OPINION/COMMENTARY

Are We Crossing Hubbert's World Peak?

World oil prices pushed up to $67 a barrel last week. Is it just a seasonal phenomenon, a reflection of summer driving patterns, a sign of Saudi intransigence, a conspiracy by the oil companies? Perhaps. But far more likely, it has something to do with Hubbert's Peak. In 1956, Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbert made a startling prediction. Judging from the rate new oil was being discovered, he predicted American oil production would reach its peak in 1969. The prediction received little attention. After all, people had been predicting that oil would eventually run out since Colonel Drake drilled the first well at Titusville in 1859. These pessimistic forecasts had always proved wrong. But Hubbert had some logic on his side. A veteran prospector, he had noticed that - largely because of requirements by the Securities Exchange Commission - oil companies did not immediately add new discoveries to their official "reserves" as soon as they were found but parceled them out year by year. This created the illusion that new oil was continuously being found. In fact, said Hubbert, when oil reserves were assigned to the year in which they discovered, a startling fact emerged. American oil discoveries had peaked in 1935 and declined steadily since then. Probably well over half the oil that was ever going to be discovered had already been found. Calculating that production usually followed discovery in a 40-year cycle, Hubbert predicted American oil production would peak in 1969. He was off by one year....

Animal terrorism

International terrorism, exemplified by the September 11 attacks and most recently in London, may pose the greatest security threat facing America. But domestic terrorists also lurk among us, mostly in the guise of animal-rights and environmental activists. They "see themselves in a war against the entire government and industrial democracy itself," explains Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. Frankie Trull, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, notes: "These are unbelievably mean-spirited people" who "operate in a classic terrorist organization mode." Over the last decade, the Animal Liberation Front has committed 700 criminal acts, according to the FBI. ALF activists recently broke into a car belonging to a pharmaceutical executive's wife, stole her credit cards and charged $20,000 in charitable "donations." At the University of Iowa, ALF members destroyed laboratory equipment, removed animals, ruined research papers and threatened school employees. Slightly less extreme is Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), which focuses only on the one company. Last month six SHAC members went on trial for allegedly vandalizing autos and homes and attacking computer and fax systems. The judge sealed the jurors' names to prevent any harassment of them. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has begun to mimic SHAC's tactics. For instance, PETA has accosted Kentucky Fried Chicken executives, intimidated company advertising pitchmen and breached KFC events....

Endangered Species Act Reform Project

The Endangered Species Act—motivated by good intentions and inspired by high-minded visions of responsible environmentalism—has proven in practice to be a bad law. As now structured, it cheapens humanity and produces unconscionable results that defy common sense. Most people would agree, including Pacific Legal Foundation, that saving significant species and protecting the environment are important public policy issues. However, the top responsibilities of government are to protect human life and preserve individual freedom. Those values must never be jeopardized or otherwise denigrated or subordinated to animals, plants or insects. Yet throughout America, peoples’ lives and their livelihoods are jeopardized by the federal bureaucracy’s inflexible regulations and enforcement actions under a harsh law that needs to be questioned—and challenged—on ethical/moral grounds, on constitutional grounds and on common sense grounds. PLF has established a special program that systematically puts the Endangered Species Act on trial. The program has two key components: litigation and public education....

Who's Afraid of Scientific Methods?

People who consider themselves very rational argue that most disputes about what is true and what is not can be settled by calmly looking at the evidence and letting it guide them to the proper conclusion. However, many who claim to be adherents of the scientific method seem to lose their "scientific objectivity" in some of the great debates of the day. The global warming debate is a glaring example of where many enthusiasts have lost all sense of the scientific method in reaching their conclusions. Some European leaders have even implied President Bush and Americans are stupid for not embracing both the theology of global warming and their policy solutions, all designed to enhance state power. To rationally debate the issue, we should start by being modest about what we do and do not know. Arguably, it seems the globe has been very slowly warming in the last few decades. But remember: Only a couple of decades ago, many leading scientists -- like Carl Sagan -- warned us about global cooling. There is almost no agreement about the rate of this warming. There is also considerable disagreement about how much of the warming is man-made -- by increasing CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels -- and dispute about how much of the additional CO2 will be absorbed by faster vegetation growth and the ocean. (It seems almost every month a new report contradicts some of the previous studies about the above questions -- which is not unexpected, given our rudimentary understanding of climatic forces.)....

