OPINION/COMMENTARY


Celebrities Cause Frogs to Croak?

Could it be that celebrities are planting the forests that are causing the global warming that is growing the fungi that are wiping out the frogs? Global warming alarmists may be compelled to consider that chain of causation this week thanks to two new studies just published in the journal Nature (Jan.12). In the first study, Max Planck Institute researchers reported their discovery that living plants emit into the atmosphere methane (natural gas), the third most important greenhouse gas behind water vapor and carbon dioxide. Until this discovery, scientists thought the methane in the atmosphere was largely produced by bacterial processes not involving oxygen. But the Max Planck researchers report that living plants – two-thirds of which are in tropical rainforest regions – produce 10 to 30 percent of annual global methane production. The implications of this study are stunning. This is all bad news for the movie and rock stars – including Leonardo DiCaprio, the Foo Fighters, Dido, and Simply Red to name a few – who have decided to plant “All Celebrity Forests” in hopes of offsetting their personal carbon dioxide emissions in order to avoid contributing to global warming. And the news seems to get worse for these so-called “carbon neutral” celebrities. The other Nature study reported that global warming is promoting the growth of the chytrid fungus in parts of Central and South America that, as Reuters headlined (Jan. 11), is “wiping out frogs.” Since we now know that living plants emit lots of methane – which global warming alarmists maintain contributes to global warming – one could reason that all those celebrity-planted forests may be taking their toll in frog casualties. Ironically, an analysis of the Nature frog study published in World Climate Report (WCR) – a long-time nemesis of the global warming alarmist crowd – would seem to let the stars off the hook. First, WCR points out that, while humans may be to blame for the chytrid fungus thriving in areas where the alleged frog extinctions occurred, it’s quite likely that the human activity in question is eco-tourism and field research, according to a 1999 study published in the journal Emerging and Infectious Diseases – not the burning of fossil fuels....

PLF Files Lawsuit To Remove Marbled Murrelet from Endangered Species List

Pacific Legal Foundation announced today it has filed a lawsuit to force the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the tri-state marbled murrelet (the murrelet populations of Washington, Oregon, and northern California) from the endangered species list. PLF says that the service has failed to issue any formal proposal to delist the murrelet, despite its legal duty and its announcement last October that it would do so by the end of the year. PLF is bringing the legal action on behalf of Coos County, Oregon, one of many communities in the Pacific Northwest that has had its economy needlessly hamstrung by regulations to protect the seabirds, which never should have been listed to begin with. Marbled murrelets are found from northern California through British Columbia and up to Alaska. For the past 13 years, the service has improperly treated the birds in the United States as separate from birds across the Canadian border—ignoring as much as 90% of the murrelet population. By some estimates, that’s nearly 1 million birds. According to PLF, the service acknowledged that listing the murrelet as threatened was dubious back when it was originally listed in 1992. Nevertheless, the agency has failed to take action to remove it from the list, despite changes in the law in 1996 and a species review in 2004 that should have made delisting pro forma. "Birds don’t have passports," said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Scott Shepard. "The Fish and Wildlife Service’s division of the murrelet species at the Canadian border has always been artificial. The species was never threatened—and should never have been listed in the first place."....

A predisposition to overregulate

When Ronald Reagan inveighed against Big Government the American people nodded their heads in strong agreement. Not only had government become too intrusive in people's lives, it had become arrogant and drunk with power and pride. Sadly, too many government agencies and their officials continue to strut like tin-pot dictators rather than servants of the public. A perfect example is the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). The SCAQMD is the regional air-quality regulatory agency for the counties of Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino. For years, the agency has been the scourge of many in the business community and has been accused of everything from institutional bias to out-and-out opposition to industrial expansion. However, it is not just the positions taken by the SCAQMD that make it so frustrating to those in the private sector. It is the attitude that comes with those policies that make the agency so infuriating. Bill Whalen, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who specializes in California public policy, has noted that the SCAQMD is too often guilty of hubris, which Webster's defines as exaggerated pride or self-confidence resulting in retribution. Whalen says this hubris stems from the fact that in California "the sad legacy of excessive government is an instinct to overregulate." This instinct becomes especially prominent when a government agency feels that other, even bigger agencies, are invading its turf. As Whalen observes, "it's the smaller fish who think they rule the sea." The SCAQMD's small-fish-big-ego mentality was on full display in its recent childish response to an agreement between the California Air Resources Board and the railroad industry....

THE WAR AGAINST SUBURBIA

Suburbia, the preferred way of life across the advanced capitalist world, is under an unprecedented attack -- one that seeks to replace single-family residences and shopping centers with an "anti-sprawl" model beloved of planners and environmental activists. The latest battleground is Los Angeles, which gave birth to the suburban metropolis, says Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow with the New America Foundation.

