The relationship between Monsanto & US regulators

“For once in your life, listen to me and don’t play your political conniving games with the science to favor the registrants……For once do the right thing and don’t make decisions based on how it affects your bonus.” [then EPA senior toxicologist Marion Copley writing to Jess Rowland as quoted in Meridian Institute article, 8 March 2017]

Bloomberg, 15 March 2017:

The Environmental Protection Agency official who was in charge of evaluating the cancer risk of Monsanto Co.’s Roundup allegedly bragged to a company executive that he deserved a medal if he could kill another agency’s investigation into the herbicide’s key chemical.

The boast was made during an April 2015 phone conversation, according to farmers and others who say they’ve been sickened by the weed killer. After leaving his job as a manager in the EPA’s pesticide division last year, Jess Rowland has become a central figure in more than 20 lawsuits in the U.S. accusing the company of failing to warn consumers and regulators of the risk that its glyphosate-based herbicide can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“If I can kill this I should get a medal,” Rowland told a Monsanto regulatory affairs manager who recounted the conversation in an email to his colleagues, according to a court filing made public Tuesday. The company was seeking Rowland’s help stopping an investigation of glyphosate by a separate office, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, that is part of the U.S. Health and Human Service Department, according to the filing.

A federal judge overseeing the glyphosate litigation in San Francisco said last month he’s inclined to order Rowland to submit to questioning by lawyers for the plaintiffs, who contend he had a "highly suspicious" relationship with Monsanto. Rowland oversaw a committee that found insufficient evidence to conclude glyphosate causes cancer and quit last year shortly after his report was leaked to the press……

The plaintiffs’ lawyers say Rowland’s communications with Monsanto employees show the regulator who was supposed to be policing the company was actually working on its behalf.

The unsealing of the court documents "represents a huge development in public health," said Tim Litzenburg, one of the lawyers suing Monsanto. Regulatory agencies, scientists, consumers and physicians "can see some of what Monsanto was actually engaging in behind the scenes, and how they have manipulated the scientific literature to date. That’s important to their decision-making, not just our lawsuits."

After the phone conversation with Rowland, the Monsanto head of U.S. regulatory affairs, Dan Jenkins, cautioned his colleagues not to “get your hopes up,” according to an email cited in the court filing.

“I doubt EPA and Jess can kill this,” Jenkins wrote. He may have spoken too soon. Another internal Monsanto memorandum unsealed on Tuesday said the ATSDR, as the federal toxics agency is known, "agreed, for now, to take direction from EPA."…..

The ATSDR announced in the Federal Register in February 2015 that it planned to publish a toxicological profile of glyphosate by October that year. It never did. The agency’s press office didn’t respond to multiple phone messages seeking comment. EPA representatives also didn’t immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers said in another filing made public Tuesday that Monsanto’s toxicology manager and his boss, Bill Heydens, were ghost writers for two of the reports, including one from 2000, that Rowland’s committee relied on in part to reach its conclusion that glyphosate shouldn’t be classified as carcinogenic.

The EPA “may be unaware of Monsanto’s deceptive authorship practice,” the lawyers said.

Among the documents unsealed was a February 2015 internal email exchange at the company about how to contain costs for a research paper. The plaintiff lawyers cited it to support their claim that the EPA report is unreliable, unlike a report by an international agency that classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen…..

Note

Jess Rowland was Associate Director- Health Effects  Division, Office of Pesticides Program at the US Environmental Protection Agency. He appears to have retired in the first half of 2016.

Apocalypse then, but what now?

“Political reforms are mostly ineffectual, in part because they are often aimed at the balance of power between the straightforwardly wealthy and the politically powerful, rather than the lot of the have-nots.”

Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, Catherine R. Kennedy and Daniel L. Grossman Fellow in Human Biology and Director of Graduate Studies in Classics at Stanford University, delivers the bad news…….

The Economist, 2 March 2017:

As a supplier of momentary relief, the Great Depression seems an unlikely candidate. But when it turns up on page 363 of Walter Scheidel’s “The Great Leveler” it feels oddly welcome. For once—and it is only once, for no other recession in American history boasts the same achievement—real wages rise and the incomes of the most affluent fall to a degree that has a “powerful impact on economic inequality”. Yes, it brought widespread suffering and dreadful misery. But it did not bring death to millions, and in that it stands out.

