The Dallas Green Zine

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Who Killed the Electric Car? runs like a Who Done It, beginning with a mock funeral for the victim: the EV-1. In 1990, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) introduced a Zero Emissions policy and three car companies began developing cars to comply. GM introduced the EV-1 electric car and made it available for lease.

The EV-1 was clean, quiet, and could be fueled at home. It could get 120-150 miles per charge–well within most commuters’ daily drives. Thousands leased the car, including celebrities like Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, etc. At least 800 people leased the car and were very happy with it.

However, GM did very little to try to promote the car and in some cases produced negative advertising for it. GM and other car companies also began pressuring CARB and after much lobbying, CARB eventually caved in and the 1990 Zero Emissions mandate was repealed.

GM then proceeded to round up every EV-1 (except for one that is in a museum) and destroyed them–despite a large of people with leases wanting to complete the lease and buy the car. Obviously, if a company leases their cars and wants their cars back, so be it. But what is disturbing in this film, even as one tries to resist any stabs at conspiracy theory, is the great lengths that the auto manufacturers go through to not only retrieve their cars (despite offers to pay for them in full), but also to kill the technology itself, to push back clean air initiatives, and to then turn around an heavily market inferior technologies like the Hummer and several SUV models. The EV-1 cost $35,000, but the Hummer costs 2-3 times that. There was also a sudden push for the hydrogen car, which director Paine describes as a ‘bait and switch’ tactic because affordable hydrogen technology is at least 20 years away.

In the end, a list of potential suspects (car companies, big oil, the consumer, etc.) are presented with arguments for why they were or were not responsible for the car’s killing. One suspect that is still questionable are the batteries. In the film, a husband-and-wife team discusses the battery technology that they invented that could get 300 miles per charge. However, there is some debate as to whether this was actually possible.

Who Killed The Electric Car?
USA, 2006
92 minutes, color
Director: Chris Paine

 Read more at Amazon.com…

The film, An Inconvenient Truth, presents a logical well-constructed argument on the effects of global warming. It is based largely on a presentation that Al Gore has been presenting to audiences for many years. Although global warmings and coolings have occurred many times throughout the earth’s history, they have always been on a slow geological scale of millions of years. However, the case made in this film, is that human activity has caused global warming to accelerate within an exremely shortly period of time. Consequently, there follows: extreme hurricanes, ice cap melting, unusually high temperatures, lakes reduced to over 1/3 or 1/2 their size, etc.

Juxtaposed against this, Gore shares his feelings of growing up on the family’s Black Angus farm in Tennessee and his relationship to the land. His family also grew tobacco, and at a time when the links between tobacco and cancer were being made, his sister died from cancer. The family stopped growing tobacco. This account provides a strong segway into a key point: that there are sharp parallels between the earlier public uncertainty about the harmful effects of smoking and the ’still lingering’ uncertainty about the harmful effects of human activity on global warming. Although medical researchers were able to show scientific evidence that there was a causal relationship between smoking and cancer, intense lobbying by large tobacco interests continued to perpetuate doubts and managed to maintain the cancer-tobacco link as a question in the public mind for a long time. Similarly, there is considerable evidence that global warming is a fact and an overwhelming majority of the scientific community agree. Yet again, corporate interests are lobbying to make it sound questionable.

Equally disturbing is the fact that the U.S. is one of only two countries (the other is Australia) that has not signed the Kyoto agreement–putting corporate profits above potentially devastating changes that could affect the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Yes, throughout the film, there are the annoying ’senior statesmen’ headshots of Gore being a politician, but if you overlook these, the message of this film is a difficult one to argue with.

An Inconvenient Truth
USA, 2006
94 Minutes, color
Director: Davis Guggenheim

The Future of Food is a documentary film about the practice of genetically engineering foods and its potential economic and health implications.

It starts with a short history of how genetic modification came into practice. In the early 20th century, efforts were made to systemize farming to get higher yields and this led to fewer varieties being produced. For example, although there are 2500 varieties of apples grown in the US, only about 100 varieties are grown commercially.

This genetic uniformity made foods more vulnerable to disease. From two World Wars came another development: the modification of nerve gas to make insecticides. Soon insecticide use was widespread.

In the 1970s, Monsanto Corporation introduced the highly effective weed-killer, Round-Up. However, Round-Up can kill the plants that you’re trying to protect too. So, Monsanto genetically modified its seeds to be Round-Up ready. This makes good business sense. They’re selling seeds that will be resistant to their weed-killer so that only other things around your seeds (i.e., weeds) will be killed when you spray; consequently, the farmer will have to buy both the seed and its corresponding weed killer from the company.

