ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

AN AUSTRLIAN COLUMNIST WORTH READING

     From columnist Andrew Bolt in the Australian Herald Sun:

...When I was a student ... my earnest teachers used to tell me the world was running out of food, and show pictures of starving Indians, which made me worry a lot.

They were repeating the hot theories of people like green guru Prof Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book The Population Explosion sold in the millions.

“The battle to feed humanity is over,” Ehrlich preached. “In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”

He was wrong, of course. Better crops, better communications, better transport, better education—and see now. Famines are now virtually unknown outside of war zones.

But such apocalyptic talk was everywhere then. Take the Club of Rome, a top think tank, which in 1972 warned the world’s economy was about to hit a wall. We were running out of oil, gas, silver, tin, uranium, aluminium, copper, lead and zinc, it warned in Limits to Growth, which sold 30 million copies, becoming the best-selling environmental book in history.

Panic spread. “We could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,” warned US president Jimmy Carter.

Except we didn’t. Instead, we’ve now got bigger reserves of all the things the Club of Rome said would soon be used up, except for tin.

But those panics about resources were nothing compared with the full-blown hysteria that was now being whipped up over the environment.

These eco-scares really took off in 1962 after Rachel Carson published her Silent Spring, using now disputed or discredited evidence to claim DDT was such a menace in the food chain we had to ban it to save whole species.

So DDT spraying was largely halted to save birds and fish, even though that meant killing tens of millions of Third World children, who were left with no good protection from the malarial mosquitoes against which the DDT had been used.

Never mind! We were too busy then panicking over a fall (sic) in global temperatures. In April 1975, for instance, Newsweek ran an article, The Cooling World, warning of “ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change”, exposing us to floods, “catastrophic” famines, “the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded” and “drought and desolation”.

The panic attacks were now coming in waves. There was “acid rain”, which the United Nations in 1986 blamed for damaging a quarter of Europe’s trees.

Now, of course, we know “acid rain” is hardly harmful, and Europe’s trees are blooming.

There was then the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, also in 1986, that was said to threaten millions of people with death and so terrified women that the International Atomic Energy Agency said as many as 200,000 had abortions. Now we know that the true death toll so far is fewer than 60.

There was the warning by British officials in 1996 that more than 500,000 people faced death by BSE, a brain disease they could catch from infected beef. Now we know—after eight million cattle were slaughtered—that the threat was wildly exaggerated, and the 100 or so victims might not have even got the disease from eating beef.

But don’t stop panicking! So we panicked instead about bird flu, with newspapers running screaming headlines such as: “Pandemic Could Kill 150 Million, UN Warns”.

But now we know the UN was just plucking figures from the air, and there’s still no proof this disease, caught from heavy exposure to sick birds, can leap from human to human.

...

Remember the fear that the world’s computers would crash the second the clocks ticked over to the year 2000? Planes would fall from the sky thanks to this Y2K bug, which the world spent an estimated $300 billion “fixing”. But what happened at midnight? Tick, tick, tick . . . er, tick.

Read the full column at Andrew Bolt, Australian Herald Sun

WHEN LEADERS NEED TO BE LED

     Polls show that the public is in a sour mood.  The mood persists despite the fact that the country has enjoyed a half decade of incredible prosperity (indeed, the economy continued tomorrow at 4.9% last quarter; the Dow, for all its recent volatility, continues at the 13,000+ level ; and Southern California real estate prices, despite their recent drop, still remain at levels unimagined 15 years ago).  Perhaps the sour mood can be traced to the ongoing Iraq conflict.  Even here, however, recent public opinion surveys indicate that Americans have increasing confidence that we are now actually winning the war.

     What accounts for the public’s mood, then?  The mood, at least in Southern California, can best be explained by the people’s perception that quality-of-life trends are seemingly beyond anyone’s control.

     For example, just a couple of months ago, the Governor and the Legislature assured us—you’ll recall, with great fanfare-- that they had produced a balanced budget.  Now we find that they were themselves victims of unbalanced perception when they made such assurance—at least one knowledgeable recent projection says this year’s fiscal budget deficit could be as high as $10-$11 billion.  Apparently, neither the Governor nor the majority party leadership in the Legislature saw this coming.

