The Surprising Connection Between Food and Fracking.

                        

 

A farmer spreads synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on a field. eutrophication&hypoxia/Flickr

 

 

By Tom Philpott

 

 

 

In a recent Nation piece, the wonderful Elizabeth Royte teased out the direct links between hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the food supply. In short, extracting natural gas from rock formations by bombarding them with chemical-spiked fluid leaves behind fouled water—and that fouled water can make it into the crops and animals we eat.

But there's another, emerging food/fracking connection that few are aware of. US agriculture is highly reliant on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen fertilizer is synthesized in a process fueled by natural gas. As more and more of the US natural gas supply comes from fracking, more and more of the nitrogen fertilizer farmers use will come from fracked natural gas. If Big Ag becomes hooked on cheap fracked gas to meet its fertilizer needs, then the fossil fuel industry will have gained a powerful ally in its effort to steamroll regulation and fight back opposition to fracking projects.

 

The potential for the growth of fracked nitrogen (known as "N") fertilizer is immense. During the 2000s, when conventional US natural gas sources were drying up and prices were spiking, the US fertilizer industry largely went offshore, moving operations to places like Trinidad and Tobago, where conventional natural gas was still relatively plentiful. (I told that story in a 2010 Grist piece.) This chart from a 2009 USDA doc illustrates how rapidly the US shifted away from domestically produced nitrogen in the 2000s.

It was the N of the era: In the 2000s, nitrogen production moved offshore as US natural gas prices rose. Source: USDA

Today, Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation off the coast of Venezuela and our leading source of imported N, is in the same position the US found itself in the early 2000s: Its supply of conventional, easy-to-harvest natural gas is wearing thin. In 2012, the International Monetary Fund estimated (PDF) that at current rates of extraction, the nation had sufficient natural gas reserves to last until just 2019.

Meanwhile, the fracking boom has made US natural gas suddenly abundant—and driven prices into the ground. A Btu of US natural gas now now costs 75 percent less than it did in 2008, the New York Times recently reported. Meanwhile, nitrogen fertilizer prices remain stubbornly high, propped up by strong demand driven by high crop prices. Those conditions—low input prices plus elevated prices for the final product—mean a potential profit bonanza for companies that use cheap US natural gas to make pricy N fertilizer for the booming US market.

Not surprisingly, as Kay McDonald of the excellent blog Big Picture Agriculture shows, the industry is starting to move back to the United States to take advantage of the fracking boom. McDonald points to a $1.4 billion project announced in September by the Egyptian company Orascom Construction Industries to build a large new nitrogen fertilizer plant in Iowa close to a natural gas pipeline. According to the Wall Street Journal, "cheap U.S. natural-gas supplies and the nation's role as the world's most important food exporter" drew the Egyptian giant into the US market.

Fertilizer giant CF Industries won more than $70 million in tax incentives from the the state, and $161 million in property taxes over 20 years from the county that houses the plant.

 

That same month, US-owned agribusiness cooperative CHS announced it was investing $1.2 billion to build a nitrogen plant in North Dakota. An Associated Press article gave a taste of the potential profits in such an operation: "Natural gas prices are now at about $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. At those prices, it takes about $82 worth of natural gas to make a ton of anhydrous ammonia, which is selling for about $800 per ton."

And then there's US fertilizer giant CF Industries, which in November announced a $3.8 billion expansion of existing nitrogen fertilizer plants in Louisiana and Iowa, a move designed to "take advantage of low natural gas costs and high grain prices," MarketWatch reported.

Now, it should be noted that it isn't just the promise of windfall profits that are driving these investments. Energy prices are highly volatile, and the industry is wary of the risk involved with plunking down billions in hopes of future gain. Enter the taxpayer: These projects are being underwritten by public money at the national, state, and local levels. As a reward for expanding its Iowa plant, CF Industries won more than $70 million in tax incentives from the the state, and $161 million in property taxes over 20 years from Woodbury County, which houses the plant, the Sioux City Journal reports. Louisiana will chip in several million dollars in tax breaks for the company's expansion there, too.

As for Orascom Construction's Iowa plant, it's being financed through a federal loan program designed to help states recover economically from disasters—in this case, Iowa's 2008 floods. The loan program, which gives Orascom access to an interest rate much lower than it would find in the commercial market, is a de facto subsidy—it will likely save the company $360 million in interest payments on the construction, the Des Moines Register reported. And that's on top of $100 million in tax breaks the state of Iowa has committed to the project.

