The Trojan Horses

By Rich Kozlovich

 

I originally posted this in 2009 in order to make sure there was no mistake about who these Trojan horses are. I linked and quoted information directly from the Activist Cash web site, which as far as I can tell no longer exists, as a result, none of the links work, and truth be told, I'm not sure if all of these organizations still exist, but the information presented here is what I posted from the site at that time.   

 

I've linked what files I have on some of these groups from P&D.  Some of the articles will be repetitious as they cover many of these groups at the same time, so bear with it. 

 

There are other groups not listed here such as 

I am a firm believer in the old axiom that birds of a feather flock together.  I originally published this list in 2009, and a lot has happened since then as a wake up call to the nation over where the funding is coming from for all these activists group, and their "mostly peaceful" riots.  The big difference is until DOGE exposed what's going on we couldn't prove so much of it was coming from government agencies like USAID, deliberately working to destroy the nation.  Now we know.  

 

Natural Resources Defense Council - The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is the utility infielder of nanny groups. Because its name implies a wide-ranging universe of issues, the group can be counted on to inject itself into just about any debate where there’s an environmental argument to be made. Washington PR firm Fenton Communications has made use of the NRDC in a variety of public campaigns, the most famous example of which was the 1989 “Alar-on-apples” food scare.

Following the release of a report called “Intolerable Risk” — which claimed that Alar was “the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply” and blamed the chemical for “as many as 5,300” childhood cancer cases — Fenton and NRDC went on a five-month media blitz. The campaign kicked off with a CBS 60 Minutes feature seen by over 50 million Americans. Despite the fact that the claims were completely unfounded, hysteria set in. Apples were pulled off of grocery shelves, schools stopped serving them at lunch, and apple growers nationwide lost over $250 million.

Currently, NRDC is focusing a great deal of its vast resources fighting against genetically improved foods.

The Wall Street Journal printed one of David Fenton’s internal memos, after the Alar-on-apples scandal was publicly debunked. Here’s Fenton in his own words: “We designed [the Alar Campaign] so that revenue would flow back to the Natural Resources Defense Council from the public, and we sold this book about pesticides through a 900 number and the Donahue show. And to date there has been $700,000 in net revenue from it.”

NRDC joined forces again with Fenton Communications in 1998 to promote a food-scare campaign called “Give Swordfish a Break!” which was operated by SeaWeb, an organization created by Fenton specifically for this campaign. Nearly all of the funding for this effort came from pass-through grants solicited by NRDC on behalf of SeaWeb. Two years later the anti-swordfish campaign folded, with both groups claiming victory. The whole promotion was based on the myth that Atlantic swordfish were being over-fished to the point of extinction. But according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, that simply wasn’t true.

 

My NRDC file

 

American Corn Growers Association - At a March 21, 2000, press conference, the organic marketer-funded Center for Food Safety unveiled a petition demanding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration begin requiring warning labels on all genetically improved foods. Among the co-signers of this document were the American Corn Growers Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

With its all-American name, the American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) brings to mind visions of Heartland cornfields and a simple farm life straight out of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” But in reality, ACGA represents a farming style more Cuban than American.

Center for Science in the Public Interest - “The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is the undisputed leader among America’s “food police.” CSPI was founded in 1971 by current executive director Michael Jacobson, and two of his co-workers at Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Since then, CSPI’s joyless eating club has issued hundreds of high-profile—and highly questionable—reports condemning soft drinks, fat substitutes, irradiated meat, biotech food crops, French fries, and just about anything that tastes good.”

 

My Center for Science in the Public Interest file.

Earth First!  - In 1997-98, the Trees Foundation, which serves as the fiscal agent for various Earth First! groups, reported to the IRS that it received funding from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Trees noted that the NRDC money was “specifically designated for” three California groups “for their work in the Headwaters Forest protection effort.” One of these groups was the Ecology Center, where Karen Pickett runs the Headwaters campaign. Pickett is also the keeper of the cash for the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.

Another group that NRDC “specifically designated” should get pass-through money from the Trees Foundation was Redwood Justice. Redwood Justice’s main program is paying the legal bills for Earth First! leader Darryl Cherney’s lawsuit against the FBI.
A spin off this group is the super radical Earth Liberation Front (ELF). “Three workers sleeping at a construction site were able to escape after the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to an unfinished, 200-unit condominium development late one night in August, 2003. "It could have killed someone," said San Diego fire captain Jeff Carle.”

 

Environmental Media Services - SeaWeb’s wholly unnecessary “Give Swordfish a Break!” campaign, conceived and directed by Fenton Communications, was originally designed as a cooperative campaign with the Natural Resources Defense Council (SeaWeb and NRDC are still Fenton clients). In its typical role as media “front” group, Environmental Media Services heavily promoted the swordfish boycott on behalf of both NRDC and SeaWeb for two years, ending with a hollow declaration of victory in August 2000.

Environmental Working Group - The Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Working Group are both clients of leftist PR firm Fenton Communications, based in Washington, DC. David Fenton, who runs this firm, also sits on EWG’s board.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency includes a remarkable number of anti-consumer activists on various advisory committees. When invitations to join the current EPA Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee were issued in August 2001, the Environmental Working Group’s Sean Gray made the list, as did Erik Olson of NRDC, John Vickery of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Troy Seidle of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

NRDC and EWG have been tag-teaming both EPA panels and the public for several years. In one celebrated episode, both groups’ representatives pulled out of Vice President Gore’s “Tolerance Reassessment Advisory Committee” in 1999, claiming that even Al “Earth in the Balance” Gore wasn’t banning pesticides fast enough for their liking. The two organizations co-released a (later debunked) report in 1996 claiming that 45 million Americans were drinking “contaminated” water. Not surprisingly, EWG pointed the finger of blame at “pesticide runoff.”

