Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever

Jacques Lacan

http://www.lacan.com/hotel.htm

Somebody spent some time this afternoon trying to convince me that it would surely not be a pleasure for an English-speaking audience to listen to my bad accent and that for me to speak in English would constitute a risk for what one might call the transmission of my message. Truly, for me it is a great case of conscience, because to do otherwise would be absolutely contrary to my own concept of the message: of the message as I will explain it to you, of the linguistic message. Many people talk nowadays about messages everywhere, inside the organism a hormone is a message, a beam of light to obtain teleguidance to a plane or from a satellite is a message, and so on; but the message in language is absolutely different. The message. our message, in all cases comes from the Other by which I understand "from the place of the Other." It certainly is not the common other, the other with a lower-case o, and this is why I have given a capital O as the initial letter to the Other of whom I am now speaking. Since in this case, here in Baltimore, it would seam that the Other is naturally English-speaking, it would really be doing myself violence to speak French. But the question that this person raised, that it would perhaps be difficult and even a little ridiculous for me to speak English, is an important argument and I also know that there are many French-speaking people present that do not understand English at all; for these my choice of English would be a security, but perhaps I would not wish them to be so secure and in this case I shall speak a little French as well.

First, let me put forth some advice about structure, which is the subject matter of our meeting. It may happen that there will be mistakes, confusion, more and more approximative uses of this notion. and I think that soon there will be some sort of fad about this word. For me it is different because I have used this term for a very long time — since the beginning of my teaching. The reason why something about my position is not better known is that I addressed myself only to a very special audience, namely one of psychoanalysts. Here there are some very peculiar difficulties, because psychoanalysts really know something: of what I was talking to them about and that this thing is a particularly difficult thing to cope with for anybody who practices psychoanalysis. The subject is not a simple thing for the psychoanalysts who have something to do with the subject proper. In this case I wish to avoid misunderstandings, méconnaissances, of my position. Méconnaissance is a French word which I am obliged to use because there is no equivalent in English. Méconnaissance precisely implies the subject in its meaning — and I was also advised that it is not so easy to talk about the "subject" before an English-speaking audience. Méconnaissance is not to méconnaitre my subjectivity. What exactly is in question is the status of the problem of the structure.

When I began to teach something about Psychoanalysis I lost some of my audience, because I had perceived long before then the simple fact that if you open a book of Freud, and particularly those books which are properly about the unconscious, you can be absolutely sure — it is not a probability but a certitude — to fall on a page where it is not only a question of words — naturally in a book there are always words many printed words — but words which are the object through which one seeks for a way to handle the unconscious. Not even the meaning of the words, but words in their flesh, in their material aspect. A great part of the speculations of Freud is about punning in a dream or lapsus, or what in French we call calembour, homonymie, or still the division of a word into many parts with each part taking on a new meaning after it is broken down. It is curious to note, even if in this case it is not absolutely proven, that words are the only material of the unconscious. It is not proven but it is probable (and in any case I have never said that the unconscious was an assemblage of words, but that the unconscious is precisely structured). I don't think there is such an English word but it is necessary to have this term, as we are talking about structure and the unconscious is structured as a language. What does that mean?

Properly speaking this is a redundancy because "structured" and "as a language" for me mean exactly the same thing. Structured means my speech, my lexicon, etc., which is exactly the same as a language. And that is not all. Which language? Rather than myself it was my pupils that took a great deal of trouble to give that question a different meaning, and to search for the formula of a reduced language. What are the minimum conditions, they ask themselves, necessary to constitute a language? Perhaps only four signantes, four signifying elements are enough. It is a curious exercise which is based on a complete error, as I hope to show you on the board in a moment. There were also some philosophers, not many really but some, of those present at my seminar in Paris who have found since then that it was not a question of an "under" language or of "another" language, not myth for instance or phonemes, but language. It is extraordinary the pains that all took to change the place of the question. Myths, for instance, do not take place in our consideration precisely because those are also structured as a language, and when I say "as a language" it is not as some special sort of language, for example, mathematical language, semiotical language, or cinematographical language. Language is language and there is only one sort of language: concrete language — English or French for instance — that people talk. The first thing to start in this context is that there is no meta-language. For it is necessary that all so called meta-languages be presented to you with language. You cannot teach a course in mathematics using only letters on the board. It is always necessary to speak an ordinary language that is understood.

It is not only because the material of the unconscious is a linguistic material, or as we say in French langagier that the unconscious is structured as a language. The question that the unconscious raises for you is a problem that touches the most sensitive point of the nature of language that is the question of the subject. The subject cannot simply be identified with the speaker or the personal pronoun in a sentence. In French the ennoncé is exactly the sentence, but there are many ennoncés where there is no index of him who utters the ennoncé. When I say "it rains," the subject of the enunciation is not part of the sentence. In any case here there is some sort of difficulty. The subject cannot always be identified with what the linguists call "the shifter."

The question that the nature of the unconscious puts before us is in a few words, that something always thinks. Freud told us that the unconscious is above all thoughts, and that which thinks is barred from consciousness. This bar has many applications, many possibilities with regard to meaning. The main one is that it is really a barrier, a barrier which it is necessary to jump over or to pass through. This is important because if I don't emphasize this barrier all is well for you. As we say in French, ça vous arrange, because if something thinks in the floor below or underground things are simple; thought is always there and all one needs is a little consciousness on the thought that the living being is naturally thinking and all is well. If such were the case, thought would be prepared by life, naturally, such as instinct for instance. If thought is a natural process, then the unconscious is without difficulty. But the unconscious has nothing to do with instinct or primitive knowledge or preparation of thought in some underground. It is a thinking with words, with thoughts that escape your vigilance, your state of watchfulness. The question of vigilance is important. It is as if a demon plays a game with your watchfulness. The question is to find a precise status for this other subject which is exactly the sort of subject that we can determine taking our point of departure in language.

