Rain, Rein, or Reign?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a broad and complex mission to control air and water pollution, hazardous waste, chemicals, radiation, and a wide range of other environmental hazards.  Does that include rain?

Apparently so.  The EPA has proposed a new initiative to “rein in the rain,” as Americans for Prosperity aptly puts it.   The agency is proposing requirements “including design or performance standards, for stormwater discharges from, at minimum, newly developed and redeveloped sites.”  No later than November of 2012 the EPA says it will publish final regulations controlling “stormwater runoff.”

To me, that looks like treating the symptoms, rather than the causes, of the outrageous impacts of rain.  Apparently rain has a tendency to create water on the ground and on buildings, which then runs in a downhill fashion toward streams, rivers, and ultimately oceans.  Clearly that cannot be allowed to continue unchecked, at least not without some regulation to insure that the water runs off correctly, meaning in smaller amounts.  But if the government is truly concerned about too much stormwater, and its disastrous propensity to run downhill, wouldn’t it be smarter to regulate the rain itself?

The new regulations may dictate the design of roofs, parking lots, streets, curbs, gutters, storm drains, pipes, and a host of other construction features involving drainage.  Notice that the intent is to regulate such facilities for new construction “at minimum,” meaning they may also decide to implement new regulatory standards for already existing cities, towns, neighborhoods, roads, and even homes.  You may have thought you were merely letting rainwater run off your place, but no – you are “discharging” it.  On purpose.  You need an EPA permit for that.

The cost of implementing such new federal regulations on every new development in the United States can only be guessed, but will be staggering, and unnecessary.  Instead, I think the government ought to go directly to the source of these problems and regulate rain.  All this expense on individual developments would be unneeded if it didn’t rain so much to begin with, so why treat symptoms and not the cause?

If you are skeptical of the government’s capacity to regulate a natural phenomenon like rain, you are clearly not paying attention.  Research over the past few years, upon which many government programs now rely, focuses on the astounding ability of people to change the weather, and even the overall climate of the Earth.  EPA is moving into regulation of naturally occurring gases like carbon dioxide (perhaps we will soon be required to stop breathing) precisely because our lifestyle is said to affect the weather.  Another case of treating symptoms, not causes.  So why not focus all these regulatory efforts directly where it would count the most and simply make it rain less where stormwater is an issue, perhaps redirecting that rain to areas where it is needed, such as the arid West?

It is not clear how long the reign of the current federal regulators may last, but maybe while they’re in power they will figure out how to rein in the rain – before it’s too late.

How many government officials does it take to replace ALL your light bulbs?

Light bulb jokes have been popular for many years as a way to poke fun of stereotypes.  I remember several old ones about how many Republicans it takes to change a light bulb, especially popular during the early Reagan years.  It took one to screw in the bulb, one to steady the chandelier, one to claim the bulb wasn’t truly needed, and one to reminisce about the old bulb.  When I went into state government, there was a joke about how many bureaucrats it takes to change a light bulb, and the answer was, “Who said anything about change?” 

But this newest joke is no joke at all.  Every single American will have to change ALL the light bulbs in their homes because by 2014 the incandescent bulbs we use today will no longer be sold.  The breakthrough invention of Thomas Edison that brought civilization out of the whale oil age – the light bulb that itself became our iconic image to illustrate a good idea – has been banned by federal law. 

Question: How many government officials does it take to change ALL the bulbs? Answer: 37,221. Here is the breakdown: 