What are taxpayers getting in exchange for these goodies? In my view, not much. Industrial agriculture's reliance on plentiful synthetic nitrogen brings with it a whole bevy of environmental liabilities: excess nitrogen that seeps into streams and eventually into the Mississippi River, feeding a massive annual algae bloom that blots out sea life; emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon; and the destruction of organic matter in soil.

By adding a "small grain" (oats or wheat) plus nitrogen-fixing cover crops, farmers can reduce their nitrogen needs by upwards of 80 percent.

 

Rather than prop up nitrogen use by subsidizing new megaprojects, public policy could be seeking encouraging farming practices that demand less nitrogen. One obvious strategy is diversification. The most prolific US crop, corn, is also the most nitrogen-intensive among major field crops. In a 2012 paper, researchers from Iowa State University's Leopold Center showed that by extending the typical Midwestern corn-soy crop rotation by adding a "small grain" (e.g., oats or wheat) plus nitrogen-fixing cover crops, farmers can reduce their nitrogen needs by upwards of 80 percent. Investing in policies that encourage such changes would likely, in the long run, be much smarter than subsidizing the fertilizer industry's move toward relying on fracked gas.

As they fight the expansion of fracking and push for tighter regulations on it, concerned citizens can count on an opponent nearly as powerful and monied as Big Oil: Big Ag. Already, the American Farm Bureau Federation, which essentially acts as a lobbyist for Big Ag firms, supports the controversial energy source: "Farm Bureau supports additional access for exploration and production of oil and natural gas, including the use of hydraulic fracturing," the group declared in an October 2012 policy statement (PDF). But the Farm Bureau and its agribiz allies haven't played much of a role in the fight over regulating fracking, yet. As the fertilizer industry becomes reliant on cheap US natural gas, that will likely change.

Am  I a Whale Killer?

 

 

by Piper Hoffman

The season for cruise ship vacations has arrived. I just got back from my very first cruise, and I brought with me a troubling question: just how much environmental damage did that ship cause? How much marine life did we kill?

My boat carried 2,800 passengers and 1,100 staff people and crew. It was 965 feet long. It is hard to fathom how big this thing was. You would not want to see it coming at you.

Periodically we would feel the ship hit something. I fervently hoped that we had hit a swell in choppy waters and not a dolphin or something.

Ship Strikes, Or Death by Pleasure Cruise

The International Whaling Commission reports that “Many species of whales and dolphins can be vulnerable to collisions with vessels, or”ship strike.”

“Collision with a ship usually results in injury or death for the whale. Records show that as many as five blue whales are killed by ships every year, and many more deaths likely go unrecorded because blue whales are negatively buoyant and sink when they die. The annual mortality could be as high as dozens of whales, which constitutes a significant threat to this subpopulation and possibly to the entire species.”

In one incident, a ship impaled a whale on its bow unbeknownst to the crew, who discovered its body only two days later.

Sometimes ships hit endangered animals like North Atlantic Right Whales, whose numbers are down to 300-400. This species is particularly vulnerable because of “their slow movements, time spent at the surface, and time spent near the coast.”

Water Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a Cruise Ship Discharge Assessment Report that Friends of the Earth summarized: “cruise ships produce an average of 21,000 gallons per day of sewage and 170,000 gallons per day of raw graywater (which can contain as much bacteria as sewage [plus oil and grease]).” They are dumping this crap into “some of our most pristine and wild places,” which of course is where people want to go on cruises.

Friends of the Earth also produces its own scorecard for cruise lines. They measure “sewage treatment, air pollution reduction, water quality compliance and accessibility of environmental information.” Their conclusion: “cruise lines are doing less than they can to limit the environmental impacts of their ships.” A company called Crystal Cruises earned an F “due to the absence of advanced sewage treatment systems on their ships and the inability to utilize shoreside power via plug-ins at equipped ports.” No advanced sewage treatment systems means they are dumping foul things straight into the water. Eww. Not using shoreside power means they are burning low-grade diesel even when electricity is available.

The crud cruise ships dump into the water includes bacteria and viruses, which “can sicken and kill marine life, including corals.” I feel disproportionately guilty about that one, since I had a nasty upper respiratory infection for the first few days of the cruise. I was careful to isolate myself from people who could catch it but never considered that my germs could do damage after they went down the drain.

Air Pollution

On a typical seven-day cruise to the Caribbean, the ship emits the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide per passenger, which is about what that individual would produce in 18 days on land.

