ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

US HOUSE BILL ON "GLOBAL WARMING"

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, aiming to put an end to the debate over whether global warming is actually occurring, passed legislation recognizing the "reality" of climate change and providing money to work on the problem.

By a vote of 272-155, the House approved an environmental funding bill for the fiscal year starting October 1 that would increase federal investments in basic research on climate change and establish a new commission to review scientific questions that need to be addressed.

The White House has threatened a veto of the $27.6 billion bill because its overall spending would exceed President George W. Bush's request by about $2 billion. The Senate has not yet debated the bill.

    Read the entire article at Yahoo! News.

THE ENVIRONMENT CAN MAKE STRANGE ENEMIES

     Perhaps naively, I always think of "progressive" causes as birds of a feather flocking together.  Provided, of course, that it is still politically correct to flock.

     In any event, I was surprised to see one favorite progressive group--environmentalists-- undermining the cause of another progressive grup, the anti-gun folks.  Yet, according to My Fox Tampa Bay, the website of a local Fox News channel, that's exactly what happened in Sarasota, Florida:

Every few months for 30 years, a police boat would be sent 14 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. Aboard, a deadly cargo, scores of guns taken from criminals, guns headed to Davey Jones' Locker.

"Just what you need for street use." said an officer as he tossed an assault rifle into the Gulf.

Next comes a box of pistols, one by one, over they go.

Sarasota Police, proud they'd made their city safer, released the video to FOX 13.

"We thought it was a great story," said spokesman Jay Frank. "We've taken 200 guns off the street, we thought that was the story. Low and behold we found out that people weren't concerned that much about that, but they were concerned about polluting the gulf."          

"They" are Betsy Roberts of the Sierra Club, and other local environmentalists, who raised the roof about the gun tossing.

"We just don't know enough," Roberts said. "How long did we use DDT before we knew it wasn't a good thing to do?".

***

Roberts and the environmentalists declared victory,

"I'm delighted they will no longer be dumping weapons into the Gulf of Mexico. I think it shows that it is not a land fill," she said.

    I understand (tongue firmly planted in cheek) that the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence is thinking about challenging the Sierra Club to a rumble.

     On a serious note, this story should remind us that everything has a trade off-- progressive idealism notwithstanding.  I am reminded, for example, of the Post I did on July 15, 2006, pointing out the extreme damage that massive illegal immigration is doing to the environment on our Southern border (see "CATEGORIES", "IMMIGRATION" on the right-hand side of this page).  I am also reminded of the Posts on this Blog that have pointed out that we can massively cut "global warming" greenhouse gasses--if we want to throw the economy into depression (Category of 'GLOBAL WARMING" Posts).

     Rational environmental regulation requires, and always will, tough decisions about trade offs.  Thank God Al Gore and John Edwards, who live in huge mansions with massive carbon footprints and who fly around in private planes spewing large amounts of carbon-related pollution, have had the good sense to buy carbon offsets-- even if, at least in Al Gore's case, the offsets are through his own company. Where would the environment be without such self-sacrificing leaders who live just like the rest of us do?

    

DRAMATIC FIGHT BREWS BETWEEN HOMEOWNERS AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS AS RESULT OF LAKE TAHOE FIRE DESTRUCTION

     The Los Angeles Times today explores the latest wrinkle in the classic debate over whether the environment is here to serve us or the other way 'round.  In this regard, the Times reports (under the headline "Crowd aims fury at regional panel"):

The mood of the crowd jammed into the meeting room was angry.

Many had lost their homes to the forest fire that swept through the Sierra Nevada just south of Lake Tahoe.

They said they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting of trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they said, and now it was too late.

In all, a crowd of nearly 2,000 people descended on the South Tahoe Middle School auditorium Monday night, wanting to be heard in the face of their losses.

And if there was an object of scorn in the crowd, it was the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a powerful bi-state environmental land use agency charged with managing the resources of the basin.

When a speaker mentioned the agency, the crowd responded with a chorus of boos. "What a joke!" yelled one man.

The wrangling began in earnest over the assignment of blame, including arguments over whether federal and state forest managers had made their tree clearing rules too strict in the face of pressure by environmentalists.

A common sentiment Monday was expressed by Jerry Martin, a bartender at the Horizon Casino Resort, whose house was still standing, although eight others around it had burned to the ground. He said U.S. Forest Service rules regulating the harvesting of dead trees were too stringent for those living next to government land.

"I hate to get political, but environmentalists wouldn't let us cut down the dead trees," he said.

     The complete article, which is found at the link above, makes plain that the government does not agree with the above-quoted criticisms.  For example, a spokeswoman for the local Regional Water Quality Control Board states that the homeowners in fact could, without a special permit, have cut down dead trees on their property as a fire-protection measure.

     No doubt further debate and investigation of this particular disaster will follow. But for the moment, the key observation is this:  the destructive fire and the Times' story illustrates once again the tension between those who believe the environment should be treated in the way that best benefits humans and those who believe that we are mere guests (some have gone further, saying we are parasites) of nature.

