What are we doing to our children

I grew up in rural Illinois... at least through attending the 8th grade. Then we left Illinois for Flagstaff, AZ because I was developing asthma and N. Arizona's dry climate was supposed to good for me. I hope that this gives me a greater sympathy for the children who now have to endure the same illness.

I recently posted about the toxic city designation for Bakersfield and Fresno. That same designation could have been applied to a number of other areas in the San Joaquin Valley had the list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas not been limited.

This all makes me wonder exactly what the Republican members of the House of Representatives are doing with their attacks on the EPA and it's efforts to clean up America's air. Joe Romm had a re-post (from NRDC Switchboard) today at Climate Progress entitled Fred Upton's bizarre ware on 24 million children with asthma.

Just about every major health group in the United States is now telling Chairman Upton that he is putting the welfare of millions of Americans at risk who suffer from asthma (that’s 24 million people right there – including seven million children!) and other respiratory diseases.

I started to pay attention to Chris Mooney after he wrote The Republican War on Science back in 2005. Mooney continues to blog about the intersection of science and policy. It seems that the war is not over and that Upton considers our children to be just collateral damage.

California has it's own Upton's. Their names might be Darrell Issa or Buck McKeon. For a party that still talks of "family values" it appears that these Republicans are only talking about voting adults.

Time for Greens to get Down and Dirty

Once again I am going back to a subject that has bewildered me since I began this blog, most recently here. I have just never figured out exactly why the Green Party of CA has not made more of an organizing effort in the Central Valley. My point has always been that this is where Greens have solutions to the very real problems the everyone is experiencing.

Today, I offer one more reason that we need to be working our buts off there. Forbes magazine has released (as of 2/28/2011) a study that lists the 10 most toxic cities in the United States. Anyone who has really experienced life in the Central Valley would not be surprised to learn that there are two CA cities in the top 5. Bakersfield and Fresno are listed as numbers 2 and 3 respectively. In both cities, poor air quality was a major factor.

Another study, released in 2006 from CSU-Fullerton put the cost of poor air quality in the San Joaquin Valley at $3 Billion. That was when the economy was good and there could have been some revenue to fix things. Now, the only fix might be to organize, because all solution are political and never more so the the current Republican attacks on the EPA.

This is what CSU-Fullerton study team found:

According to the study, the cost of air pollution averages $1,000 per person per year, and represents the following:

* 460 premature deaths among those age 30 and older
* 23,300 asthma attacks
* 188,000 days of school absences
* 3,230 cases of acute bronchitis in children
* 3,000 lost work days
* 325 new cases of chronic bronchitis
* 188,400 days of reduced activity in adults
* 260 hospital admissions
* More than 17,000 days of respiratory symptoms in children

Greens are always sensitive to ethnic issue, so we should not be surprised to learn that…

The report indicates that some communities, including those with high populations of Latinos/Hispanics and African-Americans, are harder hit than others, due to the varying concentrations of dirty air around the region.

This seems to define the mileau in which the vision of a new Green future would win many adherents, but sadly this has not been the case. Kern County, where Bakersfield is located, has only 0.2% of the registered voters. Fresno County is better, with around 0.4% but neither of these is really more than embarrassment to mention.

I believe that this is not due to the fact that our message is wrong, but rather that we have never even gotten our message out. If the current politics of the San Joaquin Valley is such that it allows two of it's most important cities to become so toxic, then it is time to change the politics.

Greens can not wait for some group of like minded public citizens to decide to form a local and then come to the GPCA for support. We need to be organizing the organizing. We need to look to the history of the unions for the model. They did not gain strength by workers rallying around to join them, but rather they sent out organizers to make sure things happened. Fresno needs to understand that we are there, we are not going away and we intend to change things. Bakersfield needs to understand that we will not allow, as some have reported, workers to lose their jobs by registering Green, but rather that registering Green in the only way to make sure that they get off the toxic cities list.

What I would like to happen is for the GPCA to set aside $5,000 for radio & TV campaign in those two markets and let them all know we are there as long as it is need. Then to follow that up with large scale registration drives in each city, even if we have to bus in volunteers. And, I think that the effort should be approved at the next General Assembly.

None of this will happen if we don't raise the money to make it happen. This week, I donated $150 by clicking on the Donate Button on the GPCA web site. They set a really low goal on $7000 by May 1 (plenary...). It will only take 42 more similar donations to make the $7K. Who will join me?

Health Hazards of Global Warming

With attention focused on Iowa, with even Jay Leno entertaining us with Mike Huckabee when he ran out of jokes, little attention is being paid to stories that will have much more far reaching consequences.

