Forward On Climate: Change We Can Believe In On Climate Change?

While I have criticized Barack Obama in this blog for his less than stellar performance on global warming, it is important to remember that he is merely the man in the Oval Office. Congress, the courts, as well as the people of this country also bear the responsibility of moving things forward when it comes to the environment and global warming.

            Of all these actors, it is often the people who prove to be the most important agents and instigators of change. Suffragettes marched and demonstrated, and politicians agreed to enfranchise women with the vote. Without Martin Luther King and the March on Washington in 1963, there may not have been the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

            For this reason I cheer the Forward On Climate Rally planned for the 17^th of this month. Organized by 350.org, the Sierra Club, and the Hip Hop Caucus, the rally promises to gather thousands at the National Mall to urge the President and Congress to pass reasonable climate legislation. The Keystone Pipeline, which President Obama has the authority to authorize or reject, has been set in the crosshairs by the organizers of the rally. The pipeline both physically and symbolically embodies what is most wrong with our energy policy. Relying on the mining of Canadian tar sands, the Keystone oil will lay waste to a huge area of Alberta, as well as contribute an ever-greater amount of CO2 to the environment than more traditional oil drilling does.

            I will, unfortunately, be unable to attend the rally, but I hope that enough concerned citizens are able to make it to DC and let Washington know that we do not want a warmer world. I will make it to the rally being held in Balboa Park in San Diego. If you can't make it to the big rally in Washington, I encourage you to show up at your local rally.

Is It Time For West Virginia's DEP To Start Doing Its Job?

In a 13-page letter, a group of environmental organizations—the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club—has given the EPA 60 days’ notice demanding that the agency reject as inadequate a list of polluted streams that West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently submitted to the EPA or face a lawsuit. Something like this should have happened long ago. As far as West Virginia and mountaintop removal go, things have been out of whack for a long time.

The law that governs mountaintop removal, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), gives to the states the responsibility of issuing permits for mountaintop removal mining. In West Virginia, the DEP issues these permits. Way back in 1997, in the pages of US News and World Report, Penny Loeb first shined the national spotlight on Appalachian mountaintop removal. Even back then she said that the, “DEP's regulations are outdated, its enforcement muscle is puny, and it is constantly reacting to problems rather than heading them off.”

            Whenever the DEP has stepped in to “enforce” the law, most of the time the fines are very low, even for the most serious of violations. The average fine is about $800 per incident. Nearly 80 percent of the fines were reduced after mining companies protested their fines.

            Over 20 years ago, in an investigative report, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward found that the West Virginia DEP did not know the amount of land of the Mountain State the had been permitted for mountaintop removal. The DEP did not even track the number of permits that it granted for mountaintop removal. Ward also found that one third of the acres to be mined by MTR in West Virginia were designated to be reclaimed for “fish and wildlife habitat,” a use that is not allowed under SMCRA.

In this latest development, the West Virginia Legislature, in a bow to the coal companies, passed weaker water quality standards last year. Instead of following protocol and submitting the new standards to the EPA for consideration, the group’s letter says that the DEP “has defiantly taken the indefensible position that [the new standards are] not a revision.” In the Kafkaesque world of West Virginia and coal, West Virginia’s DEP is saying that a revision to the rules is not a revision to the rules, even when the rules change.

The environmental groups contend in their letter that the EPA has the duty to ensure that state agencies properly perform their functions and do not abuse their powers. The group also contends that for the EPA to allow West Virginia to operate as it has gives a clear message to regulators and coal companies that they can continue to disregard our nation’s laws “without consequence.” They urge the agency to intervene in the case of West Virginia or otherwise be subjected to their lawsuit.

I cheer the West Virginia Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and their latest efforts. It is high time that the rule of law apply to the state of West Virginia and its mining companies.

Cap and Trade: Are Environmentalists to Blame For Its Failure in Congress?

Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol has written a post mortem on the cap and trade legislation that failed to pass Congress during Barack Obama’s first term. Accordingly, she recounts the environmental groups expected that serious cap and trade measures could become reality with Obama as President and a Congress that had enough legislators sympathetic to making climate legislation.

            But in her research paper, to be presented at a Harvard forum in February, Skocpol argues that the environmental organizations pushing for the legislation were caught off guard by the extreme GOP stance to their cause in Congress and were left flat footed by the emergence of the Tea Party.

            She compares the failure of cap and trade with the success of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, saying that health care reformers had experienced failure in the past and were willing to correct their strategies, whereas environmental organizations had experienced success—notably the passage of acid rain legislation under the first Bush presidency—and “eagerly anticipated building upon an earlier triumph during another political opening with a sympathetic president and woo-able legislators in both parties.”

            Knowing that Democratic members of Congress from coal and oil producing states would oppose cap and trade, the environmentalists’ plan was to lobby GOP legislators, as they had done in the past, hoping to pull enough of them away from their party’s stance to get the majority they needed.