• 1 former Vice President to jet around the world convincing everyone that our use of light bulbs was helping destroy the planet;
• 30 of Al Gore’s friends who are members of the UN‘s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 2,000 “scientists” who work for them, publish studies and (as we now know) fudge the data to make global warming appear worse than it is;
• 500 employees of United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in Nairobi, and 188 Members of the World Meteorological Association, who jointly created the IPCC and publish literature on our impending doom ;
• 314 Congressmen and 86 Senators who responded by voting for the 2007 “Energy Independence and Security Act,” which requires incandescent light bulbs to be phased out by 2014;
• 400 legislative staffers who advise those 314 Congressmen and 86 Senators on energy issues;
• 257 staffers who work for the 4 House Committees that wrote the bill;
• 127 staffers who work for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and majority Whip James Clyburn, the leaders who pushed the bill through the House;
• 245 staffers who work for the 3 Senate Committees that worked on the bill;
• 60 employees of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Majority Whip Richard Durbin, who led the bill through the upper House;
• 1 President to sign the bill into law;
• 12 White House Council on Environmental Quality staffers who advised the President to do so;
• 18,000 employees of the EPA and 15,000 DOE workers who are now finalizing the regulations for phasing out Edison’s miracle through their joint “Energy Star Program.”

Part of the EPA and DOE work is to help us figure out what to do with the old bulbs (besides reminiscing).  We can simply throw them away when they burn out.  But not the new bulbs, the Compact Fluorescent (CFL) bulbs – they must be recycled carefully, because they contain mercury.  In fact, here is the government’s official advice about what to do if one accidentally breaks: everyone must immediately leave the house by some other route, turn off all heating and air conditioning, air out the house for at least 15 minutes, then clean up the glass and put it in a sealed container (they suggest a mason jar).  Next you must throw away any clothing or bedding that may have touched any of the broken glass.  Finally, the “next several times you vacuum,” you still have to open windows and shut off all ventilation. 

There is no question that the new CFL bulbs are more efficient, use less electricity, and last ten times as long.  I like them, and I use them.  But some people don’t, citing the different colors and visual effects of fluorescent lighting.  Personally, I don’t care what kind of bulbs people use in their own homes – I guess that’s why we have government. 

After Edison had tried and failed 9,000 times to find the right material for a light bulb filament that would glow but not burn, he finally found the right combination and changed our world.  It took years of hard work by a team of two dozen assistants.  That’s why Edison sometimes said genius is “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”  We can only speculate about what he would have thought of today’s government banning his crowning achievement.  In 1879, it took 24 people to invent the incandescent bulb, and in our time about 37,221 to ban it.  So which has advanced further: science or government? 

   

 

 

 

 

 

More Snow, Please!

The federal government is famous for its inability to handle ordinary problems, but its reaction to snow is the ultimate example.  At this writing, Washington, D.C. is being hammered by its second large snow storm this week and everything is shut down again – schools, government, trains, planes and automobiles.  One local TV commentator acted like he had never seen snow, thundering, “Ridiculous amounts of snow – this is just insanity!”  My favorite snow story so far was the announcement about an hour ago that throughout the metro area, the roads are now so dangerous that they are suspending SNOWPLOW operations.　 It’s snowing hard and a bit windy, much like we see on Vail Pass every day for a couple months of every year.　 But while Colorado deals with it routinely, in Washington it’s now too dangerous even for a snowplow!

Among the casualties are a series of hearings scheduled this week by various congressional committees, all of which have been cancelled.  The most ironic was a hearing announced by Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  The committee has not been very involved in the debate on global warming since the death of the cap-and-trade bill last year, but Chairwoman Boxer was about to correct that oversight.  She had announced that this Thursday the committee would hold a hearing about the public health warnings related to global warming.  Some scientists have been warning that our destruction of the planet may lead to increased malnutrition, “encourage the spread of disease-carrying insects and worsen floods, droughts and storms.”

I couldn’t help smiling at that last part.  Is it possible that global warming is making even winter storms worse?  If so, there may yet be a positive impact from our use of fossil fuels, aerosol cans and flatulent cows.  Perhaps one unintended result is a periodic shutdown of government.  Former Senator Howard Baker famously observed that the decline of democracy began when they air conditioned the Capitol building, thus ending what used to be half-year legislative sessions.  A New York Judge in 1866 coined the often-repeated quip that “no man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”  Maybe more severe snowstorms are just what America needs to recover its sense of freedom and personal responsibility.