When I prepared this little talk for you, it was early in the morning. I could see Baltimore through the window and it was a very interesting moment because it was not quite daylight and a neon sign indicated to me every minute the change of time, and naturally there was heavy traffic and I remarked to myself that exactly all that I could see, except for some trees in the distance, was the result of thoughts actively thinking thoughts, where the function played by the subjects was not completely obvious. In any case the so-called Dasein as a definition of the subject, was there in this rather intermittent or fading spectator. The best image to sum up the unconscious is Baltimore in the early morning.

Where is the subject? It is necessary to find the subject as a lost object. More precisely this lost object is the support of the subject and in many cases is a more abject thing than you may care to consider — in some cases it is something done, as all psychoanalysts and many people who have been psychoanalyzed know perfectly well. That is why many psychoanalysts prefer to return to a general psychology, as the President of the New York Psychoanalytical Society tells us we ought to do. But I cannot change things, I am a psychoanalyst and if someone prefers to address himself to a professor of psychology that is his affair. The question of the structure, since we are talking of psychology, is not a term that only I use. For a long time thinkers, searchers, and even inventors who were concerned with the question of the mind, have over the years put forward the idea of unity as the most important and characteristic trait of structure. Conceived as something which is already in the reality of the organism it is obvious. The organism when it is mature is a unit and functions as a unit. The question becomes more difficult when this idea of unity is applied to the function of the mind, because the mind is not a totality in itself, but these ideas in the form of the intentional unity were the basis; as you know, of all of the so-called phenomenological movement.

The same was also true in physics and psychology with the so-called Gestalt school and the notion of bonne forme whose function was to join, for instance, a drop of water and more complicated ideas, and great psychologists, and even the psychoanalysts are full of the idea of "total personality." At any rate, it is always the unifying unity which is in the foreground. I have never understood this, for if I am a psychoanalyst I am also a man, and as a man my experience has shown me that the principal characteristic of my own human life and, I am sure, that of the people who are here — and if anybody is not of this opinion I hope that he will raise his hand — is that life is something which goes, as we say in French, à la dérive. Life goes down the river, from time to time touching a bank; staying for a while here and there. without understanding anything — and it is the principle of analysis that nobody understands anything of what happens. The idea of the unifying unity of the human condition has always had on me the effect of a scandalous lie.

We may try to introduce another principle to understand these things. If we rarely try to understand things from the point of view of the unconscious, it is because the unconscious tells us something articulated in words and perhaps we could try to search for their principle.

I suggest you consider the unity in another light. Not a unifying unity but the countable unity one, two, three. After fifteen years I have taught my pupils to count at most up to five which is difficult (four is easier) and they have understood that much. But for tonight permit me to stay at two. Of course what we are dealing with here is the question of the integer, and the question of integers is not a simple one as I think many people here know. To count, of course, is not difficult. It is only necessary to have, for instance, a certain number of sets and a one to-one correspondence. It is true for example that there are exactly as many people sitting in this room as there are seats. But it is necessary to have a collection composed of integers to constitute an integer, or what is called a natural number. It is, of course, in part natural but only in the sense that we do not understand why it exists. Counting is not an empirical fact and it is impossible to deduce the act of counting from empirical data alone. Hume tried but Frege demonstrated perfectly the ineptitude of the attempt. The real difficulty lies in the fact that every integer is in itself a unit. If I take two as a unit, things are very enjoyable, men and women for instance — love plus unity! But after a while it is finished, after these two there is nobody, perhaps a child, but that is another level and to generate three is another affair. When you try to read the theories of mathematicians regarding numbers you find the formula "n plus 1 (n + 1)" as the basis of all the theories. It is this question of the "one more" that is the key to the genesis of numbers and instead of this unifying unity that constitutes two in the first case I propose that you consider the real numerical genesis of two.

It is necessary that this two constitute the first integer which is not yet born as a number before the two appears. You have made this possible because the two is here to grant existence to the first one: put two in the place of one and consequently in the place of the two you see three appear. What we have here is something which I can call the mark. You already have something which is marked or something which is not marked. It is with the first mark that we have the status of the thing. It is exactly in this fashion that Frege explains the genesis of the number; the class which is characterized by no elements is the first class; you have one at the place of zero and afterward it is easy to understand how the place of one becomes the second place which makes place for two, three, and so on. The question of the two is for us the question of the subject. and here we reach a fact of psychoanalytical experience in as much as the two does not complete the one to make two, but must repeat the one to permit the one to exist. This first repetition is the only one necessary to explain the genesis of the number, and only one repetition is necessary to constitute the status of the subject. The unconscious subject is something that tends to repeat itself, but only one such repetition is necessary to constitute it. However, let us look more precisely at what is necessary for the second to repeat the first in order that we may have a repetition. This question cannot be answered too quickly. If you answer too quickly, you will answer that it is necessary that they are the same. In this case the principle of the two should be that of twins — and why not triplets or quintuplets? In my day we used to teach children that they must not add, for instance, microphones with dictionaries; but this is absolutely absurd, because we would not have addition if we were not able to add microphones with dictionaries or as Lewis Carroll says, cabbages with kings. The sameness is not in things but in the mark which makes it possible to add things with no consideration as to their differences. The mark has the effect of rubbing out the difference, and this is the key to what happens to the subject, the unconscious subject in the repetition; because you know that this subject repeats something peculiarly significant, the subject is here, for instance, in this obscure thing that we call in some cases trauma, or exquisite pleasure. What happens? If the "thing" exists in this symbolic structure, if this unitary trait is decisive, the trait of the sameness is here. In order that the "thing" which is sought be here in you, it is necessary that the first trait be rubbed out because the trait itself is a modification. It is the taking away of all difference, and in this case, without the trait, the first "thing:" is simply lost. The key to this insistence in repetition is that in its essence repetition as repetition of the symbolical sameness is impossible. In any case, the subject is the effect of this repetition in as much as it necessitates the "fading," the obliteration, of the first foundation of the subject, which is why the subject, by status, is always presented as a divided essence. The trait, I insist, is identical, but it assures the difference only of identity — not by effect of sameness or difference but by the difference of identity. This is easy to understand: as we say in French, je vous numérotte, I give you each a number; and this assures the fact that you are numerically different but nothing more than that.

