The Environmental Defense Fund gets Greenwashed over its policy on smart meters.
The US based Enviromental Defense Fund is an organization with considerable influence with environmental/Green groups internationally. This can be seen with the Green political parties in both Australia and New Zealand, both of which have a policy virtually identical with the EDF on smart meters and the smart grid.
EDF president Fred Krupp calls himself a “Market-Minded Environmentalist” who “stopped looking at industry as the enemy and enlisted it as an ally in fighting climate change.”
So when it comes to climate change ‘solutions’ Krupp has steered the EDF into a policy of working with industry in order to fight climate change. Very slippery ground here….
Enter the controversy over the smart grid and smart meters. In order for Krupp and the EDF to decide on the safety of smart meters, they have not only consulted with the industry sector promoting the technology, but with so called health experts such as Dr. Leeka Kheifets.
Sorry EDF but you have been well and truly Greenwashed from the inside out. read on….
Don Maisch
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From the website of the Environmental Defense Fund: Health and the smart grid, a message from from EDF President Fred Krupp, July 20, 2011:
Thank you for sharing your concerns about the use of wireless smart meters. At Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), we appreciate the vigilance and passion that you and others have put into understanding the potential health risks associated with radio frequency (RF) exposure.
For several years, EDF has championed a modernization of the U.S. electric grid that makes use of wireless smart meters to keep better track of power use, in order to help people and utilities find ways to:
reduce overall and peak demand;
eliminate huge waste in the system; and
enable significantly greater use of clean, renewable energy, non-polluting electric vehicles, and community-based resources.Smart meters are key to realizing these benefits, because they allow for two-way, real-time communication that gives households and utilities the data they need to cut usage and costs.
That said, two things happened in the spring of 2011 that led EDF to reexamine the meters”™ wireless technology.
SNIP
“Since this is not a field where EDF has a great deal of expertise, we also consulted with experts outside EDF “” not just experts committed (as we are) to the development of smart power grids, but also experts who are much more focused on the dangers of EMFs and RFs. One of the health experts we talked to was Dr. Leeka Kheifets, PhD, Professor in Residence at UCLA, Epidemiology, who sits on the Standing Committee on Epidemiology for the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. Our meeting with Dr. Kheifets helped inform our position that the limited RF exposure levels associated with smart meters should not result in reduced support for the smart grid. Whether or not future studies find the overall RF problem to be significant, smart meters are a very small part of that problem. At the same time, the smart grid brings great environmental benefits: reduced greenhouse gases, reduced burning of fossil fuels and enhanced integration of solar and wind power.”
And now from Microwave News, The Real Junk Science of EMFs:
Stop Electric Field Cancer Research, Say Industry Scientists
Excerpts:
A decade after some of the world’s leading epidemiologists agreed that exposure to power line EMFs could lead to childhood leukemia, the denial continues. Some people still believe that the studies that link EMFs to cancer are nothing more than junk science. Even those who should know better refuse to acknowledge the risks. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the association is so weak that it can be pretty much ignored, and the leading radiation protection group, ICNIRP, has refused to endorse precaution. Here in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scarcely acknowledges that EMFs are even a health issue.
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How did this happen? The answer has a lot to do with junk science, but not the kind often associated with EMFs. No one would deny that the EMF literature is studded with poor studies “”those that claim to show effects that can’t be repeated. This happens with EMFs, as well as all other types of research. In this case, we are referring to industry’s own brand of junk science that promotes misinformation and confusion and presents a distorted picture of EMF science.
SNIP
The story that follows illustrates how electric utilities play the junk science game. It shows how two of its long-time operatives are corrupting the EMF literature. Leeka Kheifets and John Swanson, together with two utility associates, are calling for an end to research on the links between power-line electric fields and cancer.
In a paper that will appear in the February 2010 issue of Bioelectromagnetics, Kheifets and Swanson argue that studies on electric fields and cancer have come to a dead end and that its time to close the book on them. There is “little basis for continued research,” they claim. In fact, it is just the opposite. Epidemiologic studies on electric field effects on workers have produced some of the most provocative findings in the entire EMF cancer literature. This work has been ignored for years and now Kheifets and Swanson want to bury it for good.
A Brief History of Electric Field Occupational Studies
Kheifets and Swanson are industry scientists. Kheifets spent the bulk of her professional career at EPRI, the electric utility research group, and now serves as a freelance consultant. Swanson works for National Grid, a huge electricity delivery company that operates in the U.K. and the U.S. Their new paper was bought and paid for by Energy Networks Association (ENA), a U.K. power-line trade group. On its Web site, the ENA states, “The overall case that power-frequency electric fields are causally linked to human cancer “¦ can reasonably be called non-existent.”
Read the full Microwave News article here
If I were a member of the EDF I would be handing in my resignation, with a letter explaining why!
Don Maisch
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