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

This month, briefs will be filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a case that may resolve what has been, over the last year, a constitutional anomaly. In 2004, one Ninth Circuit panel held that a Latin cross, erected on federal lands to honor those who gave their lives in World War I, violated the Establishment Clause and must be removed. Later, another Ninth Circuit panel held that Arizona’s designation of private property as sacred to American Indians and off limits to use did not violate the Establishment Clause and could stand! Thus, “no” to Christianity; “yes” to pantheism. The Ninth Circuit refused to hear the Arizona case en banc to resolve this conflict. Now comes a case from a Nevada federal district court that could force another Ninth Circuit panel to decide which panel’s view of the Establishment Clause is correct. The case, Access Fund v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, et al., challenges the district court’s ruling that the Forest Service’s decision to close Cave Rock at Lake Tahoe to all climbing because it is sacred to some American Indians does not violate the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. In rejecting the climbers’ constitutional argument, the Nevada federal district court relied on the Ninth Circuit panel’s ruling in the Arizona sacred private lands case. Held the Nevada court: “The Establishment Clause does not require government to ignore the historical value of religious sites[;] protecting culturally important Native American sites has historic value for the nation as a whole because of the unique status of Native American Societies in North American history.” However, the Nevada district court’s ruling ignores that, for the past 30 years, the “history” and “culture” associated with religious symbols embraced by governments have not saved them from court rulings that those governments had abandoned their constitutionally required neutrality....

Kyoto Shock

Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol love to portray the Bush administration as heartless and stubborn for refusing to sign onto the environmental treaty. After all, what could be bad about “the last, best chance to save the world from the ‘time bomb’ of global warming,” as the Kyoto Protocol has been dubbed by its proponents? Plenty, the government of New Zealand has discovered. The agreement, which went into effect in February of this year, requires party countries to “reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels or buy carbon credits, based on a cost per tonne of carbon.” In other words, either play or pay. The practical result? New Zealand, which produces just 0.2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, will have to buy at least $500 million worth of carbon credits, according to a new government report. This came as a bit of a shock: an initial government report grossly underestimated New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions growth and accordingly projected that the country would receive as much as $500 million in revenue from other nations wishing to purchase extra carbon emissions credits. Unfortunately, the country now finds itself at the other end of the exchange; in order to remain in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand might be forced to purchase up to $1.2 billion in carbon credits from other nations, according to an analysis by the consulting firm PWC. As this suggests, adopting the Kyoto Protocol would well have significant financial consequences for the United States—on a much, much larger scale....

Environmental Science Book a Good Buy for All

Environmental Science is a well-written, comprehensive text for both academic and general consumption. Dr. Barbara Murck writes with the clarity of one who actually understands all the science she describes. With textbook costs rising, this paperback is one of the best buys in science education to come along in decades, at $19.95. The author explains environmental science with almost complete objectivity, instead of the left-leaning, ax-grinding approach seen in so many books supported by environmental advocacy groups. She brings together the basic disciplines of biology, geology, chemistry, and physics to bear on the interdisciplinary fields of hydrology, climatology, oceanography, meteorology, and soil science. The book is a wonderful primer for first-time students at either the high school or college level, and is an outstanding refresher for the professional environmental scientist, who may benefit by brushing up on weak areas in his knowledge base. The illustrative support for each chapter is unique in its reliance on beautifully hand-drawn diagrams more detailed and understandable than the average computer drawing....

Pleistocene Park: Silly Nonsense or Deadly Serious?