What can we propose to intuition in order to show that the trait be found in something which is at the same time one or two? Consider the following diagram which I call an inverted eight, after a well-known figure:

You can see that the line in this instance may be considered either as one or as two lines. This diagram can be considered the basis of a sort of essential inscription at the origin, in the knot which constitutes the subject. This goes much further than you might think at first, because you can search for the sort of surface able to receive such inscriptions. You can perhaps see that the sphere, that old symbol for totality, is unsuitable. A torus, a Klein bottle, a cross-cut surface, are able to receive such a cut. And this diversity is very important as it explains many things about the structure of mental disease. If one can symbolize the subject by this fundamental cut, in the same way one can show that a cut on a torus corresponds to the neurotic subject, and on a cross-cut surface to another sort of mental disease. I will not explain this to you tonight, but to end this difficult talk I must make the following precision.

I have only considered the beginning of the series of the integers, because it is an intermediary point between language and reality. Language is constituted by the same sort of unitary traits that I have used to explain the one and the one more. But this trait in language is not identical with the unitary trait, since in language we have a collection of differential traits. In other words, we can say that language is constituted by a set of signifiers — for example, ba, ta, pa) etc., etc. — a set which is finite. Each signifier is able to support the same process with regard to the subject, and it is very probable that the process of the integers is only a special case of this relation between signifiers. The definition of this collection of signifiers is that they constitute what I call the Other. The difference afforded by the existence of language is that each signifier (contrary to the unitary trait of the integer number) is, in most cases, not identical with itself — precisely because we have a collection of signifiers, and in this collection one signifier may or may not designate itself. This is well known and is the principle of Russell's paradox. If you take the set of all elements which are not members of themselves,

the set that you constitute with such elements leads you to a paradox which, as you know, leads to a contradiction. In simple terms, this only means that in a universe of discourse nothing contains everything, and here you find again the gap that constitutes the subject. The subject is the introduction of a loss in reality, yet nothing can introduce that, since by status reality is as full as possible. The notion of a loss is the effect afforded by the instance of the trait which is what, with the intervention of the letter you determine, places — say al, a2, a3 — and the places are spaces for a lack. When the subject takes the place of the lack, a loss is introduced in the word, and this is the definition of the subject. But to inscribe it, it is necessary to define it in a circle, what I call the otherness, of the sphere of language. All that is language is lent from this otherness and this is why the subject is always a fading thing that runs under the chain of signifiers. For the definition of a signifier is that it represents a subject not for another subject but for another signifier. This is the only definition possible of the signifier as different from the sign. The sign is something that represents something for somebody, but the signifier is something that represents a subject for another signifier. The consequence is that the subject disappears exactly as in the case of the two unitary traits, while under the second signifier appears what is called meaning or signification; and then in sequence the other signifiers appear and other significations.

The question of desire is that the fading subject yearns to find itself again by means of some sort of encounter with this miraculous thing defined by the fantasm. In its endeavor it is sustained by that which I call the lost object that I evoked in the beginning — which is such a terrible thing for the imagination. That which is produced and maintained here, and which in my vocabulary I call the object, lower-case, a, is well known by all psychoanalysts as all psychoanalysis is founded on the existence of this peculiar object. But the relation between this barred subject with this object (objet a) is the structure which is always found in the fantasm which supports desire in as much as desire is only that which I have called the metonomy of all signification.

In this brief presentation I have tried to show you what the question of the structure is inside the psychoanalytical reality. I have not, however, said anything about such dimensions as the imaginary and the symbolical. It is, of course, absolutely essential to understand how the symbolic order can enter inside the vécu, lived experienced, of mental life, but I cannot tonight put forth such an explanation. Consider, however, that which is at the same time the least known and the most certain fact about this mythical subject which is the sensible phase of the living being: this fathomless thing capable of experiencing something between birth and death, capable of covering the whole spectrum of pain and pleasure in a word, what in French we call the sujet de la jouissance. When I came here this evening I saw on the little neon sign the motto "Enjoy Coca-Cola." It reminded me that in English, I think, there is no term to designate precisely this enormous weight of meaning which is in the French word jouissance — or in the Latin fruor. In the dictionary I looked up jouir and found "to possess, to use" but it is not that at all. If the living being is something at all thinkable, it will be above all as subject of jouissance; but this psychological law that we call the pleasure principle (and which is only the principle of displeasure) is very soon to create a barrier to all jouissance. If I am enjoying myself a little too much, I begin to feel pain and I moderate my pleasures. The organism seems made to avoid too much jouissance. Probably we would all be as quiet as oysters if it were not for this curious organization which forces us to disrupt the barrier of pleasure or perhaps only makes us dream of forcing and disrupting this barrier. All that is elaborated by the subjective construction on the scale of the signifier in its relation to the Other and which has its root in language is only there to permit the full spectrum of desire to allow us to approach, to test, this sort of forbidden jouissance which is the only valuable meaning that is offered to our life.

This intervention was published in The languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structuralist Controversy, ed. R. Macksey and E. Donato, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.

Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet

Posted on February 24, 2019 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/plastic-health-hidden-costs-plastic-planet.html

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) last week released a report, Plastic & Health; The Hidden Cost of a Plastic Planet.

Its conclusion: “Plastic is a Global Health Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight.”

Lifecycle Approach

The principal contribution of the report: it takes a comprehensive look at the health impacts of plastic throughout its life cycle. This begins with  the extraction and transport of fossil feedstocks for plastic, continues onto refining and production of plastic, creating consumer products and packaging, fostering toxic releases from plastic waste management. Waste disposal isn’t the final stage either, as afterwards, there’s the fragmentation and creation of microplastics to consider, as well as cascading exposures as plastic degrades, and finally, ongoing and continuing environmental exposures over the hundreds of years plastic remains before it disintegrates completely..

This report breaks new ground, as thus far, there’s been little systematic attention to the collective problems created by the ubiquitous and increasing use of plastic throughout its lifecycle – from when the fossil fuel is extracted from the ground, to final waste disposal – and what happens to plastic that finds its way into the environment:

To date, discussions of the health and environmental impacts of plastic have usually focused on specific moments in the plastic lifecycle: during use and after disposal. However, the lifecycle of plastic and its related human health impacts extends far beyond these two stages in both directions: upstream, during feedstock extraction, transport, and manufacturing, and downstream, when plastic reaches the environment and degrades into micro- and nanoplastics. Increasing research and investigation are providing new insights into the hidden, pervasive impacts of micro- and nanoplastics on human health and the environment (report, p.6).

