Under the false claim of improving government efficiency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently disbanded its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. But in reality, this was part of a broader effort to weaken federal regulation of contaminating industries, enabling polluters to gain greater profit at the public’s expense.
The callous elimination of EPA’s environmental justice and civil rights program has especially troubling significance in Glynn County, Georgia, but there are hundreds of other communities in the U.S. dangerously threatened by this reckless EPA action due to ongoing health problems caused by hazardous industrial contamination. As reported in 2023 by First Coast News, “Decades of industrial pollution flowing from factories in Brunswick, Georgia has ended up in the bloodstreams of longtime residents.” They reported that studies by Emory University found elevated levels of numerous hazardous chemicals, which in at least ten cases analyzed were in the top 5% of the most chemically contaminated Americans.
People at highest risk from such toxins are low-income residents – predominantly racial minority groups – living within or close to the hazard zones surrounding polluted industrial sites, who therefore suffer the greatest environmental injustices which now being eliminated from EPA’s agenda. But there are long-term medical hazards caused by pollutants that enter water supplies, either through pipeline discharges, contaminants dumped on land leaching chemicals into groundwater and/or carried into waterways as stormwater runoff.
Since there are some 1,340 known industrially contaminated sites in America that are federally designated on the "National Priorities List," many of them within close proximity to neighborhoods containing homes, commercial areas, and jobs, such findings - though deeply disturbing - are not surprising. The contaminants found in blood analysis are known to cause cancer and debilitating damage to human reproductive health, digestive organs, and nervous systems. According to the Center for Public Integrity, nearly 100 million people in America are at risk due to exposure to industrial pollution, including many who are using industrially contaminated water supplies.
Both environmental threats and anti-science propaganda were spread by the EPA administrator when he recently announced reckless cutbacks in critical public safeguards. [See: AP Article. ]
“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families ...” said EPA Administrator Zeldin.
Aside from the negligence of eliminating restrictions on heat-trapping emissions that cause rising temperatures, Zeldin attacks well-established science by depicting concerns about climate change as a religion. Moreover, he falsely asserts that dismantling these protections will benefit the public, hiding the actual truth that EPA cutbacks will help polluters – foremost the fossil-fuel industry – not American families.
Some trillion dollars in damage has been caused by extreme weather events since 1980 and a third of these have occurred just in the past five years. That means the public will be paying far more through the loss of EPA protections and suffering worsening hardships in the years ahead because of eliminating additional EPA climate actions already budgeted.
In his deceptive claims, EPA’s Zeldin omits billions of dollars in added medical care, insurance costs, and property damage that will burden Americans as a direct result of these irresponsible reductions. Removing EPA protections will leave millions of households and businesses financially stranded because of costly hazards to health and property, plus loss of income caused by flooding, wildfires, and poorly regulated pollution.
Furthermore, these reductions are unlawful.
Legal experts say it's a marked departure from the agency’s historic purpose to protect human health and the environment. “It's an all out assault on climate regulation and environmental and public health protections,” says Michael Burger, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
However, the announcement does not mean that the EPA has legal authority to institute the proposed rollbacks, experts say. “It is not within the authority of an agency to take action or to push through decisions that are directly and diametrically opposed to its mandate and the reason it was created,” says Nikki Reisch, director of Climate and Energy at the Center for International Environmental Law.
While each administration has flexibility in how they enforce agency regulations, the process of outright repealing regulations is more complicated, Reisch notes. “Merely making these pronouncements from up high does not change the law,” she says. “It doesn't change the statutes that exist to protect clean air and clean water, and to protect the health of people throughout this country.”
Concerned citizens are well-advised to contact their elected officials in Washington and state their unconditional opposition to these destructive, illegal cutbacks.
As destructive record-breaking storms impose ever greater harm on Georgians and other Americans, it is imperative that the cause of these threats significantly worsening – massive use of fossil fuels – is decisively, quickly curbed. Rapidly growing acknowledgement of the escalating hazards of extreme weather and other costly environmental impacts attributable to burning and processing fossil-fuels is motivating well-informed financial advisors to restructure their guidance provided to clients.
The Center for International Environmental Law [CIEL] just announced the findings of its thorough research, advising financial institutions to stop funding oil and gas industry projects due to the high and escalating risks – both financial and environmental – related to the petrochemical industry.
The effort is an outcome of CIEL’s collaboration with 70 other organizations, which released a policy guide outlining why financial institutions must take into account rapidly increasing social, environmental, climate, and health hazards caused by the extraction, processing, distribution, and use of fossil-fuel related products, including plastics. Also hazardous are air emissions released in burning these fuels, which are cancer-causing and heat-trapping, intensifying climate change damages to human health, property, and the environment.
