Archive for October 2018

New York Takes on Exxon

Posted by NYPIRG on October 29, 2018 at 11:06 am

New York State’s Attorney General has one of the nation’s most powerful legal tools to take on corporate wrongdoers.  The tool is the “Martin Act,” which grants the Attorney General expansive law enforcement powers to conduct investigations of securities fraud and bring civil or criminal actions against alleged violators.

The nearly 100-years old Martin Act was not used frequently until then-Attorney General Elliot Spitzer began using it to bring civil cases against Wall Street firms.  It has since become the basis for a number of high-profile cases.

It was that tool used last week by Attorney General Barbara Underwood to initiate legal action against oil giant ExxonMobil.  The lawsuit, based on a three-year investigation, alleges that ExxonMobil deceived investors on how the company was addressing the financial threats posed by a warming planet.

The investigation is effectively a response to media reports on how Exxon knew decades ago that the burning of fossil fuels would heat up the planet to dangerous levels.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, cutting-edge research on climate change was conducted by Exxon.  The oil giant even equipped one of its supertankers, the Esso Atlantic, as an oceanic laboratory to measure for CO2 in the air and water.

The company’s studies from decades ago confirmed the role of fossil fuels in global warming, and Exxon researchers at the time warned top executives of the potentially catastrophic effect – risks that posed threats to millions of humans and civilization itself.

Yet, instead of acting responsibly, the company spent the next two decades discrediting the findings of its own researchers and others who were increasingly raising the alarm as well.  Exxon and other oil, coal and gas companies spent millions of dollars to advance fake science, support front groups, pay lobbying expenses and make campaign contributions to undermine the science and to block any political momentum emerging from the consensus that global warming was real.

Losing those decades has resulted in the near-crisis situation that the planet is in today.  Recently, the world’s climate experts warned that energy policies must change – both dramatically and quickly – within a decade if the world has any chance of minimizing the harm from climate change.

The success of Exxon and others in building a powerful force to undermine science and elect climate change deniers has pushed the world to the precipice.

Whether the world will heed the new warning is debatable.  President Trump and the Congressional leadership ignore – in fact mock – the science on climate change and advance policies that will accelerate the global warming day of reckoning.

It is likely that the national policies of the United States will lead to unimaginable suffering for hundreds of millions – perhaps billions – of people, all of which would have been avoidable if Exxon had been a responsible corporate citizen.

Since the legal tool is the Martin Act, the Attorney General’s lawsuit is framed less about climate change and more about the impact that Exxon’s climate change deceptions had on investors and would-be investors.

The AG stated, “Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations.”

The Attorney General said that Exxon’s fraud had a direct impact on New York investors.  For example, New York State’s pension funds were placed at risk.

Exxon called the lawsuit “tainted” and meritless.

We are, and will continue to be, feeling the harmful effects of global warming resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.  It is important that those responsible – corporate, individual and political – are held accountable for their actions.  Whether the suit brought by the New York Attorney General is successful or not, the world is learning more and more about the deceptions of the fossil fuel industry.  Hopefully, as that knowledge becomes widely public, it will turn into the power needed to force the actions necessary to avert climate disaster.

“Superbug” Threats from Your Food

Posted by NYPIRG on October 22, 2018 at 11:26 am

Antibiotics have been one of science’s great achievements.  Antibiotics are extremely useful in the fight against bacterial infections.  Antibiotic medications may either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria that can lead to infections.  As a result, millions of lives have been saved.

Yet the successes of antibiotics have been increasingly undermined by their overuse.  Antibiotic-resistant strains and species, sometimes referred to as “superbugs,” are now contributing to the re-emergence of diseases that were previously well controlled by antibiotics.  For example, tuberculosis infections are on the rise due to emergent bacterial strains that are resistant to the antibiotics that have been effective in the past. Skin infections that in the past might have been controlled by a topical antibiotic now put people in the hospital.