I encourage readers to take a brief look at the entire report, which only runs to 75 pp. I warn you, however, that it’s deeply depressing.  In common with many others who’ve written about or studied the plastics problem, I realize that so far, I’ve limited my focus on plastic pollution only to specific stages of this lifecycle – largely waste reduction and waste management. What the CIEL report’s comprehensive approach reveals is a far, far worse catastrophe unfolding as the potential cumulative health risks of effects of plastic are considered throughout its life cycle. A too-narrow focus on one stage or even several in that of that cycle underestimates the full scope of the problem.

Don’t Drink That Water!

Just a couple of things I thought I’d mention from the report.

Microplastics contaminate the water we drink, the food we eat, even the salt we use to season our meals:

The evidence that humans are increasingly exposed to microplastics is mounting. Recent reports suggest that microplastics are entering the human body through the water we drink, food we eat, and air we breathe. In 2018, a study from the Medical University of Vienna and the Environment Agency of Austria analyzed stool samples from participants across Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Austria. Every sample tested positive for the presence of microplastics and up to nine different types of plastic resins were detected. On average, the researchers found 20 microplastic particles per 10g of stool. The study demonstrated that plastic reaches the human gut and that all food chains are likely contaminated.202 Increasing evidence that human food and water sources are contaminated with microplastic will continue to shed light on the routes of exposure (p. 37).

Tap water is contaminated by micro plastics across the globe, according to a recent study by Orb Media cited in the CIEL report:

Researchers at Fredonia State University of New York analyzed 159 tap water samples from 14 countries, half from developed and half from developing nations. Of these samples, 81 percent showed particles ranging from 0 to 61 particles per liter. The results included an overall average of 5.45 particles per liter, with the US having the highest average (9.24 particles per liter) while EU nations had the four lowest averages. Water from more developed nations had a higher average density (6.85 particles per liter) while the average density from developing nations was lower (4.26 particles per liter). Ninety-eight percent of particles were fibers.203 (report, p. 37).

How about drinking bottled water instead?

That solution would increase rather than reduce a person’s exposure to plastics:

When Orb Media ran a subsequent study of bottled water with the same researchers, it found twice as much plastic in bottled water compared to the previous study on tap water.204 The study tested 259 bottles from 19 locations across 11 leading brands and found microplastic particles in 93 percent of the samples, with an average of 325 plastic particles per liter. The tests revealed an average of 10.4 plastic particles per liter, nearly double the average of the tap water study.

Not only is bottled water contaminated with microplastics, but samples also included polypropylene, nylon, and PET – leading the Orb Media authors to suggest that packaging might be the source for some contamination.

Plastic Additives

I had been aware of the microplastics issue before. Good luck with trying to reduce your exposure.

One issue I’d failed to appreciate before was the ubiquity of plastic additives, and the potential health risks they pose:

Additives are added to plastic for flexibility (softeners and plasticizers), durability against heat or sunlight (stabilizers and anti-oxidants), color, flame retardancy, and as fillers. They are an underestimated environmental problem. Among the most hazardous additive types are brominated flame retardants, phthalates, and lead compounds. Some brominated flame retardants like polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBdEs) structurally resemble polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are environmental contaminants known to accumulate in the fat tissues of aquatic animals, causing neurotoxic effects and altering the function of thyroid hormones. Other chemicals used as softeners or brominated flame retardants cause birth defects, cancer, and hormonal problems, particularly for women. Once the additives have been released, including through incineration of plastic, they persist in the environment, building up in the food chain (report, p. 29, citations omitted).

I’m not alone in my concern. Chemical Watch also highlighted this issue, in Plastics exposure a global health crisis, says NGO report:

The report says plastics additives are an “underestimated problem”. Research that has identified negative human health impacts of many plastic additives is conclusive, it adds. “There are significant risks to human health and a precautionary approach is warranted.”

…

The report says that “most of these additives are not bound to the polymer matrix and, due to their low molecular weight, easily leach out”.

What Is To Be Done? Weak on Solutions

I found the last chapter of the report, on conclusions and recommendations, to be the weakest – especially in light of its warning:

Every stage of the plastic lifecycle poses significant risks to human health, and the majority of people worldwide are exposed to plastic at multiple stages of this lifecycle )p. 61).

Grist reports in Plastic has a long lifespan. It’s probably shortening yours. :

While plastic is the material du jour in part thanks to its cheap convenience, the true cost of plastics has not been reflected in the price at the till. “Plastics are harming or killing animals around the globe, contributing to climate change and keeping us dependent on fossil fuels, entering our air, water, and food supplies, and seriously jeopardizing human health throughout their lifecycle,” said Graham Forbes, Global Plastics Project Leader for Greenpeace, in a press release.

So, what is to be done? Especially as the use of plastics continues to increase, and is estimated may increase by a factor of four by 2050. Should we just surrender to the notion of a future in which we’ll be smothered by plastic?

The report punts on solid, focused answers, but recommends:

Solutions at every stage of the plastic lifecycle should respect the human rights to health and to a healthy environment. Despite some uncertainty requiring further independent scientific research, existing information about the severe human health impacts of the plastic lifecycle documented in this report warrant the adoption of a precautionary approach to the lifecycle of plastic and the overall reduction of plastic production and uses (emphasis added).

And CiEL recommends increasing transparency and creating a right to a remedy – but is silent on how this is to be achieved in a world hostile to global action not only on plastics, but on dealing with climate change:

In identifying, designing, and implementing possible solutions to the plastic pollution crisis transparency is key to success. As indicated above, transparency is required to identify the nature and breadth of exposure to toxic material, as well to assess and prevent possible adverse health and environmental impacts of technologies touted as “solutions” to the plastic pollution problem, such as incineration and plastic-to-fuel technologies. As indicated in a statement of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxic Substances: “The right of victims to an effective remedy, the right to meaningful participation, the right not to be subject to experimentation without consent, the right to the highest attainable standard of health and several other human rights have all been frustrated by large information gaps throughout the lifecycle of substances and wastes.” (report, p. 54, citations omitted).

