increase the cost
of electrical power by $0.18 per kWh. For example, if you are
currently paying $0.08 per kWh the true cost of electricity would
be $0.26 per kWh with out the externalized costs which we are
indirectly paying anyhow,
coal is not a low cost
source of energy but one of the most expensive and by far the most
destructive.