This has led to widespread problems, and the World Health Organization has classified antibiotic resistance as a “serious threat [that] is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.” In the United States, antibiotic-resistant bacteria infect more than 2 million people each year, causing more than 23,000 deaths. Experts predict that if antibiotic resistance is not addressed now, by 2050 there may be more than 10 million deaths per year worldwide, making antibiotic resistance a bigger killer than cancer.

The reason for the growth of bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics?  According to the federal government, of the estimated 154 million prescriptions for antibiotics written in doctors’ offices and emergency departments each year, 30 percent are unnecessary.

But the overuse of antibiotics in humans is not the only factor driving the evolution of “superbugs” that are increasingly immune to these therapies.

There has been extensive use of antibiotics in farm animals for decades.  Livestock are fed antibiotics so that they grow faster with less feed and can remain healthy in the unsanitary, disease-laden cramped conditions common on factory farms.  In fact, approximately 70 percent of medically important antibiotics sold in the U.S. are intended for use in livestock.

Since humans eat livestock, antibiotic-resistant bacteria can make their way from animals to humans.  That threat led the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to call on pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily stop the sale of antibiotics to farms for animal “growth promotion.”

Unfortunately, though most pharmaceutical companies have complied with the FDA’s guidance, this is unlikely to put a serious dent in antibiotic use in factory farms since farmers are still allowed to give the same antibiotics to livestock under the guise of disease prevention.  In addition, the FDA has also proposed changes to the rules regarding veterinary oversight that could allow veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics without having visited the facility or examined the animal in the recent past.

Given the stakes for public health, the nation shouldn’t allow even one large-scale farming operation to overuse antibiotics in this way.

As is too often the case, the federal government is failing to protect health and the environment, meaning that states need to act.  So far, the states of California and Maryland have enacted legislation to step into the void left by the feds.  What can other states do?

Since veterinarians are licensed by states and states also regulate farming, they can place restrictions on antibiotic use.  As a result, California and Maryland have passed laws banning the routine use of medically important antibiotics for disease prevention on farms that operate in those states.

Some key steps include: restricting the use of antibiotics in livestock production to cases of actual animal sickness or direct disease exposure, not dispensed to all livestock as a precaution without inspection.  In addition, states must require that the administration of antibiotics to animals on factory farms be overseen by a qualified veterinarian who has been to the farm or ranch and assessed the animals.

Of course, more needs to be done.  Off the farm, health care professionals, health systems, and patients must take actions to limit antibiotic use.

But when it comes to our food, New York should join the growing number of states looking to protect the public’s health by tightly regulating the use of antibiotics on farms.

The World Gets Another, Even More Ominous, Warning on Climate Change

Posted by NYPIRG on October 15, 2018 at 9:45 am

As the southeastern United States was hammered by an unexpectedly strong hurricane, the world’s climate experts released a report last week examining what is happening to the planet’s climate as a result of global warming.

Climate changes that are resulting from the burning of oil, coal and gas are measurably harming the planet.  Since the beginning of the Industrial Age the world has heated up by 1.8°F on average compared to preindustrial times.  The effects are already becoming painfully clear: the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in 1,500 years, more than eight inches of sea level rise since 1880, and more damaging extreme weather due to climate change.

For decades, scientists – including those working for the oil, gas and coal industries – have warned that rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels risk harming the climate, increasing ocean acidity, the frequency of extreme weather events and posed a threat to the health of all species – including humans.  But when the world met in Paris three years ago, it seemed that keeping the temperature within 3.6°F of pre-industrial levels, although seriously damaging, would probably leave Earth a tolerable, habitable place.

The current greenhouse gas emission rate puts the planet on path to reach 5.4°F of warming by the end of the century, even if every country meets its goals under the Paris agreement.  Global greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise this year.  Yet new report, issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a panel that convenes the world’s climate experts, says that the world has a critical 12-year window to make substantial progress in reversing climate change.

