Category Archives: Energy Tough Love Blog

Energy Tough Love Blog – A weblog from Community Energy Systems

Happy Martin Luther King Day – And what a day it is

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Environmental Justice is predicated on the idea that pollution is purposely sited to poor communities, many of which are not of European descent:

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maxevents-usa.com

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http://environment.about.com/b/2008/01/21/honor-martin-luther-king-by-fighting-environmental-racism.htm

Honor Martin Luther King

by Fighting Environmental Racism, Promoting Environmental Justice

Monday January 21, 2008

On Martin Luther King Day, Americans celebrate the life and vision of the late civil rights leader who has inspired generations of people to work toward a society characterized by equal opportunity and free of racial discrimination.

In 1968, Dr. King’s life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, a violent act of racism that stunned and saddened people worldwide. Today, racism still threatens the lives of millions of African-Americans and other people of color.

That threat includes environmental racism, in which the residents of poor minority communities are subject to much higher health and safety risks than people in more affluent communities because of the proximity of their homes and schools to landfills, hazardous waste sites and factories that pollute the air and water.

Environmental racism was first documented nearly 30 years ago by Dr. Robert Bullard…

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For more please read the article or this wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism

By Products – Nice term for garbage, crap, stuff we refuse to use or gold

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It all depends on your point of view. That is because everyone must produce ONE thing and that’s it. Everything else is BI oh By..by product by catch bye bye. So we consume the world tossing half of it to the side. Why?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-product

A by-product is a secondary or incidental product deriving from a manufacturing process, a chemical reaction or a biochemical pathway, and is not the primary product or service being produced. A by-product can be useful and marketable, or it can have negative ecological impact. :}

Some of which include:

Animal sources

  • dried blood and blood meal – from slaughterhouse operations
  • chicken by-product meal – clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines.
  • chrome shavings – from a stage of leather manufacture
  • collagen and gelatin – from the boiled skin and other parts of slaughtered livestock
  • feathers – from poultry processing
  • lanolin – from the cleaning of wool
  • manure – from animal husbandry
  • meat and bone meal – from the rendering of animal bones and offal
  • poultry byproduct and poultry meal – made from unmarketable poultry bones and offal
  • poultry litter – swept from the floors of chicken coops
  • whey – from cheese manufacturing
  • fetal pigs

 Vegetation

  • acidulated soap stock – from the refining of vegetable oil
  • bran and germ – from the milling of whole grains into refined grains
  • brewer’s yeast – from ethanol fermentation
  • corn stover – residual plant matter after harvesting of cereals
  • distillers grains – from ethanol fermentation
  • glycerol – from the production of biodiesel
  • grape seed oil – recovered from leftovers of the winemaking process
  • molasses – from sugar refining
  • orange oil and other citrus oils – recovered from the peels of processed fruit
  • pectin – recovered from the remains of processed fruit
  • sawdust and bark- from the processing of logs into lumber
  • straw- from grain harvesting

Minerals and petro chemicals

  • asphalt – from the refining of crude oil
  • fly ash – from the combustion of coal
  • slag – from ore refining
  • gypsum – from Flue gas desulfurization
  • ash and smoke – from the combustion of fuel
  • mineral oil – from refining crude oil to produce gasoline
  • salt – from desalination

 Other

  • sludge – from wastewater treatmen

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Industrial Waste is Huge But Household Waste Ain’t Small Exactly – If you get waste conscious at home

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Then You Can take It To Work

There are only 2 of us in our household, a man and a woman. We recycle like crazy. Because the County and the City recycle different things we sometimes have to take our recyclables to town. For some reason Riverton will not recycle corrugated cardboard so we take that to Springfield. Everyone has a problem with colored glass so we have started saving it. Springfield does colored glass drops periodically. All of our “hazardous” waste goes to the State of Illinois at the Fairgrounds or the IDOT building. Our Electronics goes to BLH. Our light bulbs go to Springfield Electric. Our plastic bags and many soft plastics goes to Schnucks grocery stores. AND close your eyes…a small part of it we burn. After composting (we have two large piles) there is a small bit of what I call promiscuous paper and other stuff (about a cubic foot or less – ie. a small trash can full every 2 weeks). We then toss those ashes on the vegetable garden. In the end we toss out about 1 small sometimes barely filled cheap garbage bag. In it are mainly cigarette butts, food stuffs we can’t recycle, and some soft plastics.  Sometimes we are so emberrassed we don’t even put it out by the curb to pick up because it’s not worth their time or gas to stop.