The massive QE2, which is no longer operating, had mileage that would send shoppers into conniptions if they saw it on a car they were considering buying: 49 feet per gallon. Yes, feet. According to the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union, cruise ships “emit particle pollution equivalent to 5 million cars driving the same distance as the cruise ship travels, and that the 15 largest cruise ships emit as much sulfur dioxide pollution annually as all 760 million cars in the world.” (Other sources say there are more like one billion cars on the road than 760 million.)

Am I A Whale Killer?

Given statistics like the annual whale strike number of between five and dozens, it is unlikely that my boat hit multiple whales a day. It is much more likely that what we encountered was the maritime equivalent of air turbulence. But I certainly did my part to pollute that beautiful blue water.

Why Doctors Can't Make You Well.

 

By Deepak Chopra

 

For many people, keeping well doesn't involve taking good advice. After decades of public health campaigns in favor of low-fat diets, moderate exercise, and stress management, it's still hard to get Americans to comply.  As a society, we are so sold on drugs and surgery as the answer to illness that many of us only register two states of health: Either you are sick, or you're not sick. In the first case, you go to the doctor, who is expected to fix you.

The choice should be broader than being sick or not. "I am well" means much more than the absence of active disease. What the public -- and most doctors -- hasn't found out is that the cause of illness is becoming more and more murky.  It's not just germs and genes. The germ theory of disease held sway for over a century after the discovery of microbes and the arrival of antibiotics to combat them. Gene therapy, long promised as the answer to almost any disease, hasn't actually achieved much success, although in certain cases, such as cancers that are caused by a simple genetic mutation, targeted drug therapies have been successful.

The bigger picture is that genetics has led us into a much more complicated view of the disease process, so complicated that it is beyond the skill of doctors.  Too many factors are at work when illness arises, and the disease model itself sometimes breaks down.

A startling article in The Wilson Quarterly covered the current explanations for schizophrenia, which has moved from being a psychiatric disorder to a disorder of the brain. And yet, to quote the article:

It is now clear that the simple biomedical approach to serious psychiatric illnesses has failed in turn. At least, the bold dream that these maladies would be understood as brain disorders with clearly identifiable genetic causes ... has faded into the mist.

All simple approaches, from talking to a psychiatrist to taking a pill or holding out for a genetic silver bullet, don't match reality.

To quote once more:

... schizophrenia now appears to be a complex outcome of many unrelated causes -- the genes you inherit, but also whether your mother fell ill during her pregnancy, whether you got beaten up as a child or were stressed as an adolescent, even how much sun your skin has seen. It's not just about the brain. It's not just about genes.

The fact is that many diseases are turning out to have multiple causes that change from person to person. Depression, which is much more widespread than schizophrenia, is now known to involve many brain centers, to the extent that no two people are exactly alike in their depression.

Therefore, the conclusion that applies to schizophrenia may be announcing a massive trend:

... schizophrenia looks more and more like diabetes. A messy array of risk factors predisposes someone to develop diabetes: smoking, being overweight, collecting fat around the middle rather than on the hips, high blood pressure, and yes, family history. These risk factors are not intrinsically linked. Some of them have something to do with genes, but most do not.

What are we left with when clear, defined causes don't work? A term even more vague than risk factors: susceptibility.  Susceptibility covers so many things that quite literally everything in life becomes a contributing factor.  A doctor can't make you well because susceptibility goes back all the way to birth. A wide range of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, autism, and Alzheimer's, are now traceable to slight changes in the brain that appear many years or even decades before the first symptoms arise.

Much of this evidence has been gained through brain scans and genetic typing, yet these indicators aren't causes. We now know that gene output is highly flexible and always changing, while the brain alters its "soft wiring" constantly. Both are highly influenced by behavior, beliefs, lifestyle choices, diet, and so on.  Despite all the new information gained through new technologies, treatment hasn't generally kept up, and sometimes, as in early signs of a predisposition for cancer, autism, and Alzheimer's, finding a suitable drug therapy, should one even exist, is years or decades away.

In the next post, we'll discuss what this tremendous shift in explaining illness means for you today, trying to find ways to reduce your susceptibility.

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VANISHING OF THE BEES - video trailer.

 

How to Inspire Your Brain (Part 2).

By Deepak Chopra - Co-author, 'Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being'; founder, The Chopra Foundation.

By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), co-authors of Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-being. (Harmony)

Evidence is gathering by the day that the brain isn't really an object but a continuous and active process. Thoughts and experiences create new pathways in the brain. They even affect the output of genes. What this means for the individual is extremely important. The control center for the brain's constant shaping and reshaping is you, the person who is using the brain. Although there are many brain processes that run on automatic, they too are highly influenced by experiences -- that's why, for instance, the automatic rise and fall of blood pressure during the day is highly responsive to all the things that happened to you during the day.
Brain health comes down to a simple-seeming formula: maximize the positive input and minimize the negative input. The result will be positive rather than negative output. To some extent the difference between positive and negative input isn't hard to define:

It's positive to maintain balanced diet, negative to eat an imbalanced one.