“In fact, a [recent] report ... reveals that Louisiana’s dependence on the petrochemical industry has taken it from a state of economic growth to one of long-term decline. This should serve as a stark warning for any economies banking on petrochemicals and plastics,” the CIEL notice states.
Highlights of their policy guide include:
• Petrochemical production releases carcinogenic and other highly toxic substances into the air, exposing nearby communities to higher risks of cancer, leukemia, reproductive and developmental problems, nervous system impairment, and genetic impacts.
• Petrochemical production also pollutes waterways with contaminated wastewater. In fact, Formosa Plastics was fined $50M in 2019 for illegally discharging plastic pollution into Texas waterways and another $19.2M as of June 2024 for continuing violations.
• Transporting petrochemicals is dangerous. The East Palestine, Ohio train derailment released toxic chemicals, polluted waterways, displaced residents, and exposed them to severe long-term health risks. Pipeline spills, fires, and leaks also put communities at risk.
• There are over 16,000 chemicals used or present in plastics, and 73 percent of chemicals with available information were considered hazardous to human and ecosystem health. Microplastics containing these chemicals now universally contaminate our air, water, food, soil, and bodies. Exiting Petrochemicals: A Policy Guide for Financial Institutions, Executive Summary Citations are available in the full Exiting Petrochemicals guide www.breakfreefromplastic.org/exiting-petrochemicals .
• The overuse of fossil fertilizers and pesticides exposes farmworkers and communities to toxic pollution and serious chronic diseases, causes algal blooms and dead zones in waterways, leeches into underground drinking water, and degrades and pollutes soil.
They warn that investing in and insuring these industries is both socially irresponsible and risky business.
“Continuing to fund the expansion of the petrochemicals industry will not only lock in pollution and emissions but could result in hundreds of billions of stranded assets.” [Stranded assets are those projects that must be abandoned before generating enough revenue to cover their costs, which can result in catastrophic financial losses for investors.]
“This policy guide has special significance in Georgia, where the Public Service Commission has approved expanded use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, despite our national priority for reducing the emissions released in burning them,” said Alan Bailey, president of the board of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, a non-profit organization protecting Georga’s coast. He added that another reason for Georgians to take these warnings seriously is because climate scientists have attributed at least half of the state’s estimated $6.5 billion dollars in damages unleashed by Hurricane Helene to fossil-fuel-based climate disruption.
Other climate-change damages to property, crops, wildlife, and human health are cumulatively in the hundreds of billions, and rapidly getting worse.
Despite decades of well-founded, science-based warnings, Georgia’s policies have defiantly continued to worsen climate-change impacts.
In defending their reckless decisions, undoubtedly Georgia leaders will claim that Helene’s massive destruction was unrelated to rising temperatures caused by the release of carbon dioxide and methane, epitomized by Georgia Power’s profitable, Public-Service-Commission-sanctioned combustion of fossil-fuels.
Yet, scientific evaluation underscores the tragedy of Georgia’s negligence:
Michael Wehner, a senior scientist … said he and his colleagues conducted a “climate change attribution” analysis of [Helene’s] rainfall, seeking to determine how global warming contributed to the event. Their findings show that rainfall totals observed in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas were … about 20 times more likely because of human-caused global warming. The authors estimate climate change “may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall….” [Drew Kann in Atlanta-Journal-Constitution.]
These findings are especially relevant because a study committee of Georgia’s General Assembly is gathering information needed to prepare legislation addressing disaster mitigation and resilience. As stated in a resolution creating the committee, “[Georgia] will benefit from a coordinated and collaborative effort to develop comprehensive … solutions to protect this state and its citizens, businesses, and natural resources [from the impacts of extreme weather] by accounting for current risks as well as projected future conditions.”
Unquestionably, this legislative study is timely and important. However, it would be foolhardy to limit its focus to devising methods for protecting Georgians from the very events that state energy policies are making more disastrous.
Safeguards protecting the public against extreme weather would greatly improve if officials honored science instead of profits.
[Pubilshed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 5, 2024]
Coastal Georgia is undergoing rapid, unprecedented urbanization, closely tied to the state’s industrial growth and international trade. Just west of Savannah in Bryan County, these trends are being dramatically demonstrated by an enormous Hyundai EV plant, among the world’s largest such facilities, under construction on a ‘mega-site of nearly 3,000 acres near the rural town of Ellabell. A related battery-making facility is also part of the $7.6 billion deal, announced in 2022.