Once the Senate EPW Committee reschedules its hearings, its Members may restart the discussion of cap-and-trade, and other schemes to make Americans live in smaller homes, travel less and generally lower our standard of living.  The process of transferring our national wealth to third-world nations will continue under the ludicrous guise of improving the environment.  Nothing good can come of that.  For now, the good news is that government remains closed, probably for the rest of this week, and possible into next week (it’s supposed to snow again Monday).　 With any luck, the snow will go on for another month – and the country remains temporarily safe.

Their Forests Good – Our Forests Bad

The next global warming conference should not be held in Copenhagen, but in Arizona.

I don’t know if anyone else remembers the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission, but I still recall the brain damage inflicted by 5 years of advisory committee meetings in the early 1990’s.  The group, reporting to the EPA, analyzed and conducted major studies to find out why the air across the American Southwest was so hazy.  It was created because of the dire concern that power plants, cars and other pollution sources were fouling the air in some of America’s most scenic postcards, including the Grand Canyon.

One early study found astounding evidence that the largest episodic contributor to regional haze was neither cars nor power plants, but smoke from fires on federal lands – many of the fires set on purpose by land managers to clear overgrown brush and trees (“prescribed fires”).  When the Commission made its final recommendations to the EPA in 1996, it simply did not know what to do with that information, because the fires were considered important by federal officials and environmental groups, who had promoted the study because they thought it would help stop the growing use of fossil fuels.  The studies did not support the desired conclusions, so the Commission nevertheless recommended the predictable regulations and, with respect to federal land fires, simply said ways should be found to make fires smoke less, and the public should be educated about how important such fires are.  In other words, we should limit fossil fuel use precisely BECAUSE we should NOT limit the wildfires that actually cause much of the problem.

During the 14 years since that report was issued, federal lands have contributed more smoke and haze than could have been imagined at the time.  In Colorado alone, forest fires in 2002 produced more particulate pollution that all of man’s activities in the West since the beginning of time.  The recent California fires are even worse for clean air and visibility.  And the failure to manage our national forests to prevent such catastrophic fires has gone from alarming to appalling.  The death and destruction of our priceless and irreplaceable national forests should bring shame to the activists who worked so hard to eliminate all timber management.  On the contrary, today’s OMB wants to cut the timber management program in half.  The result is overgrown forests, choking for water and unable to fight bark beetles and other pests, leaving billions of trees dying, falling down, and burning in massive unnatural fires that destroy entire landscapes, foul vital watersheds, and pollute the air.  Even worse, from a global warming perspective, fires belch out the very greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) that live healthy trees absorb.

I was reminded in December of the Grand Canyon studies because of the bizarre difference in the way our government approached the forest crisis in Colorado, and the global warming “crisis” in Copenhagen.  Warned that the Forest Service no longer has the resources to thin forests in the Rocky Mountains to a more natural condition and help restore forest health, federal officials debated the matter for two years, and in December finally decided they could afford another $40 million, enough to scratch the surface in one small part of these forests (the part where people built trophy homes).  But when warned that the United States might be blamed for not doing enough to stop the destruction of South American rain forests, the Administration committed $2.5 Billion to that effort without batting an eye.

Apparently South American forests are considered vitally important in the effort to capture carbon dioxide and prevent further global warming – but forests in the United States are far less important to that effort.  If you were cynical, you might suspect the real agenda is less about either global warming or forest health, and more about redistributing wealth.

What is Environmental Justice?

“Equal justice under law” is more than a quaint expression engraved on the portico of the Supreme Court building.  It is a worldview that is central to our American culture.  It is also a cornerstone of the conservation movement, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the angry activists that form so much of the modern environmental lobby.