     Also, just a couple of months ago, a federal court Judge in Fresno held that the Endangered Species Act requires Sacramento Delta pumping to be altered drastically to protect the Delta Smelt fish.   The result—30% less water availability for Southern California. 

     Earlier this year, again amidst great fanfare, the Governor and the Legislature hailed the passage of AB 32, mandating that by 2020 greenhouse gases be reduced to 1990 levels.  However, as is typical with big-fanfare, sounds-good initiatives, the legislation was drafted and signed by politicians who have no clue how California is going to achieve those decade-and-a-half old levels.  Instead, the legislation conveniently laterals this problem to the California Air Resources Board—which, by the way, also hasn’t a clue.  As a recent report by a local TV station in Northern California commented:  “California is the world's 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases and its law is expected to affect some 800 manufacturing facilities. It requires the major producers -- utilities, oil and gas refineries, large manufacturers, timber companies and cement plants -- to collectively cut emissions over the next 13 years so the state can return to 1990 emission levels. But no one really knows how much that reduction needs to be….”

     Already battered by the high-cost of doing business in California, at least one noteworthy business is not waiting around to try to guess what the regulators will ultimately decide.  Interstate Bakeries recently announced it will shut down four bakeries, 17 distribution centers and 19 outlet stores, throwing over 1,200 employees out of work.  As Sen. Tom McClintock recently commented on his weblog:  “Gov. Schwarzenegger’s AB 32 mandates a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.  A principal byproduct of baking bread is – you guessed it – carbon dioxide.  Indeed, without carbon dioxide, there’s no such thing as bread as we know it.  Bread gets its spongy texture from yeast converting glucose into equal parts of ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide.  The familiar smell of bread baking is the oxidation of the ethyl alcohol as these gases are released during heating.”   

           All of this— lack of fiscal sanity in Sacramento; judicially-ordered drought; feel-good legislation without concrete plans to implement the mandates; business fleeing the intense regulatory climate enveloping the State-- is made even worse by occurring against a backdrop of continued population increase which local and State government have been prohibited (by the federal Courts) from regulating. 

          The California Legislative Analyst in 2000 published a treatise entitled “Cal Facts”.  Among the findings:

-      “It took about 100 years to reach the 10 million mark, but since then California has been adding 10 million people every 20 years.”

-      “Currently, the state is adding about 560,000 people annually—roughly equal to a city the size of Bakersfield or a state the size of Vermont.”

-      “Foreign net in-migration accounts for the majority of total in-migration.  It is consistently in the 200,000-300,000 range annually.” (emphasis in original).

            With over one-half million people increasing our population annually and with the California-based Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches behaving as they do, how are we going to provide government services, including water, and keep people employed?  No one knows—least of all, the government officials who make these policies without any apparent appreciation for the fact that edicts in one issue area have a ripple effect and serious consequences in other areas of our lives.

           No wonder people are in a sour mood.  Our leaders continue to demonstrate that they themselves need to be led to public policy which takes account of the whole society, not just their pet issues.

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?

    

ECOTERRORIST PUNISHED BY FEDS

     As reported today on SignOnSanDiego.com (The San Diego Tribune website), a federal judge in San Diego has sentenced Stanislas Meyerhoff, one of ten ecoterrorists facing criminal charges, to 13 years in prison for participation in a string of arsons and other property-related crimes:

Meyerhoff, 29, has admitted to being a member of a Eugene cell of the Earth Liberation Front known as The Family, responsible for more than 20 arson fires from 1996 through 2001 in five Western states that did $40 million in damage. Meyerhoff was involved in fires at a Eugene police substation, a Eugene SUV dealer, an Oregon tree farm, federal wild horse corrals in Wyoming and Northern California, and a ski resort in Vail, Colo. He also helped topple a high-voltage transmission line tower in Oregon.

Environmentalism over the edge

     From Business and Media Institute:

Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth.

     Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion.

    The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued.