 

My Environmental Working Group file. 

Greenpeace - The Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace USA are both clients of leftist Washington PR boutique Fenton Communications. David Fenton’s flacks have perfected the art of the food scare, including NRDC’s Alar-on-apples fundraising scam in 1989, SeaWeb’s ridiculous 1988 swordfish boycott, and the more recent StarLink corn fiasco.

Greenpeace is the largest environmental organization in the world, with an international membership of over 5 million and offices in over 20 countries. Forbes magazine once described it as “a skillfully managed business” with full command of “the tools of direct mail and image manipulation -- and tactics that would bring instant condemnation if practiced by a for-profit corporation.” But Greenpeace has escaped public censure by hiding behind the mask of its “non-profit” status and its U.S. tax exemption.

 

Here is my Greenpeace file. 

Humane Society of the United States - When the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the United States Navy because it believed “human-generated noise -- including active sonars – ha[d] a negative effect on marine mammals,” the Humane Society of the United States was happy to sign on. The two groups have also sued Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Airport, O’Hare Airport, and others. The Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW) coalition counts both HSUS and NRDC as members. KAW aims to scare the public about the supposed “overuse” of antibiotics on farm animals. They were also both members of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Foodspeak coalition. Members hoped to avoid lawsuits for false claims against food companies by overturning food disparagement laws.

Despite the words “humane society” on its letterhead, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is not affiliated with your local animal shelter. Despite the omnipresent dogs and cats in its fundraising materials, it’s not an organization that runs spay/neuter programs or takes in stray, neglected, and abused pets. And despite the common image of animal protection agencies as cash-strapped organizations dedicated to animal welfare, HSUS has become the wealthiest animal rights organization on earth.

Ruckus Society - While the Ruckus Society’s Tzeporah Berman (who coordinates rainforest programs for ForestEthics in Vancouver) oversaw a Canadian anti-logging campaign on the ground, NRDC put economic pressure on companies like Home Depot, Lowe’s, Kinko’s, Nike, 3M, and Starbucks, each of which pledged to avoid buying products derived from British Columbia rainforest timber.

The Ruckus Society was founded in late 1995 by two giants of the radical environmentalist movement: Mike Roselle and Howard “Twilly” Cannon. Roselle was a founder of Earth First! (of 1980s tree-spiking fame), the group which spun off the domestic terrorist Earth Liberation Front in 1992. He also co-founded the radical Rainforest Action Network. Cannon built his extremist credentials as a front-line activist and ship’s captain with Greenpeace’s French and Russian anti-nuclear campaigns.

SeaWeb - SeaWeb began as a “project” of the NRDC, with a start-up grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Now that SeaWeb has been spun off and enjoys relative independence, its leaders still collaborate with NRDC program directors on a variety of promotions, including the wholly unnecessary (and thoroughly debunked) “Give Swordfish a Break!” campaign. NRDC’s opinions on which species of menu fish are politically correct enough to eat can be found on SeaWeb’s “Seafood Choices Alliance” web site. Greenpeace USA and SeaWeb are both clients of leftist Washington PR boutique Fenton Communications, the widely-acknowledged kings of the modern food scare.

What can you say about a group of alarmist publicity-seekers whose greatest passion is “saving” fish species that aren’t even endangered? Are they crazy? Power-hungry? Misguided, as the U.S. government has said? Sadly, SeaWeb is just one in a long line of recent entrants into the food-scare industry. And judging from the the company it keeps, SeaWeb is a prime example of the well-networked Nanny Culture. Its pockets are deep, its friends are powerful, its tactics are disingenuous, and it’s not going away any time soon.

Sierra Club -The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have allied on numerous occasions to combat modern livestock farms, most notably joining with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Waterkeeper Alliance in 2003 to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for increased restrictions on pork farmers. The Sierra Club also promoted NRDC's notorious Alar on apples" food scare. The two groups have collaborated multiple times to lobby the U.S. government against biotech foods, and are members of the Keep Antibiotics Working campaign, a slick PR project that frightens Americans away from the conventional meat supply with reckless claims about the use of antibiotics in livestock.

Founded in 1892 by John Muir to "make the mountains glad," the Sierra Club is the oldest and arguably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. But its concerns are no longer limited to the happiness of the valleys. Once dedicated to conserving wilderness for future human enjoyment, the Sierra Club has become an anti-growth, anti-technology group that puts its utopian environmentalist vision before the well being of humans.

 

My Sierra Club file. 

Tides Foundation - NRDC predates the Tides Center by several years, so it was never formally a Tides “project.” But it did enjoy similar “startup” assistance from the Tides Foundation during its early years. To date, Tides has used its “pass-through” granting structure to funnel over a quarter of a million dollars to NRDC, without ever acknowledging where the funds originally came from. In one example, the Tides Foundation was the funding vehicle through which NRDC received funds in 1989 to hire Fenton Communications, its PR firm of choice, to promote its much-hyped and thoroughly debunked Alar-on-apples food scare.

The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) calls one of its flagship programs the “Safe Food Fight.” And with WORC, the emphasis is always on fighting. After all, over 80% of WORC’s funding comes from big-money foundations, and they’re not paying WORC to be calm and rational.

My Tides Foundation file.

Union of Concerned Scientists - The Union of Concerned Scientists often brags about its cooperation with other environmental groups. Among the organizations with which UCS works closely, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) stands at the top of the list. UCS and NRDC regularly co-host press conferences, co-sign petitions, and co-author reports. Both groups are members of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition and the Save our Environment Coalition.