Although those involved in the negotiations to secure the Hyundai project claim they have met ‘due diligence’ requirements, many critical questions remain unanswered, and residents are raising well-founded objections. Similar clashes surround the proliferation of big-box warehousing along the I-16 corridor that is directly linked to the colossal volume of international trade flowing through the Port of Savannah. Georgia Ports Authority documents an increase of nearly 15% over the past year, which gives Savannah its highest ranking ever among U.S. container ports, now comprising 11.2% of the nation’s total.
The Ports Authority describes the Savannah facility as “the fastest-growing container terminal in the nation.” And, unsurprisingly, the Savannah Economic Development Authority portrays their domain as “one of the hottest industrial real-estate markets in the country.” In keeping with these ambitions, the Port of Brunswick registered a whopping increase of 44% in April’s cargo, some 80,600 units of vehicles and heavy equipment, setting a new record.
According to Latrice Williams writing in Savannah Morning News, through a combination of expenditures in acquiring, reviewing and preparing the site, highway expansions and infrastructure, and workforce education, as well as tax breaks, the ‘incentive package’ supporting the Hyundai operation, paid for by public agencies, is reported to be some $1.8 billion. That means that Georgia taxpayers – including many adversely affected – are subsidizing the project without participating in pivotal decisions that result in these projects being implemented, often without adequate planning, assessment, or regulatory enforcement.
A brief 15-day regional review of the Hyundai project was conducted by the Coastal Regional Commission – in compliance with proforma procedures of the Georgia Planning Act – but comments were advisory, lacking mandatory requirements, and the review evidently occurred after the lengthy incentive negotiations had been well underway and were already deeply vested. While local-government master plans are required by the same state legislation, they may be marginalized or expediently amended to accommodate opportunistic projects that can appear appealing when not insightfully scrutinized.
These experiences strongly suggest the need for fundamentally revising procedures used in making such decisions. Economic development must be judiciously evaluated, and when impacts are deemed unacceptable through informed, deliberative, and broad participatory review, projects must be accountably restricted or rejected altogether. As thousands of acres of tree-covered land are cleared and paved-over, and intensified commerce generates thousands of trips on local roads and highways, rural residents express despair about the decline in their quality of life, while also voicing concerns about stormwater contamination, river and aquifer protection, public safety, and air quality.
It is clear that decisions made by various local development authorities, the Georgia Ports Authority, and Georgia’s Department of Economic Development, whose only measure of success seems to be rapid and profitable growth, give little credence to different values held by citizens living within the expansive impact areas of these massive mega-projects.
Aggressive state and local development practices must be tempered by deliberative, mandatory review of both environmental factors and quality-of-life issues through a transparent process of participatory decision-making that justly empowers all Georgians. Our citizens must not be forced to endure the offensive consequences of dubious ventures that are unilaterally rationalized as progress, largely driven by the objectives of politically influential absentee investors.
But to help improve these decisions, the public cannot afford to be complacent. Instead of assuming a passive role that is often rationalized by cynical assertions about the impossibility of defending local interests, Georgia citizens and voters must organize and speak out at every opportunity. In particular, unless coastal Georgians insist on actively participating in these decisions, the unique character of the region will be forfeited to profit-obsessed interests, becoming just another “sacrifice zone” exploited through predatory industrialization.
“The question is whether any civilization canwage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
~ Rachel Carson
MEGA hats are available from the Center for a Sustainable Coast, www.sustainablecoast.org
Earth Day 2024
We must fulfill our obligation to serve democracy & the common good
It has been said that human life is driven by a series of decisions, personal and otherwise. That proposition has special significance in a democracy, where we have the opportunity to use our moral authority as citizens to make political choices that can have profound consequences for our collective future. In light of this valuable political opportunity, it should be acknowledged that over the past century, the rapid proliferation of commercialism has come to dominate - and critically restrict - choices that are pivotal to the future of our nation.
Accordingly, our decision-making role has increasingly shifted to becoming consumers, with a proportional decline in well-informed political engagement. Whether that trend has been orchestrated or is simply a result of gradual adaptation to economic circumstances, the implications should be taken seriously – not only by expressing our views in the voting booth, but also by voicing them in many state and local decisions providing procedures for making public comment through agency review processes, as well as in the media.
There can be little doubt that if our era is objectively chronicled, it will be marred by escalating, corrupt opportunism – exploitative practices being rewarded rather than punished. When the growing injustices of abusing the common good repeatedly go uncorrected, victims become cynically disengaged while grifters are emboldened and empowered.
