OPINION/COMMENTARY

APPEAL ARGUED IN ARIZONA SACRED PRIVATE LANDS CASE

The case of an Arizona man barred by Arizona officials from using his private property because of assertions by American Indians that his land is sacred, was argued today before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Dale McKinnon of Holbrook, Arizona, challenges a January 2003 ruling by an Arizona federal district court dismissing his lawsuit against Arizona officials because the regulation that they used is “facially constitutional.” McKinnon, whose company, Cholla Ready Mix, has been unable to extract aggregate for use in roads and bridges from Woodruff Butte, which McKinnon owns, argues that Arizona’s application of the regulation violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.

“The question before the district court was whether Arizona applied its regulation in an unconstitutional manner, not whether the regulation was, on its face, constitutional,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents McKinnon and his tiny company. “There is no question that the lawsuit should have been allowed to go forward; we are hopeful that the Ninth Circuit will agree and Mr. McKinnon will have his day in court. When that day comes, we are confident that a trial court will find that Arizona officials acted in an unconstitutional manner when they barred Mr. McKinnon from using his property because third parties think it is sacred. If the Establishment Clause bars anything, it bars such state action.”....

The Day After Tomorrow: Liberal utopia

So what will life be like this Saturday -- the day after "The Day After Tomorrow" opens?

Will Bush's reelection campaign be finished and John Kerry guaranteed the presidency, as the Guardian newspaper has predicted?

Will environmentalists seize their "teachable moment", harness a fearful and outraged public, and strongarm Congress into "seeing the light" and resuscitating the Kyoto Protocol?

In other words, will liberals get their fairy tale ending?

In a word: Nope....

For more views on the movie see Storm Warning, Will Tomorrow Ever Come? and Thank Poor Al Gore.

Putin Hits Russia’s Economic Future, Let’s Hope Senate Doesn’t in the U.S

Russia’s Academy of Science declared early last week: “The Kyoto Protocol has no scientific foundation.” Andrei Illarinov, economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been quite vocal in warning of the ill economic effects for Russia if that nation signs on to Kyoto.

Nonetheless, on Friday, May 21, Putin declared: “We are in favor of the Kyoto process, we support it.” The treaty, though, still has to be approved by Russia’s parliament. Putin chose to ignore his economic and science advisers. Why?

Well, it does not seem to be some deep commitment to the global warming cause. Instead, it was a case of political horse-trading. Putin wanted Western Europe’s support to gain entry into the World Trade Organization. Indeed, Putin declared on Friday: “The fact that the EU has met us halfway in negotiations on the WTO entry could not but have helped Moscow’s attitude to the question of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.”

While gaining entry to the WTO is important for Russia’s economy, so is avoiding the restrictions that would come with Kyoto. Putin’s best hope must be that without the U.S., Australia and all developing countries reducing and capping CO2 emissions, the Kyoto Protocol will amount to nothing more than mere symbolism, without any actual impact, in the end....

Are We Out of Gas?

With gasoline oil prices seemingly rocketing to Jupiter, and with newly-published books like "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" and "The End of Oil," it seems fair to ask if the world's fuel tank needle isn't finally tilting towards "E."

Let's get a little historical perspective. In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted American oil reserves would last merely a decade. In both 1939 and 1951, the Interior Department estimated oil supply at only 13 years. "We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," declared Pres. Jimmy Carter gloomily in 1977. In fact, the earliest claim that we were running out of oil dates back to 1855 -- four years before the first well was drilled!

Certainly supply isn't declining yet. "Proved" oil reserves increased from 677 billion barrels in 1982 to 1048 billion in 2002, a 55 percent increase. ("Proved" means quantities that with reasonable certainty can be recovered from known reservoirs under existing economic and operation conditions.) Meanwhile worldwide consumption increased only 13 percent.

That's not a particularly scary trend....

Advertising Wars in the Washington Post: Anti Fish Ad Blasted

Last week, Washington Post readers were exposed to old line bait and switch. The misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) ran an ad designed to scare consumers—hook, line and sinker—away from eating fish. Today the Center for Consumer Freedom exposes PCRM’s fishy claims with its own Post ad, exposing the self-described medical charity as a front group for the animal rights movement. PCRM has undeniable ties to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the radical group that wants to end all consumption of beef, chicken, pork, eggs, dairy food -- and even fish, one of the healthiest foods on Americans’ plates.