This does not take into account our own dodo and caca, however that will take a huge shift in infrastructure and agriculture to do. Nor does that take care of both of our car exhausts. Again this a huge infrastructure problem in ground transportation. Still it feels real good to minimize our waste.

Here is a really reall real rea re r really cool site to help out.

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 http://www.astc.org/exhibitions/rotten/rthome.htm

The Rotten Truth web site was created in 1998 by the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer: Rotten Truth (About Garbage) links to a number of activities and resources provided by institutions other than ASTC and SITES. Every effort has been made to ensure that these links are accurate, but because neither ASTC nor SITES controls the content of these web sites, outside links are not guaranteed to be correct or active. Neither ASTC nor SITES shall be liable in the event of incidental or consequential damages connected with, or arising out of, providing the information offered here. External sites are not endorsed by ASTC or the Smithsonian Institution.

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I put this up because I wanted them to know that I know that they know that I know….SO THERE

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Rotten Truth (About Garbage) takes an in-depth look at the complex issues surrounding municipal solid waste. This on-line exhibition is organized into four major sections.
  • What Is Garbage? looks at how we define garbage, and why it consists of more than what we throw away.
  • There’s No “Away” explores how burying, burning, and recycling garbage doesn’t really get rid of it, and that reducing what we use is the only real solution to the garbage problem.
  • Nature Recycles shows how the natural process of decay makes new life possible by recycling the limited number of nutrients present in the environment.
  • Finally, Making Choices provides some helpful hints on how we can all create less garbage.

Throughout the exhibition, you can:

  • Read about people who have made a difference in how we think about municipal solid waste today;
  • Try a variety of activities at home or school; and

You can also consult an extensive resource list to find out more about garbage and what you can do about it.
For exhibit developers or those who work in museums:
Visit the section for exhibit developers to learn how Rotten Truth (About Garbage) was created. Find out how lead exhibit developer Kathy McLean became interested in the subject of garbage, or learn some tips on how to create environmentally-conscious exhibitions.

Who created this exhibition?
This exhibition was researched and developed with the help and expertise of many individuals and organizations.

Finding your way through the exhibition:
By following the arrow forward icon icon, you can sequentially visit each exhibit area. (Clicking on the arrow back icon icon will enable you to return to the previous page.) Please note that several activities, resources, and profiles are located at other web sites. After visiting them, click on your web browser’s “back” button to return to your place in the exhibition. Finally, if at any time you want to visit a different exhibit area, return to this page by clicking on the “home” garbage bag icon, and selecting the desired exhibit area below. Enjoy your visit!

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So get started  now!

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Oil Speculators At It Again – This time instead of fooling with contracts they are actually fooling with the tankers themselves.

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Is there no end to the criminal ingenuity of Wall Street. It’s not enough that they destroy the mortgage market or sell all our jobs over seas, they just have to squeeze every dollar out of their grandmother’s social security check.

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=45530

http://marketplace.publicradio.org//display/web/2009/01/09/pm_contango/?refid=0

Investment banks hoarding oil

Fifty million barrels of oil are just sitting around on supertankers. They’re not getting unloaded because investors are waiting for the price of oil to go up. Mitchell Hartman explains.

More on Oil

TEXT OF STORY

Bob Moon: Now here are some millions that haven’t raised the ire of Congress — 50 million… Barrels of oil. They’re sloshing around on huge supertankers right now. They’re not going into port, not getting unloaded. They’re just waiting, for the price of oil to go up. It’s a financial play known as “contango.” A lot of investors are getting into the act. Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman explains.