Consider two prominent examples related to Georgia’s Public Service Commission, the agency supposedly responsible for representing the public interest in issues related to the price of electricity, as well as how it’s generated and distributed. Contrary to their legal obligation, PSC members have shifted billions-of-dollars in Plant Vogtle expansion cost-overruns from Georgia Power executives and Southern Company stockholders onto residential energy consumers. Southern Company stock-returns and executive salaries soared during the 15-year project, while its subsidiary, Georgia Power, caused massive financial burdens that the PSC converted to a 30% increase in residential utility costs to compensate for corporate blunders. Apparently, the PSC would rather sustain the ample incomes of company executives and stockholders than protect household energy-users and the common good.
Similarly, after litigation was filed asserting that the method for electing PSC members violated a recent Supreme Court ruling on the federal Voting Rights Act, instead of immediately correcting the problem, Georgia courts delayed the next election, extending the terms-of-office for two members by two years. Moreover, while enjoying their unfairly prolonged PSC authority, these members helped worsen Georgia’s pollution of air and climate for many years ahead by irresponsibly approving expanded fossil-fuel-burning power-generation instead of converting to clean energy. That decision fundamentally contradicted compelling, well-informed public hearing testimony as well as national climate-policy objectives.
Oppression undermines democracy, environmental justice, and the common good when flagrant exploitation by special interests is politically sanctioned instead of being prohibited. As citizens and voters, we must vigilantly strive to fulfill our obligations and use our moral authority to reform political institutions so they consistently serve urgent priorities essential to safeguarding the future.
Our active engagement in these critical decisions as citizens is imperative.
David Kyler, Center for a Sustainable Coast
The above statement is based on a letter-to-editor published in The Brunswick News and The Albany Herald, and The Bryan County News.
Ten Policies to Help Make Earth Great Again
Prohibit environmentally degrading activities, based on balanced, thorough assessment of their consequences for life-support systems and at-risk communities.
Immediately adopt escalating restrictions on the emission of heat-trapping emissions, with the goal of eliminating all such emissions no later than 2050.
Eliminate all government subsidy of activities that threaten or degrade environmental quality, critical species, and social justice.
Issue comprehensive monthly reports based on well-researched scientific evaluation of key ecosystems essential to life-support and food supplies.
Adopt federal procedures requiring mandatory review of all legislative proposals and existing laws to revise them as needed, based on these ecosystem threat-assessments.
Tax all incomes over $10 million annually at a minimum of 20% and provide a 50% carbon-emission-reduction tax-credit for all households earning less than $200,000 a year.
Use at least half the proceeds from high-income-bracket taxes to restore damaged ecosystems, correct environmental injustices, and enforce emission-reduction activities.
Implement a comprehensive international environmental education and internship program, strengthening capabilities for global ecosystem restoration and protection.
Adopt federal requirements applicable to licensed media outlets to eliminate all environmental disinformation, while disseminating weekly updates on ecosystem conditions.
Create federal trade policies that strictly prohibit products, services, and practices that degrade essential ecosystems, consistent with the latest scientific assessments.
Comments on proposed rule changes, CRD/DNR January 19, 2024
Georgia’s marshlands are a key component of the dynamic and complex intertidal zone, where freshwater systems merge with marine waters. Georgia's tidal marshlands, the largest on the U.S. east coast, are extremely important as wildlife habitat and marine fish nurseries, as well as providing invaluable water filtration and flood protection. These marshes are regulated by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which is now proposeing ill-conceived revisions in the marsh rules they administer.
Properly protecting the important functions of marshlands is complicated by the movement of tides, river and pipeline outflow, as well as stormwater runoff in the five coastal river watersheds (that can carry contaminants hundreds of miles downstream), the development of upland areas including water access via docks and elevated walkways, and changes in conditions caused by the alteration of topography, vegetation, and land-cover in adjacent upland areas. Despite the growing risk of coastal flooding and the corresponding expense of flood insurance, demand for the development of marsh-front properties continues to escalate, making the protection of marshes increasingly important and controversial, as well as more difficult. (See references listed below.)
Objectives that should be served by effective marsh buffer rules:
Prevent activities causing harm to marsh functions. Those functions include wildlife habitat and fishery nurseries, water filtration & flood protection of adjacent uplands.
Minimize harm to upland areas and marshes caused by rising sea level and storms.
Prevent damage to other [off-site] upland areas caused by permitted activities.
Administer and evaluate permitting to prevent risk of cumulative damages within a watershed or impact zone, augmented by analysis of other information about marsh conditions and threats.
Enhance public awareness of the benefits of marsh protection through state regulation.