Last Thursday’s issue of the noted scientific journal Nature woke the world’s media out of their summer doldrums. A passel of ecologists and biologists from leading universities and institutes had proposed turning most of the American Great Plains into a gigantic laboratory, reintroducing the modern descendants of all the giant mammalian megafauna that roamed the Pleistocene/Ice Age world. With mastodons, American camels, saber-toothed cats and American cheetahs long gone, they would fill that ecological "gap" and recreate that ecosysten of 10,000 years ago by reintroducing herds of Asian elephants, Bactrian (Mongolian) camels, African cheetahs and lions. A slow-month April Fool’s academic joke? Indeed not. Instead a deadly serious public launch of a visionary plan to remove man from his "creationist" pedestal and return him to his proper role as simply a naked ape, who had gotten out of biological balance with the rest of Earth’s creatures. For three decades this plan has been slowly evolving in the pervervid minds of radical Green activists from the open spaces of the rural Southwest and elitist leftist academics from the crowded confines of the urban Northeast -- united only in their belief that man was a plague on the planet, a cancer on the Earth, whose population must be contained and reduced, and the wildlands of pre-Columbian North Amerca restored by whatever means necessary. It’s a joint product of monkeywrenchers and urban planners. And modern civilization is its target.

Taxpayers Gave $2.6 Million to Panda-Studying Population-Control Advocate

One might expect the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to focus exclusively on advancing the health and development of humans—perhaps even with a special concentration on human children. But since 2001, NICHD, a subdivision of the National Institutes of Health, has provided $1,178,450 to a "Fisheries and Wildlife" professor for research focusing at least in part on "giant panda habitats" in China's Wolong Nature Reserve. NICHD, moreover, is not the only federal agency showering taxpayer money on this professor. A National Science Foundation grant that runs from 2002 to 2006 is scheduled to give him $1,111,407 to study the panda habitat, and another NSF grant in the 1990s paid him $321,055. The $1-million-plus NICHD grant is titled, "Human Population/Environment Interactions (China)." "Since 1975," says the NIH abstract for the grant, "Wolong's human population has grown 66%, but the number of households has increased 115%. Each household garners resources needed to live, particularly fuel wood for cooking and heating, from the surrounding landscape. In this study, we view population-environment interactions as the interrelationships among five major components: human population, forests, giant panda habitats, socioeconomic and institutional factors, and government policies." The separate $1-million-plus NSF grant is titled, "Complex Interactions Among Policies, People and Panda Habitat in the Wolong Nature Reserve Landscape." In total, U.S. taxpayers have granted the professor $2,610,912. Jianguo Liu, the scholar in question, holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Ecological Sustainability in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State....

Redesigning Trucks in Washington

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta proposed imaginative fuel efficiency standards for new SUVs, vans and pickups. This scheme would divide light trucks into a half dozen categories based on size, not weight. By 2011, the smallest so-called "truck" (a PT Cruiser) would have to attain 28.4 mpg, while the largest could get by with 21.3. Add a few inches, and the standards drop. Fatten up to 8,500 pounds, and there are no rules. A New York Times editorial, "Foolishness on Fuel," began with vital facts, but promptly switched to foolishness, as promised. The facts are that "cars and light trucks -- SUVs, vans and pickups -- account for roughly 40 percent of all United States oil consumption, which now amounts to about 20 million barrels a day. The same vehicles also account for more than one-fifth of the country's emissions of carbon dioxide." Since 58 percent of the oil we use is imported, while only 40 percent goes into cars, SUVs, vans and pickups, it follows that we would still be importing millions of barrels a day even if there were no passenger cars or trucks. Yet when it came to that other 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption, not to mention the other four-fifths of carbon dioxide, The New York Times had little to say. There was just the ritualistic hand-wringing over "minivans and SUVs, which are held to more lenient fuel economy standards." When it came to Mineta's new regulations, the editorial rightly noted these "are unlikely to make any serious dent in consumption." They couldn't possibly make a dent because SUVs, pickups and vans only account for half of the vehicles subject to such regulations. And half of 40 percent is just 20 percent of total oil consumption....