When my sister and I were kids, we giggled upon learning that 60 percent of the human body is comprised of water. We wiggled and wobbled and moved our bodies in mushy wave-like motions, mimicking the sloshy mess one would expect of something made largely of liquid.

It turns out we should have been pretending we were covered in bugs.

Scientific studies now reveal that nine out of 10 cells in our bodies are not actually us, they’re microbes. Yes, we’re crawling with microscopic creatures, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

And in fact, the overwhelming majority of these creatures are not bad, but good. These puny partners, having evolved with us for eons, aren’t just hitching a ride. They’re earning their keep with hefty tasks – helping digest food, absorb nutrients, and attacking disease-causing invaders.

So if they’re good, and we need them, then why are we working so hard to kill them? And by harming them, are we also unknowingly harming ourselves?

Sales of antibacterial consumer products – including multiple brands of antibacterial hand soap, body soap, dishwashing liquid, sponges and more – have mushroomed recently, fed by our growing fears of germs and nasty “superbugs” that no longer respond to antibiotics. Up to 75 percent of hand soap now sold in the U.S. is antibacterial.

I even bought antibacterial cotton swabs recently by mistake, not noticing the antimicrobial claim until I got home. Which begs the question: do I really need to worry about microbes in healthy ears?

In truth, most of these products aren’t needed. Washing hands with regular soap and warm water removes harmful germs just as effectively as antibacterial soap, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Soap binds with bacteria, picks them up off the skin, and allows them to be whisked away with warm water. People with compromised immune systems from chronic disease or chemotherapy may want added protection, but most of us don’t need it.

In fact, antimicrobial products may be bad for you. Most antibacterial items are treated with a pesticide called triclosan. Studies suggest that triclosan disrupts thyroid and sex hormones in animals. It also gets washed down drains into waterways, where sunlight converts it into a poisonous dioxin that hurts fish and wildlife.

Also, remember that triclosan kills all bacteria, which means it can kill those good bugs on your body that help prevent disease by keeping harmful bacteria, viruses and fungi in check. Some scientists worry that excessive use of antibacterial soap could actually make infectious bacteria worse by accelerating their resistance to antibiotics.

But it’s not just about infection. Many scientists believe good microbes play a critical role in regulating our metabolism, guiding brain development, influencing behavior and regulating health. For example, microbes in the gut have been shown to alter brain chemistry in mice, affecting anxiety and depression, and they may influence inflammatory responses that contribute to cancer and heart disease.

The National Institute of Health is currently examining the trillions of microbes found in the human mouth, nose, esophagus, gut, skin and urogenital tract to identify which are found in healthy people, and which are missing in those who aren’t. Related research is exploring whether microbes can help treat chronic digestive and autoimmune disorders such as Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Scientists are also studying whether modern medical practices such as C-sections (in which newborns bypass healthy bacteria in the birth canal), and excessive antibiotic use are contributing to escalating health problems such as asthma, food allergies, and obesity.

So save your creepy crawly fears for Halloween. Most of those trillions of tiny creatures on your body help maintain a very complicated and miraculous system: you. Wash the truly scary bugs away with simple soap and water and ignore the marketers trying to trick you into buying something you don’t need.

Your microbes, and the remaining 10 percent of human cells in your body, just may thank you.

Amy Mathews Amos is an independent environmental consultant and writer. © www.blueridgepress.com 2012

Many Pennsylvania and New York residents who thought they’d hit the lottery by signing natural gas drilling leases have watched their drinking water turn noxious: slick, brown, foamy, flammable.

All along, industry has claimed that natural gas fracking doesn’t pollute drinking water. But in December, for the first time, federal regulators scientifically linked fracking to the contamination of an aquifer.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified numerous fracking chemicals in groundwater in the rural ranching community of Pavillion, Wyoming. Cancer-causing benzene was found at 50 times safe levels, along with toxic metals, diesel fuel and other hazardous chemicals. The EPA is now testing water in 61 locations in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna County for possible contamination.

Nationwide, residents living near fracked gas wells have filed over 1,000 complaints of tainted water, severe illnesses, livestock deaths, and fish kills. Complaints, sometimes involving hundreds of households, have risen in tandem with a veritable gold rush of new natural gas wells – numbering about 493,000 across 31 states.

Still, the fracking industry goes virtually unregulated. Why? The answer is money.