“Legitimate medical authorities like the American Heart Association and the American Dietetic Association recommend eating fish for better health,” said Center for Consumer Freedom Executive Director Richard Berman. “But PETA’s extremists care more about fish than people, so their pseudo-medical front group is muddying the waters with animal-rights arguments masquerading as medical science.”....

The Domino Theory, Redux

Exactly 50 years ago, the idea of the "domino theory" first found its way into popular discourse in the context of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. While it sounds a bit like a Cold War relic today, the phrase remains useful to explain certain events. Consider the activist Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) recently concluded four-year campaign against Citigroup, one of America's most respected financial institutions.

In 2000, RAN accused Citigroup of loaning money to economic development projects that were purportedly destroying the world's "remaining old growth forests" and "accelerat[ing] climate change." When Citigroup disputed the charges, RAN strategists went to work. Over the next four years, RAN staged dozens of anti-Citigroup stunts, including student rallies and boycotts, anti-Citigroup TV ads, and street protests. RAN activists also hung banners in front of Citigroup's New York headquarters and demanded that Citigroup not make loans to economic development projects in undeveloped regions of the world, to ensure that they remain pristine.

Last January, Citigroup gave in--it sued for peace. In exchange for an end to RAN's campaign, Citigroup promised to "promote higher environmental standards through its business practices," particularly in the areas of "endangered ecosystems, illegal logging, ecologically sustainable development, and climate change." Translation: Citigroup will no longer help finance projects that environmentalists don't like. It will help NGOs start drawing what an activist once referred to as "green lines" around poor countries, setting them off-limits for conventional forms of intense development....

Measuring Santa Monica's Feet

Back at the turn of the month Santa Monica City Council proudly announced that they had reduced the ecological footprint of their pleasant urb by 167 square miles. As the city occupies only 8.3 square miles, perhaps a little investigation is in order?

The concept of such footprints comes from a paper in PNAS in 2002, edited by one Edward O. Wilson of Harvard (a name and place to send shivers down the spines of the economically literate). In essence, an attempt is made to add up all the land needed to support various lifestyles and then compare that to the amount of land on the earth. As always with the ecologically correct the answer is that we ran out of land a decade ago and will all be dead by next Tuesday. Amazingly enough they do reach one vaguely correct conclusion via a series of woeful misunderstandings.

Their first error is that they regard resources as something that exist ab initio. There is great play made of the fact that there is only so much arable land to go around, and that it is this land that tends to get built on. This whole idea is of course completely ignorant. Resources are created by human beings via technology. As arable means "suitable for ploughing" it is obvious that before we invented the plough and agriculture some 10,000 years ago there was no such thing as "arable land." There was just "land. " Further, we increased the supply of arable land with the invention of deep ploughing methods by varied tribes and the associated deforestation of northern Europe, again with the invention of the cast iron plough which allowed the prairies to be farmed and did it yet again last decade in opening up the Brazilian Cerrado with acid resistant strains of crop....

Polls Show Little Interest in Green Agenda

American voters are generally happy with the condition of their local environment and the performance of their elected representatives on environment issues, according to several recent public opinion polls. As a result, the polls show, environment issues rank near the bottom of concerns for American voters this election season.

According to Gallup's annual Earth Day poll, 35 percent of Americans fret over the current state of the environment. The number of Americans who worry a "great deal" or "fair amount" about the environment has dropped 15 points since Gallup's 2001 poll.

According to Gallup, fewer than half of poll respondents felt environmental protection should take priority over economic matters. A "record low proportion of Americans have chosen environmental protection over economic growth," reported Gallup.

Gallup's Lydia Saad, one of the architects of the Earth Day poll, noted, "for whatever reason, the public doesn't see the environment worsening, and that's why it's not getting a lot of attention."....

Small Businesses Fear the day after "McCain-Lieberman"

The idea that the United States Senate would even consider voting on legislation that would dramatically raise U.S. energy costs for small businesses and consumers seems rather outlandish, right? Why would the U.S. Senate vote on legislation that would reverse the progress made on our economic recovery and hurt U.S. competitiveness? At the same time that our political leaders are concerned about the future of our job creating capacity and jobs “going overseas” why would they advance policies that result in sending more abroad?

If you are similarly concerned -- as small businesses are -- about a future of high energy costs, losing U.S. jobs and making our small businesses less competitive in the global marketplace, we urge you to vote against the Climate Stewardship Act (S. 139).

The Senate wisely rejected this measure in October 2003, and should do so again....