            That did not happen. The environmentalists goofed. That’s at least how Skocpol surmises the situation.

            I believe that Skocpol is correct in her assessment that environmental groups did not fully anticipate the iron-fisted opposition by the GOP to their cause. And no one could have foreseen the rise of the Tea Party, which sprang up almost like a political deus ex machina and provided the grassroots (at least Astroturf) backing to the GOP/right wing/big business agenda.

            True the Affordable Care Act passed, but just barely. The Senate narrowly averted a filibuster on the bill. The legislation passed the House 219 to 212, with 34 of the no votes coming from Democrats. Had five more Democrats voted against the legislation, its fate would have been the same as cap and trade. The thing to remember is that the legislation received no GOP votes either in the House or in the Senate. No GOP votes. None. Nada.

            The way the press is characterizing Skocpol’s paper is that she is laying blame at the feet of the environmental organizations that worked on passing cap and trade, that they got the political landscape completely wrong. What she says has merit. And she is absolutely correct that environmental organizations need to work harder at engaging the larger public. On the other hand, can environmentalists be fully to blame when they are confronted with a party that has completely lost its collective mind? Can you point the finger at the National Resources Defense Council when Senator Inhofe argues against climate science with quotes from the bible? Is the Sierra Club the bad guy when the GOP fails to act with the barest minimum of responsibility?

The New York Times Eliminates Their Environmental Desk: Is This Bad News?

The New York Times has just announced that they are eliminating their environmental desk, with their environmental reporters and editors being assigned to other departments.

            Despite the tough times that all papers are facing today, the reason for the decision was not budgetary, says Dean Baquet, the New York Times’ managing editor for news operations. Since the desk was established, the paper says that news reporting is more “interdisciplinary,” having multiple aspects, such as business and economics. “They are more complex. We need to have people working on the different desks that can cover different parts of the story,” says Baquet.

            I can’t say for certain that this is a bad move on the part of the New York Times. Only time will tell. I fear that, without dedicated staff, some environmental stories will not make it to the pages of the Times. And, as well, stories about fracking or oil drilling in the Gulf could also lose their environmental focus.

            I don’t believe that the New York Times wants to diminish their coverage of the environment. The paper performed a similar restructuring with their education desk a few months ago. But I am troubled by the rationale that the paper gave for the change, that environmental stories are more “interdisciplinary” and no longer “singular and isolated,” as they had been when the desk was established. The environmental desk was only established in 2009. Have things changed that much in a little over three years to warrant this change? Have the stories of climate change and fracking become less “singular” in three years? Are oil spills more “interdisciplinary” than they had been in 2009? How have stories on efforts to save habitat changed? Are they no longer “singular and isolated?” I just don’t see there being that much change to the news stories on the environment.

We need good news coverage on the environment, and the United States is already underserved by its newspapers and other news sources. I hope that this move by the New York Times doesn’t further diminish our ability to stay informed on what is happening to our environment.

Senator Jay Rockefeller to Retire From Senate: This Is Not a Good Thing

West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller announced today that he will not be seeking a sixth term in the Senate, giving the usual line of spending more time with his family as the reason for his retirement from public office.

Rockefeller has, for the most part, been very supportive of the coal mining industry. In 2010 he introduced legislation that would have placed a two-year moratorium on the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. And he has taken no serious legislative action to restrict or slow down mountaintop removal.

            He has nonetheless been good at supporting miners. He says that the Senate achievement of which he is most proud is the measure he sponsored in 1992 that was aimed at preserving retirement benefits for miners and their widows and children.

            Despite his support for coal, the industry and its supporters are now accusing Rockefeller of abandoning them. Rockefeller supports his fellow Democrat, President Obama, who has made efforts to roll back some of the most egregious rule-making left over from the George W. Bush administration that gave coal companies almost carte blanche to tear down mountains, fill in valleys, and pollute the streams of Appalachia.

            It’s hard for me to feel bad about the retirement of a Senator who has supported mountaintop removal and scuttled action on global warming, but with Rockefeller’s retirement, the prospects for the mountains of Appalachia, as well as the health of the planet, may have worsened. Shelly Moore Capito, who currently represents West Virginia’s second congressional district, has vowed to run for Rockefeller’s seat. In a state that has swung from being solidly Democratic to being a GOP stronghold, her success in gaining this Senate seat is most assured. (Indeed, the politics of the state have shifted so far to the right that Rockefeller may have lost to Capito if he has chosen to run for a sixth term.)

Capito co-sponsored the “Stop the War on Coal Act,” that would, among other things, loosen rules for the storage of coal ash and gut aspects of the Clean Water Act. It’s a wish list for the coal industry. She has also authored legislation that would hamstring the EPA’s ability to do its job.

Rockefeller has been no environmental champion, but at least he hasn’t worked to worsen the situation in West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia. With his retirement, it looks like that’s exactly what we will get.