Big oil and gas – which attacked the EPA study – has reaped billions in profits from fracking. Since 1990, they’ve also pumped $238.7 million into gubernatorial and Congressional election campaigns to squelch oversight – effectively blocking federal regulation. (Republican candidates received three to five times more cash).

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett received $361,207. Top Congressional recipients include Tim Murphy (R-PA), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and James Inhofe (R-OK) – who claimed the EPA study was “not based on sound science but rather on political science.” The industry also spent $726 million on lobbying from 2001–2011.

Today, only four of 31 fracking states have significant drilling rules and the gas industry is exempted from seven major federal regulations. One of these, the “Halliburton loophole” (pushed through by former Vice-President/former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney) exempts corporations from revealing the chemicals used in fracking fluid – bypassing the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts.

Another loophole leaves hazardous waste, including contaminated soil, water and drilling fluids, unregulated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Still another dodges the Superfund law, which requires that polluters remediate for carcinogens like benzene released into the environment – except if they come from oil or gas.

Fracking, invented by Halliburton, injects water, sand and chemicals into the ground at high pressure, blasting apart shale bedrock to release gas. It takes between one and five million gallons of water to frack one well.

Up to 40 percent of that water returns to the surface, carrying toxic drilling chemicals and sometimes, naturally-occurring radioactive material. The rest remains underground, potentially polluting aquifers and drinking water. Streams and groundwater can be contaminated by spills, surface wastewater pits, and by millions of tons of chemical-laden dirt removed during drilling.

Today, 65 probable fracking chemicals are federally listed as hazardous. Many others remain unstudied and unregulated, making it impossible to assess the effects on water resources. EPA documents note that some “cause kidney, liver, heart, blood, and brain damage through prolonged or repeated exposure”, and that fracking fluid migrates over unpredictable distances through different rock layers.

Clearly, the natural gas industry needs federal regulation, something President Obama pledged in his State of the Union speech. Now, as the Interior Department drafts new fracking rules for public lands, it mustn’t be swayed by industry: assuring full disclosure of fracking chemicals, well stability, and proper wastewater disposal. The EPA must likewise impose these rules nationwide.

Congress must also pass the Frac Act, repealing drinking water exemptions. Industry-friendly state agencies – like those in Texas that sometimes approve new drilling permits in two days – must also institute real oversight.

But let’s be realistic. Real oversight means we must prevent elected officials from being bought-and-paid-for by Exxon, Koch Industries and other oil and gas companies. Otherwise, federal loopholes that poison water and ruin health will never be closed. To spark real change, Americans must speak up. Loudly.

Find out how much money flows to your Congressperson by reading Common Cause’s “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets” report online.

Journalist Sharon Guynup’s writing has appeared in Smithsonian, The New York Times Syndicate, Scientific American, The Boston Globe, and nationalgeographic.com. © www.blueridgepress.com 2012

While the environment isn’t a high priority in Washington this election year, local newspaper editors – and by extension their readers – say it ought to be. Clean water, public health and climate change are all highly important issues in every U.S. region according to a new Blue Ridge Press survey of editors at a hundred local newspapers.

The editors of the nation’s more than 4,000 dailies and weeklies rarely ever get asked their views. And I should know; I’m one of them! But as editor of The Observer, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, I can tell you that my 25,000 readers do have a point of view, and they care deeply about the environment.

When federal and state officials caved to fossil fuel interests and left West Virginia wide open for natural gas fracking, The Observer vigorously reported the issue. And why wouldn’t we? Poorly regulated gas wells can pollute drinking water, wreck property values, and as they just discovered in Ohio, cause earthquakes. That matters to folks!

Here’s what the surveyed newspaper editors had to say: a resounding 85 percent declared safe drinking water “very important” to their readers, while 93 percent said “clean rivers and lakes for recreation” are just as important. A Maine editor explains why: the “fishing and hunting culture” – his readership – wants to keep rivers and lakes clean and accessible. A Virginia editor agrees, saying that despite his readers’ conservative outlook, they “value deeply where they live” and want to keep their waters “primarily pristine.”

“Direct effects are what my readers are really concerned about,” adds a Southwest editor. If a federal or state policy is negatively impacting the local environment, then people are going to oppose it. An editor from Montana sums up this concern: “our local economy depends on good environmental preservation efforts.”