The founders of the nation’s first great conservation movement – Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, John Wesley Powell, and others – pioneered the notion of “environmental justice,” but it’s not what you think.  That’s because the term is so commonly abused by the POE’s (people opposed to everything).  In their oft-stated view of “environmental justice,” it seems the concept requires that we lock up public lands from the public, stop the production of energy, live in smaller homes and quit traveling.  We have to scale back our lifestyle, they argue, because our use of the planet Earth is destroying it.  To these organizations, environmental justice means the natural resources have rights just as important as our own and must be protected – from us.

That is almost exactly opposite of what Roosevelt and the other early conservationists intended.

The progressives of the last century who created national parks and national forests did so for three primary purposes.  First, these lands supplied the natural resources necessary to build a prosperous society, including lumber, water, minerals and recreation.  Second, the use of such resources must be monitored and regulated to ensure they are also available to future generations.  Those first two purposes are to this day the basis of the divisive – and litigious – nature of environmental disputes.  But there was a third purpose, too, found throughout the writings, lectures and letters of Roosevelt and the others.  That purpose was to ensure that these resources belong to everyone, not just one segment of the society.

The trees in national forests do not belong just to timber companies, nor minerals on public lands only to mining companies, but to everyone, they argued.  Similarly, public lands are open to everyone, not just the ranchers with grazing permits.  Believe it or not, this theory was highly contentious at the time.  Perhaps we need that debate again.

Today’s environmental lobby would close most public lands to all but the hearty few able to walk there and lucky enough to live nearby.  They would allow the national forests – one of the greatest legacies of the early conservationists – to die and burn before allowing anyone to cut a tree.  And they would lock up all our energy resources, perpetuating our dependence on foreign oil.  In their view, America’s resources may belong to everyone, but not everyone gets a seat at the decision-making table.  Those who seek preservation for the future – without any use by our generation – are more in charge of the debate than ever.  But do public resources belong only to environmentalists?  That view may seem like “equal justice under law,” but only if you think some of us are more equal than others.

 

Global Warming Did It!

Yesterday CBS aired an updated version of a 2007 “60 Minutes” story about the catastrophic forest fires that have become so common in the West. The story featured interviews with a federal official in charge of managing “hotshot” firefighting crews, and an interview with a professor at the University of Arizona. Both explained that these fires are beyond anything ever seen in the West, and both were quick to blame it all on global warming.

The story made only a very brief mention of the Forest Service’s 100-year policy of complete fire suppression, and quoted the federal official saying the result is “a huge buildup of fuel in these woods.” But then the focus of the discussion shifted entirely onto global warming, as if the Forest Service policy would have produced no such result if only global warming had not happened. It is a convenient way to avoid placing any blame on the overzealous environmental campaign to stop all cutting of trees in America. It is convenient – but wrong.

The fact is that the average temperature on Earth increased about 1 degree in the past century (as the “60 Minutes” story correctly pointed out), but that trend has not continued during the last decade. If the result of such minor warming had been to dry out the forests in the way these activists claim, there would also be dramatic decreases in recent snowfall. But that has not occurred. In fact, snowpack is back up – way up – across the Rocky Mountains in the past three years (along with colder temperatures). Yet we are not seeing huge increases in river flows, and that is for the exact same reason as the fires – too many trees.

Forest managers ended the historic role played by wildfires a century ago, but they also drastically reduced thinning and clearing about 20 years ago – about the same time these massive, catastrophic fires began. As a result, western forests that historically averaged 30-50 trees per acre now have more than 900 in many places. The trees are weaker, competing for water with a massive overgrowth of brush and grasses – all drier than normal. None of this is natural, nor are the resulting catastrophic fires.

To absolve forest managers and politicians (and ourselves) from any and all responsibility for these giant fires by blaming global warming may feel good, but don’t kid yourself. If every American were to stop traveling tomorrow, move into smaller houses without air conditioning, and get rid of their cars, the forests would still be overgrown tinderboxes ready to become towering infernos with the first lightning strike or errant cigarette. Nothing will change that until someone with a chain saw gets serious about thinning the forest back to a more natural condition.