Committed to an “open-minded search for truth,” and armed with “unrivaled scientific expertise,” the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) “doesn’t say anything [it] can’t back up with solid evidence.” At least, that’s what its fund-raising letters say. The reality is quite different.

 

 

Western Organization of Resource Councils - Natural Resources Defense Council has collaborated with the Western Organization of Resource Councils in the past, most notably on matters of mining policy. During the years of the Clinton administration, NRDC and WORC co-signed at least three letters to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, urging that stricter standards be used for determining mining rights for coal in Western states. In one case, the two groups joined with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace to sue the Bureau of Land Management over the terms of its coal mining-rights leasing program.

These groups have promoted every misanthropic philosophical flavor of the day that has come down the pike for the last sixty years and if we are to believe all that is said, and I for one do, they have done it with lies, deception and junk science.   The Democrats and RINO'S, along with Canada and the EU, are now in bed with every radical group in the world and they will have a say in everything we do!

From The Director Of Net Zero Watch

December 29, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Net Zero Watch is an affiliate of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate-skeptic think tank. (Another affiliate of the Global Warming Policy Foundation is the American Friends of the GWPF, the organization of which I am the President and a board member.). The specialty of Net Zero Watch is poking holes in the UK’s insane pursuit of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. The Director of NZW is Andrew Montford.

A few days ago (December 23), Montford issued a brief end of year statement that gives a good summary of where we are now in the climate wars. I thought that I should feature the statement here on Manhattan Contrarian. Here is the statement in full, with a few key lines highlighted by myself:

As another year draws to a close we can look back with some satisfaction on the changes in the political and economic landscape over the last twelve months.

We are not nearing the end of the climate emergency madness, but I think it’s fair to say we are at the beginning of the end – it is now clear that Net Zero is doomed, that the western world will return to rational energy policies, and that we will be completely vindicated.

There is a long road still to travel, and we shouldn’t expect the entrenched climate cult to suddenly collapse. Instead, we would expect the Net Zero timescales to be extended – see the story about the Canadian government below – and then, over the years, the targets themselves to be watered down, and then ignored, if not cancelled entirely.

There is a great deal still to do to make this happen. The UK government, and Ed Miliband in particular, appear set on economic suicide, and civil society will need to make it clear to the Labour party that their pursuit of this end will lead to their political annihilation. Limiting the damage done along the way will be a huge task, and a very difficult one, given the size of Mr Starmer’s majority. But we must try, for the sake of everyone who lives on these islands.

And we must also start to turn our thoughts to how we put the UK’s energy sector back onto a rational footing – how we reverse out from the dark and dangerous cul-de-sac into which successive governments have driven us. Escaping all the political, diplomatic, legal and economic entanglements will be no simple task, and we will need all the help we can get.

So finally let me publicly thank everyone who financially supports our efforts. We remain on a tight budget, and we are therefore enormously grateful.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year.

Andrew

I second Andrew’s sentiments, and of course also wish to see rational energy policy for the U.S. as well. We have every reason to think we are going to get that, or at least something close to it, with the incoming Trump administration.

Incredibly, the GWPF is moving toward “complete vindication” of its position with an annual budget of under $500,000. This compares to the annual budgets of the big enviro climate cult organizations in the range of hundred of millions of dollars each. (Examples: EDF $255 million for 2023; NRDC $244 million for 2023; Sierra Club $168 million for 2022; and there are dozens more, not to mention the government’s infinite checkbook.). Like the Kamala Harris campaign, they can blow through hundreds of millions of dollars in mere months, but their message of constant scare-mongering has gradually worn out.

For more from NZW, go here. For more from the GWPF, go here.

CHECC Has Petitioned The DC Circuit For Rehearing As To Its Standing To Challenge The Endangerment Finding

July 12, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Here in my retirement, my remaining law practice consists almost entirely of working on one case in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, going by the caption Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA. From time to time when there is a development in the case, I will report on it in a post here.

My most recent update on the case was on May 25, when the DC Circuit issued a decision throwing us out on the ground of “standing.” When a case challenges a regulation issued by a government agency, the “standing” doctrine requires that a party bringing the case show some kind of concrete injury from the challenged regulation, which here is EPA’s 2009 determination that CO2 emissions into the atmosphere constitute a “danger to human health and welfare.” 

Our showing was that the Endangerment Finding forces an onslaught of federal regulations suppressing consumption of fossil fuels; and that policies suppressing fossil fuels have been demonstrated in every jurisdiction that has tried them to lead to large increases in electricity prices. But the court in its wisdom ruled that the plaintiff electricity consumers were not “directly regulated by the challenged rule,” and that we had “fail[ed] to provide any evidence of injury.”

I titled my May 25 post, in the aftermath of that decision, as “At CHECC We’re Down But Not Out!” And indeed we have now bounced back! On Monday we filed a Petition for Rehearing En Banc, the term “en banc” meaning that the hearing we seek would be by the full court of eleven active judges rather than just the panel of three that initially heard the case.

The court only takes up a tiny handful of these “en banc” requests in any given year. And thus you might say that our odds are long. But then, this may be one of the most economically significant cases ever to come before this court, involving an attempted regulatory transformation of the entire energy economy of the country.

So we have taken this occasion to point out some of the absurdities of the doctrine of “standing” as it has developed over the years. I have written before (for example, in this post from April 14 on the occasion of the oral argument in our case) that the “standing” doctrine starts out as a reasonable idea that “keeps the courts out of a good deal of mischief.” 

But the problem is that, as various cases have come before the courts, many judges have bent over backwards to find standing for politically-favored categories of plaintiffs, while at the same time the standing doctrine has been used as an easy way to get rid of cases brought by politically-disfavored categories of plaintiffs without having to do the difficult work of grappling with the merits. You won’t be surprised to find out that the politically-favored category includes those claiming to be harmed by environmental degradation of any sort, no matter how speculative or inchoate such alleged environmental degradation may be. Usually the entities asserting standing from some sort of environmental degradation turn out to be richly-funded environmental activist groups, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, or the like. 