It's positive to take regular exercise; it's negative to be sedentary.

It's positive to have good relationships, negative to have stressful ones.

Anyone who has kept pace with the public campaign in prevention can make the list longer; the risk factors for a healthy lifestyle are well known. But this is where the difference between positive and negative get trickier. Information isn't the same as compliance. That Americans are getting more obese and sedentary while consuming massive quantities of sugar and fatty junk food isn't due to lack of information. Non-compliance is about inspiring your brain to function in a better way. This is a role assigned to the mind; the brain can't inspire itself.

In our book Super Brain, we focus on how to you can best relate to your brain on the basis of more positive thinking, emotions, attitudes, and beliefs. In that regard we are running counter to the prevailing trend, which sees the brain as an organ that needs to be maintained the way one would maintain the heart of stomach. Of course the brain is an organ, but far more importantly, it serves the mind. Therefore, everything you think, say, and do depends on aligning the brain with your desires, intentions, and the vision you have of your life. The brain keeps a constant feedback loop going with the mind and body; if you were to fall into a coma, it can sustain life.

But only you can sustain meaning and purpose. For all of its brilliant discoveries, neuroscience can't give your brain meaning, and if you feel that you lack purpose, there is no drug or surgery that will bring it back. At present, the main breakthroughs in neuroscience are medical. Curing organic disorders like Alzheimer's and depression are urgent goals since they undermine anyone's chance to find meaning and purpose.
But our emphasis is to raise the everyday functioning of the brain to a higher level. The baseline brain, as we call it, passively handles everyone's life given the input that is provided. Super brain, on the other hand, goes beyond the baseline brain to actively optimize what the brain can do -- it brings to life hidden potential that exists in everyone's brain. To give a sense of what we mean, here's a quiz to test how much of your brain's potential you are presently using.


Quiz: Baseline Brain versus Super Brain
Look at the following list and place a check beside each sentence that describes your behavior at least some of the time. Don't be judgmental or hard on yourself. Simply mark the items that honestly seem to apply to you.
I don't ask myself to behave very differently today than I did yesterday.
I am a creature of habit.
I don't stimulate my mind with new challenges very often.
I like familiarity. It's the most comfortable way to live.
I'm not that excited with the work I do.
My relationships follow pretty set patterns.
I should pay more attention to my weight.
I don't exercise regularly.
I can be impulsive and then regret it later.
I have certain habits I just can't seem to break.
I look at my past and see major regrets.
I know that I have missed some major opportunities.
I'm only fair at making decisions.
I'm aware of having inner conflicts.
I worry about aging, particularly memory loss.
I've had much better times in my life than now.
The future fills me with uncertainty.
I need to be in better control of my life.
I wonder what my purpose in life is.
I wish that my emotions were more valued.
I rarely read inspirational stories, poetry, or scriptures.
I feel that I deserve more appreciation.
I don't see my life really getting better.
I have a hard time getting a good night's sleep every night.
I don't feel that great about my body.

Total Score __________


Analyzing your score: Every item on the list describes the baseline brain. Its attitudes, beliefs, and habits are self-limiting. They aren't bad or wrong -- this quiz isn't about judging yourself. It's about the habitual way that you relate to your brain. The point is to assess where you stand in relation to your hidden potential.
18 - 25 points. You are not sufficiently proactive as you relate to your brain. Much of the time you allow inertia to creep into your daily life. You let old habits and beliefs hold power over you. When something goes wrong, you tend to let it slide. You don't believe that you can change your life at every moment, significantly. It's good that you see yourself realistically, because each item that you checked off can be improved, as you will discover reading Super Brain.

11 - 17 points. You know that your life could be better and have a good appreciation of your limitations. You have spent some time trying to change, either through therapy, self-help, or spiritual pursuits. You may consider yourself a seeker. Even if you don't, you would welcome positive change. Looking back at your past, you know that you had more potential than you have fulfilled so far. It's good that you are so ready to change. Every page of Super Brain will speak to you personally and help you to get on the path to fulfillment.
5 - 10 points. You are a self-aware person who has been interested in fulfilling your potential for a long time. It's likely that you are very familiar with therapy or the spiritual path. You value yourself and don't easily accept limitations. You are ready to turn the rest of your life into a rising arc. You are already so proactive that Super Brain offers fulfillment at an unusually high level. The possibility of reaching higher consciousness and calling on the higher brain to get you there is very real.

