Vermont’s brand is clean, natural and progressive.  

When it comes to food products, Ben & Jerry’s was the iconic ignition, establishing that brand nationwide.

Founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, made social responsibility a guiding principle of the company, so long as it remained in private ownership.  

Once the company grew to a certain size and became publicly owned, that mission was maintained.  This was largely due to the weight of respect carried by the founders’ own individual personalities; but shareholders held ultimate sway, so it was probably inevitable that the shining star of the Vermont brand would be sold to a much bigger player.  

That player was Unilever, and continuance of some of B&J’s social responsibility mission was a contractual obligation attached to the sale.

We don’t know at what point that breadcrumb trail back to the brand’s progressive origins will disappear, but apparently it still has the power to undermine Unilever’s corporate agenda.

Business Week reports that Ben & Jerry brand’s advocacy for GMO labelling is in direct opposition to the parent company’s own position on the issue.

Fully aware that, when they acquired the Ben & Jerry’s label, its value for Unilever lay in part in the Vermont brand associated with that name and all it implies, the multinational is now faced with a quandry.

Violating the principles of that brand by pulling the choke-chain on Ben &Jerry’s support for GMO labelling, would come at a cost to Unilever, both in bad PR and in dollars and cents.

So, for now at least, Unilever has chosen to look away while B&J’s does its own thing; but, as food industry critic Marion Nestle points out, that too may come at a cost:

If Unilever tries to play both sides of the issue, it may wind up hurting itself and Ben & Jerry’s. “In the short run, they might get away with ignoring what B&J is doing, but sooner or later it will catch up with them,” Unilever’s stance makes it “look stupid,” Nestle says, and it could open up the company to boycotts from consumer activists angry about its hypocrisy.

Could this ultimately provide the opportunity that some (including Ben Cohen himself) have reportedly wished for, to take Ben & Jerry’s back into private ownership?  

‘Just something to ponder, spoon in hand, in the last lazy days of summer.

Could a really bad idea get even worse?  The answer is “yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”

Apparently seeking a way to ensure their energy independence from the West, China is throwing in with Putin’s Russia in a venture to develop floating nuclear power plants.

One of the conundrums of nuclear energy is that in order to safely regulate and therefore harness the overwhelmingly  destructive power of nuclear reactions, it is necessary that an unlimited supply of water be constantly available to quell those reactions, as necessary.  That’s why nuclear power plants have generally been situated so close to lakes,  rivers and oceans.

In Japan, where nuclear energy had become the principle driver of the economy, power plants with multiple reactors liberally dot the coastlines; but, as we have learned since March 2011, therein lies much of their potential for disaster.

In our post-Fukushima world, even die-hard nuke lovers have to admit to the necessity of finding better ways to isolate nuclear products from natural waterways.  

The Japanese have tried every strategy they could think of, including chemical “freezing,” to prevent contaminated groundwater from co-mingling with waters of the ocean habitat.  Nothing has worked, and it is estimated that hundreds-of-thousands of gallons of highly contaminated water are being added to the ocean every day.

Russia has been notoriously oblivious to environmental impacts; and even though China has adopted some green technology to address its choking atmosphere, that nation’s focus is strictly short-term, and largely motivated by GDP rather than environmental concerns.

The “choice” of nuclear as the alternative to coal is rather like the decision in the 1950’s to use DDT in order to eradicate crop predators.  In the short-term, it worked remarkably well to increase yields and everyone was thrilled; but in the longterm, the collateral damage both to biodiversity and humans themselves was found to be so profound that its use was abandoned in the developed world.

The idea of floating nuclear plants, particularly in nations like Russia and China where quality control and corruption have been huge issues, is completely insane.  

This and several other recent developments illustrate that world organizations like the UN have waited too long to establish clean water as a basic human right that must be protected both from exploitation and the hubris of

human industry.

If we can’t even get that done, it’s just a matter of time before we snuff ourselves out.

Note: I am proud to be working for Fairewinds Energy Education, but the views expressed here are my own alone.

One of the great institutions of Vermont’s political counterculture is speaking out today in protest against the scale of collateral death and injury in the wake of current Israeli attempts to truncate Hamas in  Gaza.

Bread & Puppet Theater is staging a protest performance today at noon on the State House Lawn, and again this evening at the Bread & Puppet Theater Farm at 7:30 PM, on Route 22 in Glover, where they will replace their scheduled performance piece with Fire: Emergency Performance for Gaza.