Meanwhile, when the plaintiff is a consumer group asserting that some regulation will drive up costs to consumers, somehow the law of standing finds that the impact of the regulation on consumer costs is insufficiently clear or immediate. And thus somehow the result of standing doctrine in the courts is a one-way ratchet where environmental groups seeking more regulation often get favorable rulings, while consumers seeking less regulation get thrown out.

In our current Petition for Rehearing En Banc, we use a couple of particularly extreme recent precedents to illustrate this point. One is from the DC Circuit itself from 2020, captioned Natural Resources Defense Council v. Wheeler. This decision was written by the current Chief Judge of the court, Sri Srinivasan. You might remember him as having been a leading contender for the 2022 Supreme Court nomination, before President Biden announced that he would only consider a black woman for the slot. Anyway, the case involved a demand by NRDC that EPA engage in further regulation of gases called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, on grounds that they are “greenhouse gases” like CO2. NRDC sought standing on the ground that one of its members owned a piece of coastal real estate that was allegedly “threatened” by global warming. From our brief:

There was no assertion that any of the harm had actually yet occurred, nor when it would occur, nor how it could be redressed by a court order that would have the same power over sea level as the commands of King Canute, but without the humility. In the real world, no evidence has ever established any link between GHG emissions and any supposed enhanced “threats” to coastal property, and all attempts to show that such emissions have led to accelerating sea level rise or increased hurricane activity have failed. No matter. The Court held as follows:

Petitioners then have adequately linked the 2018 Rule to an injury-in-fact: the 2018 Rule will lead to an increase in HFC emissions, which will in turn lead to an increase in climate change, which will threaten petitioners’ coastal property.

When you are an environmental plaintiff like NRDC, it’s that easy.

Another case we pointed to is the famous Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States, currently pending in the District of Oregon after a couple of trips to the Ninth Circuit and one to the Supreme Court. This is the case where a small group of juvenile plaintiffs seeks to have the court order the federal government to ban all use of fossil fuels on the basis of a claimed constitutional right to a stable climate. In that case the courts have struggled with an aspect of standing doctrine called “redressability” (that is, whether a court has the ability to order a remedy like the one requested), but not with the question of whether the plaintiffs have alleged sufficiently concrete harm to themselves to justify their presence in court. From our brief:

The Ninth Circuit in 2020 held plaintiffs alleged sufficient “injury in fact” and “traceability” elements (while rejecting redressability) based on allegations that:

Kelsey spends time along the Oregon coast in places like Yachats and Florence and enjoys playing on the beach, tidepooling, and observing unique marine animals. . . . The current and projected drought and lack of snow caused by Defendants are already harming all of the places Kelsey enjoys visiting, as well as her drinking water, and her food sources—including wild salmon. . . . Defendants have caused psychological and emotional harm to Kelsey as a result of her fear of a changing climate, her knowledge of the impacts that will occur in her lifetime, and her knowledge that Defendants are continuing to cause harms that threaten her life and wellbeing.

Contrasted to Kelsey Cascadia Rose’s “psychological and emotional harm . . . as a result of . . . fear of a changing climate,” we made a presentation of massively increasing consumer electricity rates in every state that has engaged in systematic fossil fuel suppression. The core of the presentation is this chart, with data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (part of the Department of Energy) as of April 2023:

With the exception of Alaska and Hawaii (where high rates are driven by geographical remoteness and physical difficulty of providing service), all of the highest cost states are the ones with fossil fuel suppression programs, whether California or the RGGI states of the Northeast. Many of these fossil fuel suppression states have average consumer rates that are double or more the national average consumer electricity costs.

I think that our Petition makes for some entertaining reading, and I recommend the whole thing to you. (Full disclosure: I drafted most of it, although I had some significant help from my excellent co-counsel, Harry Macdougald.). With hundreds of billions of dollars of increased electricity costs at stake from regulations that have no chance of any significant effect on the climate, you would think that the court would pay some attention. But we are not counting on that.

A Water Rule the EPA Got Right

Contrary to reports, the EPA is not raising the limits on the level of a certain herbicide allowed in drinking water. Unfortunately, Tucker Carlson and others may have been taken in by left-wing propaganda on the issue.

Steve Milloy January 25th, 2020

I’m a big fan of Tucker Carlson. Like his fellow disruptor, President Trump, he’s willing to take on all sides of the establishment, Left, Right, and the deep state. And, in my opinion at least, he’s almost always right over the target.

 

But in one particular case, an issue he addressed recently—the EPA’s review of the herbicide atrazine—he hit way wide of the mark, accusing the agency of risking the public health by loosening standards for atrazine in water.

 

As editor of JunkScience.com, I’ve worked on environmental regulatory issues for three decades now. No one would accuse me of being a fan of the EPA. In fact, I’ve sued the EPA, called for reforms, and otherwise endlessly written about the agency’s willingness to throw science under the bus to achieve its often left-wing political agenda. As a member of the Trump transition team on EPA issues, I developed a long list of badly needed reforms for the agency, many of which have been instituted.

 

But that doesn’t mean that EPA always gets it wrong.

 

The agency’s position on the chemical atrazine is one instance in which—despite its track record—the regulators appear to be coming out largely in the right place. First, a few baseline facts about what EPA’s review says and doesn’t say.