Americans are especially unhappy with national energy policies and big corporations that don’t take their home interests to heart. Southeast editors offered mountaintop removal as an example, while another editor observed that even before Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, his readers were upset with “where the nuclear industry is going” in terms of an “aging infrastructure and site selection.”

Coastal newspaper editors, like those in Maine or on the Gulf, spoke of “alarming changes in fishery regulations that impact both the economy and tourism.” A Louisiana editor is shocked over the destruction of waterways by oil company dredging. A South Dakota editor explains this intensity of local passion, saying: “what happens upstream [in Washington or in corporate boardrooms] is always going to flow downstream.”

This grassroots concern is something Congress should seriously consider as it tries to gut the Clean Water Act and impose hydraulic fracking on voters. The failure of Washington to adequately protect the environment means that local interests must now step forward to protect communities and families.

The Blue Ridge Press National Editor Survey, sponsored by the Park Foundation, confirms that the 20^th century national focus of the environmental movement has clearly shifted in the 21^st century to a local focus. Many Americans now see the protection of limited local natural resources against big government and extractive industries as vital.

That’s a message politicians need to hear in the run-up to the 2012 election. And you can bet local newspaper editors will be getting the word out loud and clear.

To receive a copy of the Blue Ridge Press National Newspaper Editor Survey, email scherer@blueridgepress.com.

David Lillard is editor of The Observer newspaper in Shepherdstown, WV, and the Director of Blue Ridge Press.

The mega-drought in Texas this summer invoked comparisons with the 1930s Dust Bowl, as ranchers sold emaciated animals for a song, and agricultural losses topped $5 billion. But Texas isn’t alone: at least 36 states expect water shortages by 2013, and the current drought is affecting 14 of them, from Florida to Arizona.

And drought isn’t just about crops. It harms key infrastructure upon which we depend, from power plants and power lines to water pipes and drinking water supplies.

Water shortages in the West are becoming more common now due to increased demand from rapid population growth and shifting precipitation patterns due to climate change. Climate models predict that the Southwest is especially likely to experience widespread, prolonged future drought.

Drought seriously impacts energy systems, since power generation requires vast amounts of water for cooling. Coal, nuclear, and natural gas power plants account for 41 percent of freshwater withdrawals, according to the U.S. Geological Society. This fall, the Texas grid operator ERCOT warned that 3,000 megawatts could go offline by next spring if rains don’t come.

Hydroelectric power plants are also vulnerable to drought, and their dams supply up to 40 percent of Western electricity. In some river basins, such as the Colorado, hydropower production can decrease by a factor of five during drought.

Drought threatens another form of energy: natural gas hydraulic fracturing has recently been heralded as a way to help achieve U.S. energy independence. But the word “hydraulic” in that phrase means water, lots of it – up to 13 million gallons to open a single well. In drought-savaged Texas, the fracking boom has slowed as energy producers scramble for insufficient water.

The heat and drought of climate change also increase the likelihood of fire. And wildfires can destroy more than homes: major transmission lines were threatened during Arizona’s Wallow fire this summer, as were toxic waste dumps at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Drought can even parch key infrastructure to the point that it breaks. This summer, in Houston and Fort Worth, clay soils got so dry that water pipelines burst, house foundations buckled, and asphalt pavement split.

Droughts also threaten drinking water, particularly in coastal areas. When water managers pump groundwater faster than it’s replenished, saltwater can flow into aquifers. Saltwater intrusion is already threatening water supplies in San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

To reduce the frequency and severity of drought, we need to think big, supporting national and international policies to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions, curbing climate change. A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly links extreme weather events such as droughts to global warming.

On the local level, we need to adapt to our already changing world. Conservation is a first step. Many cities in California and Arizona lead the nation in water conservation. For example, during peak demand, Gilbert, Ariz., saves more than 131 million gallons of drinking water a day. Other places should learn from its experience.

Many cities now have water conservation ordinances for new buildings and some, like San Francisco, require retrofits upon resale. Tiered pricing structures, first innovated in Irvine, Calif., can also help: if you use more, you pay more. More than 200 U.S. cities now use tiered pricing.

In 2003, California adopted a policy discouraging freshwater use for power plant cooling. The result: energy developers have designed less water-intensive cooling for new plants – a policy other states should adopt.