Referring to their noon protest, Bread and Puppet has released the following in a public statement:

The protest will bring attention to the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the U.S. government’s support of the Gaza attacks. Tableauxs will depict Palestinian women with their arms raised over the death of their children. A bell of mourning will chime slowly next to large, black and white woodcut banners featuring such questions as “Why?”, “How Much Longer?” and “How Much More?”

The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate today, after the humanitarian cease fire was broken with an exchange of horrifying violence that has characterized the current crisis.

No resolution will ever be possible so long as both sides see themselves entirely as the victims and never accept any responsibility for being victimizers.

The righteous stalemate over Gaza is an odd sort of metaphor for the Right-eous stalemate in DC, where Republicans have worked themselves into a fever over the evils of progress of any kind, and especially of the progressive kind.  

They cannot see themselves as anything but victims facing an alien surge, even though holding the pursestrings of the 1% gives them power the other side cannot even imagine.

‘Stupid, pointless and cruel: no matter what the conflict, the true “victims” are always overwhelmingly comprised of the weak, the poor, the elderly and the children.

As regular readers already know, I have very recently  joined Fairewinds Energy Education; nevertheless, the following represents my own personal opinions, which are shared independently.

The Nuclear Energy Institute is not to be confused with any objective regulatory body.  An unapologetic interested party, The NEI is an industry association whose primary purpose is to further the interests of those businesses for whom nuclear energy and its products represent a significant portion of their worth.

So, anything that emanates from their central nervous system may be assumed to represent a strong bias.

Sometimes that narrow, almost oblivious focus betrays itself in funny ways.  Take for instance this, clipped from an NEI press release:

Nuclear Energy Institute employees, along with members of Women in Nuclear and the North American Young Generation in Nuclear, facilitated a nuclear fuel cycle game during the Technology Student Association’s annual conference earlier this summer.

Visiting the NEI website, we discover that there is even a downloadable game, presumably a downsized version of the “facilitated” one, available for play by amateur engineers.  

Touted as “A Plant In Your Pocket,” the concept produced gales of laughter all around our household.

What isn’t very funny is the fact that Entergy continues to play games with the communities surrounding Vermont Yankee.

Meeting with state and local representatives, VY’s Emergency Preparedness Manager, Mike McKenney, told them that Entergy is asking the NRC to reduce their responsibility for emergency planning to the perimeter of their own property, as of April 1, 2014

Asserting that, once the fuel is removed from the reactor and placed in the spent fuel pool at the end of December, all the associated risk is pretty much over, McKenney made the following remarks:

“Any offsite emergency support will be limited to local police and fire departments, ambulance services and hospitals,” he said. “At that point, we will become your typical industrial-type facility.”

In previous decommissionings around the nation, the NRC has allowed operators to reduce their emergency response obligations because the dangers associated with storing spent fuel aren’t as significant as those associated with an operating reactor, said McKenney.

“You no longer have the motive force and high temperature associated with the steam.”

Unfortunately, the difference between “not as significant as…with an operating reactor” and non-existent is rather substantial.

Whatever position the NRC has taken B.F. (Before Fukushima) must certainly be reconsidered in light of that unanticipated disaster.

Much of Entergy’s “confidence” that  there will be no significant danger of radiation release from the spent fuel pool is based upon the assumption that a constant temperature will be maintained in the pool.

However many things could precipitate a loss of constant temperature, including but not limited to simple equipment failure, power outages due to extraordinary storm events, and malicious intent.

Most of these could be adjusted for by an alert and competent staff, but Entergy is also asking to reduce staffing; and what happens if several of these factors come into simultaneous play?

We don’t have to look any further than to Fukushima to observe the worst case scenario for an analogous spent fuel pool where, due to a catastrophic chain of errors and events, criticality proved unpreventable.

Entergy is looking to cut costs wherever it can, now that it’s rung the last bit of value from its VY cash cow.  

The good people of the surrounding communities should take every reassurance of innocuousness from these people with a grain of salt…and maybe a  bottle of iodine tablets.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for playing. Please leave your expectations at the door.”

Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders (I) may not hail from a populous state; and he may not benefit from the weight of a major party propelling him forward;  but he is looking more and more like a force to be reckoned with in the hallowed halls of Congress.

Sanders has long been known to be a formidable advocate for veterans’ best interests.  Having assumed the role of Chairman of the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee in January 2013, Sander’s arrival on the scene came just as that advocacy experience was called for in the wake of revelations that VA hospitals (and, by extension, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs) has failed in its mission to provide promised relief to former service members who were in need of timely healthcare.

