OPINION/COMMENTARY

Ninth Circuit Torches Sensible Forest Fire-Prevention

Nevertheless, in December, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a plan designed to head off the next out-of-control blaze by clearing trees that were scorched in the last one. The U.S. Forest Service plan had given the go-ahead for private logging of charred timber across just over 1,700 of the blackened acres. The reason: Forest managers don’t want to be confronted with “Star Fire - the Sequel.”

But there’s a species of self-described environmentalists who act as if they never met a forest fire they didn’t like, and one such group sued to stop the tree clearing. Although a federal district judge sided with the Forest Service, the enviros got their way before the Ninth Circuit. The judge writing for the 2-1 majority cited, among other issues, the continued “presence of owls” in the area as a possible reason to bar logging.

But how does it help owls or other species if the forest is allowed to remain a tinderbox? Burned trees serve as wildfire fuel, and wildfires kill owls, scorch their habitat and incinerate the small rodents that owls love to eat. On the other hand, quick removal of dead trees and reforestation of the area increases the species’ chances of long-term survival....

A Really Ugly Shade of Green

Dick Lamm, public policy gadfly and former Democratic governor of Colorado, is being denounced these days as a right-wing extremist, a neo-Nazi and a racist. "In all my years of public life, nobody has ever talked that way about me," he said. His offense is that he is one of three men running for the Sierra Club board of directors on a platform of limiting immigration to protect the environment. In response, the leadership of the club and its allies have been playing the race card with berserk ferocity. Among the charges are "environmental racism," and the "greening of hate," which presumably means that the three represent dark forces gussied up in environmental green. These arguments assume that any urge to cap or slow immigration is a form of anti-Latino or anti-Asian bigotry. "It's hate," the Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said of the splinter group endorsing the insurgent candidates. He also said the group, Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, is profoundly infected by "a virus."....

Clinton's EPA Chief Springs the Mercury Trap She Left

BACKGROUND: MoveOn.org, the Environmental Working Group Action Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council have announced what MoveOn.org terms a "hard hitting TV ad campaign" against "the President's proposed ten-year mercury cleanup delay."1

Carol Browner, who ran the EPA during the Clinton Administration, is participating in the project.

TEN SECOND RESPONSE: Although she served as President Clinton's EPA chief for eight years, Carol Browner never imposed a crackdown on power-plant mercury emissions. But between Bush's election and inauguration, she proposed an expensive, technically infeasible mercury plan -- for her successor. It was an effort to trap Bush by giving him the choice of imposing a draconian policy -- or face condemnation by the left for supposedly being "weak" on the environment.

THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE: MoveOn.org is an anti-Bush organization, as its ad campaigns make clear. What it doesn't make clear is that the Bush Administration has proposed a plan to cut power plant mercury emissions by 40 percent by 2010, and 70 percent by 2018.2 But a mercury crackdown doesn't matter as much as people are being led to believe. Researchers recently failed to find any mercury-related health effects among regular consumers of swordfish, the most likely source of mercury exposure among Americans....

Federal Regulations Pump up Gasoline Prices

The stage is set for sky-high gasoline prices this summer. We probably won't threaten the inflation-adjusted record of $2.90 per gallon set in 1981, but all signs point to bad news for motorists in the months ahead.

And despite the implications of $40 fill-ups so close to the fall elections, the federal government continues to contribute to the problem.

What you pay at the pump is determined by the price of crude oil, the cost of refining the oil into gasoline and transporting it your local gas station, and fuel taxes. Of these, the largest factor is the cost of oil, which is responsible for more than 40 percent of the retail price for gas.

In recent years, Washington has imposed a bewildering variety of regulations, mostly designed to make gasoline cleaner-burning. Each adds to the cost of producing gasoline.

Further, federal and state regulators now mandate numerous unique gasoline recipes for different parts of the country, turning what was once an efficient national market into a patchwork of many smaller ones. The logistical burden of separately refining and distributing all these distinct blends strains the nation's already struggling motor fuel infrastructure, and adds another layer to the costs. This is particularly true in California and the upper Midwest, where the number and complexity of motor fuel requirements are the worst in the nation....

EARTH DAY--April 22: What It Means for Environmental Extremists

Earth Day is April 22—a good time to be reminded of just what radical environmentalists really stand for.

Consider this proposition: Environmental policy should be grounded in the needs of people, scientific facts, and constitutional rights—especially the right to own and use private property. Certainly, Pacific Legal Foundation stands for that.

Now consider another proposition: Environmental policy should be grounded in the control of people, politicized “junk science,” and a disregard for constitutional rights for the sake of advancing a political agenda—namely, the closure of public land to human use and the control of private land by a central government that can be manipulated by massively funded lobbying efforts. For sure, PLF does not stand for that, yet most environmentalists do....

H2O No!

Monday was World Water Day. Many Americans are coming to recognize that managing water sustainably is one of America's leading environmental problems, far more significant than climate change. It is also more important to developing countries.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the notorious Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press 2001), argues money is far better spent solving water problems than trying to counter climate change. For while the former is a major environmental and health challenge, the latter is a low priority for most countries, and may even turn out to be a non-problem. The Kyoto Protocol alone would cost at least $150 billion dollars a year and not have an appreciable impact on the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. That money redirected to water policy would save countless lives....

Animal Wrongs

"We definitely did have plans to use violence against hunt people. But that got thwarted by our arrest ... I remember seriously wanting to go along those lines." In a chilling interview, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) miscreant John Curtin discusses burning buildings, raiding laboratories, desecrating graves, and plotting violence against people -- all tactics in ALF's vicious pursuit of animal rights. When asked if he ever received support from the above-ground "animal rights movement" while serving jail time for his crimes, Curtin responds: "The two are inseparable, really. [An] enormous amount of support ... sometimes an embarrassing amount of support."

America's most notorious animal rights fugitive is still on the run from authorities. Daniel Andreas San Diego has been featured prominently on America's Most Wanted and is sought in connection with the 2003 bombings of the Chiron and Shaklee Corporations in California. He is even accused of leaving a "secondary device," timed to go off once fire and rescue workers arrived on the scene. San Diego allegedly targeted those companies because of their business ties with a laboratory that uses animals in pursuit of cures for AIDS, breast cancer, and Parkinson's disease....