We also need better development planning. Most municipal zoning doesn’t require developers to prove long-term water security for projects. But California passed a law in 2001 that makes project approval dependent upon whether developers can provide at least 20 years’ worth of water. Other areas need to follow suit to ensure future growth won’t be left high and dry.

We can take control of our water destiny, and beat drought. But we need to start planning – and acting – now.

Freelance reporter Erica Gies has been published by The New York Times, Forbes.com, The International Herald Tribune, Wired News, Grist, and E/The Environmental Magazine. ©2011 www.blueridgepress.com

The U.S. House of Representatives gave Americans a strange gift this holiday season. They passed a bill to gut safe drinking water protections, even as millions of people on New York’s Hudson River and New Jersey’s Passaic River struggle with the industrial legacy of toxic PCB and dioxin pollution, and as Pennsylvania and New York wrestle with potential water pollution from natural gas drilling (“fracking”).

Americans overwhelmingly want safe drinking water – 84 percent of respondents to a recent Gallup poll ranked water pollution as the top U.S. environmental concern. Yet numerous bills passed this year by the GOP-led House ignore citizens’ very real concerns, well-established scientific evidence, and health risks in an attempt to dismantle or delay regulations that keep pollutants out of America’s drinking water.

The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act is the scariest of these initiatives. Passed by the U.S. House on December 7^th, it is flying below the media radar and is embedded within a Senate bill for “job creation.” REINS requires a Congressional vote on any regulation with an annual economic impact over $100 million – that’s up to 100 congressional votes per year – creating a scheduling logjam that would make passage of any new federal regulation virtually impossible.

Under the Act, if one house rejected or failed to vote within 70 working days on a new regulation, it would “be dispatched to the regulatory graveyard,” notes The Washington Post. REINS will essentially return environmental regulation to 1890s standards – when corporations polluted with impunity.

The current war on clean water is part of a GOP deregulation agenda that screams “job killer!” at any environmental protection. Both Senate and House Republicans make no secret of their ultimate goal: to end all environmental regulation and abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

While advertised as money savers, these attempts at deregulation are thinly-veiled corporate giveaways that bolster industry profits at the expense of our families’ health. The REINS Act is a stealth attack on clean water and clean air protections that would cause tens of thousands of premature deaths annually. Bipartisan analyses have repeatedly shown that the cost of environmental regulation is exponentially cheaper than the costs of toxic cleanup and medical care.

Americans want healthy lives for themselves and their children – and that means protecting our water supply. But EPA is under intense pressure from Congress and corporate lobbies not to do their job. As a result, millions of us ingest toxic traces of pesticide, rocket fuel, arsenic, heavy metals, and industrial and waste treatment chemicals each day. Not because they’re safe, but because EPA has only gotten around to testing 114 of the 315 pollutants found in U.S. tap water. There are no standards for the rest.

Last year, EPA finally regulated perchlorate – the first chemical regulated by EPA in 15 years. This rocket fuel is known to cause neurological problems in babies and pollutes drinking water in 26 states. Since 1996, the fiscally- and resource-strapped agency has reviewed just 138 chemicals, and failed to set drinking water safety standards for any of them; these chemicals collectively pollute the drinking water of 110 million Americans.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson openly admits such failings. In a New York Times interview she agreed that the nation’s water doesn’t meet public health goals, and that enforcement of water pollution laws is unacceptably low.

Americans clearly want and have a right to safe drinking water, free of dangerous chemicals. EPA must be strengthened – not abolished – and meet its Congressionally-appointed duty to enforce clean water laws. The agency needs to protect public health by speeding research and regulation of hazardous industrial contaminants.

Of course, this can’t happen until Americans stand up to polluting industries and their political allies in Congress who pass dangerous legislation like the REINS Act.

Journalist Sharon Guynup’s writing has appeared in Smithsonian, The New York Times Syndicate, Scientific American, The Boston Globe, and nationalgeographic.com. © www.blueridgepress.com 2011

What do foreign cars, computer hard drives, hamburgers, chocolate, coffee, peanut butter, wine and Kentucky bourbon have in common? They’re all likely to cost more – and be harder to come by – in coming months and years for the same reason: climate change.

Globalization has brought us many wonderful things, like cheap sneakers and February bananas. But lately, the global economy is taking a hit from global warming, as extreme weather – floods, droughts and heat waves – increases the price and decreases availability of U.S. imports and domestic goods.

