OPINION/COMMENTARY

Does Manure Make a Farm a Superfund Site?

Environmental activists are teaming up with state attorneys general and trial lawyers to bankrupt the nation’s livestock farmers – in the name of saving the environment. If the situation wasn’t so serious, it would be hilarious. The activists – including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Union of Concerned Scientists – are trying to convince Congress that the nation’s farms should be treated as industrial waste sites and therefore subject to severe penalties under the federal Superfund law. Some state attorneys general, supported by trial lawyers, have filed lawsuits toward the same end. Why? Because, they argue, animal manure is a hazardous substance. They are now demanding that Congress refuse to clarify that the Superfund law was never intended to apply to natural animal waste. They are claiming – falsely – that without Superfund, animal waste would be unregulated. The fact is that manure already is heavily regulated under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other federal and state regulations. They are claiming – falsely – that small family farms won’t be affected. The reality is that under Superfund, huge penalties can be levied against small operations and even individuals. Tens of thousands of small family farmers could be affected....

State Global Warming Laws - How Foundation Grants Affect Climate Policy

Summary: “If the feds won’t act, make the states do it!” That’s the environmental movement’s latest demand. During the last decade green groups have repeatedly failed to win support from Congress and the White House for national and international controls on greenhouse gas emissions. But the activists won’t give up and they are now playing politics in state capitals. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute puts it succinctly: Global warming alarmists want to pass “50 mini-Kyotos.” What is less well-understood is the role private philanthropy plays in promoting state government climate change regulation. When states pass emissions laws mandating compliance from individuals and industry, who would suspect that private foundations are behind the effort?....go here(pdf) for the full report.

Judge Keeps PETA Animal Killers On A Tight Leash

On Wednesday afternoon in a North Carolina courtroom, defense lawyers for two animal-cruelty defendants asked a judge to dismiss dozens of criminal charges. The judge was unimpressed. The defendants, former -- or perhaps still -- employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), stand accused of killing adoptable dogs and cats in the back of a van in 2005 and discarding their bodies in a trash dumpster. While the saga continues to drag on without a firm trial date, it's now settled that defendants Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook will indeed face felony charges that carry lengthy jail sentences. In Greenville, WNCT-TV's Laila Muhammad reported that the detective who arrested Hinkle and Cook testified that in addition to dead animals, a search of the PETA van turned up "a digital camera with pictures of living and dead animals and vials of substances later determined to be drugs used to euthanize animals." In addition to felony-level cruelty to animals charges, these two "people for the ethical treatment of animals" are charged with obtaining property by false pretenses. According to an employee of a North Carolina veterinarian, Hinkle and Cook promised to find suitable homes for three kittens, but killed them just hours later without even bringing them back to PETA's Virginia headquarters....

Nature Magazine Provides Latest "Inconvenient Truth" for Globetrotter Al Gore

Al Gore continues to be the comedic gift that keeps on giving. First, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) revealed on May 24, 2006, that Gore has used enough hydrocarbons to circle the globe to present over 1,000 Power Point presentations on climate change. CEI also revealed that he recently used five large SUVs to haul his movie entourage a mere 500 yards at the Cannes Film Festival in France, all the while admonishing others to curtail their own energy use. Gore's "Saturday Night Live" appearance can't top that kind of comedy. On the heels of these embarrassing revelations, Nature magazine now obliterates the core assertion of Gore's new movie and globetrotting global warming crusade -- that climate change is an unnatural and irrevocable phenomenon. In Nature magazine's June 1, 2006, issue, scientists demonstrate in three new studies that the area near the North Pole was a balmy 74 degrees Fahrenheit 55 million years ago. That was obviously long before the invention of the wheel, let alone the advent of hydrocarbon scares or the internal-combustion engine (which Gore has called to completely eliminate). So much for Gore's assertion that climate change is "irrevocable." Using cutting-edge technology, the scientists removed core samples from beneath the Arctic Ocean to examine the physical evidence and establish their findings. According to Mark Pagani, a Yale University geology professor and co-author of one of the three studies discussed by Nature, the area surrounding the North Pole was once similar to Florida's present-day topography: "[i]magine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean." These studies reconfirm the fact that the earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming millions of years ago, caused by an unexplained increase in carbon dioxide levels....

Better Fuel Economy Can Be Hazardous To Health

The drive to raise the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard is among the most foolish policies proposed in the name of national security. Raising CAFE standards would be unlikely to reduce American's dependence on foreign oil, but it would likely cause public harm. Since 1974, domestic new car fuel economy has increased 114 percent, and light truck fuel economy has increased 56 percent. At the same time, the share of imported oil has risen from 35 percent of the oil consumed in the United States to nearly 60 percent. Improved fuel economy makes it less expensive to drive. When driving becomes cheaper, almost everyone does more of it. Indeed, people drive more than twice as many miles today than in 1974. Worse, the steps needed to improve fuel economy have historically had tragic consequences. Improving fuel economy is primarily achieved by reducing the size and power of vehicles. Downsizing comes at a cost to safety. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader stated in 1989, "larger cars are safer." Researchers at Harvard University and the Brookings Institution found that, on average, for every 100 pounds shaved off new cars to meet CAFE standards, between 440 and 780 additional people were killed in auto accidents - or a total of 2,200 to 3,900 lives lost per model year. And using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Traffic Safety, USA Today calculated that size and weight reductions undertaken to meet current CAFE standards had resulted in more than 46,000 deaths....

Fables of Federal Regulation

You've heard the story. Industrialization and economic growth laid waste to the American environment through much of the twentieth century. Common law-based environmental protections were ineffective, and state and local governments were unable or unwilling to address environmental concerns. As a result, environmental quality was in continuous decline until comprehensive federal legislation was adopted in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The infamous 1969 Cuyahoga River fire and the massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara focused public attention on the nation's environmental plight and helped spur the passage of needed federal environmental laws. This is the conventional account of the origins of federal environmental law. It is a story often told to explain how the nation moved from a mix of property-based, common law rules and state and local regulations to a sprawling federal regulatory apparatus. But it is wrong. The conventional narrative of the origins of federal regulation is a fable. Contrary to common perceptions, many measures of environmental quality were already improving prior to the advent of federal environmental laws. The Environmental Protection Agency's first national water quality inventory, conducted in 1973, found that there had been substantial improvement in water quality in major waterways during the decade before adoption of the federal Clean Water Act, at least for the pollutants of greatest concern at the time, organic waste and bacteria (Freeman 1990, 114). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, state and local governments began to recognize the importance of environmental quality and adopted first-generation environmental controls. Some states' efforts were more comprehensive and more successful than others, and different states had different priorities. Environmental protection did not always trump health care, education, or other local concerns. Nonetheless, by 1966, every state had adopted water pollution legislation of some sort. A similar pattern of state and local action preceded federal regulation in other areas as well....