One of those stories is the report in the Sacramento Bee concerning a new study of the Health Consequences of Global Warming released by Stanford Univ.

Vehicle and power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the predominant climate-altering gas, are estimated to cause 1,000 additional deaths and many more cases of respiratory disease every year in the United States for each degree Celsius of temperature rise in the Earth's atmosphere, according to the Stanford study.

The bulk of those deaths - an estimated 300 - are occurring in California cities already socked with smog, said Mark Jacobson, a Stanford environmental engineering professor who led the study.

This is really a major issue for many. It does not fall on the urban power centers of this state: Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego. Rather, its effect are more strongly felt in the Central Valley where we have 5 of the worst cities in the country in terms of air quality: Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno, Merced and Sacramento, according to the SacBee report.

What that report does not say is that politics plays a very important role in how we deal with these facts. I received a recent email from Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla concerning those very differences. Barbara is the Campaign Director for Restore the Delta and the force behind their "Health Delta Communities" programs. Barbara wrote

"Kate, my five-year-old, developed walking pneumonia, then full-blown pneumonia, and severe asthma problems starting all on the 19th."

That is only a reference point for how serious this situation is for her family. The politics behind this is very much a power game, as Barbara made clear later in her note:

...why does the SJ Valley Air Pollution Control Board permit wood burning on moderate air quality days, when the Sacramento Valley restricts burning on those days? It seems that wood burning in our neighborhood is a major trigger for Kate, even though I am keeping her indoors. Her pediatrician at Kaiser says this is a major problem for asthma kids in Stockton.

This personalizes the facts. A 2006 study by California State University - Fullerton let us know just how gargantuan this problem really is. It costs California $3 Billion per year. There are thousands of families like Barbara's in the San Joaquin Valley and thousands of children like Kate.

The San Joaquin Valley would love for you to think that the primary cause of their ail pollution is from automobiles. That simply is not true. A much greater amount comes from agriculture. Methane from dairy operations is significant. So is the dust from discing; so are the pesticides from aerial spraying. No single source accounts for more than 35% of the air pollution. Yet, any attempt to increase regulation in the valley meets with stiff opposition from all levels of the body politic, right up to Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Visalia, CA-21).

His August, 2007 press release, New domestic energy production and air quality improvements the focus of Nunes legislation, is an example of his absolutely delusional propaganda. Other than this title, then entire release is about Coal Liquefaction, one of the worst technology solutions that gullible, scientifically challenged Congress Critters are talking about, but Nunes has no qualms in telling his constituents that this dirty technology will solve their air quality problems.

"Coal liquefaction has been proven as a viable fuel for decades. With today’s improvements in technology, we can produce domestic energy and improve environmental outcomes at the same time. This fuel would be particularly beneficial in the Central Valley of California, as we seek to address ongoing air quality challenges," said Rep. Nunes.

The counter argument comes from David Hawkins, Director of the Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, April 2006, Hawkins gave a very different picture of the processes.

The impacts that a large coal-to-liquids program could have on global warming pollution,
conventional air pollution and damage from expanded coal production are substantial.
Before deciding whether to invest scores, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in a new industry like coal-to-liquids, we need a much more serious assessment of whether this is an industry that should proceed at all.

I would give Nunes a Climate Change Cretin award, except Oklahoma Senator Inhofe seems to win that every year.

More importantly, is we are are to truly reduce the costs of Health Care, especially for those least able to afford it, we have to address Air Quality. Some can keep their children indoors when air quality is bad. Those who can't afford health care may not be able to afford air conditioning in the summer either. Maybe they have to use wood for fuel because they can no longer deal with the rising cost to heat their homes in the winter We can not separate all of these problems into neat compartments and decide what solutions we need in a vacuum. We can not solve our health care crises now without addressing air quality. We won't be able to so do in the future unless we address climate change. We can not separate issues of social justice from the environment is we are going to have a future.

Five year old Kate Parrilla needs all of us to go to work for her. We need to get rid of bloviating demagogues like Devin Nunes. We need to make Schwarzenegger's new Queen of Air Quality do her job and forget about trading carbon credits. It there were ever a situation that cries out for the values of this Green Party to be implemented as policy, this is it. If we want to prove our abilities to practice governance, we need to be challenging the power structure of the San Joaquin Valley, to be "speaking truth to power", to become the agents of change that the Obama's of this world promise to be, but never will while still supporting environmentally destructive, unhealthy, unClean Coal and Ethanol from Corn for the sake of a few additional votes.