The strangest thing about digging into a dispute between environmentalists and a corporation is how hard it is to find the latter's side. I mean, who do these people talk to and whom are they trying to convince?

I'm this close to buying you a subscription to the WSJ.

Nice points, but it seems funny to talk about the credibility of Owens Corning when the contra side is the environmental lobby. I like Owens Corning, but I also think drugs and suicide should be legalized and that Oregon should be growing, selling, and taxing the marijuana that God meant for it to do- I'm not kidding about that. "Some wine, some weed, some chicken... " sounds like more fun than styrofoam, I admit.

Hey. It's a tea party....

Buy away. I don't know when I'd read the thing, but I'd love to have the Journal for a counterpoint.

Regarding the enviros, at least they try communicate. Corporations make a hell of a mistake by keeping things under wraps. The corporate mentality, which I'd argue has extended to the federal executive in an unfortunate way, doesn't put the premium on transparency that they ought. In too many ways, they view themselves as only indirectly accountable to the public at large, mainly through market mechanisms. What they're missing is that they're beholden to the public for the infrastructure that supports them, whether it's the roads they drive to get to work, the schools they send their kids to, or the power that allows them to function. It's a free country and all, so they don't have to pay attention to this kind of thing so long as they provide jobs, but they'd be so much smarter if they did.

The communications-averse corporate mentality is the really the don't-get-us-sued mentality which is really the mentality we can thank the trial lawyers for... and which has Democratic patronage written all over it.

Of course I would also reverse your larger point. The public infrastructure is very much beholden to profitable private enterprise, not the other way around. There are notable and outrageous exeptions of corporate welfare, of course, but I hear at least as many Republicans decry that issue as Dems.

I apologize for the length of this post, but the issues are complex enough to deserve the space. Here are my comments to DEQ about the proposed Owens Corning facility. I have sent this information to the Tribune, the Oregonian, and Willamette Week, KBOO and KPOJ. Catherine Trevison at the Oregonian is the only one in the media who is following this story. I haven't seen anything of substance in the Outlook. Even though the comment period for DEQ's permit has ended, it is never too late for expressing one's own views; contact your city, county, and state representatives. They should be held accountable. Jim =================================================== Air Quality Permit Coordinator DEQ Northwest Region, 2020 S.W. 4th Ave., Suite 400, Portland, OR 97201 c/o Catherine Blaine

[email protected].

                        Monday, September 26, 2005

Dear Sir or Ms.:

I am a Professor of Chemistry at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. I am writing to you to express my complete opposition to the permitting of the proposed Owens Corning foam insulation plant in Gresham, Oregon.

This plant will use a manufacturing process that is noxious to the environment, with no positive benefit to Oregon outside of the meager number of jobs involved.

As you know from my previous testimony at the June 16th information meeting, 1-chloro,1,1-difluoro-ethane (HCFC 142b) is a potent greenhouse gas and the amount of annual emission (226 tons or 205 metric tons per year) will erase the savings in twenty months in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by the Portland and Multnomah County over the last fifteen years. I have included an analysis of the emissions data for the City of Portland and Multnomah County (see the attached file “Analysis of PDX CO2 data”).

At the information meetings and permit hearings held by DEQ, I have heard verbal assertions from Paul Lewandowski, an Owens Corning attorney, that the increase in global warming due to their manufacturing process will be offset by energy savings (with a lower amount of carbon dioxide then produced) less than ten months. These assertions differ in the extreme from my own calculation of the “payback period”. My calculation of the payback period is 63 years for the state of Oregon, and 124 years for the Northwest as a whole. These latter two figures do not reflect an uncertainty; they differ due to the extent of fossil fuels used in the two regions. My work is based on an analysis of a publicly available independent study of manufacturing and emission payback periods performed by Franklin Associates, a Kansas engineering firm. I have included the numerical calculations of my analysis of the payback period (see the attached file “Analysis of Payback Period”).

This substance is also a Class II ozone depleting substance scheduled for complete elimination for all uses in 2020 under the Montreal Protocols. In the meantime, Owens Corning can continue to operate – if they wish – until 2020, provided that they have the materials available to them. The emissions from each year of operation are equivalent to adding approximately 90,000 cars to Oregon roads - this is essentially the same as adding one more I-5 and all of its Portland metro traffic to Oregon roads every 18 months, and the result is cumulative, so that five years of operation will have added a burden to the atmosphere equivalent to about 450,000 cars. And these effects will persist for centuries, not decades.


There are many troubling aspects to the permitting of this facility:

1. First of all, this is a very large amount of emission for Oregon, but 205 metric tons per year are 1/20th of the annual emissions of this substance for the entire nation!