***

     Watson essentially called for humans to return to primitive lifestyles. “We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us.”

  The Watson rant kept on going calling for everything from cutting down on the population of domesticated dogs and cats to cutting down on everything else in what he called “simplify, simplify, simplify.”

And from The Observer (U.K.):

Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides and the man who encouraged a generation of travellers to pack a rucksack and explore the world, has compared the damage done by tourism to the impact of the tobacco industry.

Ellingham now says travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday. He wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. The development he regrets most is the public's appetite for what he calls 'binge-flying'.

***

While determined to encourage people to reduce the number of flights they take, Ellingham admits he has no intention of stopping himself, and he does not expect others to do so either. 'As a "recovering travel writer", I fly less than I would like to, but more than I know that ethically I should. The deal I have made with myself is to limit the number of flights I take to one long-haul and two or three shorter flights each year,' he said. 'I very much respect the purist attitudes of those who say they will never fly again, but it's totally unrealistic to expect the majority to do the same.'

     You can skip your daily dose of comic books today.

HEARST COMMUNICATIONS SEES ITS GREEN OPENING--AND TAKES IT

     A long ways from the newspaper era of William Randolph Hearst, Hearst Communications strives to keep up with changing times by launching a new website/weblog, The Daily Green.  Still in its Beta phase, the website's "advertising" seems to be limited to/oriented to "eco-friendly" groups like the Sierra Club and Earth Share.

     It's difficult to believe, that Hearst is not going somehow to try to produce spendable green from The Daily Green. However, the website's mission statement merely states:

We’re spending the summer creating what we hope will be a one-stop Web destination where the fast-growing community of green consumers can find each other and everything they need to know to embrace a more energy-conscious, natural foods-oriented and environment-friendly lifestyle.

The Daily Green.com is published by the Digital Media unit of Hearst Magazines. Hearst Corporation, the parent company of Hearst Magazines, has been at the forefront of raising awareness for and addressing environmental concerns.

...

Let us know what you’d like to see on this site!

     For the complete mission statement, go to http://www.thedailygreen.com/whoweare.

     The website initially seems to promote a blend of green in a strong shade of blue (left-leaning politics), promoting as the site does The Huffington Post, a blog from John Edwards and the Sundance Channel.  You can check out the site at the above-referenced links.

ANOTHER MYTH SHATTERED-THE NON-ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLY PRIUS

     People in Santa Monica, California and Greenwich, Connecticut--you know, the trendy people who look down their noses at truck- and SUV-driving driving middle America-- aren't going to be happy with a newspaper commentary which begins:

     The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.

     So states Chris Demorro, a Staff Writer at the Central Connecticut State University Recorder Online (to add insult to injury insofar as the environmentalist movement is concerned, the Recorder Online is based in academia, where the "progressive" thinkers reside).  Mr. Demorro goes on to write:

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

     Yet another shattered shibboleth thus emerges.  The complete commentary is to be found at http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188

"New Report Sees Positive Environmental Trends Across The U.S."

The free-market oriented Pacific Research Institute last month published a study that concludes the environment is fairly dramatically improving.  You can find a summary of the study here.  An excerpt (don't bother looking for this angle on the environment from Time, Newsweek or The New York Times):

.

“With over a decade of compiled research in the Index, the facts speak for themselves – it’s impossible to deny the environmental improvements we’ve made and the certain progress we’ll continue to make over time,” said Dr. Steven Hayward, author of the Index, senior fellow at PRI, and F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at AEI.

The eleventh edition of the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators (available at www.pacificresearch.org) highlights the positive trends occurring in key areas including climate change, air quality, water quality, toxic chemicals, and biodiversity in the U.S.

