OPINION/COMMENTARY

New Army Corps Rule Fails To Give Relief To Property Owners

In an effort to discourage developers from building on large areas of wetland by offering them waivers to build on smaller ones without environmental reviews, the Army Corps of Engineers issued new construction rules last week that have upset environmentalists and developers alike. According to H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), this was a missed opportunity to protect property owners and may lead to a slew of law suits. "Undoubtedly this was an attempt to comply with Court rulings striking down their previous interpretation of its power to protect wetlands, without unduly angering the powerful environmental lobby," said Burnett. "Yet environmentalists are likely to portray this as a rolling back on environmental protections, as they do with any change in the status quo that doesn't increase government's control over private property." Burnett predicts that "property owners will wind up back in court arguing that the new rules illegally restrict the lawful development of their property in areas that in fact have little or no connection to navigable waterways as traditionally understood. This won't help the environment but it will continue to hamper economic progress - only lawyers win with these new construction rules."....


PRIUS OUTDOES HUMMER IN ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE

The Toyota Prius, the flagship car for the environmentally conscious, is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America, and takes more combined energy to produce than a Hummer, says the Recorder.

Consider:

* The nickel contained in the Prius' battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers.
* Dubbed the Superstack, the factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist's nightmare.
* Acid rain around the area was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside, according to Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin.
* After leaving the plant, the nickel travels to Europe, China, Japan and United States, a hardly environmentally sound round the world trip for a single battery.

But that isn't even the worst part, says the Record. According to a study by CNW Marketing, the total combined energy to produce a Prius (consisting of electrical, fuel, transportation, materials and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime), is greater than what it takes to produce a Hummer:

* The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles -- the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
* The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.
* That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use almost 50 percent less combined energy doing it.

Source: Chris Demorro, "Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage," The Recorder, March 7, 2007.

For text:http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188


Our Green ICE Age

All environmentalists should be singing the praises of the internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of damning it for polluting the environment. The environmental advantages of the internal combustion engine have been obvious for a long time. But a recent story in the British newspaper, "The Independent," on the methane from livestock flatulence makes the advantages of internal combustion even more obvious. According to "The Independent," a recent study by the Food and Agricultural Organization finds that "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together." Global warming became a concern, however, long after the internal combustion engine began improving the environment. In 1900 most of the horsepower we had available really was horse power -- or mule power, or oxen power. As reliance on the internal combustion engine increased in the early 1900s, we began replacing the emissions that came out of the tailpipes of animals with those coming out of the tailpipes of cars and trucks. And the latter emissions were a lot less harmful than the former. Consider the effects of horse emissions in our towns and cities at the beginning of the last century. The air and water pollution from horse manure contributed to a death rate far greater than that generated by the pollution from cars and trucks. No one denies that photochemical smog from gas powered vehicles is a health risk, but it is not nearly the health risk of cholera, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, diphtheria and malaria. These diseases killed tens of thousands of Americans in the early 20-century and these deaths began to decline as cars and trucks replaced horses and wagons. And the improvements in the environment weren't limited to just the towns and cities. Before gasoline power arrived, beasts of burden were polluting agricultural communities along with meat producing animals such as cows, chickens and pigs. By eliminating horses, mules and oxen on farms, tractors and other types of gas-powered farm machinery greatly reduced the problem of animal waste that environmentalists, with justification, still complain about. This also eliminated the need to grow the food required by millions of farm animals. It has been estimated that it took about 93 million acres of land in 1900 to grow the food to fuel the farm animals that were soon replaced by motorized farm machinery. Much of that land has now gone back to woodlands....


Do as I say, not as I spew

Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was billed as "a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it." But right after the movie won an Oscar for best documentary, America learned that Gore's crusade ends at his front door. A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, released a press release that showed the Gores spent $30,000 a year on energy for their suburban Nashville home -- and burned 221,000 kilowatt-hours last year, or 20 times the national average. The reaction of Gore's spokesperson is instructive. Kalee Kreider told ABC News' Jake Tapper, "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue, so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent." Kreider is right, in a way. Gore is the most effective global-warming advocate in America. Yet somehow Gore has little problem doing a lot of the very thing he tells the rest of the country not to do -- that is, burning more energy than is necessary. The message comes across loud and clear: The Gores are rich, and rich people are going to burn a lot of energy. They won't let their belief in global warming crimp their lifestyle....


The Left-Wing Echo Chamber

Death threats. Harassing phone calls. Threatening e-mails. Such was a day in the life of Drew Johnson a few weeks ago. His crime? Johnson is president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free-market think tank that broke one of the juiciest stories of 2007. A day after the Academy Awards, on Feb. 26, Johnson’s organization reported details of Al Gore’s enormous utility bill. The former vice president had consumed nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in a single year -- more than 20 times the national average. The story skyrocketed to the top headline on the Drudge Report, sending tens of thousands of visitors to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s Web site. With Gore facing charges of hypocrisy just a day after winning an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth," the news traveled fast. Unfortunately for Johnson, it meant enduring days of attacks from liberals -- even though the facts of the story came directly from public records. Last week he visited Washington, D.C., to share his story. Johnson told a group of conservative bloggers at The Heritage Foundation that he heard from hundreds of angry callers, many of whom used profane language. The research center’s vice president, whose phone number was listed on the Web page, eventually had to change her number when the attacks became so persistent and threatening. The phone blitz was only one avenue liberals used to intimidate. Johnson said his organization received thousands of e-mails, the vast majority of them negative and hate-filled. Shortly after the story made headlines, popular liberal blogs Daily Kos and Huffington Post, laid out their plan of attack....


ETHANOL HYPOCRITES

Once the darling energy source of the political left, we now hear how sugar production for ethanol is trashing the otherwise forgotten rain forest and adds to global warming. Others are blaming ethanol for everything from poverty to floods. However, the argument doesn't get the facts right, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

Consider:

* Brazil is not growing sugar for ethanol production on rain forest land but in the southern grasslands, making environmentalists' renewed interest in deforestation irrelevant.
* On the grasslands, ethanol production has barely started; Brazil's entire agricultural production is done on only 8 percent of the nation's arable land.

Environmentalists, however, are trying to sell Brazil as one big rain forest in need of "saving" instead of a diverse, rapidly industrializing country whose development is critical to conservation:

* Poverty, not development, is the biggest danger to rain forests, as UC Berkeley professor emeritus Jack Hollander found in a study.
* As Brazil industrialized in 2005, it reforested 553,000 hectares of rain forest, and last year it reduced Amazon deforestation by 11 percent.
* Meanwhile, an even bigger ethanol producer, the United States, leads the world in reforestation, according to Jesse H. Ausubel, director of Rockefeller University's program for the human environment.

Ethanol is no panacea and unlikely to be more than 10 percent of energy production, but it's a viable alternative, says IBD. If President Bush can enrage environmentalists by developing the ethanol they once championed, it is unlikely that any alternative (in the hands of Bush that is) will satisfy them. They simply aren't serious.

Source: Editorial, "Ethanol Hypocrites," Investor's Business Daily, March 9, 2007.

For text:http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258250203727155



Global Warming Expedition Called Off When Hiker Gets Frost Bite

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment. "Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition. On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week....hat tip to Allen Estrin