I read somewhere that Mark Twain and Helen Keller were good friends and wrote each other on a regular basis. In one of her letters to Twain, Keller ridiculed her work as not very original.  Twain replied, “Don’t worry, there is very little original work. Everyone copies everyone.” 

I suspect that is absolutely true in my case. I read so much, and whether it is industry or environment related, it all just runs together in my mind. Ideas are generated, original or not, prompted by something I’ve read.

To be sure, sometimes I get politics involved with the environment. But as Jason Mark, editor of Sierra, suggests, one begets the other. I have received countless letters and emails begging me to avoid politics and focus on environmental and sustainability issues. I understand what these folks are saying.

As Jason puts it (and obviously this is not an original idea): “It would be awesome if basic environmental protections – clean air and water, a stable climate, the defense of wilderness and wildlife and universal access to outdoor recreation – were uncontroversial and could be left outside the partisan scrim.”

But, it just ain’t so.

Environmentalism is and will be a political issue. “Politics is a contest over competing ideas over the common good. Take one example: Debates over fossil fuel extraction and the protection of wildlife. For some people, the highest good is protecting wildlife and its habitats. For others the highest good is the protection of cheap energy, regardless of the risks to wildlife or the climate.” 

So, the dispute or difference of priority is settled in debate and eventually legal actions and potentially new laws, or to say it simply, by the world of politics. And it really doesn’t make any difference where you live in Europe, America or Asia, if you live in a true democracy.  Politics – and let’s face it, power – rule the day.

So, some of my messages do stray into political innuendo, not on purpose but because I don’t believe decisions are in the best interest of you and me. The cynic in me does take over at times, and I believe the other side, the bad guys (and here I am talking about good guys and bad guys and that begs the question, “what is a bad guy?”) are in it for money.

So, I guess I’m using Jason’s editorial to apologize for some of my comments. And also using Mark Twain’s message to Helen Keller to say, “It’s okay if it’s not mine.”

This is a rather long prologue for this month’s topic: climate change. I know, I’ve written about climate change many times. But I’ve decided I really don’t think you’re listening. 

As I sit at home in lockdown and read, literally dozens of articles and magazines on climate change, I have come to the conclusion that we’re at war! It was Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes (oh, how I relate), who said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” But in the case of climate change there is irrefutable proof, it is, indeed, “us!” 

Our industry is a good example: We spend years talking about cleaning up our technology and nothing happens, nothing has changed. We’re still landfilling liner and matrix in huge volumes. We’re at war because people, companies, aren’t prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice: spend more money to divert by-product from landfills. We’re at war. We still haven’t grasped that while our technology is only a fraction of the problem that causes climate change, it still isn’t friendly. We need to make changes and commitments that will demonstrate improvement. Yes, there are examples of change and success, but they’re the exception. We’re at war, and if we don’t mount a massive effort to create change, I’m afraid we’ll lose the war.

This is not a political statement. Please don’t go there. Facts are facts. We have global warming. The real issue isn’t identifying the problem. The real issue is doing something about it. In Europe, they have begun to legislate a solution. Ahh, politics. In Europe there are now 6-8 countries where spent liner is defined as packaging, and it is illegal to landfill packaging by-product. 

In America, we’re doing nothing. Oh, yes, we’ve agreed that spent liner is a problem.  However, we are unable to gather enough support to legislate that landfilling spent liner will add a “waste tax.”  We’re at war!

When liners and matrix are landfilled, they combine with other materials and eventually contribute to creating methane. I’ve written about methane before. It’s bad stuff. Occasionally, if you drive by a landfill, you’ll see gas being “flared off” from the landfill. That’s methane that’s being burned.

Now, think about that: instead of recovering the methane and using it in a positive way, we’re just burning it and letting the emissions float in our environment. And you wonder why we have increased cases of cancer. Think no more. Methane is part of the reason. 

A study was done by a team of investigators from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in the state of New Mexico. The team was checking for leaks or malfunctions in the flare-off process for methane. What they found was just staggering.

There is a region in New Mexico called the Permian Basin. In this area, there are over 100,000 oil and gas pads. As you know, methane is the primary component of natural gas and, as mentioned, the investigators wanted to check on the effectiveness of recovery systems at these wells.

Mark Brownstein, head of EDF’s energy program, was especially interested in this study because “you can’t solve climate change without solving methane,” he said.

Brownstein wanted to determine if the Permian oil and gas region was generating unwanted methane emissions. He believed it was a good place to start, as it is the world’s top producing oil field.  He said, “It’s a very large area, hard to get to, and it’s packed with oil and gas sites.

Along with the University of Wyoming and Pennsylvania State University, EDP developed a mobile laboratory that could measure methane and other toxic pollutants. Using a laser spectrometer, the EDF team identified a number of leakers, one which shows it’s emitting more than a ton of methane per hour. Left unchecked for a year, this single leak would have the same 20-year climate impact as a year’s pollution from 150,000 cars.”

The gas and oil industry has to clean up its act. So do we! Unfortunately, the EPA has proposed rollbacks that would “allow an extra five million metric tons of methane, 1.2 million tons of smog-forming chemicals and over 43,000 metric tons of hazardous air pollutants every year.”  This is war, without a doubt.

And people say to me, “Don’t get political.” How can I help it when I am watching attempts to push back legislation that is in place that tries to improve our environment, not destroy it?

As this column goes to press, the current administration has ordered federal agencies to use emergency authority to:
. . .sidestep environmental reviews to expedite highway, pipeline, and other major infrastructure construction projects as a way to boost the economic recovery from the pandemic. The executive order Mr. Trump signed Thursday (June 11, 2020) builds off a national emergency declaration for the pandemic with a broad effort to, at least temporarily, suspend bedrock environmental laws.

It orders agencies to find projects that could help an economic recovery and then work with senior administration officials to identify emergency exemptions and ways around standard requirements of the National Environmental Policy and Endangered Species acts, among others.

Yes, we’re at war and, like it or not, this involves politics. Stay tuned for War – Part Two in the next issue of Label & Narrow Web.

Another Letter from the Earth


Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address is
[email protected].