DNR’s current and proposed procedures for marsh buffer regulation are flawed by:
Incremental decision-making that lacks systemic assessment and longer-term perspective
Fragmented, weakly coordinated use of state and local authority [under rules based on both Georgia’s Marshlands Protection Act and the Soil Erosion and Sedimentation Act]
Neglect of significant factors that can adversely influence the consequences of permitting decisions – foremost rising sea-level, and
Inadequate public understanding of the permitting process and its relevance to Georgia’s coast.
Critique & Recommendations
Lack of Systemic Analysis
Due to the risk of accumulative adverse effects of many individual permitted activities and rising sea level, incremental permitting cannot provide adequate protection of the tidal marsh ecosystem. Permitting decisions must be augmented with assessment of the consequences of activities previously permitted and changing conditions affecting the ecosystem functions of Georgia’s tidal marshes.
Uncoordinated & Fragmented Use of State Authority
The current split of authority between two separate divisions of Georgia DNR, as well as the option for local governments to assume certain elements of regulation caused inevitable but avoidable lack of uniformity, understanding, and rigor in the use of rules intended to protect tidal marshes. Buffer rules must be adopted under a structure that empowers a single agency unit for applying state authority.
Neglect of Key Assessment Factors
Current rules provide no assurance of credible evaluation of important factors relevant to anticipated impacts of proposed development activities in the tidal marsh buffer. Foremost, there are numerous studies predicting the accelerated risks of coastal flooding caused by rising sea level, which must be a critical factor in regulation of demand for marshfront projects such as seawalls and evaluating their impacts over the life of the project. Buffer rules must include mandatory assessment of such factors, for which there are now many sources of technical support through NOAA and various national NGOs, as well as federal funding for programs providing climate change adaptation. [See references below]
Inadequate Public Involvement & Understanding About Marsh Protection
Reforming rules for marsh buffer regulation provides an important opportunity to upgrade reporting and analysis of permitting activities for public review, which promises to enhance citizen understanding about the relevance of these efforts, support for them, and compliance with regulatory requirements. As I suggested in oral comments at the January 4th hearing, it is strongly advised that DNR/CRD adopt the practice of producing and widely distributing an annual report that describes and maps all permitted activities [Marshlands Protection, Shore Protection, and Buffer Protection], results of any post-permitting assessment of impacts, regulatory violations and related resolutions, and letters of permission affecting the tidal marshes of Georgia. To initiate enhanced public involvement, we enthusiastically support the formation of a stakeholder/public advisory group to work with DNR/CRD in developing a more thorough, consistent, and effective regulatory program for Georgia’s marsh buffers.
By David Kyler, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Saint Simons Island, Georgia
We have become vulnerable to entrenched assumptions and practices that are not only failing to serve humanity’s interests, but which are, collectively, an escalating threat to our future on Earth. As one of hundreds of factual analyses and reports substantiating this assertion, consider the recently issued National Climate Assessment, the fifth in a series of such evaluations mandated by Congress.
The report documents numerous threats to property, health, and environment. Among them are the increasing extreme-weather events caused by human activities emitting heat-trapping gases – primarily carbon dioxide and methane from using fossil fuels – costing U.S. citizens over $150 billion annually in recent years. These destructive effects include:
Wildfires – Destroying carbon-storing capacity while amplifying heat-trapping gas emissions.
Drought – Killing crops, destroying communities and habitats, endangering millions of people.
Extreme heat – Causing premature deaths and a range of degenerative heat-related diseases.
Extinctions – Entire species are being lost at about a thousand times the historical average.
Cumulatively, these costly worldwide effects are accelerating, and aside from the tragically inequitable financial penalties, they’re creating worsening living conditions that will become intolerable unless pivotal changes are quickly made in how humans use the Earth to support quality of life. This will mean finding viable means to curtail the destructive assaults of our reckless industrialized economy and correct deeply flawed understanding of self-interest.
The implications of these findings are not new, only more alarming due to woefully deficient efforts to appropriately respond to four prior climate assessments, beginning over 20 years ago. The reasons for failing to properly restructure our social and economic institutions despite factual analysis of crucial problems are complex and disputed, but one thing is certain: due to unprecedented environmental damage to life-support systems caused by overriding human activities, the measures for guiding these activities must be judiciously restructured.
The following three factors must be well-integrated into these new institutional guidelines.