Many in the political, planning and media elites are itching to use the regulatory process to turn L.A. into a dense, multi-story metropolis. Experts differ on the impact of these regulations, but it certainly has not created the new urbanist nirvana widely promoted by proponents of these policies.

According to Kotkin, suburbia has not been crushed, but simply pushed farther away:

* Since 2000, notes analyst Wendell Cox, New York City has gained less than 95,000 people while the suburban rings have added over 270,000.
* Much of the growth credited to "cities" has actually taken place in the suburb-like fringes.
* Nowhere is the commitment to low-density living greater than in the United States; roughly 51 percent of Americans, according to recent polls, prefer to live in the suburbs.

It is time politicians recognized how their constituents actually want to live, says Kotkin. If not, they will only hurt their communities, and force aspiring middle-class families to migrate even further out to the periphery for the privacy, personal space and ownership that constitutes the basis of their common dreams.

Source: Joel Kotkin, "The War Against Suburbia," Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2005.

For WSJ text (subscription required):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113720150260446647.html

For free version:

http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=2823


Kyoto Bad for the Environment

The U.S. dropped its signature from the Kyoto treaty because arbitrary emissions targets are both pointless and economically damaging. No proof exists that lower emissions reduce global warming. Indeed, the idea that human activity influences climate change one way or another is dubious, given the overwhelming role nature itself plays in atmospheric changes. And if the centuries-old warming trend continues — by no means a certainty — it might well be a boon to humanity. The Japanese of Sapporo, buried under house-high snow banks at the moment, might think so. Consider Denmark, home of the EU’s environmental watchdog. Rather than reduce levels by 21% as the accord stipulates, Denmark has so far notched a 6.3% increase in emissions since 1990, the base year used in Kyoto. The likely gap between its treaty commitment and its emissions levels projected for 2010 is 25.2 percentage points. Alas, no one is talking about reducing the amount of hot air produced by politicians. At the U.N.’s environmental summit in Montreal last year, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas of Greece spoke grandly of Europe’s continuing leadership in the reduction of greenhouse gases. Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada, another Kyoto diehard, chimed in that America lacked a “global conscience.” For the record, Greece and Canada saw emissions rise 23% and 24%, respectively, since 1990, far above the U.S. rate....


New Study Confirms Kyoto's Impotency

A new study published in the British journal Nature suggests that the biggest climate offender may literally be in our own backyard-trees. NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett states that the study proves the ineffectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol. "The Kyoto Protocol rewards countries that plant trees because up until now, science believed that plants absorbed carbon dioxide, offsetting the effect of human carbon emissions," said Dr. Burnett. "However, this study shows that the very remedy Kyoto advances could actually exacerbate the problem." The study suggests that while trees do soak up carbon dioxide, they also release methane, another ozone-depleting gas. Like carbon dioxide, methane traps heat, causing a rise in temperatures. According to the study, plants emit approximately 10 to 30 percent of the total amount of methane released into the atmosphere per year. This amounts to tens of millions of tons per year. "If this study proves to be correct, it reinforces what I've argued all along, we can't trust the climate models and at best, we have woefully incomplete science," said Dr. Burnett. "Accordingly, Kyoto's prescriptions for response are fatally flawed as it is based on these two shaky pillars."....

Europe In Heat

Last week the European Commission gave some official guidance to member states drawing up national plans for allocating carbon dioxide emission allowances for 2008-2012 under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). According to the Commission this second trading period is significant because it coincides with the five-year time frame in which the EU and member states must meet their targets for limiting or reducing emissions of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. Member states need to ensure that their emissions strategies, in which allocations under the ETS are an important element, achieve their targets. The Commission move is a baffling follow-up to the outcome of last July’s G-8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, and last December’s UN Climate Conference in Montreal. In Gleneagles world leaders failed to reach agreement on a follow-up to Kyoto after 2012. This was surprising, because many months earlier, host Tony Blair had announced that this would be one of the major issues at the summit as far as he was concerned. Some time later, however, he told an audience in New York that he had cooled on Kyoto. Nor was there worldwide support in Montreal for a follow-up, beyond 2012, of the Kyoto approach favored by Europe, which is one of binding caps on carbon dioxide emissions in conjunction with tradable emission rights. As a matter of fact, Europe remained isolated on the issue. One can only wonder whether, and if so how, European policy planners in Brussels assessed the outcome of these meetings. Apparently the political implications of the decisions which have been taken there -- including approval of the Gleneagles outcome by Blair, Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi -- have escaped them. Otherwise they would have refrained from issuing their new Communication on the next phase of the Emission Trading Scheme....