 

Contrary to some reports and Tucker’s shot on atrazine, the EPA is not raising the limits on the level of atrazine allowed in drinking water. These will remain exactly where they are now, which is an almost infinitesimal 3 parts per billion on a yearly average. Neither is the monitoring program coming to an end. Atrazine levels will continue to be monitored as before under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which requires testing for a large number of naturally occurring chemicals, microorganisms, and possible synthetic contaminants.

 

Here’s what’s changing: In 2003, EPA set up a separate Atrazine Monitoring Program (AMP) to more frequently sample drinking water in communities with heavy atrazine use to make sure the SDWA monitoring wasn’t missing anything. It wasn’t.

 

The AMP—which tested for both atrazine and its breakdown products—demonstrated a clear lack of health concerns. The vast majority of samples came in below 1 part per billion, none exceeded the SDWA standard, and the clear trend was declining atrazine levels over time. EPA reasonably decided that the extra monitoring wasn’t needed. The decision will be reviewed in a year.

 

In any case, monitoring will continue as always under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

 

It’s important to understand that EPA sets its limits on contaminants by building in huge safety margins. This is especially true for pesticides (herbicides are one kind of pesticide), where allowable levels are many orders of magnitude below what has been demonstrated in the lab to have “no effect.” At each point in the process, EPA assumes a “worst case” scenario and purposefully errs on the side of caution. This includes assuming maximum exposure to the most sensitive parts of the population (infants and pregnant women) and multiplying “uncertainty factors” together for any issue on which the science can’t give a definitive answer.

 

When the 3 parts per billion limit was set in the early 1990s, this created an “uncertainty” buffer, or margin, which was 1,000 times below the no-effect level. What the EPA said in its recently published review is that toxicological science has advanced considerably in the past 30 years, and that means many of the “uncertainties” the EPA built in back in 1991 are no longer uncertain and could, theoretically, be dispensed with. The EPA doesn’t say this, but if one were to calculate safety limits according to the up-to-date science, the allowable limit could easily be set above 500 parts per billion and still achieve a wide margin of safety.

 

But EPA isn’t going to do that. It’s keeping the 3 parts per billion. It works for farmers and the agency doesn’t see any compelling need to change it.

 

One could complain, perhaps, that if they were basing their regulations on the best science, they really ought to raise it; but it makes no sense to complain that EPA has done an incredibly thorough job and is accurately reporting out on their findings.

 

The problem is that environmental groups such as the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) have, as usual, mischaracterized the EPA’s findings and in their news releases and seemingly conflated EPA’s drinking water limits with its ecological review, which has nothing to do with human health.

 

The eco-review does, in fact, recommend raising these eco limits in light of extensive new studies, but these limits are based on the effect of atrazine on algae, which sits at the bottom of the food chain for lots of aquatic wildlife. Algae, like most other plants, engage in photosynthesis to turn sunlight into energy. Atrazine works by disrupting photosynthesis in plants. Humans don’t do photosynthesis. The eco-limits don’t apply to drinking water and they will have no effect whatsoever on any human health issues.

 

If you read all this and still think the safety factors aren’t enough, think about the difference between drinking one cup of coffee, which is harmless and may possibly have positive health effects, and drinking 1,000 cups of coffee in one sitting, which would probably kill you.

 

If you’re worried about NRDC’s claims that atrazine is an “endocrine disruptor,” understand that this is only true in the sense that any food that contains naturally occurring phytoestrogens is an endocrine disruptor, including (and this is a short list) rice, beans, wheat germ, apples, carrots, coffee, tea, and—sorry to break it to you—beer. Most of these foods are thought to have positive health effects. Phytoestrogens like resveratrol and genistein—two famous “antioxidants”—are even marketed as health supplements, and there is evidence that they fight inflammation and may be protective against cancer.

 

If you still say that pesticides are yucky and you don’t want artificial chemicals in your diet, I’m sorry to tell you that you’re out of luck. All farmers who grow to scale, including organic farmers, use chemical pesticides, and they have for centuries. NRDC and EWG won’t tell you this, but organic farmers use older pesticides like sulfur, neem oil, and copper sulfate, which is highly toxic to people, plants and wildlife and is a known carcinogen. And because these “natural” chemicals are less targeted and less effective, they dump them on their fields in truly astounding quantities.

 

A final word about “big agriculture.” My first response is, “if only it still existed.” I carry no brief for ethanol mandates (which are stupid) and farm subsidies, but the political power of the “farm lobby” has become increasingly attenuated as, ironically, farming has become ever more efficient and fewer and fewer people have any direct connection to the land. If you doubt this, pick up a copy of the Des Moines Register sometime, which has effectively become an environmentalist, anti-farmer mouthpiece.

 

Meanwhile, the power of the environmentalist movement grows ever greater by the day. Many of the “nonprofit” anti-pesticide and anti-GMO groups are the same, and funded by many of the same money sources, as those that are pushing the global warming agenda, including the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Bloomberg Family Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the McArthur Foundation, as well as the organic industry and the trial bar.

 

Environmental “nonprofits” that are in part or wholly devoted to a “Green New Deal”-style attack on modern agriculture have a war chest in the neighborhood of $10 billion a year, which goes into producing nothing but environmentalist propaganda that barely disguises its true anti-capitalist, big-government agenda.

 

I’d take everything they say with a heavy helping of salt—which according to NRDC standards, is also an endocrine disruptor.

NRDC Never Stops Lying About Glyphosate, or Science in General

By Alex Berezow — May 3, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

 

Pop quiz: What do the New York Times, Jeffrey "the yogic flying instructor" Smith, and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have in common?

Answer: They all shamelessly lie about glyphosate to make money. (You get full credit if you answered, "They are all bad sources of science information.")

