Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Teresa Heinz Kerry joins Liberal Values today on her blog tour. I wish I could say that the above picture was taken as I personally discussed these issues with Teresa, but actually it was taken when she was campaigning in Michigan shortly before the Iowa caucus. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that John Kerry just might manage to pull into second place, keeping his long-shot chances at the nomination alive. I don’t know if it was just optimism for her husband, or if Teresa really knew something, but she did sound hopeful for a first place victory in Iowa. John Kerry did go on to win the Iowa caucus, to win the nomination, and to beat the odds in coming as close as he did to an incumbent President during war time.

Teresa and John Kerry have used the time since the election to promote some of their long-standing interests, including the environment. This includes their recent book, This Moment on Earth, as well as Teresa’s work on women’s health and the environment. Teresa Heinz Kerry and the Heinz Endowments recently sponsored a conference on Women’s Health and the Environment in Pittsburgh. Starting about a week before the conference, Teresa has been on this blog tour. Participating blogs submitted written questions to Teresa at the onset of the tour. These questions were written during the recent conservative attack on those who discuss climate change after Al Gore won his Oscar. Teresa’s responses to my questions follow :

Liberal Values: The Heartland Institute quotes from a September speech from Senator Inhofe attacking those speaking out on global warming, and slurs James Hansen for having received a grant from the Heinz Foundation. Similar attacks have come from House Republicans and right wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh. Inhofe’s speech included the following statements:

The 60 Minutes segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for president in 2004.”

Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation.

The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.”

Could you discuss why you felt James Hansen was deserving of a grant, as well as any comments on the slurs from Senator Inhofe and other conservatives?

Teresa: Let me begin with some background information. The Heinz Awards were established in 1993 in honor of the late Senator John Heinz, to recognize outstanding leaders in areas in which he was most active. Among the largest individual achievement prizes in the world, the Heinz Awards recognize significant and sustained contributions in the Arts and Humanities, the Environment, the Human Condition, Public Policy, and Technology, the Economy and Employment. The annual awards program is the primary activity of the Heinz Family Foundation, which initially began as a charitable trust established by Senator Heinz in 1984, with the first Heinz Awards given in 1994. The Heinz Family Foundation is a part of the Heinz Family Philanthropies and the Heinz Awards program is a distinct part of the philanthropies, with a separate board of directors.

The Heinz Awards nominations are submitted by an invited Council of Nominators, all experts in their fields who serve anonymously. The nominations are reviewed by five panels of 10 jurors each appointed by the Foundation. Award recipients are selected by the Board of Directors of the Heinz Awards upon review of the jurors’ recommendations. The award money is for the recipients’ unrestricted use. Heinz Award winners receive their awards at a private ceremony in Washington, D.C. There are eight board members – I am one of them.

Each year the Heinz Awards board of directors selects an individual(s) in each of the categories who work best personifies the memory of my late husband Senator John Heinz. Jim was selected:

“… for his exemplary leadership in the critical and often-contentious debate over the threat of global climate change. The theory that industrial pollution continues to create an atmospheric “greenhouse effect” or warming has pitted scientist against scientist and politician against politician. In the eye of the storm that swirls around this issue is Dr. Hansen. He calmly pursues his research while scrupulously maintaining his scientific credibility and modifying his views as new data and techniques have become available, all the while acting as a messenger from the esoteric world of computer climate models to the public and policymakers alike. It was Dr. Hansen who, in the sweltering, drought-scorched summer of 1988, went where few scientists were willing to go – before Congress, to explain just how serious the potential for global warming truly was. Dr. Hansen courageously testified that the time had come to recognize that the “greenhouse effect” was real and that new and cleaner sources of energy had to be found. Time has validated his position. The director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, Dr. Hansen has collected and analyzed global surface temperatures and studied the earth’s atmosphere since the 1970s. The advocacy role he has undertaken has placed him squarely in the uncomfortable role of serving as lightening rod in the debate. He is respected among his peers for his creativity, his intellectual rigor and flexibility, and his dogged pursuit of this pressing global problem. Dr. Hansen’s critics, however, claim that his findings and computer models are uncertain, contradictory and prone to induce hysteria. “

With regard to the slurs of Senator Inhofe and other conservatives, it is important to remember that Senator Inhofe and Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA), Mark Souder (R-IN) or other conservatives have not spent most of their adult lives studying the Earth’s atmosphere. Jim Hansen’s work has been published in peer-reviewed journals for nearly 40 years. He is arguably the world’s leading researcher on global warming. Dr. Hansen’s campaign to change federal policy and educate the public about climate change dates back to at least 1988, when he pushed the concept of global warming into the national consciousness with testimony before an often hostile Congressional committee.

As well as earning him a Heinz Award, Hansen’s outspokenness has earned him criticism, as well. Some of those critics, including some inside the Bush Administration, have attempted to silence Dr. Hansen. Failing that, they have tried to undercut his credibility with unfounded attacks on his character. So let me be clear: Dr. Hansen’s views on global warming were well known for more than a decade before he was honored with a Heinz Award.

In fact, on his web page on the Columbia University website, he has a “Statement of Political Inclinations” (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/polinclin.pdf) which includes this paragraph:

“In the 1980s I met politicians of both parties in the course of testifying to the United States Senate and House of Representatives. My favorite politician then, as I indicated to friends, was Senator John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican, who I hoped would one day run for President. I may have been biased by the fact that he called me at home to tell me that he had intervened with John Sununu (head of President George H. Bush’s staff) on my behalf (I have a 17 May 1989 letter from Heinz describing those interactions) after I complained about alterations of my Senate testimony by the Bush Administration.”