Mitchell Hartman: “Contango” refers to a market condition in which the future price of a commodity is higher than the cost of buying it today. Right now, investors can lock in oil futures contracts to get paid $46 a barrel in March. They can fill a supertanker right now for just $41 and change. It’s pretty cheap to keep the tanker floating around in the ocean. When it unloads in the spring, the investors make a tidy profit: more than $3 a barrel.Daniel Yergin is author of the Pulitzer-winning book, “The Prize.” He says there’s a glut of oil right now, caused by the global recession. But futures prices are going higher, because OPEC has promised to cut production. And, says Yergin, oil traders are reading something else in the economic tea leaves.>Daniel Yergin: There’s a bet here that all of the stimulus, new economic programs, are going to work, and that by the second half of the year, we’re going to move out of recession, back into economic recovery, and that demand will start rising for oil again.

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For more please go to the PBS site and listen to the report. For a different point of view:

http://www.supplyexcellence.com/blog/2009/01/13/oil-price-fundamentals-contango-opec/

Oil Price Fundamentals: Don’t believe the hype

January 13th, 2009 · by Bob Zieger ·

Last week, Marketplace had an interesting report on the growing trend of “contango” in the oil industry. For those of you who are not familiar with the practice, contango occurs when investors sit on a commodity because the future price is higher than the spot price. In this case, that results in full oil tankers sitting offshore, waiting for the price to rise before they unload their 50 million barrels onto the market. So a quick buck is made by those holding the inventory on the high seas, but what happens when those barrels eventually reach a port ? We’ve got a glut of material again, which forces prices down. This type of profit-taking merely adds to the volatility of the market, but has little influence on macroeconomic fundamentals.

Frankly, it seems as though the oil/energy sector has the most interesting bag of tricks when it comes to speculation, rhetoric, and other market manipulation. But all the headline grabbing stories aside, oil is just like other commodities in that pricing is governed by supply and demand. While contango, Somali pirates, and accounting tricks can be a source of market volatility, these games don’t have a long term impact on pricing.

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The POINT for us is that they are “messing around” like mice worrying at a hole. Practicing. If someone doesn’t hit them with a broom, sooner or later they will succeed.

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For more on Cantango and other disgusting practices:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/contango_backwardation.asp

 http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/01/super_contango.html

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/11/11/crudes-credit-contango/

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47633

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Please note Goldman Sachs says oil will hit 102$$ per barrel by the end of the year and I have said that oil will hit 130$$ a barrel by next summer. I wonder whose right?

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Why Call Them Landfills? They are dumps, eyesores, middens and disgraces.

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 When has it been ok to urinate and defecate in a drinking water source. But Humans world wide do it every day. Some of us purify those byproducts before they actually get to the river or the lake or the aquifer, some of us don’t. When has it ever been OK to put food products let alone industrial products (lets take the buy out of byproduct) in a drinking water source yet we have done it for 200 years. What did we think? That there would be no results?

Yet we go further. We stack our garbage in the most inappropriate places like we are PROUD of it. Heh look our garbage pile is bigger than yours.  Like the garbage dump that you can see from SPACE.

http://gothamist.com/2003/09/30/fresh_killpark.php

Fresh Kill…Park?

Mayor Bloomberg announced the city’s plans to turn the closed Fresh Kills landkill into a park. The Times points out that the landfill is “a garbage dump site that is so large it can be seen from space,” which is why it’s a sensitive and important issue for Staten Islanders…especially Staten Islanders who can vote. Reporter Michel Cooper describes the city’s renderings of a Fresh Kills Park as “Monet using Photoshop” or Andrew Wyeth-like. Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro called the announcement was “the final nail in the heart of Dracula,” as people have been speculating the dump might reopen since it closed in 2001. The Post says the proposal from Field Operations, the landscape company that won the competition to transform Fresh Kills, includes “bird-nesting island, public roads, boardwalks, soccer and baseball fields, bridle paths and a 5,000-seat stadium.

Of course, all of this is also an effort to keep his approval numbers from slipping any further, although at this point, it’d be in the negative territory…people would just claim ignorance when asked about Mayor Bloomberg.

More information about Fresh Kills.