Danny Hakim, a journalist (I'm using that word rather loosely) who writes for the New York Times, promotes conspiracy theories about American agriculture. He once wrote an article comparing pesticides to "Nazi-made sarin gas." And he followed that up with another article accusing the U.S. government of knowing that glyphosate was killing people but covering it up. I eagerly await his next exposé on the aliens the government is hiding at Area 51.

The same sort of hysteria is repeated by Jeffrey Smith, a yogic flying instructor (yes, it's as weird as it sounds) who operates the deceptively named Institute for Responsible Technology. Like the New York Times, Smith perpetuates one lie after another about biotechnology. Now, he's spreading lies about medical treatments for cancer which are so egregious that, if cancer patients actually followed the advice, they would die. So much for responsible technology.

In our experience, birds of a feather flock together. It's an easy jump from being anti-GMO to being anti-vaccine or anti-technology in general.

NRDC: Cranks, Crackpots, and Conspiracy Theorists

Thus, joining this motley crew is the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a group of cranks, crackpots, and conspiracy theorists who knowingly spread misinformation about nuclear power, GMOs, and scary "chemicals."

While the NRDC is fond of calling everybody who disagrees with them a "shill" for industry, the reality is quite different. The NRDC rakes in a whopping $130 million every year telling people that the latest technological developments in energy and biotechnology are just too scary for Americans. It's good business. The President, Rhea Suh, made $541,000 in 2016. Not bad. That's more than half of ACSH's entire budget.

Well, NRDC is back, trying to cash in on the delirium surrounding glyphosate. What better time to cash in than when trial lawyers are duping juries into awarding multi-million-dollar verdicts to sympathetic cancer patients? It is within this milieu that NRDC's Jennifer Sass said:

"EPA's Pesticide office is out on a limb here—with Monsanto and Bayer and virtually nobody else. Health agencies and credible non-industry experts who've reviewed this question have all found a link between glyphosate and cancer."

That's not just a lie. That's a pants-on-fire, nose-is-longer-than-a-telephone-wire sort of whopper.  The truth is literally the exact opposite.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) claim that there is no link between glyphosate and cancer. That is also the conclusion of regulatory agencies in Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. (See this excellent infographic from the Genetic Literacy Project for more.)

To insist that glyphosate causes cancer, you would have to reject the scientific consensus established by regulators around the entire world. (Or, you'd have to believe that Monsanto has secretly bought off every major nation on the planet.) The only groups who reject the consensus are IARC and the environmental activists and their lawyers who rake in millions of dollars telling juries that biotechnology is killing them.

We can predict that the New York Times will cheer them on and uncritically parrot whatever the NRDC says, because needlessly scaring people is good business for them, too. And for the yogic flying instructor.

It's utterly infuriating to watch as modern medicine and science are mocked and exploited for personal profit by environmental activists and lawyers. What a stupid time to be alive.

 

Is organic agriculture leading to an increase in antibiotic resistance?

Hank Campbell 

One of the mostly aggressively promoted attributes of organic agriculture–it uses ‘natural’ fertilizer, better known as manure–may be linked to animal health problems. It turns out that cows fed antibiotics to cure diseases can excrete them back into the environment and that could be one reason for increased antibiotic resistance in the soil.

We can’t be too hard on cows and chickens, people do the same thing and those traces of antibiotics have to be processed in sewage systems. We use a lot of antibiotics because people get sick–but a lot fewer die due to streptococcus and diphtheria than before man-made antibiotics entered the scene, and a lot fewer animals die also. Medical science has clearly saved hundreds of millions of human lives and tens of billions of animals, but how much difference is it making in modern antibacterial resistance?

Organic company marketing departments and their environmental corporation allies have capitalized on the use of antibiotics in livestock and, in many cases, misrepresented it when it comes to resistance. The National Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit over antibiotic use for growth in 2011 but when California recently tried to pass a law mandating no antibiotics for growth and letting farmers revert to FDA guidelines for medical use, the NRDC lobbied against the bill and admitted that antibiotics for growth is actually a tiny percentage of outlier farmers.....To Read More.....

Observations From the Back Row - 4/3/11

By Rich Kozlovich

“De Omnibus Dubitandum” - Alas, the internet has cost them the trust of the people.

In 2007 the average number of google hits for a news search for “global warming” was around 20,000 stories. It then steadily declined until just before climategate it was around the 10,000+ news articles…….. I have kept a personal tab on the number of global warming stories and 6600 really now is the dross at the bottom of the barrel: eco-lunatics whose idea of a perfect world is one without anyone else in it; tired out-of-date journalists who still think it is fashionable to go on about “global warming”; young wet-behind-the-ears journalists who heard about climate “science” at school and still believe their teachers, and yes … the boring old sods who go on about global warming being an utter load of twaddle!

My Take - If the internet had been in existence in the 1970’s the Montreal Protocol would have been recognized and exposed for the junk science that it is, just as the Kyoto Accords has been. RK

Rep. Jim Costa introduced legislation on March 30 that would eliminate vital Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled fish and other wildlife in California's struggling Bay Delta ecosystem.

The following is a statement from Kim Delfino, California director for Defenders of Wildlife:

This legislation will only further destroy the Bay Delta, the hundreds of species that call it home, and the livelihoods of thousands of people who once made a living off its bounty……..Rep. Costa would like to blame the state's economic woes on essential environmental safeguards. But the high unemployment rate in the Central Valley is the result of a severe nationwide recession and a three-year drought in California, not the Endangered Species Act…... We need real solutions to ongoing resource challenges, not politically-motivated hyperbole.