If that counts as relief, you can begin to imagine the scale of the woe that comes before and after. Mr Scheidel, a Vienna-born historian now at Stanford University, puts the discussion of increased inequality found in the recent work of Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson, Branko Milanovic and others into a broad historical context and examines the circumstances under which it can be reduced.

Having assembled a huge range of scholarly literature to produce a survey that starts in the Stone Age, he finds that inequality within countries is almost always either high or rising, thanks to the ways that political and economic power buttress each other and both pass down generations. It does not, as some have suggested, carry within it the seeds of its own demise.

Only four things, Mr Scheidel argues, cause large-scale levelling. Epidemics and pandemics can do it, as the Black Death did when it changed the relative values of land and labour in late medieval Europe. So can the complete collapse of whole states and economic systems, as at the end of the Tang dynasty in China and the disintegration of the western Roman Empire. When everyone is pauperised, the rich lose most. Total revolution, of the Russian or Chinese sort, fits the bill. So does the 20th-century sibling of such revolutions: the war of mass-mobilisation.

And that is about it. Financial crises increase inequality as often as they decrease it. Political reforms are mostly ineffectual, in part because they are often aimed at the balance of power between the straightforwardly wealthy and the politically powerful, rather than the lot of the have-nots. Land reform, debt relief and the emancipation of slaves will not necessarily buck the trend much, though their chances of doing so a bit increase if they are violent. But violence does not in itself lead to greater equality, except on a massive scale. “Most popular unrest in history”, Mr Scheidel writes, “failed to equalise at all.”

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the careful accumulation of evidence showing that mass-mobilisation warfare was the defining underlying cause of the unprecedented decrease in inequality seen across much of the Western world between 1910 and 1970 (though the merry old Great Depression lent an unusual helping hand). By demanding sacrifice from all, the deployment of national resources on such a scale under such circumstances provides an unusually strong case for soaking the rich.

Income taxes and property taxes rose spectacularly during both world wars (the top income-tax rate reached 94% in America in 1944, with property taxes peaking at 77% in 1941). Physical damage to capital goods slashed the assets of the wealthy, too, as did post-war inflations. The wars also drove up membership in trade unions—one of the war-related factors that played a part in keeping inequality low for a generation after 1945 before it started to climb back up in the 1980s……..

Read the rest of the article here.

Flood warnings still being ignored while intense storms over parts of the New South Wales north coast have flooded farmland and damaged crops

ABC News, 20 March 2017:

PHOTO: The community of New Italy, near Woodburn received 445 millimetres of rain on Saturday alone.(Supplied: Keryn Clapham)

Intense storms over parts of the New South Wales north coast have flooded farmland and damaged crops.

The community of New Italy, near Woodburn, received almost half a metre of rain on Saturday alone, while Dorrigo had 430 millimetres over the weekend.

Woodburn State Emergency Service (SES) unit controller Jim McCormack, also a beef farmer in the district, said it had been more than 40 years since a rain event like this.

"The system just sat over the top of us for a number of hours and just belted us with everything it had," Mr McCormack said.

"It was so intense for that five or six hour period on Saturday morning, it caused all sorts of issues for our SES unit as well, but people are seeing water where they have never seen water for a long, long time."

Mr McCormack said a fall of 443 millimetres at New Italy resulted in water backing up in places that had not been flooded for years….

FLOOD WARNINGS STILL BEING IGNORED

The State Emergency Service says warnings about staying out of flood waters are still being ignored by some.

There were several reports of children playing in flood waters across the Northern Rivers at the weekend.

The reports follow the death of an 11-year-old boy who was playing in a flooded park in Wollongong last week.

Clarence-Nambucca SES regional controller Caroline Ortel says people have been found in flood waters swimming, playing and paddling on surfboards.

"We have to ask them to move on and where they won't listen to the advice of our members, we're having to call the police in to ask them to move on," she said.

The Richmond-Tweed SES received 168 calls for help and carried out 15 flood rescues over the weekend.

Between #Yamba and #Macksville there were 337 call outs and 10 flood rescues, with the majority in the #CoffsHarbour and #Bellingen areas.