2003_9_freshkills.jpg

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What the heck have we ever been thinking?

 http://naturecalendar.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/fresh-kills-earning-back-its-name

fk2.jpg

by Erik Baard

 

Not so many years ago, if you told people that you were getting up early on Saturday morning to rush over to Fresh Kills on Staten Island, they would have thought you were crazy or a highly-paid union worker. Today, a few savvy folks might peg you for a naturalist.

 

The world’s largest dump (actually, the world’s largest manmade structure, of sorts, in that it exceeded the volume of the Great Wall of China) is quietly transforming into the city’s second largest park, after Pelham Bay Park. You can witness the process yourself by signing up for a free tour now through November through this link. Don’t fret the competition to get a ticket – the tour I joined this weekend wasn’t booked up. Besides, you have, oh, a few more years of chances. The park officially opens in 2036.

 (the site has four large ones mounds, ranging between 140? and 200? tall)

At the moment the trash is being digested by microbes, which will actually cause the mounds to shrink a bit. But not before they’ve earned their keep! The methane (“natural gas” in daily parlance), organic chemicals, and carbon dioxide produced are tapped via long pipe networks (see the methane taps in the foreground of the above photo by Emmanuel). The natural gas is purified and sold to Keyspan (now part of National Grid), which in turn sells it to heat up to 10,000 homes at a time. I can imagine a “green” dry cleaner using the CO2 to spiff up designer suits for the local gentry.

 

Less immediately marketable is the leachate goo that landfills produce when water jazzes up microbial and fungal activity. That’s dried and shipped out to another landfill in West Virginia. As a side note, the five boroughs now send trash to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. Remember, the primary insight of environmentalism is that when things are thrown away, there is no “away.”

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Please read both articles if you have a strong stomach.

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Why We Throw Things Away? Everything has value.

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Isn’t throwing things away basically throwing money on the ground and walking away? Some people assert that discarding behavior originates in our time, historically, spent in the trees.  In other words a primate swinging in the trees with no pockets throws everything away, even if its valuable sometimes. In fact if it is valuable and it lands on the ground and there is a predator around it could be lost forever.

Other people say that our discarding behavior is based in our hunting techniques. Once we figured out that we could kill other meat sources by throwing rocks and sticks then it was a simple step to throw other things away as well. But middens are an archaeological constant.

Still other people have pointed out that discarding behavior was probably a fact of our nomadic lives. They argue that for us to retain “things” we would have had to carry them. So there would be a point where a thing, like a broken spear, or a pot would no longer possess enough value that would make it worth carrying on to the next campsite.

But will that explain all of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill

Landfill

A landfill, also known as a dump (and historically as a midden), is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment. Historically, landfills have been the most common methods of organized waste disposal and remain so in many places around the world.

Landfills may include internal waste disposal sites (where a producer of waste carries out their own waste disposal at the place of production) as well as sites used by many producers. Many landfills are also used for other waste management purposes, such as the temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or processing of waste material (sorting, treatment, or recycling).

A landfill also may refer to ground that has been filled in with soil and rocks instead of waste materials, so that it can be used for a specific purpose, such as for building houses. Unless they are stabilized, these areas may experience severe shaking or liquefaction of the ground in a large earthquake.

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That hill is a garbage dump on an island in Florida. Or is this worth it?:

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http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

The world’s rubbish dump:

a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden
Tuesday, 5 February 2008

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INDEPENDENT GRAPHICS

 

A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

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Please see this article…it is really really really scary.

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Archer Daniels Midland And Greenwash – They profess green but consistenly pollute

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We are going to trust these folks with our watershed?

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13646

Green Fuel’s Dirty Secret

by Sasha Lilley, Special to CorpWatch
June 1st, 2006

The town of Columbus, Nebraska, bills itself as a “City of Power and Progress.” If Archer Daniels Midland gets its way, that power will be partially generated by coal, one of the dirtiest forms of energy. When burned, it emits carcinogenic pollutants and high levels of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Ironically this coal will be used to generate ethanol, a plant-based petroleum substitute that has been hyped by both environmentalists and President George Bush as the green fuel of the future. The agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is the largest U.S. producer of ethanol, which it makes by distilling corn. ADM also operates coal-fired plants at its company base in Decatur, Illinois, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is currently adding another coal-powered facility at its Clinton, Iowa ethanol plant.