My Take - One of the things that she fails to mention in this article is that this fight to save the delta smelt, which is as far as I can see isn’t much different than any other smelt other than it lives in the delta, has been going on for years, and for years they have diverted water from the farms of the Central Valley. She claims that “we” can restore the Bay Delta (which is code for eliminating anything that benefits mankind, and in spite of the claims in this article….they could care less about jobs and people, that is merely a red herring fallacy) and still provide enough water for the Delta and farmers, yet historically that hasn’t been the case; so by use of what magic is this to happen? It is the same of rhetoric that gives the impression of moderation and accommodation, but when the greenies have had their way they have destroyed enterprise and industry everywhere else in their world. Why should we believe it is different in California? We shouldn’t! The Endangered Species Act has done more to destroy farmers, ranchers and loggers and industry as a whole in the west than any economic downturn has ever done since the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl drought of that time.

GOP-Sponsored Bill Would Bar Groups from Enforcing Our Nation's Environmental Laws - Natural Resources Defense Council (blog)

Yesterday, Senator Vitter (R-LA) and Congressman Bishop (R-UT) introduced 2 companion bills that, among other harmful policies, would prevent environmental non-profit organizations from recovering legal fees when they successfully sue under the Equal Access to Justice Act or the Endangered Species Act In February, Rep. Lummis (R-WY) introduced similar language in an amendment to H.R. 1(amendment no. 195).

This bill would bar environmental groups from recovering attorney’s fees in the vast majority of situations, thus hindering their ability to bring cases protecting our nation’s environmental laws—laws that ensure we have clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, and protected public lands on which to hunt and fish, among other benefits.

My Take - This is long overdue. The ESA has been a means of enriching activists groups, and in point of fact some of them exist only because of the funds they raise under this ridiculous provision. What about the poor defendant? Whether they win or lose, they have to pay up…. or capitulate, and that is what happens most of the time. They can’t afford the legal fees and end up giving up their property without compensation or recourse; although they can still own the property and pay taxes on it….they just can’t use it. This outrageous scheme is nothing more than a criminal shakedown by the environmental movement sanctioned by the federal government.

ESA Outrages, Part I
By Rich Kozlovich

Last week I told everyone that I would be running a section dealing with ESA outrages. Here is the first installment. I first want to make sure we had some historical background for what is to come.

Between 1962 and 1972 the U.S. Congress got all wrapped up in passing bills that couldn’t help but make the greenie heart beat fast and furious and take their breaths away.

• Wilderness Act, 1964
• Clean Water Act, 1965
• Endangered Species Act, 1966
• Clean Air Act, 1967
• Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, 1968
• Endangered Species Conservation Act, 1969
• Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, 1971
• Marine Mammal Protection Act, 1972

Most of us would think that this would satisfy the most jaded greenie. They wanted more, and it was decided that the 1969 ESA was inadequate and in 1972 they “upgraded” ESA with some significant changes. Section 4 and Section 7 contained poisoned pills and no one realized it.

Section 4 required the Secretary of the Interior to list any species that was endangered or threatened and defined species as “fish or wildlife or plants” and further refined that definition as “any mammal, fish, bird, amphibian, reptile, mollusk, crustacean, arthropod or other invertebrate.” This will take on greater significance in coming weeks.

Section 7 “prohibited the “take” of any listed species. A “take” means to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, dill, trap, capture or collect” a listed species. Friends of the Earth stated that the degradation of a listed species habitat would fit the definition of a “take” under the bills.” Everyone seems to have been caught up in the warm and fuzzy feeling because the thinking was clearly fuzzy…no one hardly whispered an objection. One reason is that they were primarily thinking of what is called the “charismatic” species, such as bald eagles, bears, wolves, etc.

Shannon Peterson noted that; "Few at the time opposed the ESA because no one anticipated how it might interfere significantly with economic development or personal property interests. …..The timber industry, other natural resource industries, and private property groups declined to fight the law in 1973 because they failed to see how it might affect them." That lack of insight would come back to haunt every one of these groups, especially the timber industry.

ESA Outrages, Part II
The environmentalist’s victory regarding DDT gave them unprecedented power and influence, but the decision in TVA v. Hill gave them regulatory authority. Never before have individuals outside of the government been able to “not only advance, but to enforce, wildlife preservation without restraint.”

New Congress targets eco indulgences
U.S. subsidies to environmental causes have become expensive to maintain over the last 30 years. The U.S. government regulatory workforce has grown 16% in the first two years of President Obama. U.S. government services have increased by 41% from 2000 to 2008 in contrast to private sector services which grew by only 27% (The Economist, Jan. 8, 2011). Much of the regulatory and government environmental programs have only promoted gratuitous green symbolism, without any measurable long term environmental or economic benefit. These programs have also become a playground for eco-group litigation and propaganda.


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The Alar Story

By Rich Kozlovich

The Alar story is a most enlightening account of how abuse of bureaucratic power, scare mongering by the media, and self enrichment by the green activists can create a real mess. If you ask most people who are somewhat familiar with this story how it all got started they will tell you that it was the 60 Minutes broadcast that did it. That is inaccurate; although the 60 Minutes segment set the story on fire, if you dig deeply into the whole Alar story you find that it takes so many twists and turns that it is hard to believe; but this is how the whole thing started.

In 1982 the EPA got caught up in a superfund scandal. By March of 1983 EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford resigned after finding herself in a bureaucratic mess between the EPA and the Department of Justice in an attempt to deal with this scandal. One prominent EPA staffer was fired and others left.

What has this to do with Alar? Everything! Because of the black eye EPA received over this it was decided that something had to be done to restore their credibility to the public. So what did they do? They felt that they needed to ban something, and since anti-pesticide activists love anyone who wants to ban something, they started looking around and viola; Alar was to be the target.