The SES says despite river levels dropping across the region some residents, mainly in the #CouttsCrossing and #Orara River areas, will remain isolated for the next few days.

UPDATE

9 News, 20 March 2017:

More than 4000 people remain isolated in northern NSW due to heavy rain, with wet weather forecast for much of the state during the week.

Eleven rivers in the Northern Rivers and Mid North Coast regions have flooded, with the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) issuing severe thunderstorm warnings on Monday for those areas, along with the Central West Slopes and Plains, and Upper Western and Northern Tablelands.

Significant rainfall has eased in these areas but showers will persist this week due to a humid air mass hovering over the state.

The SES said on Monday about 4200 residents around the Clarence and Nambucca regions remain isolated, the majority of those around Iluka.

Since the wild weather began last week, the NSW State Emergency Service has responded to more than 3300 jobs - a concentrated number of those call-outs coming from Coffs Harbour, Gosford, Hornsby and Sydney's Hills area.

The SES has also carried out 85 flood rescues.

While the rain may have eased for Monday, the SES is warning NSW residents around swollen rivers, especially the Orara and Macintyre rivers, to take care.

"We're asking people not to be complacent with the fact these river systems are starting to drop, there's a lot of water around," SES spokeswoman Sue Pritchard told AAP on Monday said.

Clarence Valley Council advises risk of landslips in Yamba NSW coastal zone - see map

Clarence Valley Council, media release, 20 March 2017:

Mayor: Jim Simmons LOCKED BAG 23 GRAFTON NSW 2460

A/General Manager: Ashley Lindsay Telephone: (02) 6643 0200

Fax: (02) 6642 7647

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 20, 2017

Yamba hill residents notified of landslip risk

SOME residents on Yamba hill have been advised to watch for potential landslips following heavy rain in the area over the past five days.

Clarence Valley Council works and civil director, Troy Anderson, said council monitored rainfall events on the hill so it could warn landowners and property managers of any increased risk of landslip in an area known as the Yamba landslide risk zones (see attached image).

“With the heavy rain over the past few days, we have now reached red alert levels,” he said.

“If landowners or other occupiers notice any sign of soil movement they should consider evacuating the site and should notify council immediately.

“We have an engineer on standby to investigate any concerns, but at the moment there have been no problems reported.

“We notified the occupiers of the 15 affected properties with this information on Saturday.”

Below is a chart indicating trigger levels for the Yamba landslide risk zones.

Rainfall Period (days)	Orange Alert Level (Total mm)	Red Alert Level (Total mm)
1	180	200
2	200	280
5	215	325
8	250	370
15	310	425
30	425	560
45	500	675
60	600	800
90	740	955

Note: 1 day = 24 hours

Release ends.

The highlighted area shows properties in the Yamba landslide risk zone

Wangan Jagalingou Traditional Owners: "we've seen the end of the world and we've decided not to accept it"

Resisting Adani

https://youtu.be/xIN8b1MAwvs

And the shadowy foreign corporations they are fighting……

ABC News, 14 March 2017:

Up to $3 billion from Adani's planned Carmichael coal mine will be shifted to a subsidiary owned in the Cayman Islands if the controversial project goes ahead, an analysis of company filings shows.

An "overarching royalty deed" gives a shell company rights to receive a $2-a-tonne payment, rising yearly by the inflation rate, beyond the first 400,000 tonnes mined in each production year for two decades.

The company with this entitlement is ultimately owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a secretive entity registered in the Cayman Islands, and controlled by the Adani family.

"In plain English, the upshot for the Adani family is [that] if the mine goes ahead, they receive a $2-a-tonne payment, so up to $3 billion, via a Cayman Islands company, a company owned in a tax haven," says Adam Walters, principal researcher and Energy Resource Insights.

With a production capacity of 60 million tonnes or more a year, that amounts to about $120 million per annum in payments, increasing each year in line with the CPI, potentially flowing offshore.

"I would describe it as a structure that means that the Adani family enriches themselves if the mine goes ahead but that other shareholders are impoverished," associate professor Thomas Clarke, director of the Centre for Corporate Governance at UTS told the ABC.

"The worry is that this may be just the beginning.

"That the Adani family have the ability to shift cash and assets around at will and in the future they may well do so at the cost of shareholders and the Queensland economy."