The way we think about the plastic problem has to change, too, from a focus on one aspect or another of the issue, without considering the cumulative effect of exposure throughout the entire plastics lifecycle – and regulating or restricting accordingly. Absent a more comprehensive approach, well-meaning but ill-conceived solutions that address one aspect of the problem may only exacerbate another – and worsen the overall scenario. So, looking at the whole plastic lifecycle is key:

The current narrow approaches to assessing and addressing plastic impacts are inadequate and inappropriate. Understanding and responding
to plastic risks, and making informed decisions in the face of those risks, demands a full lifecycle approach to assessing the complete scope of the impacts of plastic on human health.

As is considering the health impact of chemical additives in addition to a product’s plastic components:

Health impact assessments that focus solely on the plastic components of products while ignoring the thousands of additives and their behavior at every stage of the plastic lifecycle are incomplete and dangerous (report, p. 63).

One of the report’s seven co-authors, David Azoulay, director of environmental health for CIEL, was quoted in Chemical Watch article, as saying:

that because supply chains and the impacts of plastic cross borders, continents and oceans, “no country can effectively protect its citizens from those impacts on its own, and no global instrument exists today to fully address the toxic lifecycle of plastics”.

“Countries must seize the opportunity of current global discussions to develop a holistic response to the plastic health crisis that involves reducing the production, use and disposal of plastic worldwide,” he says.

I can’t offer much by way of a happy prognosis. This is not to fault the achievement of the report’s authors in organising and summarizing material defining and outlining the problem. Perhaps it’s too ambitious to expect more by way of solutions.  

What can consumers do? Alas, the best answer I can come up with is to practice the four Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle, and repair (see Four Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and…Repair).  My recommendation will provide scant comfort to those readers who have or will look at the report, as they are inadequate to confronting this pending global health catastrophe  created by indiscriminate use of plastics.

The Inevitable Death of Natural Gas as a ‘Bridge Fuel’

Read time: 11 mins

By Justin Mikulka • Friday, February 22, 2019

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/22/inevitable-death-natural-gas-bridge-fuel-renewables

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced the city is scrapping plans for a multi-billion-dollar update to three natural gas power plants, instead choosing to invest in renewable energy and storage.

“This is the beginning of the end of natural gas in Los Angeles,” said Mayor Garcetti. “The climate crisis demands that we move more quickly to end dependence on fossil fuel, and that’s what today is all about.”

Last year America’s carbon emissions rose over 3 percent, despite coal plants closing and being replaced in part by natural gas, the much-touted “bridge fuel” and “cleaner” fossil fuel alternative. 

As a new series from the sustainability think tank the Sightline Institute points out, the idea of natural gas as a bridge fuel is “alarmingly deceptive.” 

But signs are emerging that, despite oil and gas industry efforts to shirk blame for the climate crisis and promote gas as part of a “lower-carbon fuel mix,” the illusion of natural gas as a bridge fuel is starting to crumble.

Market Forces

While Mayor Garcetti may be right in predicting the downward slide of natural gas for power generation, climate concerns won't drive that change — just simple economics.

It wasn’t long ago that President Obama — who was accused of starting “the war on coal” because of air quality regulations — was touting the benefits of “clean coal.” But automation in the coal mining industry and competition with cheaper renewables and natural gas began taking a toll on coal.

The struggling coal industry thought things were looking up when Donald Trump was elected, with his promise to bring back coal.

But he has failed.

Most recently, President Trump tweeted that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) should vote to keep two old coal power plants open.

Nevertheless, the TVA voted to close those coal plants and said it expected the move would save a billion dollars in future costs. Burning coal for electricity is increasingly incompatible with profits.

Gary Jones, the economic development director for the Kentucky county where one of the closing coal plants is located, acknowledged this economic reality in his comments to The Wall Street Journal, saying: “We definitely don’t blame him [Trump] for this. It’s the market.”

Exactly. Coal can’t compete with the historically low and unsustainable price of natural gas in the U.S. when it comes to power generation. And it can’t compete with renewables either.

In July 2016 I wrote the following about a presentation on coal at the annual Energy Information Administration conference:

“The presentation on India ended with the following conclusion: Cheap coal remains critical to Indian economic growth.”

India was all-in on coal for the next few decades, and yet in the two and half years since I wrote that, renewables have been hurting India’s coal industry. Why?

Just like in Tennessee and Kentucky, it’s the market. But it isn’t natural gas taking down coal in India, it’s wind and solar, according to a recent Reuters column by Clyde Russell:

“… the main reason coal may battle to fuel India’s future energy needs is that it’s simply becoming too expensive relative to renewable energy alternatives such as wind and solar.”

A similar situation is unfolding in Germany, which aims to close all its coal plants in the next 20 years. The natural gas industry initially saw this as an opportunity to slide in and replace coal, but the lower cost of renewable energy may lead Germany to skip the “bridge” offered by natural gas and move straight to renewables, which already provide over 40 percent of the nation's power.

According to Bloomberg, a large German energy company's study predicts natural gas use in Germany (and other European countries) will likely decline. Why?

“… the cost of solar and battery systems will fall far enough that renewables may become the most cost-effective way to generate new flows of electricity.”

Compare that to 2014, when industry giants were trash-talking the future of renewables in Europe. At an energy industry conference, Paolo Scaroni, the CEO of oil and gas company Eni, said that Europe is realizing that renewables are “more a problem than a solution,” and Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said, “Using solar panels in Germany is like growing pineapples in Alaska.”

Now renewables are the solution. And that certainly poses a problem for the fossil fuel industry.

Building new natural gas infrastructure looks like a bad investment right now to cities like LA when renewables are already competitive. Natural gas seems poised to join coal as another fuel that just couldn’t compete with renewables.

Here are more reasons why that's the case.

Natural Gas Prices Headed Up, Renewables Down

The price of renewable energy and storage is trending downward while the already super-low price of natural gas — especially in the U.S. — has nowhere to go but up.