A few examples: unprecedented floods in Thailand submerged a thousand factories last month. Some were neck-deep in grimy water and only reachable by jet ski and skiff. While this might not seem like a U.S. problem, consumer goods giants Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota and Honda all have plants there. So do the world’s biggest computer manufacturers.

As a result, expect a 10 percent price surge on external computer hard drives in coming months, reports The New York Times. Parts shortages could even lead to laptop and desktop computer price increases.

Likewise, with the auto industry which sources parts from Thailand. Bangkok’s flooding forced Toyota to slow assembly plant production in North America, Indonesia, Japan, and elsewhere. That could mean longer waits for some models and higher sticker prices.

All this comes about as the influences of globalization – the wholesale conversion of Asian floodplains and rice paddies to industrial parks – collides with climate change and weird weather.

Commodities worldwide are also taking a hit. Peanut butter prices, for example, soared this autumn after searing summer temperatures scorched the U.S. peanut crop – pushing bulk prices from $450 to $1150 a ton. That means at least a thirty percent price hike for Smucker’s Jiff and Unilever’s Skippy.

Then there’s U.S. beef devastated by the Texas drought. Ranchers are slaughtering starving herds rather than take a total loss. While this has created a brief beef glut with lower prices, expect the long-term loss of herds to bring higher costs for hamburger next year, and for t-bones and roasts in 2013, says American Public Media’s Marketplace.

Many global crops grow best within strict limits of temperature, rainfall and altitude. Half the world’s chocolate, for example, is made from Ghana and Ivory Coast cocoa grown only between 72 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit, at an altitude of 330 to 820 feet. Hotter weather is forcing cocoa higher – above 1,500 feet in the next forty years. Costs to the industry and chocolate lovers will make the climb along with the crop.

Coffee giant Starbucks told Congress this October that coffee production is already being impacted by climate change in Central America, with much worse expected. Coffee too – like Kentucky bourbon – is sensitive to rising temperature and erratic rainfall.

In 2011, wild weather wreaked havoc with U.S. wine grapes and Australian sugar cane. Long-range climate forecasts call for crop declines and record prices for global staples like soybeans, wheat, corn and rice.

How do we prepare for the volatility ahead? One way is to match climate change computer models with vulnerable landscapes and consumer products (like major industrial floodplains or coffee-growing mountainsides), and perform detailed risk analyses to benefit businesses, farmers, nations and consumers.

If, for example, the world’s computer makers had foreseen the climate risks posed by concentrating factories in the Bangkok floodplain, they could have scattered plant sites. Such analyses would help us plan new factories and croplands, and better protect existing ones. But we can’t fund those analyses if U.S. policy denies there’s even a problem.

Climate change denial threatens more than polar bears. It imperils your next cup of joe, that sweet glass of Kentucky bourbon, and our daily bread. We can meet the threat, but action is needed yesterday. Inaction leaves business and consumers flatfooted.

“Climate change brings not only bad news but also a lot of potential opportunities,” notes the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. “The winners will be those who are prepared for change and know how to adapt.”

Glenn Scherer is Blue Ridge Press Senior Editor. © 2011 www.blueridgepress.com

The world watched in shock this summer as heavy rains in Montana and North Dakota and snow melt from the Rocky Mountains caused flooding in ten states along the Missouri River. People evacuated; roads, bridges, and railways were closed; the waters even burst a berm protecting the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant near Omaha, Nebraska.

Unfortunately, Midwestern floods are becoming more common because climate change is creating greater fluctuations in watershed flows that U.S. infrastructure was not built to withstand.

Add the fact that dams and levees are aging and ill-maintained because federal and state budget cupboards are bare, and wherever you look, there’s the possibility for a perfect storm of flooding and costly infrastructure failure.

This year’s record Rocky Mountain snowmelt and spring rains pushed the Missouri River’s aging, but massive, earthen dams to their very limit. The three-mile-wide Fort Peck Dam in Montana – holding back one of the largest U.S. reservoirs – was nearly overtopped, which could have led to collapse. Commenting on 2011’s unprecedented weather events, Jody Farhat of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said, “Basically, there [was] little or no storage left in our reservoirs…. It now moves us into uncharted territory.”

Ultimately, taxpayers bear the costs of rebuilding after such not so “natural disasters.” Unfortunately, solutions won’t be easy or cheap. During the twentieth century, water managers planned for future needs based on past precipitation patterns. But with climate change, those patterns are more unpredictable, and we haven’t yet learned how to adapt.