He said the billions flowing to the Adani private company would come at the expense of minority shareholders in the company listed on the Bombay stock exchange which ultimately owns the Carmichael mine.

How Adani acquired the right to this multi-billion-dollar revenue stream is a tale in itself.

In 2010, Adani Mining Pty Ltd bought the coal tenement that is set to become the Carmichael mine from the now defunct Linc Energy.

Part of the sale involved Adani Mining giving Linc Energy an "overriding royalty deed" which entitled it to receive $2-a-tonne for all coal mined beyond the first 400,000 tonnes in any production year.

Linc Energy informed investors at the time could be worth "over $120 million per annum" and up to $3 billion over the course of the royalty right.

But in August 2014, in dire financial straits, Linc Energy agreed to sell the royalty deed back to Adani at a fire sale price: just $150 million.

The obvious course would have been to extinguish the royalty deed, because it represented a multi-billion-dollar liability for the mine which is ultimately owned by Adani Enterprises Ltd, the Bombay-stock exchange listed company.

Instead, the royalty deed "was assigned by Linc Energy Limited to Carmichael Rail Network Pty Ltd as trustee for Carmichael Rail Network Trust," notes in financial reports of Adani Mining Pty Ltd say.

Carmichael Rail Network is one of a group of companies behind the proposed North Galilee Basin rail line, which Adani is currently seeking a subsidised loan of up to $1 billion from the Federal Government's Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to build.

"What this means is that one of the companies currently seeking up to $1 billion in public subsidy is going to profit to the tune of up to $3 billion if the mine goes ahead," Mr Walters said…..

Climate change, farming, food & families in Australia

“The price, quality and seasonality of Australia’s food is increasingly being affected by climate change with Australia’s future food security under threat….

Australia’s food supply chain is highly exposed to disruption from increasing extreme weather events driven by climate change, with farmers already struggling to cope with more frequent and intense droughts and changing weather patterns.” [Climate Council, October 2015]

It used to be said of Australian families that generally they were only one generation away from the farm and it used to be noted that in the suburbs spreading out from major metropolitan areas in the 1950s and 60s these families lived in relatively small houses on quarter acre lots.

Families then were still close enough to the means of food production to understand the importance of both climate and weather and often supplemented the family diet with chooks in the backyard, along with a couple of fruit trees and a vegie patch. In outer metropolitan and regional areas there was often a rain water tank attached to the house long after town water became available.

Go look in your back yard now. What do you see?

Then have a think about this…….

Climate Council, Feeding a Hungry Nation: Climate change, food and farming in Australia, October 2015 report:

Australia is one of only a handful of countries that produces more food than it consumes and most Australians have access to an abundant and safe food supply. But Australia is also considered one of the most vulnerable developed countries in the world to impacts of the changing climate. Rising temperatures, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and declining water availability in some of our most important agricultural regions pose significant risks for the nature, distribution, quality, and affordability of our food supply. At the same time, the Australian and global population continues to grow, competition for arable land continues to intensify, and our natural resource base continues to degrade, placing ever-increasing demands on food production systems.

Up to 70% of Australia’s wine-growing regions with a Mediterranean climate (including iconic areas like the Barossa Valley and Margaret River) will be less suitable for grape growing by 2050. Higher temperatures will continue to cause earlier ripening and reduced grape quality, as well as encourage expansion to new areas, including some regions of Tasmania.

Many foods produced by plants growing at elevated CO2 have reduced protein and mineral concentrations, reducing their nutritional value…..

Australia is projected to be one of the most adversely affected regions from future changes in climate in terms of reductions in agricultural production and exports.

Climate impacts on agricultural production in other countries will affect our competitiveness, especially if warmer and wetter conditions elsewhere boost production of key products such as beef and lamb.

This report noted:

Ø    Harsher climate conditions will increase use of more heat-tolerant breeds in beef production, some of which have lower meat quality and reproductive rates.

Ø    Heat stress reduces milk yield by 10-25% and up to 40% in extreme heatwave conditions.

Ø    The yields of many important crop species such as wheat, rice and maize are reduced at temperatures more than 30°C.

Ø   Climate change is increasing the variability of crop yields.