While India and Germany already are finding renewables cheaper than fossil fuels for power generation with today’s technology, further advances in research and development as well as manufacturing will continue making renewables even more competitive.

MIT professor and former CIA director John Deutch recently presented a study entitled, “Demonstrating Near Carbon Free Electricity Generation from Renewables and Storage,” at a Stanford University energy seminar, in which he said:

“You are going to find yourselves very shortly in a situation where you have storage alternatives that, when matched with existing solar and wind generating systems, will be able to meet load extremely effectively.”

Meeting power demand effectively and as the lowest-cost producer — using fuel sources (wind and sun) that are free.

According to Greentech Media, energy industry analysts at Wood Mackenzie say the combination of renewables with battery systems can currently replace approximately two-thirds of U.S. natural gas turbines — right now. Estimates predict the cost of storage alone could drop 80 percent by 2040.

Who wants to own a gas power plant in 2040 knowing that?

Meanwhile, the cost of producing power with natural gas is dependent on the cost of the fuel.

Right now, gas companies are losing money — and have been for some time — at the current price of natural gas in America. As DeSmog has detailed, the fracking industry, which is responsible for most U.S. natural gas production, has been on a decade-long, money-losing streak.

The industry has proven unable to turn a profit at current natural gas prices. So, unless Wall Street wants to lose billions more subsidizing the natural gas industry, prices will have to go up at some point. And when natural gas prices go up, residential electricity rates go up.

Additionally, if all of the planned infrastructure gets built to export U.S. natural gas in liquid form (known as liquefied natural gas, or LNG), prices for natural gas are very likely to rise. This is the industry’s survival plan for the future. However, the higher prices natural gas producers need possibly will kill off one of the industry’s main markets.

Tom DiCapua, managing director of wholesale energy services at Con Edison Energy, recently summed up the situation to Reuters: “As LNG exports increase, so will future gas prices.”

When it comes to the long-term economics of power generation, it isn’t a fair fight. There is no clear way natural gas can compete with renewables on an economic basis in the coming decades. Which is why the oil and gas industry works so hard to convince people gas is clean and cheap.

It knows it can’t win a fair fight.

Structural Financial Issues With Natural Gas Industry

In a July 2017 Forbes column, energy industry expert Art Berman laid out the details of the structural problems in the finances of natural gas production. Since then, things have only gotten worse as huge volumes of gas are pumped simultaneously out of Permian oil wells in Texas and New Mexico.

However, even before the huge ramp-up in the Permian, Berman made the case that the natural gas industry was producing record amounts of gas at prices in which companies could not make money.

How could they do that?

Wall Street's coffers.

As Berman explained, “Credit markets have been willing to support unprofitable shale gas drilling since the 2008 Financial Collapse.”

Of course, now credit markets are not as willing to loan money to shale companies to produce gas at a loss. Berman estimated that natural gas producers needed prices of $4 per million Btu of gas to break even. Prices are below $4, and the average price has been below that for years.

Not looking good for natural gas.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

Similar to the fossil fuel industry, electric utilities also have fought renewable energy options. In 2016, utilities in Florida spent almost $30 million to limit residents' ability to install rooftop solar — perceived as a direct threat to the utilities.

Much like coal's prospects in India, a couple of years has made a huge difference, however. In February, the Christian Science Monitor reported that utilities in Florida have begun embracing utility-owned solar farms. And while utilities have still been fighting residential rooftop solar, it's started making gains in Florida anyway — despite regulatory restrictions. 

“The utilities are putting out solar like you wouldn’t believe,” said James Fenton, director of the University of Central Florida’s Florida Solar Energy Center.

The utilities didn’t suddenly decide the climate was more important than profits. They just see a better path to profits with solar, as long as they can be in control of it, at least.

“It is simply undeniable now that this is often the lowest cost source of generation,” Ethan Zindler, the head of U.S. research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told the Monitor. “So you can pat yourself on the back for doing something environmentally conscious, but at the same time, you’re also actually doing something to procure power at the lowest cost for your customers.”

Arizona Public Service (APS) is the largest investor-owned utility in the state, and it spent big money to help defeat a 2018 ballot initiative that would have required Arizona get 50 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

However, because APS is “investor-owned,” the utility is now investing in solar and claims that solar plus batteries are an even cheaper option than natural gas power plants for peak power. The need for so-called gas “peaker plants” that can quickly ramp up electricity in times of peak demand is one of the energy industry’s favorite arguments against renewables and for natural gas.

But because investors want to make money, APS is moving forward with solar and batteries.

“This is a head-to-head [economic] comparison where we’re trying to select the best resources to meet our customers’ needs,” Brad Albert, vice president of resource management for APS, told Greentech Media.

In that head-to-head comparison, natural gas lost.

As usual with the oil and gas industry, it’s best to watch what it does, not what it says.

The Permian Basin is the heart of the shale oil fracking boom in the U.S. and is producing so much natural gas along with the oil that the price of natural gas there actually went negative in 2018. 

It takes a lot of electricity to power the fracking boom. And the Permian needs more. But is the industry taking advantage of all that cheap natural gas to produce that power?

Nope. Plans for new electricity generation in the heart of the Permian oil and gas region include a solar farm and the world’s largest battery.

Renewables have become the low-cost source for new power generation much faster than most anticipated, which is great news for the climate.

Natural gas, with its potent globe-warming effect, is a climate-killer. And a money loser.

If the lobbyists don’t win and the free market is allowed to work for power generation, natural gas — like coal — looks less and less like a “bridge fuel” and more like a fuel of the past.

‘Socialism’ and other bad words from the Name-Caller-in-Chief

February 25, 2019

from Dean Baker

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/socialism-and-other-bad-words-from-the-name-caller-in-chief/

We know the way Republicans win elections these days. They call their opponents offensive names.

This is probably a good political tactic. After all, when your party’s agenda is about redistributing as much money as possible to the very richest people in the country, you are not likely to win much support based on your policies. Therefore, we get name-calling.

The latest bad word in the Republicans’ schoolyard taunts is “socialism.” President Trump and his team have decided that they will run around calling Democrats “socialists.”