0 - 4 points. Either you are astonishingly self-aware or you didn't take the quiz seriously. Please take it again without fearing that you will make yourself look bad. The quiz is about an objective assessment, not about judging against yourself.

In the next post we'll discuss the implications of turning baseline functioning into higher functioning.
Read Part 1 of How to Inspire Your Brain

(To be cont.)
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The Story of Stuff.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Can Antibiotics Make You Fat?

Factory animals are pumped full of antibiotics to make them gain weight. What does that mean for our waistlines?

—By Tom Philpott

Like hospital patients, US farm animals tend to be confined to tight spaces and dosed with antibiotics. But that's where the similarities end. Hospitals dole out antibiotics to save lives. On America's factory-scale meat farms, the goal is to fatten animals for their date at the slaughterhouse.

And it turns out that antibiotics help with the fattening process. Back in the 1940s, scientists discovered that regular low doses of antibiotics increased "feed efficiency"—that is, they caused animals to put on more weight per pound of feed. No one understood why, but farmers seized on this unexpected benefit. By the 1980s, feed laced with small amounts of the drugs became de rigueur as US meat production shifted increasingly to factory farms. In 2009, an estimated 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States went to livestock.

This year, scientists may have finally figured out why small doses of antibiotics "promote growth," as the industry puts it: They make subtle changes to what's known as the "gut microbiome," the teeming universe populated by billions of microbes that live within the digestive tracts of animals. In recent research, the microbiome has been emerging as a key regulator of health, from immune-related disorders like allergies and asthma to the ability to fight off pathogens.

In an August study published in Nature, a team of New York University researchers subjected mice to regular low doses of antibiotics—just like cows, pigs, and chickens get on factory farms. The result: After seven weeks, the drugged mice had a different composition of microbiota in their guts than the control group—and they had gained 10 to 15 percent more fat mass.

Why? "Microbes in our gut are able to digest certain carbohydrates that we're not able to," says NYU researcher and study coauthor Ilseung Cho. Antibiotics seem to increase those bugs' ability to break down carbs—and ultimately convert them to body fat. As a result, the antibiotic-fed mice "actually extracted more energy from the same diet" as the control mice, he says. That's great if you're trying to fatten a giant barn full of hogs. But what about that two-legged species that's often exposed to antibiotics?

Interestingly, the NYU team has produced another recent paper looking at just that question. They analyzed data from a UK study in the early '90s to see if they could find a correlation between antibiotic exposure and kids' weight. The study involved more than 11,000 kids, about a third of whom had been prescribed antibiotics to treat an infection before the age of six months. The results: The babies who had been exposed to antibiotics had a 22 percent higher chance of being overweight at age three than those who hadn't (though by age seven the effect had worn off).

The connection raises another obvious question: Are we being exposed to tiny levels of antibiotics through residues in the meat we eat—and are they altering our gut flora? It turns out that the Food and Drug Administration maintains tolerance limits for antibiotic residue levels, above which meat isn't supposed to be released to the public (PDF). But Keeve Nachman, who researches antibiotic use in the meat industry for the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, told me that the FDA sets these limits based solely on research financed and conducted by industry—and it refuses to release the complete data to the public or consider independent research.

"We may not understand the biological relevance of exposures through consuming meat at those levels," he says. Indeed, a recent European study showed that tiny levels of antibiotics could have an effect on microorganisms. The researchers took some meat, subjected it to antibiotic residues near the US limit, and used a traditional technique to turn it into sausage, inoculating it with lactic-acid-producing bacteria. In normal sausage making, the lactic acid from the starter bacteria spreads through the meat and kills pathogens like E. coli. The researchers found, though, that the antibiotic traces were strong enough to impede the starter bacteria, while still letting the E. coli flourish. In other words, even at very low levels, antibiotics can blast "good" bacteria—and promote deadly germs.

Nachman stressed that we simply don't have sufficient information to tell whether the meat we eat is messing with our gut microbiome. But, he adds, "It's not an unreasonable suspicion." If that's not enough to churn your stomach, there's also the fact that drug-resistant bugs—which often emerge in antibiotic-dosed livestock on factory farms—are increasingly common: Remember the super-salmonella that caused Cargill to recall 36 million pounds of ground turkey last year? Luckily for me, it's unlikely that drug-laced meat will mess with my gut. I think I've lost my appetite.