The now-regular occurrence of “100-year” and “500-year” floods is putting increased pressure on dams not designed to withstand it. There are 87,000 dams in the U.S., according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO). The vast majority are privately owned, and many no longer serve their planned function. About 10 percent have no known owner. ASDSO found that 10,127 dams nationwide pose a serious threat to human life if they fail, and of those, 1,333 were structurally deficient or unsafe.

Even worse, many Midwestern cities have developed their floodplains, putting new businesses and homes in the path of future floods and dam or levee breaks. Increased flooding is predicted in 10 out of 12 U.S. cities evaluated in a climate change study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

St. Louis, for example, is the “epicenter of floodplain encroachment nationwide,” says Nicholas Pinter, a Southern Illinois University Carbondale researcher. The city suffered the highest tab for damages in the region in the historic 1993 Midwestern flood, thanks to significant commercial and industrial development in the floodplain. Experts called the ’93 flood a 100-year event, which was apparently comforting: soon after, developers unveiled their new “500-year-levees,” and 1,400 additional floodplain acres were developed, which increases the chance for wholesale disaster.

Floods and sea level rise also jeopardize critical, low-lying infrastructure: airports, bridges, highways, pipelines, railroads, refineries, ports, water treatment plants, and nuclear plants.

Midwestern cities need to adapt now. All new infrastructure plans should pass muster not only under past climate conditions, but also those modeled for the next fifty years. Do we really want to follow the St. Louis example, ramping up floodplain development after each flood?

We should instead spend limited funds shoring up critical infrastructure that we can’t do without or can’t move, and embrace new types of infrastructure designed for “soft failure” by bending rather than breaking. I’m talking about innovations like low-impact development – porous pavements and rain gardens that absorb rainwater into the earth, decreasing flooding.

We also need regulations that discourage construction in floodplains by pushing developers to shoulder the financial risk of disaster. Building codes must be updated too, reducing flood risk. Dams that have outlived their function should be removed.

The evidence of changing water patterns is all around us. We have a choice: adapt now, and prepare for the floods to come, or pay a high price in property damage and human suffering later.

Freelance reporter Erica Gies has been published by The New York Times, Forbes.com, The International Herald Tribune, Wired News, Grist, and E/The Environmental Magazine. To comment on this column go to www.blueridgepress.com ©BRP 2011

The town of Dryden, New York has banned fracking – the controversial practice of shooting high-pressure toxic chemicals and water underground to release natural gas. The anti-fracking ordinance was immediately challenged by an irate gas-drilling corporation, which is taking the town of 13,000 to the State Supreme Court.

“The threat to our water supply is unconscionable,” declared Dryden resident Jack Edmonds at the town meeting that approved the ordinance. “Do we poison our water for the richness of a few?”

Across the country other towns frustrated by the failure of federal and state authorities to regulate fracking are acting to protect property rights, public health, and local economies.

At least a dozen New York municipalities, including Buffalo, have banned fracking. In Peters Township, Pennsylvania, a judge has approved an anti-drilling referendum. In Morgantown, West Virginia, the city council passed a fracking ban – later overturned by the courts. Massillon, Ohio officials recently rejected a major gas-drilling lease.

Citizens of Pinedale, Wyoming are demanding that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cut air pollution caused by fracking in the state’s Upper Green River Basin. South Park, Colorado residents are seeking major curbs on gas exploration lease sales.

South Lake, Texas put a moratorium on fracking to consider new ordinances protecting property owners. Dish, Texas paid to do their own air pollution study after doubting industry results. They were right, finding the air seriously polluted by fracking emissions.

Fracking has been outlawed in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh ordinance condemns fracking as a “significant threat to the health, safety and welfare of residents and neighborhoods within the city… [Drilling] allows the deposition of toxins into the air, soil, water, environment and the bodies of residents.”

Pittsburgh’s city council sent a copy of their ordinance to every municipality in the state, urging adoption of similar laws. While these ordinances may go against state and federal rules, gas-drilling companies must comment on every ordinance, and are forced to bring court challenges, significantly slowing their ability to drill. Fracking companies have responded to this local revolt by threatening litigation intended to bankrupt and break the will of towns standing in their way.

