OPINION/COMMENTARY

Stopping the Real Pests

It's great news that most Americans now identify themselves as environmentalists. Unfortunately, a small number have embraced environmentalism with religious fervor, basing their beliefs more on faith and dogma than on science and data.

Not unlike fundamentalists engaged in a jihad against unbelievers, these radical environmentalists pursue an agenda that has less to do with protection of the environment than with antipathy toward business, profits, and certain products and technologies. Ironically, their efforts to achieve their own narrow vision of what constitutes a "good society" often are inimical to protection of the environment -- a variation on the admission by Peanuts cartoon character Linus van Pelt, "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand."

For example, exploiting a technicality that links the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to pesticide registration, environmental groups have filed a spate of nuisance lawsuits that attempt to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from registering or re-registering pesticides. These suits take advantage of a legal technicality that links pesticide registration to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). They allege that by failing to put in place a process for consultation with the federal agencies that administer the ESA -- the National Marine Fisheries Service and Fish & Wildlife Service -- before registering a pesticide, the EPA has not complied fully with the law. This in spite of the fact that the Fish & Wildlife Service's ESA Consultation Handbook makes it clear that "[t]he Services cannot force an action agency to consult."....

Democrats Dodge Campaign Finance Law with Environment 2004

Taking advantage of campaign finance laws that restrict direct contributions to political candidates but allow unrestricted contributions to “issues” advocacy, several former Clinton administration officials have begun raising money to target President George W. Bush’s environmental record during the upcoming election.

Referring to itself as “Environment 2004,” the new group consists of such Clinton notables as former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and former Undersecretary of Global Affairs Frank Loy. Environment 2004 has so far raised $500,000 to attack the Bush environment record and has set a goal of raising $5 million by the November 2004 election.

According to the December 5 Chicago Tribune, “The organization is structured to take advantage of loopholes in campaign finance laws that allow independent interest groups to gather unlimited ‘soft money’ contributions that candidates and political parties are no longer allowed to accept.”....

Glacier National Park Ruling Voids Property Rights

However, in December 1999, the NPS sent McFarland an email informing him “that no one will drive park roads once they are closed to the public.” Though McFarland believes he has the right to use Glacier Route 7, he was willing to compromise. On January 6, 2000, he filed a special use permit application asking the NPS’s permission to use a vehicle or snowmobile to travel between his home and the Polebridge Ranger Station. On January 24, 2000, the NPS summarily denied that application.

McFarland sued. First, because he claims an easement in Glacier Route 7, with which the NPS interfered, he sued under the Quiet Title Act, by which Congress authorized landowners to get title to property to which the government asserts an adverse claim. Second, because the NPS arbitrarily and capriciously denied his special use permit, he sued under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

Recently, a Montana federal district court dismissed McFarland’s case. The court ruled he had filed beyond the Quiet Title Act’s 12-year statute of limitations, which, according to the district court, began to run in 1976 when the NPS restricted the general public’s ability to use Glacier Route 7 north of Polebridge Ranger Station. Though the NPS gave McFarland complete access to Glacier Route 7, he should have known, reasoned the court, that the NPS believed it could deny him that right. The court also dismissed the APA claim because the Quiet Title Act is “the exclusive means” of resolving property disputes. Both rulings are legally suspect and terrible public policy....

Want to know why “that dog won’t hunt”?

Congress passed a new law requiring that everyone in New York and California allow at least ten mice and two hundred cockroaches to live in their homes.

I am just kidding. Congress didn’t really do that, but wouldn’t it be fun, just for once, to let them know what if feels like to have other people dictate how to live? It will never happen, because “that dog won’t hunt” (an unworkable idea), any more than the prairie dog hunts.

Prairie dogs are proposed for listing under the endangered species act. They will receive additional attention this year, because Lewis and Clark “discovered” the prairie dog two hundred years ago. Lewis and Clark noted in their journal that the French called them “petite chien”, which means “small dog”.

Actually, the prairie dog is a rodent belonging to the same family as tree squirrels, chipmunks and ground squirrels (or as I call them “gophers”)....

The Terror of "Animal Rights"

The "animal rights" movement is celebrating its latest victory: an earlier, more painful death for future victims of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease.

Thanks to intimidation by animal rights terrorists, Cambridge University has dropped plans to build a laboratory that would have conducted cutting-edge brain research on primates. According to *The Times* of London, animal-rights groups "had threatened to target the centre with violent protests ... and Cambridge decided that it could not afford the costs or danger to staff that this would involve."

The university had good reason to be afraid. At a nearby animal-testing company, Huntingdon Life Sciences, "protestors" have for several years attempted to shut down the company by threatening employees and associates, damaging their homes, firebombing their cars, even beating them severely....

Time To Cowboy Up on Extremists

Among the many excesses of radical environmentalism, few can match its unremitting opposition to genetically modified crops.

Led by groups such as Greenpeace, the radicals have displayed an astonishing callousness to suffering and starvation in the Third World, and an even more astonishing ability to impact political decisions there.

In the fall of 2002, Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for Economic Development put it well. He was trying to ship maize to drought-stricken Zambia, where millions were in desperate need. But the Zambian government refused to distribute the maize because the Greenpeace-types had convinced them some of it might be genetically modified. Better to starve than take a chance on that, notwithstanding the fact there is no evidence GM maize represents any health hazard whatsoever. "They can play these games with Europeans, who have full stomachs, but it is revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at stake," Natsios said....

Separating people from their water

Agenda 21 represents a major fundamental change in the role of government in social and land-use policy. Under its concept of sustainability, the primary purpose of government will no longer be to serve the people. Rather, the focus of Agenda 21 is to protect nature from people. Governance will be by consensus among "stakeholders and partnerships." The concept of elected representation that holds the government accountable to the citizens will be eliminated.

Agenda 21 requires that by 2000, "All States...have designed and initiated costed and targeted national action programmes, and to have put in place appropriate institutional structures and legal instruments" to implement Agenda 21. The Clinton Administration responded, creating the President's Council on Sustainable Development which published its report entitled Sustainable America in 1996. Chapter 18 of Agenda 21 requires that all States implement integrated watershed management plans "for the protection and conservation of the potential sources of freshwater supply, including ... protection of mountain slopes and riverbanks and other relevant development and conservation activities."

The Clinton Administration eagerly took up the challenge. In the U.S. State Department's 1997 report on its progress to the U.N., the U.S. proudly stated, "Agenda 21 sets ambitious objectives [for the United States to] ... move toward integrated water resource management, a holistic approach that treats water resources as an integral part of the ecosystem." Among the many programs spawned by Sustainable America to fulfill the fresh water protection requirements of Agenda 21 include the American Heritage Rivers (AHRI), and the Clean Water (CWI) initiatives. Neither program was voted on by the U.S. Congress. Instead, they are being implemented through executive order....