Economics

The problem is with the way Monsanto and companies with similar products can control the use of their genetically-modified seeds. It isn’t simply a matter of owning the application of the process for modifying them or owning the seeds that are sold. The ownership of GM food is moving into uglier directions with Monsanto being one of the biggest players.

In the 1930s, plant breeders could patent their work but not patent subsequent generations of seeds. The Future of Food explains how this was changed though in the case of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty. A U.S. court ruled that ‘A live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under 101. Respondent’s micro-organism constitutes a “manufacture” or “composition of matter” within that statute. Pp. 308-318.’ That is, because it did not occur naturally through nature, it was patentable. This gave corporations the power to control life that they created.

Monsanto bought lots of patents on seed and it started going after farmers who had fields where loose seed had strayed. The Future of Food explains the case of Perry Schmeiss, a Saskatchewan farmer, who accidentally found some Monsanto plants in his canola field. He surmised that the plants may have come from seed blown off a truck off the road. The Monsanto canola was identical to his own and he only discovered the plants were not his when he sprayed Round-Up in the area to kill weeds, and the canola didn’t die. In 2004, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Percy Schmeiss infringed on Monsanto’s patent. It didn’t matter how the seed got there. The court ruled that if his plants ended up getting cross-pollinated with one of Monsanto’s then Monsanto had the right to that plant. The implications of this can be broad-reaching.

Health

The Future of Food also raises the question of whether GM foods are healthy. For example, Monsanto genetically modifies corn to act as an insecticide so that if a corn borer eats it, it’s dead. It’s referred to as BT corn and it is actually registered as an insecticide because every one of its cells has been modified to generate BT. I haven’t heard enough evidence to convince me whether it is or isn’t safe (although the thought of eating something that is designed to kill something else seems a little unsettling).

A study is cited that shows depressed immune systems and growth in rats that had been fed genetically modified potatoes. However, this study has criticized by a panel of toxicologists appointed by the Royal Society. Differences between the rats fed GM vs. non-GM potatoes were defined as ‘uninterpretable because of the technical limitations of the experiment and the incorrect uses of statistical tests.’ (See link Sci/Tech GM food study was ‘flawed’.)

Another concern that has not been very much explored, but is a major concern to scientists, is with the antibiotic ‘marker’ genes that are used in genetic engineering. There is a ‘fear that exposure to these genes will eventually lead to the development of antibiotic resistance in the bacteria found in the intestine of animals - or humans - who eat the crops.’ (See link GM food raises health concerns.)

Politics

At this point, you may be asking (as I am): Ok, even if the research is inconclusive regarding whether GM foods are safe or not, why should I take the risk? If the jury is still out, why not just eat non GM food in the meantime? The problem is that for those of us in the United States, GM food isn’t labeled–despite the repeated best efforts of some of our legislators, such as Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to get legislation passed that requires this labeling.

What is the resistance to passing such a bill? The Future of Food suggests that the problem is due partly to the conflict of interest that exists because several key people who work for agencies like the EPA and other areas of government had formerly worked for Monsanto. Three names you may recognize are:

• Michael (Mickey) Kantor - Former United States Trade Representative, the Secretary of Commerce for the United States, and a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.
• Anne Veneman - U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a member of the Board of Directors of Monsanto’s Calgene Corporation, and served on the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade, (a group funded by Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, and Archer Daniels Midland).
• Donald Rumsfeld - Secretary of Defense, president of Searle Pharmaceuticals (a company owned by Monsanto) You can see what all three of these individuals have in common, and although Monsanto is targeted in this film, there are other corporations that are involved similarly.

Unfortunately, right now, the only way you can be certain that the food you’re eating is not genetically modified is if it’s labeled ‘organic.’ However, the three main GMO crops are canola, corn and soybeans—and these crops end up in a lot of ‘processed’ foods that are not going to have organic labels on them. The US is among the top 5 GM crop producers. (See link Countries Growing GMOs.) So, it seems odd, but sadly predictable, that 25 other countries are ahead of the U.S. in this area and do require labeling. Many countries continue to be cautious about genetically-modified foods, and the film quotes a Japanese trade representative as saying, ‘We will watch the children in the U.S. for the next 10 years.’ 

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The Future of Food
USA, 2005
88 minutes, color
Director: Deborah Koons Garcia