2. Second, one might legitimately question whether or not Owens Corning is providing DEQ with accurate scientific information. As you know from the November 9, 2004 information meets, no one from Owens Corning, no one from the Oregon Department of Energy, and no one from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality had discovered the factor of one thousand errors made by Oregon DOE and Oregon DEQ employees in estimating the net effect of global warming associated with these emissions – it was I. (See the attached electronic version of the Portland Tribune article, “Same As 100 cars MORE LIKE 111000"). Is it not the obligation of the permit applicant to provide to DEQ as part of the permit process all that is known to the applicant about the potential harmful effects of the proposed process? For then, if Owens Corning did know that HCFC 142b is a potent greenhouse gas, why did they not tell DEQ of its error? And, if Owens Corning did NOT know that HCFC 142b is a potent greenhouse gas, why would Owens Corning expect DEQ to accept any other assertion – for example, the length of the “payback period” – about the manufacturing process without adequate documentation? I do not know the answers. These are legitimate questions, and they deeply trouble me.

3. Third, the actual burden to the atmosphere arising from this manufacturing process and the material made therein is much worse than that associated with the emissions on site alone. Owens Corning data suggests that only a small fraction of the greenhouse gas (about 13.1 to 13.4%) is emitted on the manufacturing site. The rest is emitted over the lifetime of the foam insulation. This implies that, after the insulation has lost most of its insulating gas (and it will, in time), the actual burden to the atmosphere is about 750% greater than the effect associated with manufacturing alone. Each year of operation and the eventual emissions from the foam made in that time is equivalent to adding an additional 650,000 cars to Oregon roads each year!

4. There are green alternatives available. CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere could be used as the foam blowing agent with less than a 15% reduction in the R-value of the foam insulation. This method of manufacturing would be truly green, since it would contribute to global warming only the energy costs associated with obtaining the components used to make the insulation and the manufacturing process itself. Any emissions would be a trade-off since the CO2 would be obtained from the atmosphere.

   Yes, these issues also raise questions of scientific competence at Oregon Department of Energy, and at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. After all, I have been able to teach my “Chemistry and the Atmosphere” students the nomenclature scheme for HCFCs in about ten minutes - something that apparently no one in Oregon DOE or DEQ thought was important enough to spend a few minutes learning.

   But this is not about DOE or DEQ personnel; this is about whether or not DEQ should permit Owens Corning to operate this insulation plant. How can this possibly be construed to be a benefit to Oregon, when the payback period is 63 years or longer? Is Oregon DEQ going to follow its mission? DEQ’s own web page proclaims “DEQ is responsible for protecting and enhancing Oregon's water and air quality”. And all this over less than three dozen jobs. Put those words into action. Deny this permit.

                   Sincerely
   
                   Jim Diamond
   

For C2TBF, that reasoning gets circular pretty fast - e.g. corporations provide the jobs that provide the wage that provide the taxes that provide the infrastructure that enables the corporations to provide the jobs...but between the number of folks employed by small business - who don't suffer the same image problems - and the persistent decline in corporate taxation (especially here in Oregon), the burden falls increasingly on the public and small businesses. I'd still argue that, based on that, the public contribution trumps the private.

As for Jim Diamond's, don't worry about the length, man! Wonderful contribution. Given your part in one of the earlier disputes (the 100 v. 111,000 spat), you've got the background, not to mention the expertise, to provide better insight than a palooka like me, unschooled as I am in the chemical sciences (1 year college chemistry series - what I didn't sleep through, I've totally forgotten).

That's an important addition as well, Jeff. Even beyond deadline-pressed reporters, there's the simple matter of the business of news - i.e. the neccessity of providing content that will lure readers; they've got to surround the meaty stuff with the sensationalist twaddle just to get an outside shot at someone reading this.

Overall, I think this post had a semi-perverse and certainly naive motivation: it's close to a plea to corporations to be upfront with the pubilc, the go into the public square and defend what can be defended - and, the crappy reputation of the corporate world aside, they could probably do a credible job if they just got off their humps and did it; the Owens Corning thing, which balances pumping greenhouse gases into the air against 35 jobs (Prof. Diamond did well with that juxtaposition), isn't the best example of that, but I think it's broadly easier to make their case. Based on what I see, corporations seem to think it's better to throw money at charities and sponsor civic events; both actions may be valid, but, given how separate they are from any given corporation's core mission, they take on the appearance of ass-covering confections, lipstick on a pig, etc.

Point taken. Overall, though, the reason corporations should move more aggressively to win public favor boils down to self-interest. Lawsuits, brought on by fear of the unknown or general, often justified mistrust, cut into profits.

<h2>I think that t.a. barnhart makes a good point, but HCFC 142b just does not appear to be a toxic substance. Part of the insiduous aspect to this OC issue is that the "foam blowing agent", HCFC 142b, appears to be relatively nontoxic; outside of the very large global warming potential of the emissions, the manufacturing process is relatively clean, producing small amounts of styrene, particulate matter, and hazardous waste. This makes regulation much more difficult, especially when the EPA - which oversees enforcement of the Clean Air Act - is actively pursing a policy of nonenforcement.</h2>