OPINION/COMMENTARY

Flushing Out Eco-Terrorism

An epidemic of eco-terror is rapidly spreading across America, and it is time for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether these criminal activities are being illegally bankrolled by tax-exempt money.

In August, fires set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) gutted a warehouse at an auto dealership and destroyed 20 Hummers and damaged 20 others at a California auto dealership, resulting in $2.5 million in losses.. Vehicles were spray-painted with slogans like “Fat, Lazy Americans.” In September, ELF "activists" torched six homes under construction and burned down an apartment complex in San Diego County.

All told, in August and September alone, ELF’s acts of eco-terrorism have cost individuals and businesses some $54 million, the most damage ever inflicted by eco-terrorism in a two-month period. The FBI has now declared ELF the nation’s most threatening homegrown terrorist organization.

A related group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), targets laboratories that conduct vital scientific research on animals. Walter Low, a researcher at a University of Minnesota laboratory, noted that a recent ALF attack on his facility “has set back two years research conducted there on Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.”...

Up In Smoke

...The post-mortem on the fires should lead to the most brutal review of the federal Endangered Species Act in its 30 year history. Nowhere more so than in southern California has more time and money has been invested in the idea that government bureaucrats (working with environmental activists, using the money scalped from landowners) can build a better nature than local governments and the market would otherwise deliver. The stubborn fact is California has never had fires of this magnitude. Now that the federal government is running a huge portion of land use, disaster strikes.

The core problem is that species protection prohibits many ordinary fire precautions. You cannot clear coastal sage scrub, no matter how dense, if a gnatcatcher nests within it--unless the federal government provides a written permission slip which is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. The same prohibition lurks behind every species designation, and can even apply to land on which no endangered species has ever been seen but about which allegations of "potential occupation" have been made.

The land that has passed into "conserved" status is at even greater risk of fire than private land that is home to a protected species because absolutely no one cares for its fire management policy. The scrum of planners, consultants, and G-11s that put together the plans should be monitoring these areas closely. Instead, they regulate and move on to savage the property rights of the next region.

THE MOST PRESSING QUESTION for the federal government after the fires are put out will be the number of acres of land burned which had already been set aside for species conservation purposes. Whatever that number is, it will be a challenge to the drafters of the plans to provide evidence that they had anticipated the conserved acres being charred. Of course they didn't, but that won't protect the guilty from intoning about the natural benefits of fire. In their acquisitiveness, the planners have focused only on locking up land against development, not in protecting it from devastating fire. The nakedness of their error is found in the very plans they developed, which lack comprehensive fire management programs and the means to carry them out...

Senate's Economic Horror Story? The Senate considers carbon dioxide caps on U.S. industry

With Halloween fast approaching, the Senate appears to be all tricks and no treats. Topping the list is the Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) proposal to cap carbon dioxide emissions. The “Climate Stewardship Act,” which was open for debate in the Senate on Thursday, October 29, seeks to address concerns about global warming. The problem is, the science behind global warming theory is far from complete, and the scientific community continues to identify uncertainties and problems with existing theories about global warming. On the other hand, the costs of measures such as the Lieberman-McCain proposal and the Kyoto Protocol are not inconsequential; passing such proposals is sure to be a trick, not a treat, for all consumers.

The Lieberman-McCain bill is an attempt to push the United States closer to implementing the Kyoto Protocol, a global warming treaty that seeks to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases primarily by reducing the use of fossil fuels. The Climate Stewardship Act takes a similar approach, seeking to cap emissions at 2000 levels from 2010 to 2015 (Phase I) and capping emissions at 1990 levels beginning in 2016 (Phase II). Perhaps the biggest trick in the legislation will be a proposal to eliminate Phase II and its more severe cutbacks in energy emissions. But with the administrative and enforcement mechanisms already established in Phase I, how likely is it that environmentalists and future Congresses will resist the urge to pass future legislation to implement Phase II?...

Worried Warriors?

"Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?" ask the enthusiastic young people who often waylay pedestrians on Washington, D.C.'s Farragut Square. Knowing a bit about the organization, I normally answer, "Not even a second." But the rainbow warriors might soon be facing several years to think about their actions.

A nonprofit watchdog organization, Public Interest Watch, after investigating Greenpeace's finances, recently filed a complaint with the IRS alleging that Greenpeace has "illegally solicit[ed] millions of dollars in tax-deductible contributions." As those young activists might say, "Uncool!"

Greenpeace has changed a great deal since its founding in the early 1970s. It began as a group dedicated to ensuring conservation by confronting people with the facts while maintaining a neutral position politically. It has now become a different beast entirely. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore left the movement after 15 years "to switch from confrontation to consensus… to stop fighting and start talking with the people in charge." However, he notes, "this would bring me into open and direct conflict with the movement I had helped bring into the world. I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology… The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric."

Moore is not alone. Greenpeace began as several different organizations, most of which consolidated into Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International. However, one of the original bodies, Greenpeace Foundation, Inc., based in Hawaii, refused to do so. Like Moore, Greenpeace Foundation is openly critical of Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International, whom they accuse of deceptive fundraising tactics, anti-Americanism, and failure to do much for wildlife preservation (especially in the case of dolphins)...