The report was depressing.  Unless drastic changes are made in the world’s economy and a resulting radical reduction in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted from human activities, we will see unprecedented devastation.

The new 700-page report, the work of 133 authors, is a comprehensive review of the global evidence that drew on more than 6,000 peer-reviewed research articles.  The overarching conclusion is that temperature rise will exact a huge toll on lives, natural systems, and the economy.  Fighting to keep warming in check — which will include radically and rapidly reducing coal and oil consumption, among other things — will save lives, the food supply, and homes.

The report’s blunt and ominous conclusion:  Unless aggressive actions are taken now, as early as the year 2040, the world will be experiencing worsening food shortages and wildfires and a mass die-off of coral reefs.

To prevent that dangerous level of warming, the report said, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050.  The IPCC found that, by 2050, use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40 percent today to between 1 and 7 percent.  Renewable energy such as wind and solar, which make up about 20 percent of the electricity mix today, would have to increase to as much as 67 percent.

Given that the report operates on the consensus of so many scientists, its projections and conclusions are typically conservative.  It is far more likely that the “tipping point” will occur earlier than the year 2040.

Nothing like this has ever happened in recorded history.  Humans are destroying the climate in which they live, at a rate that may devastate humans and other species.  Yet there are no indications that the ideologues and partisans who control the national government are willing to do anything about it, other than advance policies to make the situation even more dire.

There is no easy way out.  We have to stop thinking that technology will save the day without serious trade-offs, that the world will somehow dodge the catastrophic consequences of global warming, that actions won’t come without having to pay for it, either now or in the not-so-distant future.

The world must act, and it must act now.  But collective action on an issue this big requires true leadership by key actors.

Americans must lead the world on this.  Our elected officials – federal, state, and local – must pledge to act, not talk about acting, but act now.

New York’s Voting Deadline Looms, But Its System Fails

Posted by NYPIRG on October 8, 2018 at 11:52 am

This week is the deadline for new voters who wish to vote in the 2018 election in New York State to register.  That’s right, a full 25 days before the election is the deadline to register.  In many cases, busy New Yorkers may not be paying attention to the candidates until Election Day gets closer.  For those would-be New York voters, they will be shut out.

Why a 25-day deadline?  Good question.  Voting is a constitutional right, not a privilege.  Yet New York is notorious for making it difficult to vote.   And the impact is clear:  the state has a Voting Eligible Population (VEP) of nearly 13.7 million in 2016.  VEP is the most reasonable measure of participation and includes citizens over 18 who are not incarcerated for a felony or on felony parole.  However, only 12.5 million New Yorkers were listed by the New York State Board of Elections as either active or inactive voters for the same time period.  That means over one million eligible citizens were not registered to vote.  While the comparison of these two datasets is imperfect, it underscores that many New Yorkers who are eligible, are simply not registered to vote.

Simply put, New York’s voter registration and voter participation rates are anemic.  In the 2016 general election, a stunningly low percentage of registered New Yorkers – under 57 percent –voted.  A review of the U.S. Elections Project analysis, showed New York to have among the worst eligible voter turnout rates in the nation.

While many dedicated board staff and poll workers work tirelessly before and on Election Day, the problems many voters faced are systemic.  An obvious example of the deliberate way in which lawmakers create obstacles is the voting deadline itself.

New York’s longstanding constitutional voting limit states that no law can be established that sets a voter registration limit within 10 days of an election.  10 days.  What do New York’s political leaders do?  They set a deadline of 25 days.  Two full weeks longer than the constitutional minimum.

And as the years go by, no meaningful changes are made despite the technological and societal changes.

The state’s antiquated system of voter registration is a relic of a bygone era.  It serves little purpose other than to help self-perpetuate the current leadership, ensuring re-election of incumbents and limiting voter participation.  In fact, other states have been modernizing their laws to make it easier to register to vote and as a result are among the states with the highest voting rates in the nation.

