The proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) would research high-consequence biological threats involving zoonotic (i.e., transmitted from animals to humans) and foreign animal diseases. It would allow basic research; diagnostic development, testing and validation; advanced countermeasure development; and training for high-consequence livestock diseases.

And best of all, it will be run by Homeland security.

NBAF in NC: NOBIO pt.1 from LibertyTUBEtv on Vimeo.

Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation has now gone public with the findings of their last voyage, what before was only mentioned in conference. In 1999, they found that the weight of plastic was six times greater than that of all marine life on the ocean surface. What’s the news for 2007? After processing a handful of samples from this recent voyage, the estimates are 30 to 1. That’s a five-fold increase in less than a decade, and for those of you who may have already appreciated the black humor of Watch This – No Don’t, the results are alarming. Basically, every bit of plastic ever produced seems to be staying with us. The seas are drowning in plastic and there is every reason to believe (not to be an alarmist) that toxins are bio accumulating and entering the food chain causing obesity, infertility…and worse…, for example, the overarching environmental implications of so much plastic building up with no end in sight.

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, has just coauthored a book on the environment, A Contract with the Earth, with former zoo CEO Terry Maple, forwarded by the venerable Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson. One might quibble about the strength or Newt Gingrich’s environmental record, still, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Obviously E.O. Wilson has.

The almost presidential candidate has seen the light on the environment. That’s a fine thing. I heard an interview a few nights ago in which he focused on the need to harness the agility of the free markets to find creative environmental innovations. Check. New technology. Check. He trotted out some platitudes here and there. I have to admit, he still sounds like he is getting the hang of it with environmental issues. He mentioned nuclear power as having a lot of potential. A lot of the folks who came in with the Republican Revolution seem to really like nuclear power–that and the idea of drilling in ANWR. Sometimes I listen to them and it crosses my mind that if they actually got to drill in ANWR along with a few more nuclear power plants, they would think it was better than Christmas and their birthdays rolled into one.

I don’t think I heard him mention anything about having the nuclear power plants insured by insurance companies in the free market. I wonder why? To quote McDonough on it, “Don’t get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It’s just that I prefer fusion to fission. And thank God we have our nuclear reactor exactly where we want it, 93 million miles away–and its tireless.”

Well if Pat Robertson is talking about global warming, maybe Gingrich with his new-found green credentials will even eventually get his weight behind solar and leave this fission thing behind.

Conserving the Environment by Recycling Plastic into Toxic Children’s Toys

Following the work presented by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation pointing to a massive buildup of plastics in the sea, one has to wonder at the latest series of stories about children’s toys from China being recalled. Many of these toys were made from recycled plastics shipped from the United States. The last recall was for toys that contained something similar in chemical composition to a date rape drug that was released when children put them in their mouths. You might say that this plastic consumption isn’t so great, but at least we are recycling.

Are the 60+ toy recalls that we’ve recently heard about only a question of poor quality control on their side, or is there something in the process of plastic recycling that has potentially toxic results, either through contamination or because of unforeseen chemical reactions? It seems that the plastic industry is unregulated enough that a number of toxins are present at the get-go. The wisdom of shipping plastics halfway around the world, so they can be recycled and shipped back to us seems counter-intuitive at best.

Considering the life-span of plastics being some thousands of years, the wisdom of using plastic briefly as a water bottle and/or a lawn chair/speed bump/children’s toy, with the the rest of time it floating around in the oceans, also seems a little counter-intuitive.

Our Synthetic Sea
One reason people avoid reading sites too focused on the environment is that they tend to go heavy on the bad news. When I saw the video that follows I almost had to laugh at the immensity of it. Another problem – almost worse than the other ones. Funny if you enjoy black humor. Maybe not, if you don’t. Researchers at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation trawled large swaths of the North Pacific Gyre with fine nets to discover that they were pulling up 6 pounds of plastic for every pound of bio-matter. The plastics aren’t biodegrading as had been popularly thought, but like diamonds, are forever.

No naturally occurring organisms can break these polymers down. Instead, plastic goes through a process called photodegredation, where sunlight breaks down plastic into smaller and smaller pieces until there is only plastic dust. But always plastic remains a polymer. When plastic debris meets the sea it can remain for centuries causing untold havoc in ecosystems and appears to be bio-accumulating toxins, and getting broken down into such tiny particles that even the smallest organisms are injesting them, causing death or further bio-accumulation up the food chain.Oil is heading up towards a $100 a barrel and petroleum based plastic isn’t going anywhere. Might be what gives us the push we need for corn based plastics to become widely used.

Is a Ron Paul presidency the specter of the unbridled capitalism of an 18th century London blackened with factory smoke, the waterways polluted? Or is it more like the start of the 20th century of Teddy Roosevelt promoting a national parks system and conservation? Yesterday, a doctor and congressman, long a darling in the alternative health community, raised 4.3 million dollars from 37,000 donors in a single day. He says he wants to bring America back to its constitutional roots. And environmentalists have a chance to discuss what that potentially means.

When asked about protecting the environment, Paul answers that giving massive government subsidies to a host of industries such as big oil and agribusiness as well as the massive American military-industrial complex is anything but environmentally friendly. He would seek to end those subsidies and greatly reduce the military-industrial complex by pulling out of Iraq, and almost everywhere else for that matter. He argues to let people keep what they earn (he wishes to abolish the Federal Reserve and the IRS) and donate or invest their own money in organic food, land conservation, biodiesel, etc. as they see fit. In all matters, he refers to the wisdom of the founding fathers, saying our ills stem from having drifted from our constitutional roots.

These arguments to stop subsidizing major corporate entities and get the government out of our personal lives have resonated strongly in the alternative health communities and with organic farmers–two groups with whom environmentalists have frequently had common cause. It isn’t very unusual to walk in a yoga studio and see flyers for meditation, health food seminars and Ron Paul for president. While this might have something to do with his public statements, it probably has more to do with a substantial body of health care legislation that he has supported or introduced to make things easier for these folks to do their thing free of government interference.

The significance of Paul’s environmental legislation is less obvious than that of his health care legislation, yet environmentalists might start asking to what extent specifically environmental legislation is the best way towards achieving what they ultimately want. There is a tendency in the environmental community to rubber-stamp a strong government approach over a libertarian approach as the lesser of two evils, and yet one has to consider the environmental value that can be assigned to greatly paring down the US military-industrial complex, getting ranchers off federal lands, stopping massive subsidies to agribusiness, or ending the war on drugs with its Silent Spring-like aerial spraying of Columbia, Peru and Bolivia.

Concerns naturally exist about property rights vs. the Endangered Species Act, global warming, or preventing clear-cutting of old growth forests in private hands. However, Ron Paul might ask us to consider how the US made such great environmental gains under Teddy Roosevelt before the central government became so strong, or if things are actually better now. With Ron Paul having something close to 12 million dollars cash on hand and an almost rock star-like internet following, these all seem like questions worth considering.