OPINION/COMMENTARY

The Battle of the Bulb Imagine, if you will, the following news story set in the not-too-distant future: Federal agents raid illegal bulb factory: In a surprise raid that netted twelve arrests, US federal agents were able to shut down an incandescent light bulb factory in a Philadelphia suburb. Thousands of bulbs, which were banned from manufacture and sale in 2012, were confiscated and are slated to be destroyed. A spokesman for the FBI said the raid broke an “important link” in a chain of environmental terrorism. If Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) has her way, it could very well happen. Harman has introduced federal legislation that would ban the sale of traditional incandescent bulbs, which environmentalists accuse of being less environmentally friendly than compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) while contributing to the supposed horrors of man-made global warming. She said it was "an important first step toward making every household, business and public building in America more energy-efficient." California, Connecticut, North Carolina and Rhode Island are all considering similar legislation on a state level. CFLs may use fewer kilowatts, thus using less electricity, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the most environmentally friendly choice. Right now, CFLs are not manufactured in the US, but in China, where environmental manufacturing policies would make Greenpeace activists choke. Increasing the demand for CFLs would increase the demand for China to build more coal-powered plants to run their factories. How will that improve the dreaded carbon emissions we hear Al Gore constantly prattling on about? In addition, CFLs contain mercury, which is known to poison water and soil when it is disposed of in landfills. How will the government ensure that CFLs are not disposed of improperly? Is this just another “need” waiting to be filled by yet another bloated government agency, paid for out of our growing tax burden?....

Grizzly Bear Removal From Endangered List Cause For Celebration The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is coming under attack from environmental activists for its decision to remove the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the list of endangered animals under protection from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Yet the government's decision should be viewed as cause for celebration, not concern, according to Brian Seasholes, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). "Critics seem to have forgotten the ultimate purpose of the Endangered Species Act," said Seasholes. "The point of the act is to get species to the point where we can delist them, not to keep them as permanent wards of the state." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the grizzly bear on the endangered species list in 1975 based on an estimate that only 136 bears remained in the lower 48 states. Since then, the grizzly bear has become the most intensely studied bear population in the world. In the 1980's, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) was formed to manage bear mortality and habitat to then increase the bear population. The grizzly bear population has increased 4-7 percent annually since the 1990s, now citing more than 500 bears and counting. Approximately 10 percent of those bears are collared so they can continue to be tracked and protected. Seasholes also pointed out that despite the delisting, conservation efforts for the grizzly bear will continue. Seasholes noted that this is not the first time activists have opposed the delisting of a species. For example, the delisting of the gray whale, the American peregrine falcon, gray wolf, as well as the soon-to-be-delisted bald eagle, have all been opposed. "In all of these cases, opposition to delisting has been about using wildlife as means to control land and resource use, not to control the actual status of these species," said Seasholes....

Bush administration praised for opposing Kyoto treaty A public-policy think tank says the Bush administration is completely justified in ignoring the demands from European countries to ratify the Kyoto global warming treaty. H. Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a non-profit research organization that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. He says the administration recognizes that a Kyoto-style treaty would do little or nothing to prevent warming or help the environment, but would put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to other countries. Burnett says the U.S. doing a better job of emission control than many countries that have signed Kyoto. "While our economy is growing faster than Europe's [and] our population is growing faster than Europe's -- some of Europe has shrinking populations -- they are putting out more emissions per unit of GDP, more emissions per unit of energy used than we are," the NCPA spokesman observes. "Our plants, our workers are more efficient." He says Europeans need to stop criticizing the United States for not ratifying Kyoto, which he points out has always really been an economic treaty -- not a climate treaty. "And the funny thing is, despite the fact that the U.S. has not been a party to the treaty [and] did not ratify the treaty in the Senate, ... overall we have done a much better job than our European allies, who have committed to the treaty, of slowing our emissions growth," Burnett explains....