New York should join the states offering Same Day Registration through the passage of an amendment to the State Constitution.  As of March 2018, 17 states plus the District of Columbia offer same day registration (SDR), which allows any qualified resident of the state to go to register to vote and cast a ballot—on that very day.  Additionally, Washington has enacted same day registration, to be implemented in 2019.

Each year, just as interest in elections and candidates begins to peak, potential voters find that the deadline for registering to vote has already passed.  Here in New York, campaigns for statewide and local offices barely attract public attention before October.  By the time voters begin to focus on the election, the deadline has already passed.  If you’re not registered, please do so.  When thinking about Election Day and the importance of this fundamental civic obligation, remember New York’s need for voting reforms.

Will Water Regulations Get Improved?

Posted by NYPIRG on October 1, 2018 at 3:25 pm

One of New York’s greatest natural resources is its abundance of water supplies.  But the state’s industrial history has resulted in serious threats to using that water for drinking.  Those threats should be checked by government regulations, but in far too many cases, they are not.

Drinking water regulation is organized around “regulated contaminants” and “unregulated contaminants.” Regulated contaminants are those for which the government has set health standards.  Regular testing allows government regulators to identify drinking water supplies that contain contaminants that pose a threat to the public.  Unregulated contaminants are substances that can pose health threats, but neither federal nor state government regulators have set safety standards.

Unregulated contaminants that are well known to pose health threats are PFOA, PFOS and 1,4-dioxane.  Due to their common use in water-resistant, stain-proof and nonstick products as well as firefighting foam, PFOA and PFOS are increasingly being detected in New York’s drinking water.  1,4-dioxane is an industrial solvent manufactured in large quantities and in widespread use.  Decades of improper use, disposal and storage have led to widespread drinking water contamination.  PFOA and PFOS endanger public health at very low levels of exposure, resulting in developmental effects to fetuses, kidney damage and cancer.  Studies find that exposure to 1,4-dioxane can cause liver cancer and chronic kidney and liver effects, which has led EPA to designate the chemical as a likely human carcinogen.

The threats from these chemicals, and others, are the reason why Governor Cuomo established the New York Drinking Water Quality Council to make recommendations that set the safety standards for certain unregulated toxic chemicals.

The Council is supposed to make its first round of recommendations this October 2nd.  In an effort to show the magnitude of the threats, researchers at the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) reviewed the test data for public drinking water supplies in New York to see the extent of PFOA/PFOS and 1,4-dioxane contamination.

NYPIRG’s review of public water systems in New York found that many communities have reportable levels PFOA/PFOS or 1,4-dioxane in their drinking water. NYPIRG reviewed the most recent data available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The review showed that drinking water for over 2.8 million New Yorkers has levels of 1,4-dioxane above .3 parts per billion, and drinking water for over 1.4 million New Yorkers contained levels of PFOA/PFOS above the most stringent levels recommended.

The review of communities showed that 49 public water systems have 1,4-dioxane in their drinking water supplies that meet EPA minimum reporting limits.  There are over 31 systems in which the amounts have exceeded the limits recommended by public health and environmental groups.  Eight public water systems have PFOA or PFOS in their drinking water supplies that meet EPA minimum reporting limits.  All eight of those systems reported levels that exceed recommended limits, and four exceeded the EPA’s current health advisory threshold.

With millions of New Yorkers’ drinking water supplies at risk, the Drinking Water Quality Council should take the important step of setting stringent public-health based safety standards.  PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-dioxane, which can cause several types of cancer and other diseases, have harmed communities from Long Island to Hoosick Falls.  The only way to ensure every community is safe from these dangerous chemicals – meaning every water supply is tested and response protocols are in place – is to establish health standards.

Whether that will happen, time will tell.  But what is clear is that New York’s precious natural resource – its water supplies – must be protected.  As the planet heats up from global warming, fresh water supplies will be more and more at risk.  Places like New York must do all they can to protect its drinking water.