There is no quid-quo-pro involved in the award, it carries with it no obligation to hew a Foundation line or even refrain from criticizing us, should a recipient find a reason to do so. Dr. Hansen’s support of Senator Kerry in the 2004 presidential election was clearly based on Senator Kerry’s recognition – in sharp contrast to President Bush’s willful disregard – of the dangers of climate change. Ad hominem attacks are simply dishonorable attempts to change the subject by those who do not have the facts on their side.

Liberal Values: The press release for your upcoming conference states the conference will include information for women including “protective steps they can take as they make everyday decisions about their health and lifestyles.” What are some of the protective steps that you recommend women take?

Teresa: All of us, including men, need to demand from our leaders in Congress and the White House that cosmetics, personal care and household products are tested in the same manner as food, drugs, air, and water to ensure that we are not using products with known carcinogens. Here is why: according to Dr. Devra Davis and Dr. Ron Herberman in the upcoming newsletter from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Center for Environmental Oncology, “….when experimental animals are tested at the lowest parts per billion level — over the animal’s lifetime — they develop cancer. The levels found in some children’s bathing products are one thousand times greater and measured in parts per million.”

Drs. Davis and Herberman also dispel another myth. While many believe that we are protected by the FDA (which has established a recommended level of no more than 10 parts per million in consumer products), the reality is something completely different.

Davis and Herberman explain:

“David Steinman’s research, discussed in his book Safe Trip to Eden and additional studies after the book was published, shows that at least 15 percent of cosmetic products with 1,4-dioxane exceed the FDA recommended upper limit. But since these so-called limits are only voluntary, companies not meeting them face no consequences from the federal government. Within a day of the Newsweek (http://www.safecosmetics.org/newsroom/newsweek_2_15_07.cfm) article appearing, ATSDR withdrew from its website the toxicological profile of 1, 4- dioxane. The revised posting as of April, 2007 (http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp187.html) says,

“In February, 2007, ATSDR, [an agency charged with evaluating toxic hazards,]was informed by the Director of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Cosmetics and Colors, that an error was present in the Public Health Statement of the toxicological profile. The FDA pointed out to ATSDR that the FDA had not recommended a limit for 1, 4-dioxane in cosmetic products.”

In fact, the only FDA recommendation about 1, 4-dioxane pertains to levels in adhesives and food additives. The ATSDR revised notice advises consumers to read labels: “1, 4-dioxane may be a contaminant in cosmetics, detergents, and shampoos that contain the following ingredients (which may be listed on the product label): “PEG,” “polyethylene,” “polyethylene glycol,” “polyoxyethylene,” “-eth-“ or “-oxynol-.”*Most manufacturers remove 1, 4-dioxane from these ingredients to concentrations recommended by the FDA as safe.”

This alone should convince all parents that every day we are putting are lives in jeopardy and that of our children. It is time for action – not more rhetoric.

Second, a recently released book Michael de Jong entitled Clean: the Humble Art of Zen Cleansing (available on Amazon.com), explains how you can use five basic products to clean your home.

Third, Deirde Imus, in her new book, Green This! Volume One: Greening Your Cleaning, urges people to find less toxic and more environmentally friendly ways to clean their homes.

Fourth, buying organic or other locally grown food and join with others to promote this. Buying organic or other food locally and join with others to promote such efforts: http://www.relocalize.net/ . Consider inviting your friends and neighbors over for a “fifty-mile dinner”, in which everything served comes from within fifty miles of your town

Fifth, switch to safer personal care products, listed here: http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2/?key=nosign

And keep up to date on coordinated efforts at our new website: http://womenshealthandtheenvironment.org/

There are also creative ways to bring attention to the issues, including painting a public mural, memorializing women lost to breast cancer, like the Cambridge-based Women’s Community Cancer Project mural in Harvard Square, which also celebrates political activism against cancer, condemns environmental carcinogens, and insists on the right to a clean environment. http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0399/039904.htm

We must all continue to investigate, explore, create, write, research, experiment safely, and change our ways so that our children and their children can live in a world of hope, health, and joy.

Liberal Values: Conservatives have taken on an uncharacteristic disdain of the affluent in their attacks on those speaking out on climate change, including the recent attacks on Al Gore’s energy use. In response we’ve heard about the carbon offsets and other efforts from Al Gore, and the efforts of John Edwards to make his mansion carbon neutral. What are you and Senator Kerry doing to reduce your energy use?

Teresa: We have purchased three hybrids – cars we have been hoping would come on the market for years. Perhaps the most exciting change with hybrids is the introduction (or soon to be introduced) lithium battery which can help a Prius, for example, improve gas mileage to 150 miles per gallon.

Our homes try to maximize the use of energy efficiency where available including the newest light bulbs on the market. These improvements help, but the reality is we all have a long way to go.

We have, or at least I have, reduced my airplane travel and try to accomplish more by calls and soon we will be doing much more video conferencing.

And, we are active in using carbon offsets for all of our travel. While it is not enough, it is a great place to begin.

(Thanks to Teresa for all the effort that went into providing the information in these answers. Tomorrow the blog tour concludes at Freedom’s Fire. Links to previous posts on the tour can be found here.)