Why Alar? It had been used successfully as a growth regulator to keep apples from falling off trees since 1963. In 1983 the EPA placed Alar under “special review” and in 1984 they claimed that Alar was a potential carcinogen for children because after administering massive doses of Alar to mice tests showed that that it might cause cancer. It might be noted that rodent testing as a determinate as to what is carcinogenic has come under attack from the scientific community. Although critics of this procedure don’t disavow the value of using rodent testing, they dismiss the idea that EPA should be determining what is carcinogenic based on rodent testing alone.

On August 23, 2005 the American Council on Science and Health petitioned the EPA to “eliminate "junk science" from the process by which it determines whether a substance is likely to cause cancer in humans” under the Information Quality Act (IQA), which requires the government to use the best science available. Nearly five months later the EPA responded by “claiming that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” If their policy guidelines aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on? What were they based on in 1985?

The reality is that in 1985 the EPA own “Scientific Advisory Panel” concluded that the laboratory animal studies of Alar were too flawed to use.” However, the anti-chemical people became involved to “help” EPA to ban Alar, because no matter how much they studied the matter EPA couldn’t develop enough evidence to justify banning Alar.

Eventually facts and studies were irrelevant. The NRDC, through Fenton Communications, a public relations firm that seems to specialize in representing radical environmental groups, approached 60 Minutes with this unwarranted health scare.

“Following the release of a report called “Intolerable Risk” — which claimed that Alar was “the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply” and blamed the chemical for “as many as 5,300” childhood cancer cases — Fenton and NRDC went on a five-month media blitz. The campaign kicked off with a CBS 60 Minutes feature seen by over 50 million Americans. Despite the fact that the claims were completely unfounded, hysteria set in. Apples were pulled off of grocery shelves, schools stopped serving them at lunch, and apple growers nationwide lost over $250 million.”

However, “from the standpoint of the NRDC and Fenton Communications, the campaign against Alar had been a phenomenal success. The public had been panicked, the product had been destroyed, and a major media organization, 60 minutes, had been a willing tool in carrying out the operation. Further, membership and contributions to the NRDC increased.” Worse yet, “after the election of President Clinton, the EPA ceased being an unwitting participant in the toxic scare campaign.”

“The Wall Street Journal printed one of David Fenton’s internal memos, after the Alar-on-apples scandal was publicly debunked. Here’s Fenton in his own words: “We designed [the Alar Campaign] so that revenue would flow back to the Natural Resources Defense Council from the public, and we sold this book about pesticides through a 900 number and the Donahue show. And to date there has been $700,000 in net revenue from it.”

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan states that “the Alar scare was totally without scientific merit. By the early 1990s, authorities ranging from the World Health Organization to U. S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop confirmed that there was never any health risk posed by the use of Alar. Even the late Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes, told me that he regretted having done the Alar segment, but Ed Bradley, the producer of the piece, refused to retract it.”

When junk science becomes policy it is because the policy was already a conclusion in search of data. And when there is no data available… then apparently any old conclusion will do.

Scientific Sanity and 2,4-D!

On February 23, 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) closed the public comment period on a petition submitted by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) seeking to cancel registrations of 2,4-D herbicide and revoke its residue tolerances. The Industry Task Force II on 2,4-D Research Data anticipates that EPA will deny the petition and stand on its major scientific reassessment of 2,4-D and determination of eligibility for continued registration completed in 2005. EPA is also well aware of ongoing studies to further strengthen the database on 2,4-D.

It is not unusual for the NRDC and other interest groups to petition EPA for the cancellation of a pesticide registration. In response to several recent petitions, EPA has published a notice inviting public comments, carefully reviewed those comments and ultimately issued denials of the petitioners’ requests. The EPA’s reviews and responses obviously take time to complete. NRDC's petition to cancel dichlorvos in 2006 resulted in an order denying the petition in 2007. EPA followed a similar time course in response to a petition to revoke tolerances for carbaryl in 2007 by denying the petition in 2008.

For 2,4-D, the Task Force does not take for granted that EPA will deny NRDC’s petition. Rather, the Task Force submitted detailed scientific comments in response to NRDC’s petition, and was pleased that its many friends also urged EPA to deny the petition given EPA's recent thorough and thoughtful review of 2,4-D in the June 2005 Re-registration Eligibility Decision.

During the 2,4-D comment period, over 431 comments were submitted; overwhelmingly supporting EPA’s 2005 re-registration decision. Some 14 comments were negative, but provided no new or compelling evidence for EPA to cancel the product. Thank you to all the foresters, ranchers, farmers, scientists and habitat managers that wrote the Agency, providing real-world information on the value of 2,4-D to their management programs.

The Industry Task Force II on 2,4-D Research Data and the many users of 2,4-D are proud of the more than 300 state-of-the art GLP studies on mammalian toxicity, ecotoxicity, environmental fate and residue that support 2,4-D registrations. EPA’s recent Re-registration Eligibility Decision thoroughly reviewed this data base against the demanding environmental, food and child safety standards of the pesticide laws, FIFRA and FQPA. Other governmental authorities, such as Canada’s PMRA and the EU’s pesticide regulatory authority have also given 2,4-D a clean bill of health. Simply put, few pesticides, indeed few substances of any type, have been so thoroughly tested and so often reviewed by authorities worldwide as the herbicide 2,4-D. The NRDC petition raises no new issues that have not been thoroughly considered by others before.

The Task Force’s comments that carefully respond to the petition’s allegations are posted on the Task Force website at www.24d.org. We are confident that the Agency will deny the petition and re-confirm its 2005 decision that when used according to label directions 2,4-D meets FIFRA and FQPA standards for registration and establishment of residue tolerances.


Jim Gray
Executive Director
Industry Task Force II on 2,4-D Research Data
james.gray@24d.org
1-800-345-5109
www.24d.org