No More Excuses: Let the Children of Appalachia School You About Mountaintop Removal

This is from Appalachian Voices, an organization that works to protect the people and lands of Appalachia. Needless to say, they oppose mountaintop removal. Go ahead watch the video.

I’d like to see this go viral and get more hits than Gangnam Style. All the figures and statistics that that the children tell us, all in less than two minutes, are accurate. They are also frightening. No child should live with these threats to life and health.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute Wants You to Think That They Care About People LOL

I’ve been meaning to get around to writing this post for a while, ever since September of this year, when I blogged about the 50^th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring. In the googling I did to research for that blog post, I ran across the site Rachel Was Wrong. Go ahead, click around the site if you like.

This site claims that, in pointing out the environmental and health consequences from the overuse of many pesticides, particularly DDT, Carson and Silent Spring “generated a culture of fear, resulting in policies have (sic) deprived many people access to life-saving chemicals. In particular, many nations curbed the use of the pesticide DDT for malaria control because Carson created unfounded fears about the chemical.”

The site suggests that millions of deaths from malaria might be avoided had the US not banned DDT and the rest of the world restricted its use. Malaria is a serious health concern. Each year, worldwide, more than 200 million people contact malaria, and more than half a million people die each year from the mosquito borne disease, with more than 90 percent of these cases and deaths occurring in Africa. That Africa suffers the most from malaria is reflected in the logo of Rachel Was Wrong, a mosquito biting into the African continent.

DDT or other pesticides are not necessary for malaria eradication. As has been shown with the U.S. construction of the Panama Canal and the eradication of malaria from the South through the U.S. Public Health Service and the Tennessee Valley Authority, malaria is best fought through organized government efforts, efforts that sometimes span decades. DDT is still used in many parts of the world for malarial control. Its use is complicated, with demonstrated health consequences for humans and environmental damage, while it can be successful in stemming the occurrence of malaria or can serve as a part of a program for the disease’s eradication.[i]

Rachel Was Wrong is a website placed upon the Internet by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). CEI has been around since 1984. That they would attack Rachel Carson and her work is unsurprising. This organization has a track record of anti-environmentalism. In 2003 the institute worked to quash a report on global warming that had been published in 2000. In 2005 they supported a bill that would have severely weakened the Endangered Species Act. They are loath to credit environmental regulation with any success. In May of 1998, during a fairly upbeat time when more than 20 imperiled plants and animals had recovered so well that they were about to be delisted as endangered, Brian Seashole, a CEI spokesman, said that the eagle, peregrine, and other species, “have recovered despite the ESA, not because of it.”[ii]

On the Rachel Was Wrong website photographs of children, all of them African, give the impression that CEI is a compassionate organization, trying to right the wrongs of misguided environmentalists. But this organization’s positions have not been ones to enhance health or well-being. They have supported the tobacco industry, on one occasion trying to obfuscate the findings of a 1994 study that found that as many as 3000 American lives are shortened each year from the passive inhalation of tobacco smoke.

Just this year CEI published an op-ed in USA Today opposing increased inspection of slaughterhouses and farms and the adoption of risk prevention controls in food production to stem the incidence of food borne diseases. A 1997 study found that hundreds of thousands of premature deaths could be prevented each year by curbing the emission of greenhouse gasses and particulate matter into the atmosphere. CEI dismissed the findings, saying, “effect of particulates on health is controversial.”[iii]

So is CEI helping Africa? The cigarette companies that they support are opening markets in Africa, with some health organizations predicting a "tobacco epidemic" on the horizon there. The oil companies that back the CEI are causing great environmental damage in Africa, with corresponding human suffering and loss of life.

Like the beggars in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who are shown to be faking their lameness and blindness to gain the alms of their fellow Parisians, Rachel Was Wrong is a similar dishonest ruse, giving us the impression that CEI cares about suffering children, when they don’t care in the slightest.

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[i] Bouwman, Hindrik, Henk van den Berg, and Henrik Kylin. "DDT And Malaria Prevention: Addressing The Paradox." Environmental Health Perspectives 119.6 (2011): 744-747. Environment Complete. Web. 25 Dec. 2012.

[ii] Hebert, Josef. “Bald eagle, peregrine, and others leaving endangered list.” Ludington Daily News May 6, 1998 page 6 print

[iii] “Study: Emission curbs would save lives” The Tuscaloosa News November 7, 1997 page 8A print

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[i] Bouwman, Hindrik, Henk van den Berg, and Henrik Kylin. "DDT And Malaria Prevention: Addressing The Paradox." Environmental Health Perspectives 119.6 (2011): 744-747. Environment Complete. Web. 25 Dec. 2012.

[ii] Hebert, Josef. “Bald eagle, peregrine, and others leaving endangered list.” Ludington Daily News May 6, 1998 page 6 print