Now, it appears that Sanders and his counterpart in the House, Republican Jeff Miller, may have negotiated enough common ground to bring some much needed relief to the situation:

The chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs committees have reached a tentative agreement on a plan to improve veterans’ health care…Sen. Sanders and Rep. Miller continued negotiating over the weekend. Aides said they “made significant progress” on legislation to overhaul the VA and provide funding to hire more doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals…

Amid the deliberate gridlock that has paralyzed Congress since Obama’s election, and even more so over the past year; the injection of an identified ‘Independent’  to lubricate the process seems to have been just what the doctor ordered.

Of course there is no question that, when veterans’ rights are at issue, both major parties should be highly motivated to play nice.  But Republicans have the smell of extinction in their nostrils as they observe the changing demographics of twenty-first century America.  

That smell has prompted sane Republicans to cower in the corner, allowing the fringe to run amuck with some pretty crazy and losing positions on long-over arguments like minority civil rights, women’s civil rights and even funding of essential services.  

So even when it’s logically in their best longterm interest to be reasonable and allow common-sense legislation to move forward they have sometimes scuttled the whole thing for pure cussedness.

On other issues as well, Sanders’ voice rises above the din to reach the ears of a public hungry for straightforward decency.  He is plain spoken and direct; never stooping to hackneyed expressions of sham patriotism or constituent flattery.

I was opposed to seeing Bernie run for president until recently.  I thought he could do more good just exactly where he is than by hitting the campaign trail, Don Quixote style.

But then I started reading how the vast sums of money going into media buys post-Citizens United will limit and shape the very conversation in the 2016 election cycle; so that things like Climate Change and poverty may be pushed right off the podium by the wishlists of moneyed special interest groups demanding expanded drilling, heterosexual hegemony, a ban on abortions, vouchers for education, military expansion; or anything simply to change the subject and monopolize voter attention.

If that is what is likely to happen when candidates face off in presidential debates, I would just like to see them try to hijack Bernie Sander’s ten minutes of voter attention!

So I’m changing my tune and joining the swell of support for a Sanders presidential run.  It may be our last chance to get the people’s word in edgewise.

Progressive candidate for lieutenant governor Dean Corren  has been invited to address the Democratic State Committee on July 26 in Montpelier.  

Recognizing the essential value of a Democratic endorsement, Corren will be making the case that he has a lot to offer  with his candidacy.

Says Democratic Party Executive Committee member, Selene Hofer-Shall:

“There is a lot of interest in Dean’s candidacy, particularly because he qualified for public financing, and his synergy with the Governor on healthcare.”

Corren has already demonstrated the ability to marshall popular support and set valuable precedent for campaign finance reform, by becoming the first candidate to qualify for matching public funding.  

This success has nettled the somewhat dozy Phil Scott, who has apparently gotten a little too accustomed to going unchallenged.

Nose out of joint, Scott sniffed petulantly about opposing public funding because he doesn’t want to “burden taxpayers,” thereby betraying his not-so-nice-guy side, while demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of the democratic purpose of public funding.

And Corren knows just exactly what he can bring to the Democratic table that, for all his centerist camouflage, Republican Scott most certainly never will:

“Democrats and Progressives alike want to make sure we follow through on creating a real comprehensive VT healthcare system.  Vermont needs a Lt. Governor who will help make that happen.  That’s the overriding reason I got into this race, and why I am asking Democrats to write me in on the primary ballot in August.  Working together is the best way to get the job done,” said Corren.

As Corren points out, Democrats endorsed two other “outsiders” in the last election, Independent ,Bernie Sanders and Progressive, Doug Hoffer.

Those endorsements turned out rather well for Democrats, and Corren is hoping that similar support can be mobilized around his candidacy, with or without the grumpy old men of the Blue Dog fringe.

Once touted as the answer to U.S. energy consumers’ dreams, it is beginning to look like the natural gas extraction process known as “fracking” may be as much of an envionmental obscenity as the name suggests.

First, neighbors in the vicinity of fracking operations in Pennsylvania complained of wells contaminated by chemical effluent from the process, and of uncontrolled methane releases into the aquifer that could actually make the water combustible.

Those complaints were dismissed by the industry as unproven and the “selling” of fracking to the American people as an unlimited source of cheap energy continued unabated.

When initial concerns were raised that pressurized fracturing of substrates far beneath the surface might induce earthquakes, they too were met with derision by the industry.

Vermont became the first state to place a moratorium on the practice in 2012, followed by other states.  In June of this year,  North Carolina lifted its moratorim on fracking before even ensuring that promised rules were in place.

