OPINION/COMMENTARY


Enviros' Agenda Is Selfishness and Greed

Why then are there particular places where housing costs have skyrocketed? In those places, much of the land is prevented by law from being used to build housing. These land use restrictions are seldom called land use restrictions. They are called by much prettier names, like "open space" laws, laws to "preserve farmland" or prevent "sprawl," "greenbelt" laws -- or whatever else will sell politically. People who already own their own homes don't worry about whether such laws will drive housing prices sky high. Somebody else will have to pay those prices while existing homeowners see the value of their property rise by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, land that might otherwise provide homes for others becomes in effect free park land for themselves, while such upscale communities use "open space" laws to keep out the masses. The crowning touch is that such self-interest is depicted as idealism. A famous economist named Joseph Schumpeter once said that the first thing someone will do for his ideals is lie. Some people distinguish little white lies from black lies but the biggest lies of all are green lies. To hear environmental zealots tell it, they are just trying to save the last few patches of greenery from being paved over. But in fact the land area of the United States covered by forests is more than three times as large as the land area covered by all the cities and towns across the nation. Only about 5 percent of the land is urban. In other words, you could double the size of every city and town in America and still nine-tenths of the land would be undeveloped....

Attending The PETA Class Reunion? Bring Your Parole Officer

The arrest of six suspects in a string of eco-terror arsons has generated a string of related stories, including many about the jail-cell suicide of one defendant described as the "ringleader" behind eco-terror fires in several states. In a follow-up report that caught our eye, The Seattle Times talked to defendant Kevin Tubbs' mother. Tubbs is charged with setting a $1.2 million fire in June 1998 which consumed the USDA's Animal and Plant and Health Inspection Service facility in Olympia, Washington. He's also accused of torching 35 sport-utility vehicles at a Eugene, Oregon car dealership. And according to his mother, he used to work for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In 1993, an Associated Press photographer snapped a picture of Tubbs and PETA employee Matt Rossell, after the two were arrested for trying to disrupt a meeting of cattle ranchers. Tubbs wore a colorful cow costume. And the following year, Tubbs (then described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as "a PETA supervisor"), was charged with assault after he and two PETA interns attempted to douse the headquarters of a pharmaceutical company with buckets of urine. Unfortunately for PETA, they ended up drenching several police officers by mistake....

AGAINST THE GRAIN

When seen in the context of the global biotech landscape, Europe's continued ambivalence toward genetically modified (GM) crops seems strangely anomalous in what has clearly become a global trend, says Christian Verschueren, director-general of CropLife International, the global lobbying group for the plant science industry.

Just look at the statistics:

* The year 2005 saw the planting of the one billionth acre of genetically modified crops in the world, and marked the 10th anniversary of the first commercial planting.
* Last year alone, more than 81 million hectares of the world's arable land were sown with genetically modified seed by over eight million farmers in 17 countries -- a 20 percent increase on the previous year.
* In Spain -- the pariah state of the EU when it comes to the cultivation of biotech crops -- farmers planted 58,000 hectares of insect-resistant maize in 2004, an increase of 80 percent on the previous year's level.

This maize is resistant to the corn borer, a pest known to decimate entire harvests, and has brought great benefits for the Spanish farming community. Not only has it ensured an unusual level of crop and income security for Spanish farmers -- increasing their crop yields and contributing to a 12 percent jump in their gross margins -- but it has simultaneously allowed them to use pesticides in a more targeted fashion.

In the notoriously unpredictable business of farming, these results are making big differences -- and causing waves among farmers in other European countries who are beginning to look enviously toward the south.

Economically speaking, GM crops represent a winning proposition. Over the first nine years of commercial biotech crop cultivation, there was an estimated global increase in net farm incomes of $27 billion, says Verschueren.

Source: Christian Verschueren, "Against the Grain," Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2005.

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Particle Civics

When the Environmental Protection Agency cuts allowable particle pollution levels more than 45 percent, you might expect commendations from environmentalists and the press. You’d be disappointed. EPA recently proposed reducing allowable daily levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from 65 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3) down to 35 ug/m3. The change would nearly double the number of pollution monitoring locations that violate federal PM2.5 standards.[i] Environmentalists were unimpressed. Clean Air Watch complained “President Bush Gives Early Christmas Present to Smokestack Industries.”[ii] According to the American Lung Association “EPA Proposes ‘Status Quo’ Revisions to PM [Standards].”[iii] Some newspapers didn’t do any better. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s front-page headline claimed “EPA barely budges on soot; Health advice disregarded.”[iv] According to the New York Times, EPA “modestly” reduced allowable PM2.5, and “largely ignored recommendations for tighter controls from its own scientists and from an independent panel of outside experts.”[v] A more realistic assessment is that EPA substantially tightened its PM2.5 standard, but by a bit less than its science advisory panel recommended, and not by nearly as much as environmentalists wanted. That this could be called “status quo” is a mark of how detached from reality the bizarre world of air pollution politics has become....