Communities are hanging tough because stakes are high. Fracked wells that leak pollute drinking water. Toxic, radioactive frack wastewater, stored in open pools, pollutes the air and groundwater, and it overwhelms sewage treatment plants. Tank trucks that transport the millions of gallons of freshwater needed for fracking clog and ruin scenic country roads. Fracking industrialization hurts rural economies dependent on tourism.

Unfortunately, defending communities from fracking is an uphill battle. Federal and state laws are stacked against flesh-and-blood property owners in favor of profit-obsessed fossil fuel companies. Under the Bush administration, Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Thirty-nine states allow “private eminent domain,” forcing landowners to surrender drilling rights to corporations. This legal outrage, known as “forced pooling” compels landowners who hold out against a fracking company to join in gas-leasing agreements with willing neighbors.

The trend toward local sovereignty is quickly morphing into a municipal environmental movement in direct counterpoint to Congressional Republican efforts to shut down the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and state schemes to gut environmental regulations and strip agencies of power and funding.

As a result, towns often stand alone to protect citizens’ rights – ranging from corporate threats such as the Keystone XL pipeline in Atkinson, Nebraska; mountaintop removal in Stephens, West Virginia; the pollution of drinking water by agribusiness in Seville, California; and the depletion of aquifers by bottled water companies in Newfield, Maine.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized corporations as super citizens – backed by wealth and political influence – municipalities have no choice but to sound the battle cry and expend limited resources to prevent corporate bullying.

This is their established right! Towns pass ordinances to keep dogs on leashes to prevent them from defecating in your front yard. It is no different – and more imperative – to require the leashing of aggressive corporations who pose a greater threat to private property, public health, local economies, and our American way of life.

Glenn Scherer is Blue Ridge Press Senior Editor, and lives in Montpelier, Vermont. © 2011 www.blueridgepress.com

Some years ago I was traveling through Kenya during a ferocious drought. Crossing a desolate landscape, our truck lurched to a sudden halt. We passengers, all westerners, were mystified until our African driver pointed through the shimmering heat to a small figure trudging toward us. A shepherd had flagged us down.

It turned out he was just a boy who needed water, badly. Our driver filled the young man’s gourd and he drank non-stop, draining the contents. After three refills, the boy smiled thanks and, much revived, returned to his goats.

We westerners got a valuable lesson in human solidarity that day. To the driver, it was unthinkable to pass by a stranger in need. “You must help such persons,” he explained.  “Someday it might be you who needs help.”

Now drought and desperation are again afflicting Kenya and the Horn of Africa. 750,000 people – half of them children – could starve to death by December, projects the United Nations.

Scientists have long predicted that Africa will suffer first and worst from the heat and drought that climate change unleashes. Of course, climate change isn’t the only reason Africans are starving. Somalia, epicenter of the famine, is also plagued by civil war and dysfunctional government. But this famine was brought to a head by the worst drought in six decades, a drought bringing hunger to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, two relatively peaceful, stable countries.

Americans haven’t heard much about this famine, but it deserves our attention, and not solely for altruistic reasons. For climate change is already hurting food production here at home. In Texas, the state climatologist calls 2011’s weather perhaps “the worst drought on record for agriculture,” with West Texas now resembling that hell-hot desolation I once witnessed in Kenya.

What’s more, climate change is bound to get worse. The inertia of the climate system insures that temperatures will rise and extreme weather intensify for decades to come.

That spells trouble for farming everywhere. Corn doesn’t reproduce at temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit. By 2040, Iowa will likely suffer three straight days of 95 degree heat in three years out of four.

Africa, meanwhile, will get even hotter and drier. “By 2020, one of every two growing seasons in sub-Saharan Africa will be hotter than any in the last fifty years,” concludes a study by Stanford University’s David Lobell.

For now, people in the Horn of Africa need emergency food aid. But only long-term responses will keep Africans from falling into such difficulties again.

Don’t believe cynics who say Africa is hopeless and foreign aid always mistaken. There are dozens of agricultural success stories across the continent that only need to be scaled up to improve African food security and climate resilience – lessons that can also benefit American farmers.

Many of these success stories rely, unexpectedly, on trees. Land degradation and poor soils are basic causes of Africa’s low food production. Growing trees amid farm fields – so-called “inter-cropping” – counters these problems. Trees retain soil moisture, provide mulch (with fallen leaves), limit erosion, add coolness, and more.