As this extraction method rapidly spreads across the country, the negative evidence is mounting, and it suggests that the practice is even more damaging than originally imagined.

Methane, the volatile fracking byproduct that featured spectacularly in the early news, is a gas with far more potential to hurry climate change than even CO2.  There are massive amounts of this powerful greenhouse gas sequestered deep in the earth, comprising the primary component of the “natural” gas and oil that are the desired products of fracking.  

Freeing the natural gas for collection also frees excess methane to do its worst.

As if that weren’t enough to worry about, states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, which have not been known as earthquake prone, are suddenly alive with seismic activity.  These also happen to be among the states where fracking has been most enthusiastically adopted, and a correlation is beginning to establish itself between fracking and increased risk of earthquake.  

The risk may be primarily associated with the “discard” phase of the process, in which waste water and chemicals from the fracturing phase are discarded through injection into deep concrete-lined wells.  

Investigation of the phenomenon is still in its early stages and it won’t be known for some time whether the fracturing itself contributes to seismic activity; however, there is little disagreement that some aspect of the process is directly linked to greater seismic instability in areas not previously known for earthquakes.

One more negative which must be weighed against any remaining argument for the practice, has to do with another frequent byproduct of fracking: radiation.  Of particular concern is radium,  substantially present in the eastern shale deposits which happen to be rich repositories of oil and gas and therefore ripe for fracking exploitation.  

The radiation liberated in the fracturing phase escapes with methane into the atmosphere, and doubles-down its contamination when tailings from the extraction process are dumped, ultimately finding their way into the aquifer.  Radium-226, one of the radioactive substances sequestered in the oil rich shale beds, has a half-life of 1,600 years.

Tar sands and fracking: the worst of the worst.

In our last desperate attempts to quench an unsustainable thirst for energy, it seems we will commit to the fires anything that will burn, even our bridges.

The U.S. is nothing if not a study in contradictions. The same people who rail against a woman’s right to choose and marriage equality on Tuesday, rage on Wednesday at what they see as liberals trying to limit their rights: to guns…or God…or tax evasion…or pollution and despoilment…  

The folks who object to an influx of violence refugees on our southern border close ranks to prevent immigration reform legislation from getting a hearing in Congress while also slashing government funding that might at least provide more screening and enforcement capability to the department charged with maintaining border security.

But the contradictions don’t end at traditional political rivalries.

Look no further than the President himself to find a contradiction as vexing as any that plays out in Congress.

On the one hand, President Obama publicly dedicated his administration to curbing climate change.  The EPA is proposing new regulations to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants; and that’s a good thing, as detailed today in Vermont ANR Secretary Deb Markowicz’ op ed.

But even if the EPA succeeds in making this one stick, the “other hand” of Obama has just dealt a resounding slap to the future of clean air by proposing to permit, by executive order, sonic exploration for oil and gas deposits beneath the ocean floor; and seems likely, in this election year, to cave to political pressures and endorse the Keystone XL Pipeline.

By itself, either of these two initiatives has the potential to release enough CO2 over the coming decades to completely dwarf current emissions from coal-fired power plants;  nevermind the collateral environmental risks of each.

So, we have to ask if the Obama administration is just as short-sighted as its science-denying opposites.

Indeed, to accept the science but take anything but a hardline against fossil fuel expansion is worthy of even greater condemnation than might be directed toward the hopelessly ignorant.

Book reviews are a little out of the ordinary for GMD; but as it touches on homelessness, exploitation and nuclear cataclysm, Vermont novelist Chris Bohjalian’s latest release ventures right into our bailiwick.

Known for his well-researched, issue oriented story-telling, in “Close Your Eyes. Hold Hands” (Doubleday), Bohjalian invokes the nightmare of a homegrown Fukushima-style nuclear disaster.

The pivotal event takes place not in Vernon, but at a fictitious facility located in the Northeast Kingdom; and Bohjalian has taken great pains with the technical accuracy of his story.  Benefitting from the counsel of our mutual friends at Fairewinds Energy Education, Maggie and Arnie Gundersen, the author successfully avoids pure sensation while telling a poignant tale of life in the shadowy aftermath of a massive radiation release.

The story is told by Emily, a fifteen-year-old girl whose parents have presumably died in the accident, and who are believed by the fleeing population to have been guilty of negligence leading to the reactor meltdown.

Isolated both by the loss of her parents and the real and imagined hostility she encounters as their daughter, Emily slips away during a mass evacuation of her schoolmates, adopts a false identity and flees alone.  