Their hope is to conjure up images of the stagnation and shortages in the Soviet Union. Or, for those who lack memories of the problems of Soviet bloc economies, they’ll use the economic chaos in Venezuela as a substitute.

Of course, the policies being put forward by the Democrats have nothing to do with the socialist bogeyman Trump is using to try to scare people. They are policies that have deep roots in U.S. history and are, in fact, overwhelmingly popular among voters in both parties.

For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new representative from Queens, New York, has proposed a marginal income tax rate of 70 percent on income in excess of $10 million. This is the same rate that was in effect under that well-known socialist Richard Nixon. Under Dwight Eisenhower, another prominent socialist, the top tax rate was 90 percent. 

It seems that Republicans don’t only dislike the idea of taxing the rich, they don’t even understand it. Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker told a group of fifth graders that AOC wants to have the government take $7 of the $10 that their grandmother pays them for doing chores.

As Representative Ocasio-Cortez explained, this is not the way our tax system works. Her 70 percent tax rate would apply only to income above $10 million. This means that if these fifth graders earned $10,000,010, the government would take $7 out of the last $10. If they earn less than $10 million, they don’t have to worry about it.

Many Democrats are also proposing to expand the Medicare program to cover everyone. Perhaps Medicare now fits in the Republicans’ definition of “socialism,” but it is a hugely popular program with both Democrats and Republicans.

The idea of extending health care coverage has, until recently, been a major goal of both political parties. Richard Nixon had a plan for universal health care coverage that was much more far-reaching than the Affordable Care Act, which the Republicans have spent a decade hating on.

Getting to a universal Medicare-type program will be a big change and we will almost certainly not get there all at once. But, the idea of ensuring that every American has decent health care is not one that most people in the United States consider radical. Only Republican politicians seem to view it that way.

The same applies to Democratic plans to make college free, or at least more affordable. Again, this was once a widely shared goal of both political parties. The GI Bill of Rights, which allowed tens of millions of former troops from poor or middle-class backgrounds to attend college, had wide support across the political spectrum. Now we learn from Donald Trump and other Republican leaders that all of these people were socialists.

The idea of addressing global warming and other environmental hazards also is not exclusively a Democratic one. Richard Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Endangered Species Act. Theodore Roosevelt famously fought to preserve public lands more than 100 years ago.

In short, there is a long bipartisan heritage for the ideas that Democratic leaders are now pushing. These proposals are intended to help the vast majority of the people in the country who have been left behind in the last four decades.

By contrast, the Republican agenda of tax cuts for the rich and the deregulation that allows them to plunder whatever they want is just not very popular. Therefore, we get name-calling.

The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies

by John Pilger

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/22/john-pilger-the-war-on-venezuela-is-built-on-lies/

Travelling with Hugo Chavez, I soon understood the threat of Venezuela.  At a farming co-operative in Lara state, people waited patiently and with good humor in the heat. Jugs of water and melon juice were passed around. A guitar was played; a woman, Katarina, stood and sang with a husky contralto.

“What did her words say?” I asked.

“That we are proud,” was the reply.

The applause for her merged with the arrival of Chavez. Under one arm he carried a satchel bursting with books.  He wore his big red shirt and greeted people by name, stopping to listen.

What struck me was his capacity to listen. 

But now he read. For almost two hours he read into the microphone from the stack of books beside him: Orwell, Dickens, Tolstoy, Zola, Hemingway, Chomsky, Neruda: a page here, a line or two there. People clapped and whistled as he moved from author to author. Then farmers took the microphone and told him what they knew, and what they needed; one ancient face, carved it seemed from a nearby banyan, made a long, critical speech on the subject of irrigation; Chavez took notes.

Wine is grown here, a dark Syrah type grape. “John, John, come up here,” said El Presidente, having watched me fall asleep in the heat and the depths of Oliver Twist.

“He likes red wine,” Chavez told the cheering, whistling audience, and presented me with a bottle of “vino de la gente.” My few words in bad Spanish brought whistles and laughter.

Watching Chavez with the people, la gente, made sense of a man who promised, on coming to power, that his every move would be subject to the will of the people.  In eight years, Chavez won eight elections and referendums: a world record. He was electorally the most popular head of state in the Western Hemisphere, probably in the world.

Every major chavista reform was voted on, notably a new constitution of which 71 percent of the people approved each of the 396 article that enshrined unheard of freedoms, such as Article 123, which for the first time recognized the human rights of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chavez was one.

Their First Champions

One of his tutorials on the road quoted a feminist writer: “Love and solidarity are the same.” His audiences understood this well and expressed themselves with dignity, seldom with deference. Ordinary people regarded Chavez and his government as their first champions: as theirs.

This was especially true of the indigenous, mestizos and Afro-Venezuelans, who had been held in historic contempt by Chavez’s immediate predecessors and by those who today live far from the barrios, in the mansions and penthouses of East Caracas, who commute to Miami where their banks are and who regard themselves as “white.” They are the powerful core of what the media calls “the opposition.”

When I met this class, in suburbs called Country Club, in homes appointed with low chandeliers and bad portraits, I recognized them. They could be white South Africans, the petite bourgeoisie of Constantia and Sandton, pillars of the cruelties of apartheid.

Cartoonists in the Venezuelan press, most of which are owned by an oligarchy and oppose the government, portrayed Chavez as an ape. A radio host referred to “the monkey.” In the private universities, the verbal currency of the children of the well-off is often racist abuse of those whose shacks are just visible through the pollution.

Although identity politics are all the rage in the pages of liberal newspapers in the West, race and class are two words almost never uttered in the mendacious “coverage” of Washington’s latest, most naked attempt to grab the world’s greatest source of oil and reclaim its “backyard.”

For all the chavistas’ faults — such as allowing the Venezuelan economy to become hostage to the fortunes of oil and never seriously challenging big capital and corruption — they brought social justice and pride to millions of people and they did it with unprecedented democracy.

Stellar Election Process

“Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored,” said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center, is a respected monitor of elections around the world, “I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” By way of contrast, said Carter, the U.S. election system, with its emphasis on campaign money, “is one of the worst.”