That’s not all. “[Ethanol] plants themselves – not even the part producing the energy – produce a lot of air pollution,” says Mike Ewall, director of the Energy Justice Network. “The EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has cracked down in recent years on a lot of Midwestern ethanol plants for excessive levels of carbon monoxide, methanol, toluene, and volatile organic compounds, some of which are known to cause cancer.”

A single ADM corn processing plant in Clinton, Iowa generated nearly 20,000 tons of pollutants including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds in 2004, according to federal records. The EPA considers an ethanol plant as a “major source” of pollution if it produces more than 100 tons of any one pollutant per year, although it has recently proposed increasing that cap to 250 tons.

Sulfur dioxide is classified by the EPA as a contributor to respiratory and heart disease and the generation of acid rain. Nitrogen oxides produce ozone and a wide variety of toxic chemicals as well as contributing to global warming, according to the EPA, while many volatile organic compounds are cancer-causing. Last year, Environmental Defense, a national environmental group, ranked the Clinton plant as the 26th largest emitter of carcinogenic compounds in the U.S.

For years, ADM promoted itself as the “supermarket to the world” on major U.S. radio and television networks like NPR, CBS, NBC, and PBS where it underwrites influential programs such as the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Now, as it actively promotes its ethanol business, ADM has rolled out its new eco-friendly slogan, “Resourceful by Nature” which “reinforces our role as an essential link between farmers and consumers.”

Despite the company’s attempts at green packaging, ADM is ranked as the tenth worst corporate air polluter, on the “Toxic 100” list of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency has charged the company with violations of the Clean Air Act in hundreds of processing units, covering 52 plants in 16 states. In 2003 the two agencies reached a $351 million settlement with the company. Three years earlier, ADM was fined $1.5 million by the Department of Justice and $1.1 million by the State of Illinois for pollution related to ethanol production and distribution. Currently, the corporation is involved in approximately 25 administrative and judicial proceedings connected to federal and state Superfund laws regarding the environmental clean-up of sites contaminated by ADM operations.

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Even The Right Wing Doesn’t Like Archer Danieals Midland -How Often do I agree with the Cato Institute?

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To date once:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html

Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare

by James Bovard

James Bovard is an associate policy analyst with the Cato Institute. His most recent book is Shakedown: How the Government Screws You from A to Z (Viking, 1995).

Executive Summary

The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30

One of the most politically charged debates in Washington revolves around business subsidies known as “corporate welfare.” A number of policy organizations have published studies examining the corporate welfare phenomenon: what qualifies as corporate welfare, how much it costs taxpayers, and how much it damages the economy. This study examines the dynamics of corporate welfare somewhat differently by investigating ADM as a classic case study of how those subsidies are obtained, how the welfare state encourages such “rent seeking,” and how such practices fundamentally corrupt the political life of a nation. Congress’s expressed desire to foster a free marketplace cannot be taken seriously until ADM’s corporate hand is removed from the federal till.

Introduction

ADM is certainly the nation’s most arrogant welfare recipient. And it is one of the few welfare recipients that spend millions of dollars each year advertising on Sunday morning television shows populated and watched by politicians. Chairman Dwayne Andreas’s and ADM’s success in farming Washington represents the rational result of contemporary government policies that turn elections into “an advanced auction of stolen goods,” as H. L. Mencken quipped. Thanks to its multi-million-dollar hustling in Washington, a company that lives and dies on the generosity of the American taxpayer has managed to get itself revered as a great public servant. Although ADM is not the only corporation with its hand out in Washington, it is easily one of the most successful beggars on the block.(1)

Andreas recently told a reporter for Mother Jones, “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”(2) Andreas’s comment about “no free markets” is like the old joke about the son who murdered his parents and then asked for the court’s mercy because he was an orphan. ADM champions political control over markets and then invokes that control as an excuse for its continued political manipulation. Andreas has exerted his influence in Washington to ensure that the U.S. form of “socialism” resembles 1930s’ Italian corporate statism: the government plunders the citizenry for the benefit of politically connected corporations. And, though Andreas does not like to admit it, there are many markets in the world for agricultural products that are not controlled by politicians.