No Future in Kyoto Dreaming

In 1977, the punk rock band the Sex Pistols shocked England with their nihilist anthem "God Save the Queen," where they declared there was "No future in England's dreaming." They were right. England was ruled by a somnambulant socialist government that managed to lead the country to near collapse, with the dead lying unburied during the "winter of discontent," as trade union leaders dreamed only of higher wages and jobs for life. Two years later Margaret Thatcher shook England awake, and its economy has not looked back since, despite Tony Blair's attempts to administer sleeping pills. For supporters of the Kyoto protocol, this is 1977. Science and reality are causing people all over the world to wake up to the realization that, like socialism, Kyoto environmentalism has no future. A brief review should suffice to demonstrate the way the tide is flowing. First, Kyoto isn't working. As the European Commission itself admits, western Europe is likely to miss its Kyoto targets. Canada, which has signed on to the protocol, has increased its emissions more than the USA, which famously has not. Japan is also unlikely to meet its targets. New Zealand, which thought it would be able to meet its targets easily, is now facing a massive bill of $NZ1 billion to be able to live up to its commitments. Meanwhile, Russia, which signed on to the protocol at the last minute after extracting a promise of EU support for its efforts to join the World Trade Organization, is enjoying its new position of helping dictate EU energy policy. If the EU is to come anywhere close to meeting its targets, it will have to buy billions of dollars worth of emissions credits from Russia. Those funds will go to the Russian energy corporations, now under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies. To some it may seem ironic that, after the fall of communism, President Putin should be able to engineer such a massive redistribution of wealth, all thanks to Kyoto....

The Hybrid Hoax

WHEN TREASURY SECRETARY John Snow announced guidelines for a new tax cut for the rich here last week, liberals did not denounce him. That's because the proposed tax breaks were for gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, the favorite ride of environmentalists this side of bicycles. But the dirty secret about hybrids is that, even as the government continues to fuel their growth with tax subsidies, they don't deliver the gas savings they promise. Most cars and trucks don't achieve the gas mileage they advertise, according to Consumer Reports. But hybrids do a far worse job than conventional vehicles in meeting their Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy ratings, especially in city driving. Hybrids, which typically claim to get 32 to 60 miles per gallon, ended up delivering an average of 19 miles per gallon less than their EPA ratings under real-world driving conditions (which reflect more stop-and-go traffic and Americans' penchant for heavy accelerating) according to a Consumer Reports investigation in October 2005. For example, a 2004 Toyota Prius got 35 miles per gallon in city driving, off 42 percent from its EPA rating of 60 mpg. The 2003 Honda Civic averaged 26 mpg, off 46 percent from its advertised 48 mpg. And the Ford Escape small sport utility vehicle managed 22 mpg, falling 33 percent short of its 33 mpg rating. "City traffic is supposed to be the hybrids' strong suit, but their shortfall amounted to a 40 percent deficit on average," Consumer Reports said. The hybrid failed another real world test in 2004 when a USA Today reporter compared a Toyota Prius hybrid with a Volkswagen Jetta diesel, driving both between his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Washington, D.C. area. Both should have made the 500-mile trip on one tank of gas. "Jetta lived up to its one-tank billing," reporter David Kiley wrote. "Prius did not."....

Uppity in Central Park

There is no better example of the fraudulent nature of political systems than is to be found in the concept of “eminent domain.” The lies that have long been taught to gullible people about how government exists in order to protect the lives and property of individuals, are revealed in the practice that allows the state to forcibly take property from its owners. If one bothers to examine the literal meaning of eminent domain, one discovers – as one dictionary informs us – the underlying premise of “the superior dominion of the sovereign power over all lands within its jurisdiction.” The stark contradiction between the idea that the state was created to protect private property rights, and that the state has “superior dominion” over all such property, has been conflated into the common belief that individual rights come from the state; that “property” is a state-created concept. This notion has been no more forcibly confronted than it was by the 19th century philosopher, Thomas Hodgskin, who observed that, in order to accept it: we must believe that men had naturally no right to pick up cockles on the beach, or gather berries from the hedge – no right to cultivate the earth, to invent and make comfortable clothing, to use instruments to provide more easily for their enjoyments – no right to improve and adorn their habitations – nay, no right to have habitations – no right to buy or sell, or move from place to place – till the benevolent and wise law-giver conferred all these rights on them. If the principle be true in one case it must be universally true; and, according to it, parents had no right to the love and respect of their offspring, and infants no right to draw nourishment from the breasts of their mothers, until the legislator – foreseeing, forecalculating the immense advantages to the human race of establishing the long list of rights and duties which grow out of their affections, and constitute our happiness – had established them by his decree. The malignant nature of eminent domain has so metastasized itself throughout America that even some members of the news media are taking note of its dangerous implications. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo case declared a state’s use of such authority to forcibly take private homes from their owners and transfer ownership to commercial developers was not violative of the Fifth Amendment. Such powers have long been used to confiscate private property on behalf of politically-influential business interests desirous of building sports stadia, factories, industrial parks, or shopping centers....