Ø    Food prices during the 2005- 2007 drought increased at twice the rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) with fresh fruit and vegetables the worst hit, increasing 43% and 33% respectively.

Ø   Cyclone Larry destroyed 90% of the North Queensland banana crop in 2006, affecting supply for nine months and increasing prices by 500%.

Ø   The 2009 heatwave in Victoria decimated fruit crops, with significant production losses of berry and other fruit crops.

Ø   There is typically less than 30 days supply of non-perishable food and less than five days supply of perishable food in the supply chain at any one time. Households generally hold only about a 3-5 day supply of food. Such low reserves are vulnerable to natural disasters and disruption to transport from extreme weather.

Ø    During the 2011 Queensland floods, several towns such as Rockhampton were cut off for up to two weeks, preventing food resupply. Brisbane came within a day of running out of bread.

Perhaps it’s time to pick up the phone and call your local state and federal members of parliament to ask them what they and their political party are actually doing - by way of implemented policies and/or legislation - to protect your family’s food and water security now that climate change is a fact of life.

* The Climate Council is an independent non-profit organisation funded by donations by the public. 

Are there plans afoot to sell off part or all of the Snowy Mountains Scheme?

Snowy Hydro Ltd states on its website that:

The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority was corporatised on 28 June 2002 under the Snowy Hydro Corporatisation Act 1997 to establish Snowy Hydro Limited. The Snowy Hydro Limited Constitution (Constitution) prescribes the responsibilities of the Board and Snowy Hydro’s reporting obligations, subject to the Corporations Act (Cth) 2001. Snowy Hydro’s shareholders are the New South Wales (58 per cent), Victorian (29 per cent) and Commonwealth (13 per cent) governments, with each shareholder having equal voting rights…….

Since corporatisation in 2002, Snowy Hydro has grown beyond the Snowy Scheme and now operates a growing and profitable retail energy, wholesale energy risk management and power generation business. We combine the power of the mighty Snowy Scheme with gas and diesel fired peaking generators to deliver a flexible and reliable mix of energy to our customers every day. We have 15 power stations, generate 4500 Gigawatt hours (GWh) on average per annum and have 5480 Megawatts (MW) of generating capacity across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. We’ve become the fourth largest retailer in the NEM by investing in growing our customer base, modernising our generation infrastructure, building and acquiring more generating capacity where we need it and developing our workforce of more than 1700 employees.

Snowy Hydro controls the headwaters of the Snowy, the Murray and the Murrumbidgee rivers and its water licence allows it to collect, divert, store, and release water by and from the works of the Snowy Scheme for the 75 year term of the licence. This licence is due to expire sometime between June 2076 and June 2077.

On 19 December 2016 the Dept. of Energy and Industry called for expressions of interest in conducting a valuation of the corporation for the three owners – with the contract to commence 1 February 2017.

The tender document states in part:

The contractor is required to provide each shareholder with a “fit for purpose” certified report, detailing the valuation of Snowy Hydro Limited's (SHL's) equity at fair value as at 30 June 2017 and 30 June 2018. The report will detail the scope, methodology, procedure and outcomes as well as all relevant assumptions, definitions and limiting conditions appropriate to the procurement. The contractor will supply the three shareholders with the preliminary and final versions of the valuation report in both written and electronic format. The report is to include explanations of movements in the valuations from year to year and take into account the interest holdings of the Commonwealth, NSW and Victorian Governments. The contractor will undertake the valuation as at 30 June 2017 and 30 June 2018 as a Limited Scope Valuation Engagement….. 

On 15 March 2017 Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Securing Australia’s Energy Future with Snowy Mountains 2.0 – a plan to boost Snowy Hydro’s power generation by 50 per cent.

This announcement mentioned $2 billion in federal government funding but in effect only commits to a feasibility study of pumped hydro expansion.

Remembering the 2006 push led by the Howard Government to sell off the Snowy Mountain Scheme as well as 2016 media reports of a possible sale, the valuation of Snowy Hydro Ltd raises questions about Turnbull’s out-of-left-field announcement.

Was it a prime ministerial thought bubble thrown in to quieten the heated debate over energy security which is currently taking place or was it a calculated ‘sweetener’ thrown in to make future sale of the corporation to institutional and foreign investors more attractive?