Honoring Environmental Limits
Fifty years ago, a landmark book, The Limits to Growth, presented the inevitably destructive effects on the condition of vital world resources caused by irresponsible industrialization and population growth. By foolishly isolating decisions guiding human activities from impacts on the natural systems upon which all life depends, over the five decades since these dire predictions were made, they have become conclusively exhibited. To prevent environmental collapse and an uninhabitable planet, future economic choices must be based upon reliable evaluation of their consequences on life-support systems. Among other things, this will require a well-developed ‘circular economy’ that maximizes the reuse of resources, applying methods that minimize harm and conform with environmental limits.
Merging Individual and Common Interest
Western values now dominating the global economy, epitomized by the American culture, have emphasized self-reliance and individual ambitions that have all too often neglected the common good, with disastrous results. These contrasting outcomes were memorably described as “private affluence amid public squalor” by the well-respected economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Similar negligence has been manifested in U.S. policies adopted over recent decades, as corporate influences have overpowered political and economic agendas, exacerbated and sanctioned by the 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United. That disruptive landmark ruling granted Constitutional protections for corporate political spending as a form of free speech. Yet, human prospects on Planet Earth cannot be served if corporate motives and methods continue to prevail, because individual liberty, economic justice, and environmental viability will increasingly suffer the dire impacts of insatiable profit-and-growth mega-business agendas. Any durable emerging civilization must be based on institutions that transparently reconcile – and accountably integrate – individual rights and the common good to prevent exploitation of the many by the opportunistic few.
Time Horizon
Directly related to the above dominance of profitmaking constructs are the devious effects of short-term thinking that impede the forethought needed to ensure that consequential decisions are properly evaluated, and unwise choices are prevented. But negligent myopic perspective is rewarded by the rigid aims of quarterly and annual profit-maximizing, which routinely forfeit unexamined future well-being for near-term opportunities. The responsible accountability required to prevent continued destruction of life-support systems demands that both individual and collective decisions are guided by longer-term viewpoints. Rather than guaranteeing stock dividends for the next quarter or prolonging annual growth, key decisions must combine the goals of meeting near-term human needs with the rigorous, well-informed long-term conservation of world resource systems. To achieve enlightened economic and social objectives, our ever-advancing information-gathering and analytical capabilities must be dedicated to serving the complex demands of a ‘mixed scanning’ approach that continually surveys and justly reevaluates the dynamic landscape of our socio-geo-political biosphere.
Electronic waste, material recovery, and the clean energy transition
Based on reports by Environmental Resources Management [ERM], consultants. See www.erm.com
The use of and demand for electronics has reached unprecedented levels, propelled by new technologies, intensified reliance on communication infrastructure, and the pressing need for clean energy sources, including upgrades in energy storage and grid transmission. It has been estimated that growth in demand for strategic materials needed to meet these needs will require a production increase of some 400% within a decade, especially critical due to the urgency of rapidly transitioning to clean energy as a means of curbing heat-trapping fossil-fuel emissions.
With accelerating reliance on electronic equipment, there’s been an enormous growth in electronic waste (“e-waste”). In the past e-waste has included computers, servers, monitors, tablets, printers, and cell phones. But with the spreading use of computer chips and electronic devices, this term now encompasses many more household and business products—appliances, toys, tools, audio-video gear, cars, etc. When the performance of these items are surpassed by newer technology, or when they fail, their useful life ends, converting them to e-waste.
“According to the 2020 UN Global E-waste Monitor, e-waste is the world’s largest waste stream globally, often contains materials that are toxic to human health and the environment, yet very little is being recycled. E-waste also contains extremely valuable materials, such as cobalt, lithium, palladium, copper, and gold,” with a lost value in many billions of dollars when not recovered through recycling.
“The world generated 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste in 2019. Only 17.4% of that was recycled. The fraction not recycled (82.6%) represents $47 billion in lost value from materials that could have been recovered, including cobalt, palladium, copper, and other conflict minerals.” [ERM, 2022.] Sources: 2020 UN Global E-waste Monitor, GESP 2020 How E-waste Management Market Became a Highly Profitable Industry 2020: Revenue Analysis and Growth Opportunity, AP Newswire 2020
To the greatest extent possible, the demand for these critical materials must be extracted from the e-waste-stream rather than mining and processing them from deposits scattered around the world. Deriving such materials from e-waste will greatly reduce both environmental and financial costs by avoiding the disruptive, energy-intensive processes required to mine, refine and distribute them from new sources. Risky geo-political disputes may also be avoided.
Coastal Georgia is already encountering a unique opportunity in the emerging e-waste recovery industry with the recently announced location of Igneo Technologies, a New York-based e-waste recycling company, which will be opening its first U.S. electronics recycling facility in Savannah next year. This makes the assessment and control of e-waste recycling even more pertinent in our region, offering potential alignment between environmental and business interests.