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I know it is from 1995 but what has changed in the past 13 years? They have gotten a whole lot bigger.

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CES Is Not The Only Organization Critical Of Archer Daniels Midland – They can be so wrong in so many ways

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http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/page1662.cfm



Download this page as a pdf
Back to Hall of Shame homepage
More on ADM
*Corporate welfare and greenwashing
*Corporate snapshot
*Take actionMore info on ADM from Rainforest Action Network
Forests burn in Indonesia to make way for palm oil plantations.
Forests burn in Indonesia to make way for palm oil plantations.
© Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

First the good news: burning ‘biodiesel’ fuels emits less global warming pollution than burning standard, oil-based gasoline.

Now the bad news: producing biofuels creates tons of global warming pollution – easily enough to offset any global warming benefits gained at the tail end of the process.

At least that’s the case when it comes to Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and its business partners that manufacture and trade in Indonesian palm oil.

ADM is an agribusiness giant, and they’re a big player in the biodiesel business. A large part of the business relies on clearing Indonesia’s woodsy wetlands, or “peatlands,” to create palm plantations. The result? A whole lot of palm oil and a whole lot of resulting global warming pollution.

A 2007 Greenpeace report found that clearing, draining and setting fire to Indonesian peatlands emits 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. That’s about four percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Roughly half of Indonesia’s peatlands have already been destroyed, helping Indonesia achieve a dubious ranking as the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only China and the United States.[1]

But if this palm oil can be used instead of standard gasoline to fuel our cars, isn’t it worth it? Sadly no. Not by a long shot. According to Rainforest Action Network, “Producing palm oil, one of the most popular sources of biodiesel, entails so much deforestation that, over its lifecycle, palm-based biodiesel can emit up to ten times more carbon dioxide per gallon than gasoline.”[2]

ADM and its partners’ rampant destruction of Indonesian peatlands also threatens the existence of endangered species like the orangutan; a close relative of ours that scientists say could be wiped out by 2012 .[3]

Corporate welfare and greenwashing
ADM is a major player when it comes to influence in Washington, DC. Indeed, one of ADM’s largest supporters is the American taxpayer; the biofuels behemoth rakes in massive tax credits to subsidize its ethanol sales.[4]

Meanwhile, ADM is bending over backwards to present itself to the public as a friend of the environment. ADM’s company slogan is “Resourceful by Nature”, and its website extols its efforts to “develop nature-based alternatives to the world’s finite stores of fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, one of its alternatives is destroying an ecosystem and accelerating global warming.

Corporate snapshot
Founded in 1902 and incorporated in 1923, the Decatur, IL-headquartered ADM is one of the world’s largest processors of agricultural crops and a “world leader” in biodiesel fuels. [5]

According to Greenpeace, “global commodity traders including ADM-Kuok-Wilmar (ADM’s business alliance operating in Indonesia), Cargill, Golden Hope and Sinar Mas have commanding control over the entire palm oil supply chain – from plantations in Indonesia to refined vegetable oil or biofuel [processing facilities]. The alliance brings together Wilmar, the ‘largest palm biodiesel manufacturer in the world’, and ADM, the ‘world leader in renewable transport fuels’.
The ADM-Kuok-Wilmar alliance have ‘rapid expansion plans’ in relation to biodiesel. Between early 2006 and mid-2007, the ADM-Kuok-Wilmar alliance gained control of more than 1.4 million acres of peatland.[6]

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There is a whole lot more. Please read the entire article and see who ADM pals around with in the rest of the Corporate Hall of Shame.

If Evolution Is True Why Doesn’t ADM Evolve – (creepy voice) Because it’s not alive!

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16347-review-iwhy-evolution-is-truei-by-jerry-coyne.html

Review: Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

10:16 05 January 2009 by Rowan Hooper

T he first “why” that struck me on seeing Why Evolution is True was why do we need yet another book on evolution? There are lots of good ones out there already and nothing less than a mountain of evidence to support the reality of evolution by natural selection.