She ends up living the life of a homeless youth in Burlington, eking out a sordid living in the company of other desperate individuals, including a nine-year-old child whom she attempts to protect as a surrogate for all the loved ones she expects never to see again.

She cannot fully abandon the idea of returning to the Exclusion Zone where her home was, in order to finally achieve closure;  and the certain knowledge that she must inevitably confront the mortal truth of her family’s fate underlies her daily battle just to survive and evade the authorities.

Bohjalian does a credible job of imagining the interior dialogue of a teenage girl of exceptional intellect but conflicted emotions.  Emily is devoted to the poetry of her namesake, Emily Dickinson, and the story  is interwoven with facts about the poet with which a troubled young woman might identify.

It is also rich with references to landmarks and habits that anyone familiar with the downtown Burlington scene would relate to as authentic.

Remembering Bohjalian’s delightful features in the Free Press back in the days of his own daughter’s infancy and early years, when he was just learning about the unfamiliar world of little girls,  it is easy to imagine that she was his inspiration when he chose the challenging viewpoint from which to unwind his narrative.

It is always risky for an author to adopt the voice of the opposite gender; even more so if it is the voice of that gender in the turbulent years of youth when, by design, her mannerisms, tastes and even vocabulary are almost hermetically inaccessible.

That the reader can forget the male novelist’s identity for a while and enter the painful world of a displaced girl child is a testament to Bohjalian’s talent. It suggests a penchant for risk-taking that parallel’s that of his young heroine.

It is only in the closing pages of the book that we are reminded of where we recall hearing the title sentence

“Close your eyes. Hold hands.”

Those were the instructions given by police to the small survivors of the Sandy Hook massacre as they were led away from the building through a path strewn with the corpses of their classmates.  

In raising that memory, Bohjalian reminds us that life-altering tragedy is an every day possibility for each innocent in our perilous world.

It is the state auditor’s job to assess how well agencies and policies are fulfilling their mission in the interests of the taxpayers.  In theory and over time, this watchdog role takes the auditor’s office to every corner of the bureaucracy, including some that are of particular sensitivity for the public.

Nothing is more certainly sensitive for Vermonters than the need to keep vulnerable individuals safe from sexual predators.

Under Doug Hoffer, the auditor’s office has just taken a second look at Vermont’s Sex Offender Registry, first examined in 2010.  Numerous faults and recommendations emerged from that 2010 review, and Hoffer wanted to determine whether or not the recommendations had been successfully implemented, and the identified issues resolved.

The findings are not encouraging.  

Hoffer’s team identified more than 250 instances of critical errors in the current Sex Offender Registry (11% of the total number of entries), calling into question its reliability as a whole.  Significantly, the 2014 audit discovered that recommendations made in the 2010 audit still have not been fully implemented, despite some improvements having been made.

“Improper categorization and errors in the system don’t serve the public, which seeks reliable information, or offenders, who are sometimes mislabeled,” Auditor Hoffer said. “The registry is meant to provide accurate information to the public and protect the rights of people in the system. Presently, the system doesn’t appear to be doing this as well as it should.”

Act 58, adopted in 2009 expanded the Sex Offender Registry; but cautioned that this was not to be undertaken lightly.  One significant obstacle to making the Registry more accessible and effective is a provision in the law that ties electronic posting of the Sex Offender Registry to a successful audit of the procedures that are in place to ensure its accuracy.  

(2) Sec. 14 of this act shall take effect July 1, 2010, provided that Sec. 14 shall not take effect until the state auditor, in consultation with the department of public safety and the department of information and innovation technology, has provided a favorable performance audit regarding the Internet sex offender registry to the senate and house committees on judiciary, the house committee on corrections and institutions, and the joint committee on corrections oversight. Approved: June 1, 2009

Hoffer points out that, once again, the auditors office has avoided a determination of outright “failure.”  

By tying implementation to a positive audit outcome, the legislative mandate, as written, has inadvertently hamstrung the process.  It is the legislature who must find a path to making the electronic posting happen for Vermont just as quickly as possible; and the agencies involved must be held fully accountable for the reliability of the electronic registry.

We recommend that the Legislature require that the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, and the Court Administrator periodically report on the progress of corrective actions being taken to improve the reliability of the SOR.

We recommend that the Legislature require that the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, before posting addresses to the Internet SOR, certify that the process that is established to support this function will ensure that addresses of only those offenders that meet the statutory requirements will be posted.