Significant risks of e-waste
ERM warns that E-waste contains many toxic and hazardous materials, such as lead, mercury, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), brominated flame retardants (BFR), chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC), and persistent organic pollutants. When e-waste is not recycled, these chemicals contaminate landfills, creating risks to water quality through leachate when disposal-linings leak, exposing land and wildlife to relate harms. Communities located near landfills are particularly susceptible to chemical exposures resulting from improper e-waste disposal. Environmental contamination from recycling operations is common, endangering human health in neighboring communities, often compounding long-suffered environmental injustices.
When recovering valuable materials from e-waste, the disassembly process presents the potential for worker exposure to airborne contaminants such as lead, mercury, and combustible dust, causing significant health risks. Following disassembly, the treatment of e-waste for recovering precious metals entails hazardous chemicals and high-risk methods, such as acid processing and smelting, creating risky working conditions.
Most e-waste treatment occurs in developing countries, which often lack the regulatory controls, safety infrastructure, and culture to keep their workers safe. Research by the World Health Organization identified associations between e-waste exposure and thyroid dysfunction, adverse birth outcomes, behavioral changes, decreased lung function, and adverse changes at the cellular level in children. For these reasons, it is critically important that science-based safeguards are reliably implemented and conditions are monitored to protect waste-recovery workers – in the U.S. and globally.
According to ERM, consumers and governments are increasing demands for business programs that accommodate product takeback and resource recovery. Some regions are seeing regulatory action on e-waste, such as the European Union’s recast of the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. Many European businesses are committing to climate and zero-waste goals in response to shareholder and customer pressures, to enhance their corporate profile in achieving sustainable business outcomes. E-waste processing business is especially sensitive to factors such as regulation of working conditions and the environment, shifting market incentives, consumer preferences, and carbon-emission reduction goals, all of which are increasingly critical to profitability.
Achieving sustainability through responsible resource recovery
As the world transitions from a linear economy to a circular one, mining prime materials needed for electronics is unsustainable for business and intolerable for our already overburdened ecosystems. While the technology for efficiently recovering and recycling key components is still developing, more companies are investing in recovery and recycling technologies, because doing so contributes to their emerging bottom line. Capturing the value from existing e-waste will save billions in material costs and significantly reduce adverse environmental impacts. Companies need to discuss how to ensure that resource recovery from e-waste is applied as a strategic business advantage in the transition to a circular economy.
Those business that succeed in resource recovery methods will not only become major leaders in sustainability, but they will also have the potential to realize cost savings by tapping into the growing e-waste market, predicted to reach $102.62 billion by 2027, according to AP Newswire (2020).
ERM advises that the approach must be two-pronged: (1) understand and mitigate the risks associated with current e-waste processing methods, and (2) harness the value of the circular economy transition through product redesign and reuse of valuable materials.
By diligently adopting these goals and also making the important commitment to implementing a clean-energy transition, Georgia can become a leader in advancing a sustainable future.
. Thanks to prolonged supremacy of the greed ethic over the past four decades, stockholder affluence has soared while the U.S. minimum wage, inflation adjusted, is less than a third of what it was in the 1970s. Concurrently, along with such financial injustices that eroded the working wage and depleted the middle class, environmental negligence has escalated, with severe consequences.
“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.”From the 1987 film, Wall Street.
In the 35 years since the fictional character Gordon Gekko proclaimed that greed is good in the movie “Wall Street,” the tycoon’s assertion, further empowered by the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, has taken a treacherous toll on America and, in various ways, the world beyond. Thanks to prolonged supremacy of the greed ethic over the past four decades, stockholder affluence has soared while the U.S. minimum wage, inflation adjusted, is less than a third of what it was in the 1970s. Concurrently, along with such financial injustices that eroded the working wage and depleted the middle class, environmental negligence has escalated, with severe consequences.
A recent, controversial example is the preventable railroad accident in eastern Ohio, spilling hazardous materials that killed wildlife and will likely cause diverse public health risks for years to come.
According to news coverage, the cost of installing braking devices – that could have stopped hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals from contaminating the city of East Palestine and its inhabitants – was deemed unjustified by Norfolk Southern Railway executives. Equally troubling, the railway industry used its political clout to get the federal government to weaken rules so that trains with fewer than 70 cars carrying hazardous material are not required to have electronically controlled pneumatic brakes. Furthermore, they reduced crew size and inspection standards that boosted rail industry profits by taking risky shortcuts.