But we do need another, insists Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago, because creationism is spreading.

And he’s right – creationism is all over the place, not just in the US, where it often gains huge amounts of publicity. In December, a UK poll found that 29% of science teachers thought that creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution; a state of affairs that Richard Dawkins called “a national disgrace”. It is also on the rise in Islamic countries.

Careful persuasion

Creationism, Coyne tells us in this wide-ranging, beautifully written account, is like a roly-poly clown that pops back up when you punch it. But he resists the temptation to punch. He seeks to persuade, by carefully leading the reader through the overwhelming evidence, that evolution is a fact.

The audience is those who are uncertain about explanations of life’s diversity. The book is not aimed at people who hold faith-based positions – Coyne considers them to be lost causes – but you have to wonder how many people who are “uncertain” will be won over.

Coyne describes, for example, giving a talk on evolution versus intelligent design/creationism to a group of rich Chicago businessmen. You would think that people in the business world might think that evidence for something is worth taking into account, but this was the response Coyne got from one audience member after his lecture: “I found your evidence for evolution very convincing – but I still don’t believe it”.

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So you would think that Archer Daniels Midland will evolve in this new Green World and “get it” that polluting the environment needs to stop. That their by-products as they call them must be put to a use. Like growing algae for a fuel source or making cement. But NO, they want to pump it underground. Like that’s not polluting. Why don’t they quit? Because as the man above said, “They don’t believe.”


illinois environmental protection agency

1021 north grand avenue east, P.O. Box 19276, springfield, illinois 62794-9276 -( 217) 782-3397 james R. thompson center, 100 west randolph, suite 11 -300, chicago, IL 60601 – (312) 814-6026

rod R. blagojevich, governor douglas P. scott, director


UNDERGROUND INJECTION CONTROL (UIC) FINAL PERMIT DECISION

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency provides notice pursuant to 35 111. Admin. Code 705.201(c) that a final UIC permit was issued to Archer Daniels Midland Company of Decatur, Illinois on December 23, 2008. The Agency’s response to comments, the Response Summary and Attachment 1, are available at the Illinois EPA web site at the following link: http://www.epa.state.il.us/public-notices/general-notices.html (Scroll l/3 of the way down the page to select documents posted concerning the Archer Daniels Midland project.)

Specific information must be submitted to the Agency as either permit modification requests or as supplemental information for review and approval prior to ADM’s use of the injection well. Please review the lists of these data requirements on page 2 of the Response Summary.

The applicant may petition the Illinois Pollution Control Board to contest this permit decision pursuant to 35 111. Adm. Code 705.212. Third parties also have appeal rights pursuant to 35 111. Adm. Code 705.212. Appeals must be filed within 35 days of the decision date. The deadline to appeal the Illinois EPA permit decision is January 27, 2009. For additional information on the permit appeal process, please contact the Illinois Pollution Control Board (312-814-3620).

To receive a paper copy of the final UIC permit for ADM or the Illinois EPA Response Summary and Attachment 1, please contact:

Mara McGinnis

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency 1021 North Grand Avenue East Springfield, Illinois 62704-9276

Mara.McGinnis@illinois.gov 217/524-3288

rockford – 4302 North Main Street, Rockford, IL61103 -(815)987-7760 • des PLAINES-9511 W. Harrison St., Des Plaines, IL 60016 – (847) 294-4000

elgin – 595 South State, Elgin, IL 60123 – (847) 608-3131 • PEORIA-5415 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614 – (309) 693-5463

bureau of land- peoria-7620 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614 – (309) 693-5462 • champaign – 2125 South First Street, Champaign, IL 61820-(217) 278-5800 springfield – 4500 S. Sixth Street Rd., Springfield, IL 62706-(217) 786-6892 • collinsville – 2009 Mall Street, Collinsvilie, IL 62234-(618) 346-5120

marion – 2309 W. Main St., Suite 116, Marion, IL 62959 – (618) 993-7200

printed on recycled paper

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Guess What? There isn’t a single environmental group in Illinois that is going to protest it.