In extending the franchise to a parallel people’s state of communal authority, based in the poorest barrios, Chavez described Venezuelan democracy as “our version of Rousseau’s idea of popular sovereignty.”

In Barrio La Linea, seated in her tiny kitchen, Beatrice Balzo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day’s school and be given a hot meal and to learn music, art and dance. “I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers,” she said.

In Barrio La Vega, I listened to a nurse, Mariella Machado, a black woman of 45 with a wicked laugh, address an urban land council on subjects ranging from homelessness to illegal war. That day, they were launching Mision Madres de Barrio, a program aimed at poverty among single mothers. Under the constitution, women have the right to be paid as caregivers, and can borrow from a special women’s bank. Now the poorest housewives get the equivalent of $200 a month.

In a room lit by a single fluorescent tube, I met Ana Lucia Fernandez, aged 86, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two children. Once, none of them could read and write; now they were studying mathematics. For the first time in its history, Venezuela has almost 100 percent literacy.

This is the work of Mision Robinson, which was designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mission Ribas gives everyone the opportunity of a secondary education, called a bachillerato. (The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century).

In her 95 years, Mavis Mendez had seen a parade of governments, mostly vassals of Washington, preside over the theft of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it flown to Miami. “We didn’t matter in a human sense,” she told me. “We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn’t afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. Now I can read and write my name and so much more; and whatever the rich and the media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy and I have the joy of seeing it happen.”

In 2002, during a Washington-backed coup, Mavis’s sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren joined hundreds of thousands who swept down from the barrios on the hillsides and demanded the army remained loyal to Chavez.

“The people rescued me,” Chavez told me. “They did it with the media against me, preventing even the basic facts of what happened. For popular democracy in heroic action, I suggest you look no further.”

Saddam Hussein Incarnate

Since Chavez’s death in 2013, his successor NicolásMaduro has shed his derisory label in the Western press as a “former bus driver” and become Saddam Hussein incarnate. His media abuse is ridiculous. Onhis watch, the slide in the price of oil has caused hyperinflation and played havoc with prices in a society that imports almost all its food; yet, as the journalist and film-maker Pablo Navarrete reported this week, Venezuela is not the catastrophe it has been painted.

“There is food everywhere,” he wrote. “I have filmed lots of videos of food in markets [all over Caracas] … it’s Friday night and the restaurants are full.”

In 2018, Maduro was re-elected president. A section of the opposition boycotted the election, a tactic tried against Chavez. The boycott failed: 9,389,056 people voted; 16 parties participated and six candidates stood for the presidency. Maduro won 6,248,864 votes, or 68 percent.

On election day, I spoke to one of the 150 foreign election observers. “It was entirely fair,” he said. “There was no fraud; none of the lurid media claims stood up. Zero. Amazing really.” 

Like a page from Alice’s tea party, the Trump administration has presented Juan Guaidó, a pop-up creation of the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, as the “legitimate President of Venezuela.” Unheard of by 81 percent of the Venezuelan people, according to The Nation, Guaidó has been elected by no one.

Maduro is “illegitimate,” says Donald Trump (who won the U.S. presidency with 3 million fewer votes than his opponent), a “dictator,” says demonstrably unhinged Vice President Mike Pence and an oil trophy-in-waiting, says “national security” adviser John Bolton (who when I interviewed him in 2003 said, “Hey, are you a communist, maybe
even Labour?”)

As his “special envoy to Venezuela” (coup master), Trump has appointed a convicted felon, Elliot Abrams, whose intrigues in the service of Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush helped produce the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and plunge central America into years of blood-soaked misery.

Putting Lewis Carroll aside, these “crazies” belong in newsreels from the 1930s. And yet their lies about Venezuela have been taken up with enthusiasm by those paid to keep the record straight.

On Channel 4 News, Jon Snow bellowed at the Labour MP Chris Williamson, “Look, you and Mr. Corbyn are in a very nasty corner [on Venezuela]!” When Williamson tried to explain why threatening a sovereign country was wrong, Snow cut him off. “You’ve had a good go!”

In 2006, Channel 4 News effectively accused Chavez of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran: a fantasy. The then Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, allowed a war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, to liken Chavez to Hitler, unchallenged.

Overwhelming Bias

Researchers at the University of the West of England studied the BBC‘s reporting of Venezuela over a 10-year period. They looked at 304 reports and found that only three of these referred to any of the positive policies of the government. For the BBC, Venezuela’s democratic record, human rights legislation, food programs, healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction did not happen.  The greatest literacy program in human history did not happen, just as the millions who march in support of Maduro and in memory of Chavez, do not exist.

When asked why she filmed only an opposition march, the BBC reporter Orla Guerin tweeted that it was “too difficult” to be on two marches in one day.

A war has been declared on Venezuela, of which the truth is “too difficult” to report.

It is too difficult to report the collapse of oil prices since 2014 as largely the result of criminal machinations by Wall Street. It is too difficult to report the blocking of Venezuela’s access to the U.S.-dominated international financial system as sabotage. It is too difficult to report Washington’s “sanctions” against Venezuela, which have caused the loss of at least $6 billion in Venezuela’s revenue since 2017, including $2 billion worth of imported medicines, as illegal, or the Bank of England’s refusal to return Venezuela’s gold reserves as an act of piracy.

The former United Nations Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, has likened this to a “medieval siege” designed “to bring countries to their knees.” It is a criminal assault, he says. It is similar to that faced by Salvador Allende in 1970 when President Richard Nixon and his equivalent of John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, set out to “make the economy [of Chile] scream.” The long dark night of Pinochet followed.

The Guardian correspondent, Tom Phillips, has tweeted a picture of a cap on which the words in Spanish mean in local slang: “Make Venezuela fucking cool again.” The reporter as clown may be the final stage of much of mainstream journalism’s degeneration.

Should the CIA stooge Guaidó and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela’s utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country’s oil, as outlined by John Bolton.

Under the last Washington-controlled government in Caracas, poverty reached historic proportions. There was no healthcare for those could not pay. There was no universal education; Mavis Mendez, and millions like her, could not read or write. How cool is that, Tom?