The biased calculations used in these selfish trade-offs, made to exclusively serve narrow corporate goals, are ubiquitous and increasingly driven by the outsized influence of well-paid professional lobbyists, who too often produce grossly unethical hidden consequences. Corporate profits are boosted by a combination of degraded safety precautions and inadequate accountability when the public, and/or workers, are injured – unfairly shifting private costs and suffering onto unwary third parties.
Similar regressive outcomes have occurred through relaxed environmental enforcement. In June 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled that EPA cannot limit state-level carbon emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This constraining rollback, serving short-term motives of the power industry at the public’s expense, is brazen circumvention of urgently needed policy goals adopted by Congress. Moreover, the ruling defied well-established scientific findings that such emissions are the main cause of climate change, an unparalleled threat to human health and vital life-support systems. In recent decades other threats to the public accumulated in an array of lower-court decisions failing to penalize violations of state and federal regulations, weakening natural-resource safeguards and environmental justice. And in May 2023 the Supreme Court delivered a decision degrading federal Clean Water Act protections over millions of acres of wetlands that are essential to water quality, wildlife habitat, flood prevention, and human health.
By prioritizing short-term property income and investment interests over the common good, bolstered by government funding favoring intertwined fossil-fuel and financial institutions, the injustices of U.S. policies are only outdone by certain states, including Georgia, that reward industry investors at the citizens’ expense, even for mismanaged projects.
As the earth hurdles toward ever-worsening climate hazards and economic injustice, we can no longer tolerate the indiscriminate promotion of all development under “greed-is-good” policy, as if it inherently benefits society. Until more objective and holistic assessment standards are applied in using public resources and regulatory authority to guide business activities, government programs will continue generating inequitable and environmentally harmful outcomes.
For example, while Georgia wins unbridled praise for securing major investments in the manufacture of batteries, solar panels, and electric vehicles, officials remain stubbornly regressive in the state’s energy policy by severely restraining the implementation of rooftop solar infrastructure. Energy experts advise that the widespread use of rooftop solar and on-site battery storage will not only reduce consumer energy costs, but it will help ensure a more stable and resilient power grid as demand grows and extreme weather threats worsen.
Concurrently, Georgia’s energy policymakers have expanded the use of natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits heat-trapping gases when burned and is linked to an array of methane leaks that dangerously compound global overheating. Furthermore, unlike most states, Georgia has failed to adopt a clean-energy transition plan or scheduled targets for reducing carbon emissions.
Likewise, Georgia officials have imposed grossly excessive cost overruns, incurred in Georgia Power’s Vogtle nuclear plant expansion, on residential customers, who have suffered a rate increase near 30 percent since 2010, while industrial rates grew by only 0.3 percent. These Vogtle costs are some $20 billion over budget, and still increasing by millions weekly. In effect, residential energy customers are subsidizing Georgia’s industrial development – and Georgia Power’s profit margin – without public approval, and probably without the understanding of those who are most financially abused because of it.
Meanwhile, economic development proponents have received unqualified support for producing clean-energy equipment, while Georgia markets for it are either stymied by state policies (solar panels) or encumbered by products (electric vehicles) that will be recharged primarily with power produced by burning fossil fuels.
To initiate remedies for these blatant contradictions and inequities, rigorous standards must be adopted and consistently applied, including the following recommended criteria:
Public costs for subsidizing economic development projects, including tax exemptions, low-cost leases, and below-market land/energy, must not be imposed on taxpayers and energy customers without their formal agreement through detailed, specific voter referendums.
Government support for ‘job creation’ in the clean-energy sector must require both enhanced working conditions and employee benefits as well as energy policies that are consistent with the goal of reducing heat-trapping gases that cause disruptive climate damages. States like Georgia, without such policies, should not be eligible for federal support, including grants and/or tax credits provided through the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Any state receiving clean-energy development incentives must be required to adopt a transition plan and routinely report corresponding implementation efforts. States without such plans or sufficient progress in implementing them, must not be eligible for receiving federal support.
The environmental impacts of clean-energy projects must be thoroughly analyzed, publicly reviewed, and reliably evaluated, consistent with applicable state and federal laws. The potential benefits of clean-energy projects do not justify regulatory exemptions or lax enforcement. Impacts of these projects on water, air quality, surrounding land uses, and other factors must be responsibly assessed and all reasonable alternatives must be rigorously but expediently evaluated.
Unless we can rapidly surmount powerful political interests fixated on short-term profitmaking, humanity's prospects will grow increasingly dire as our life-support systems further degenerate. The common good, essential to our future, can only be realized by responsibly controlling greed.