Air Quality
1.	The number of exceedances of the eight-hour ozone standard in Los Angeles during the last 30 years has dropped significantly, from 201 in 1975 to 75 in 2005. There are large scale areas of the LA air basin where there have been no exceedances of the ozone standard for the last several years, meaning millions of residents have no exposure to high levels of ozone.
2.	In the Washington, D.C. area, not a single Code Red day for poor air quality was declared over the summer of 2005, despite the hot temperatures. Ozone levels are falling in 19 Eastern states where smog has been a recurring problem in the summer.
Auto Emissions
1.	Automobile tailpipe emissions from carbon monoxide have been reduced by 96 percent since the 1950s. These emissions rates are per mile—not an average for the whole auto fleet. The frequently-heard claim that large SUVs "pollute more" is a myth.
Toxic Releases
2.	In 2005, the Center for Disease Control reported declining amounts of chemicals in human blood and urine almost across the board.

'GREEN" DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN ETHICALLY CLEAN

     The NEW YORK POST reports today that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's appointment to chair the UN Environmental Program has come under suspicion:

Kofi Annan came under fire yesterday for his role in giving a prestigious post to a man who had sat on a panel that awarded the U.N. secretary-general a prize worth $500,000.

Members of Congress and other critics pushing to clean up the United Nations have raised sharp questions over the still-murky circumstances that led to the appointment of Achim Steiner of Germany to head the U.N. Environmental Program.

Steiner, a well-known international activist who headed the World Conservation Union, was a judge on a panel that awarded Annan the $500,000 Zayed Prize for Global Environmental Leadership, sponsored by the United Arab Emirates.

The prize was awarded last December.

Less than a month later, Steiner's name was included on a short list of candidates for the U.N. environmental job, and his appointment was made official on March 15.

     Of course, it is important to remember that Mr. Anna's appointment of Mr. Steiner has not been shown to involve a quid pro quo or other illegal/unethical favoritism--all that is at issue right now are allegations and suspicions.  The Post story does, however, serve as a useful reminder that nice-sounding names like "UN" and "environmental" don't necessarily mean that people with those titles are immune from the basic laws of cronyism and avarice that so often are alleged to affect the business community.

     I often wonder why some people think that, by taking somewhat decentralized power away from private hands and placing that power into centralized public hands, greater fairness is achieved.  In fact, such transfers may only succeed in placing greater power in the hands of people with nice-sounding titles but who are in positions to do more damage than could ever be done by their private-industry counterparts.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT USA IS NOT THE FOCUS OF THE WORLD'S ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

     On March 29, 2005, I Posted "THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT: STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES (WHICH HAVE LESS CHANCE OF BEING POLLUTED IN THE USA THAN ALMOST ANYWHERE ELSE)" (see "Environmentalists" under "CATEGORIES" on the right-hand side of this page).  The Post opined that the United States is way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to environmental protection; the Post suggested that the environmentalist movement, if it is to be productive, thus needs to focus more on foreign environmental issues.

     Yesterday's The New York Times carries an article highlighting this point:

The Chinese government's decision to cut potentially contaminated supplies of fresh water to a major city has highlighted the threat that industrial pollution poses to public health and economic development across the nation.

Almost four million people in Harbin in northeastern China are expected to be without running water until late Saturday after a chemical plant explosion on Nov. 13 contaminated the upper reaches of the nearby Songhua River with toxic benzene.

***

The threat of contamination to Harbin is a reminder that with its booming economy, China is facing a huge environmental challenge.

The combination of rapid industrialization, a vast population and intensive agriculture has led to some of the world's worst air pollution, widespread shortages of fresh water and soil degradation.

Pollution and contamination have exacerbated China's water shortages, which environmental experts and even senior officials say could threaten economic development. Data from monitoring stations in the country's seven major river drainage zones showed that 44 percent of rivers were polluted.

     China's air, as well as its water, need help.  See my Post of September 2, 2005, under the CATEGORY "Global Warming", entitled "Space Sensors Show Massive Surge In Chinese Air Pollution" .

     Moreover, even some mature, industrialized nations are not doing as good a job as is the United States in protecting the environment.  See my Post of November, 10, 2005 (under the CATEGORY "Global Warming"), IN THE "PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES SHOULDN'T THROW STONES" DEPT.

    The data in this Post and in the September 2 and November 10 Posts buttress the conclusion that the United States actually leads the rest of the world in environmental protection.  Environmentalists, take note.