OPINION/COMMENTARY

EPA Loses Clean Air Case against TVA

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review an appellate court's determination that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exceeded its authority in seeking to enforce a controversial interpretation of the Clean Air Act (CAA) against the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

In 1999, the Clinton administration EPA decided to retroactively enforce against TVA a new interpretation of New Source Review (NSR) requirements of the Clean Air Act. EPA claimed TVA violated NSR 14 times between 1982 and 1996 when it performed work on nine of its power plants.

At the time TVA performed its contested maintenance, the federal government's longstanding interpretation of NSR did not require TVA to obtain an EPA permit or install best-available pollution abatement technology. Nevertheless, EPA filed an "administrative compliance order" in 1999 ordering TVA to install expensive new equipment and pay hefty fines for the maintenance work it had done.

TVA objected to retroactive enforcement of the new NSR interpretation and ultimately filed a federal suit seeking to prevent EPA from enforcing its compliance order. According to TVA, EPA had acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner in interpreting NSR and issuing its compliance order....

Federalism for Forests

On July 12th, the Bush Administration decided to devolve more decision-making over roadless areas to the states. The decision, which replaces the 2001 Clinton Roadless Area Conservation Rule, drew sharp rebuke from national environmentalist lobbyists such as the Wilderness Society. But such applied federalism (i.e. devolution of decision-making to the states) by the Bush Administration offers hope for better management of our forests by acting on the old maxim: think globally, act locally.

Historically, the Forest Service placed a high level of emphasis on local input in the management process. According to Roger Sedjo, a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. and world-renowned scholar on forest policy, this allowed for decision-making which recognized that forests near urban centers require different management than those in rural areas. (Sedjo’s research can be found here.) Similarly, forests in arid Arizona require different management than those in rain-washed Washington. Disregarding these basic common-sense concepts, the past fifty years’ forest policy has been one of centralized, one-size-fits-all management that has increasingly led to one-size-fits-no-one forests where increased disease and fire risk predominate over forest health....

State AGs Attempt to Hijack Climate Policy

Tomorrow, seven state attorneys general and counsel for New York City plan to file lawsuits against five major electric utility companies, asking that the courts require them to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. The plaintiffs seek, in effect, a version of emissions control policy repeatedly rejected by the Congress, most recently in the failed so-called “Climate Stewardship Act,” which was defeated on the floor of the U. S. Senate last October 30 by a 55 to 43 vote.

“The AGs are seeking to take over setting national policy from the Congress and the president. Moreover, the costs would largely be paid by residents of states other than those whose attorneys general are bringing the suit,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute....

Now They Want to Be Caesar: Eight State Attorneys General Decide to End-Run Legislatures, Set National Global Warming Policies Themselves

According to a press release announcing the events, "New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, New Jersey Attorney General Peter C. Harvey, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, Vermont Attorney General William H. Sorrell and the office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will announce on July 21, 2004 the filing of a major lawsuit to curb global warming in the United States, in conjunction with the attorneys general of California, Iowa and Wisconsin."(1)

The announcement, according to the release, is to take place at not one but four press conferences, to be held simultaneously at noon Eastern in New York City, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Des Moines.

Environmental policies properly are established by legislators voting in view of the public, not by lawyers in courtrooms....

Court decisions are blunt instruments and ill-suited for determining policies on such matters as global warming, where opinions are constantly undergoing change as new scientific knowledge is gained. The judicial branch, unlike the legislative, is not designed to accommodate the easy repeal or amendment of flawed policies....

Sir David King's Queenie Fit: Shutting Down Dissent

The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out.

The chairman of the conference told the press that the leader of the disruptive delegation "had brought several scientists along with him and he insisted that the program should include among the speakers only those scientists and no other. So, he came over, selected scientists at his discretion, scientists who were to be given the floor in his opinion and scientists who were to be denied an opportunity to speak." A top official of the host government commented, "For some participants the main goal was the search for the truth, understanding of real processes. Other people had the task of disrupting the seminar, so that other people who were seeking the truth could not do so."

Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences....

The Fight Over the Roadless Rule

The Bush administration set-off a political firestorm on July 12 when it announced that the Clinton administration's rule blocking road construction on 60 million acres of U.S. Forest Service lands will soon go up in smoke. The Bush administration plans to replace it with a regime that essentially allows a state's governor, in consultation with the U.S. Forest Service, to decide how much logging will occur on federal forest lands in that state. While environmentalists predictably went berserk and conservatives naturally applauded the re-embrace of states rights, both camps are increasingly lost in the intellectual woods.

For their part, the environmental lobby is brazenly rewriting history by suggesting that the National Forests are primarily there to save trees from the woodsman's axe. As environmentalist icon Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service, wrote in a speech for Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, "Forest protection is not an end in itself; it is a means to increase and sustain the resources of our country and the industries which depend on them." In short, the National Forests were created not to dance in but to cut in (the reason, by the way, that the Forest Service is an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and not the U.S. Department of the Interior). Public ownership was embraced because, back then, politicians were convinced that scientific management of the forests by federal rangers could maximize timber yields over the long run....

Pam Anderson's PETA Hypocrisy Hits the Editorial Page

"The Center for Consumer Freedom," writes the Wall Street Journal on this morning's editorial page, "raises a good question." [subscription required] Should "Baywatch" star and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) celebrity supporter Pamela Anderson be held to her own rhetorical standards? The buxom star has criticized NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. for endorsing KFC, saying: "When you take a multimillion-dollar endorsement from a company, you must also take some responsibility for the company's practices." But Anderson lends her name to the radical PETA, which supports the restaurant-firebombing Animal Liberation Front. And PETA also opposes research that may lead to a cure for Anderson's own disease.

The Journal points out a striking contradiction from the silicone-enhanced screen goddess. PETA opposes all animal testing:

That ought to be of interest to Ms. Anderson, who suffers from Hepatitis C, a virus that puts her at high risk for liver disease and liver cancer. The American Liver Foundation believes that animal testing is essential for finding a cure, and Ms. Anderson herself served in 2002 as grand marshal for an American Liver Foundation fund-raiser. Must have left her PETA T-shirt at home that day....

PARTNERS & AGENDAS

Why is it that Congressional Committees can find no one to oppose Federal Invasive Species Authority proposals? Such authority will jeopardize and probably spell doom for pheasants, chukars, Hungarian partridge, brown trout, Great Lakes salmon, largemouth bass west of the 100th meridian, and other such critters that grace the walls of Cabelas and Bass Pro and sportsmen’s family rooms and dinner tables across the country. Where are the Pheasants Forevers and the shotgun and fishing tackle manufacturers? Where are the guides and outfitters and rural folks who profit from and enjoy the presence of these welcome species brought here from far away to enhance our lives? Where are the State fish and wildlife agencies that manage and profit from the uses of these species?

Why is it that growing Endangered Species complaints ignore the impacts of wolves on deer and elk and other game? Why is it that decreasing permit availability for big game is blamed on weather and “too many formerly” and habitat change and everything EXCEPT the growing wolf densities in these areas? Why is it that Universities and State fish and wildlife agencies (with one or two exceptions) rubber stamp Federal wolf “experts” forecasts that are patently untrue about future wolf behavior and future management relief of serious problems? Where are the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundations and Deer Hunters organizations as future decreases in big game availability become realities?

Why is it that the explosion of Federal land acquisition in recent years is not questioned by State fish and wildlife agencies or sportsmen’s organizations? The increasing Federal acreage and increasing Federal control of State lands purchased with Federal funding (even only in part) coupled with increasing inaccessibility; decreasing fish, wildlife, and forest management; increasing elimination of the full gamut of human uses; and the decrease in fish and wildlife numbers, diversity, and habitats seems of no importance when mention of the old saw about “save the dirt” is brought up....