Dubbed “Evergreen Agriculture” by the World Agroforestry Center, this approach is doubling crop yields in parts of Niger, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Malawi. And it’s cheap: famers can grow trees by themselves.

It’s in our interest to encourage such solutions. Not only because it is morally right, but because lessons learned in Africa – one of the first places climate extremes are being felt – can teach our own farmers how to cope with climate change tomorrow.

That’s why it’s essential to reject calls on Capitol Hill to end foreign aid. Foreign aid accounts for only 1 percent of the federal budget (not the 25 percent most Americans think it does). Cutting aid will not cure our deficit, but it will deprive hungry people of the help they need to help themselves.

If you wonder why you should pay for such efforts, think back to that shepherd boy in Kenya. Remember, in the new era of climate change, you too may need help someday.

Independent journalist Mark Hertsgaard has authored six books, including his latest, HOT:  Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. (www.markhertsgaard.com) © 2011 www.blueridgepress.com

by Glenn Scherer

Despite soaring rhetoric to the contrary, President Obama is fast becoming as big of a fossil fuel booster as predecessor, Texas oilman George W. Bush.

In recent months, Obama launched a run on coalfields on Western federal lands that could double U.S. carbon emissions. He moved to open fragile Arctic waters to oil exploration, and also delayed plans to cut CO₂ emissions at coal-burning power plants.

Now the President seems poised to approve the 1,661-mile Keystone XL pipeline, running from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. The Washington Post last week reported that TransCanada, the company proposing Keystone XL, likely received inappropriate insider coaching from the Obama State Department, so that the company could perfectly tailor its responses to environmental arguments against the pipeline.

The Keystone XL project could seriously harm the U.S. economy and environment. Here’s how:

• Oil companies lie: Big Oil says that Keystone XL uses long-proven, safe technology. This is a lie. It uses largely untested technology. Tar sands oil is a heavier, thicker, dirtier crude, piped under higher pressures than in conventional pipelines. High-pressure means that oil doesn’t leak slowly; it spouts in geysers.
• The pipeline could cause a disastrous spill: Oil companies claim a long history of pipeline safety. Another lie. There are 100 significant conventional U.S. pipeline spills annually, says The New York Times. New high-pressure tar sands pipelines have already breached in Michigan (840,000 gallons), near Chicago (250,000 gallons), and in Alberta (1.3 million gallons). Does that sound safe?
• Keystone XL could be the ultimate terrorist target: Our soldiers fought for a decade to make our nation safe from terrorism. So why construct a pipeline that, if attacked, could harm our nation’s energy supply and our food and water supply. The Keystone XL pipeline would run atop the Midwest’s Ogallala Aquifer, crucial to Heartland crop irrigation. Blow it up, or let it leak, and you spill 830,000 barrels of oil per day, poison groundwater, and wreck our best farms.
• Climate change is real and the Keystone pipeline is a dangerous game changer: The Canadian tar sands are the largest untapped oil repository on earth and could be a major climate change accelerator. Top NASA climate scientist James Hansen says this: “The tar sands of Canada constitute a deadly threat to our planet.”
• You might never use any of that oil: This harks back to reason number one: oil companies lie. Big Oil says tar sands oil is for U.S. consumption, but when pressed as to whether they might sell the oil to the highest bidder – say, China – oilmen declaim the idea as foolishness… but they never guarantee they won’t.
• Your kids deserve a safe future: Nature, unlike Big Oil, does not lie. The weather is becoming horrific – with escalating numbers of record floods, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes and heat waves. There is solid scientific proof that humans are causing this change, and there is real concern that continued fossil fuel dependency will mean more catastrophic storms and droughts, which could wreck our economy.

It’s time for a national carbon tax that puts responsibility where it belongs: on America’s fossil fuel producers and energy hogs. It’s time to end fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks, and pass those incentives on to green energy companies. It’s time to end two wars, bring our troops home, and put them to work repairing and protecting flood and drought susceptible communities. That means more, not less money, for FEMA and disaster recovery. It means preparedness, not sailing blind into the climate change storm.

Lastly, we need a leader willing to stand up to Big Oil and confront the climate change emergency. Barack Obama could be that leader if he boldly rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.

Glenn Scherer is Blue Ridge Press Senior Editor, and lives in Montpelier, Vermont. © 2011 www.blueridgepress.com