US SUPREME COURT IN KEY ENDANGERED SPECIES RULING-NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS ET AL V DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE ET AL

     In a major 5-4 ruling announced today, the Court ruled that federal delegation of water pollution authority to States under the Clean Water Act is governed solely by the criteria in Section 402 of the statute and not by the added, extra-statutory consideration of the delegation's potential effect on endangered species.  While this case has garnered lots of attention, the best summary of the issues I have seen today is on the website of Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Oklahoma).  While Sen. Inhofe has strong views which side with the Court majority, his website's description of the issues in the case is factual and is set forth here (also see the link above to his site, which provides his favorable opinion of the ruling):

Under section 402(b) of the Clean Water Act, EPA is required to transfer permitting authority to a state if that state meets nine statutory requirements.  In the case, Defenders of Wildlife argued that compliance with section 7(a)(2) of the Endangered Species Act, effectively adds a 10^th statutory requirement, thus preventing the state of Arizona from having the authority to manage of its own water pollution control program.  Section 7(a)(2) requires federal agencies to consult the Department of Commerce or the Department of Interior to assure that a proposed agency action is unlikely to jeopardize an endangered or threatened species. 

The Court held that this requirement applies only to discretionary actions by the agencies and because “the transfer of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting authority is not discretionary, but rather is mandated once a State has met the criteria set forth in section 402(b) of the Clean Water Act, it follows that a transfer of NPDES permitting authority does not trigger section 7(a)(2)’s consultation and no-jeopardy requirements.” 

The Justices went on to note that, “[r]ead broadly, the Ninth Circuit’s construction would also partially override every federal statute mandating agency action by subjecting such action to the further condition that it not jeopardize listed species.”

SHADES OF "X FILES"- CHILEAN LAKE DISAPPEARS VIRTUALLY OVERNIGHT

     From CNN: and AP:

A five-acre glacial lake in Chile's southern Andes has disappeared -- and scientists want to know why.

Park rangers at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park said they found a 100-feet-deep crater in late May where the lake had been in March. Several large pieces of ice that used to float atop the water also were spotted.

"The lake had simply disappeared," Juan Jose Romero, head of Chile's National Forest Service in the southernmost region of Magallanes, said Wednesday. "No one knows what happened."

(Rest of story at above link).

LIMITED STYROFOAM BAN PROPOSED FOR CALIFORNIA

     As previously Posted (see "CATEGORIES", "Styrofoam" on right-hand side of page) various local jurisdictions in California have imposed a ban on Styrofoam food packaging.  At the State level in California, there appears to be only one such similar piece of legislation pending in the current session; and the proposed ban is much more limited than the existing local legislation.

     AB 820 (Asemb. Kernette, D-54th District, Long Beach and environs) would, effective January 1, 2009, ban State facilities from selling, possessing or distributing expanded polystyrene food containers, with certain exceptions (i.e., the University of California, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of Mental Health could all, under varying conditions prescribed in the legislation, decide not to sign on to the ban).

     The limited proposed ban may be influenced by the fact that the California Waste Management Board, in a 2004 study requested by the Legislature, questioned the efficacy of imposing the ban at all.  Moreover, it's not clear that this legislation is going anywhere soon, because the State Assembly website says it is being held in Committee "under submission".

     For an analysis of the bill, go to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations Internet site.

TOO MUCH CHLORINE= ASTHMA?

     Listening to Fox News this morning, it is being reported that exposure to too much chlorine in indoor swimming pools could contribute to asthma, especially in children.  The chlorine itself is not the direct culprit, but Rather the mixture of gasses given off by he chlorine with human perspiration and (ugh) urine. 

     Apparently, the problem has not been found to exist with outdoor pools.

WEBLOG SNAFU FIXED

     Thanks to the helpful people at Typepad, I've corrected the problems that distorted the appearance of the Blog.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

SORRY FOR THE BLOG LAYOUT SNAFU

     When I log on, the Blog comes up with the columns askew and with a portion of the articles cut off on the right-hand side. Also, there is an advertisement appearing in the middle of the Post column which I have not (at least not intentionally) placed there-it just shows up. I have sent a "Help" message to TypePad to correct the problem.  Thanks for bearing with it.

THERE'S A FUNGUS AMONG US

     From The Oregonian, today:

Question: What does the world's largest living organism do all day? Answer: Pretty much whatever it wants. But very slowly.

The U.S. Forest Service has adopted an informal live-and-let-live policy for the enormous tree killer it calls the "humongous fungus."

The huge root-rot infestation underlies 2,200 acres east of Prairie City in a remote corner of eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains at an elevation of about 6,500 feet near the Strawberry Mountain and Monument Rock wilderness areas.

***

Its sheer mass -- it's roughly the size of 1,600 football fields -- makes Herman Melville's fictional white whale Moby Dick seem like a tadpole. And it could get bigger.

In terms of age, Armillaria is a fungiform Methuselah. Researchers say it may have been 100 years old when Alexander the Great conquered the known world in 330 B.C. And some estimates suggest it could be 8,000 years old, said Forest Service researcher Catherine Parks, who has spent 10 years studying it.

     Holy Moley, Batman!