 

Stopping Pollution or Selling Indulgences?

Although blown off the front pages by the death of Michael Jackson, the most ominous government action of the decade came a step closer to reality Friday when the House passed an energy bill that would make “cap and trade” official policy.  It passed the House by 7 votes (with 8 Republicans crossing over to help).  Most Americans support almost any effort to stop pollution, and are sympathetic to attempts to limit greenhouse gases.  But understandably, many are confused about what this “cap and trade” idea really means.  Here are two simple things to remember during the coming Senate debate:

American Enterprize Institute

First, cap-and-trade is a financial scam.  The idea is anti-democratic, it would perpetuate economic serfdom for much of the world, and it would guarantee the permanent dominance of existing corporations to the exclusion of opportunity for everyone else.  It is the ultimate scheme for making the rich richer and the poor poorer.  Sound extreme?  Consider this – if we really are polluting the air so much it endangers the very planet, we should stop it.  Plain and simple.  But this scheme does not stop pollution, it creates a market for it.  If the right to pollute can be bought and sold, and the amount of pollution is capped, then that right has tremendous value.  And it will always be owned by the rich and held in the power centers of New York, LA, Chicago, London, and Paris.  So much for economic growth in the third world.

The Science and Public Policy Institute called it a scheme “by which jet-setting celebrities like Al Gore can publicly parade the pretense that their extravagant, carbon-emitting lifestyle is not really adding anything to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.  All they have to do is buy the modern equivalent of the Indulgences sold for profit by unscrupulous pastors in the medieval Church.  The Indulgences, coyly marketed under the name of “carbon offsets,” are sold by various private scamsters, who craftily suggest to penitents that they can salve their consciences for, say, the carbon emissions arising from a transatlantic flight by paying as little as $5 towards the planting of trees that may or may not take place, and might or might not have taken place anyway.”

Second, cap-and-trade is a bureaucrat’s dream.  Carbon is among the most abundant natural elements, and carbon dioxide is central to all life.  As MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen wrote, “If you control carbon, you control life.”  So predictably, advocates of big central government not only want to regulate carbon and the ability to buy and sell it, they also want to tax that right.

Some leaders think transferring wealth is a legitimate government function.  But however you feel about the economic issue, it is silly to pretend the argument is about the environment.  In fact, in my view it is unethical to use the environment as the false platform for that debate.  It is an ethical breach because it is misleading and dishonest, and especially because it is bad for the environment.  Worst of all, it cynically protects actual polluters at the expense of keeping the world’s poorest people locked forever in poverty.  That is “Robin Hood in reverse,” literally robbing the poor to enrich the rich.

When is “Final” final?

Maybe the old saw that “a man’s word is his bond” is obsolete in today’s politics. I grew up in a time and place where a handshake is a contract, and a deal is a deal. But it just doesn’t seem to be true for lots of interest groups today, as we see all too often in the odd world of environmental policy. Many people have become reluctant to make agreements with their opponents, because they fear the “settled” agreement won’t stay “settled” past the ink-drying stage.

 

Witness last week’s lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, demanding the agency re-open the already-settled decision about “critical habitat” for the Canada Lynx. The agency studied the matter for more than a decade, sought and received input from thousands of interest groups, businesses, stakeholders, state and local governments, and interested individuals across the country. Very few species have been studied more closely over a longer time than the lynx. In the end, based on the best available science, the agency designated 39,000 square miles in Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Wyoming as protected habitat. The population of lynx we introduced in Colorado provided much of the scientific evidence that the Southern Rockies are not critical to the animals’ survival. But that did not provide some extremists with the tools they sought for regulating human activity on public lands, so this week a group called the “Center for Native Ecosystems” filed suit to force the government to reconsider adding Colorado and New Mexico to the designated habitat, with no scientific basis whatsoever. Only time will tell whether the courts will defer to sound science and cool heads, but anyone can predict the millions taxpayers will spend on legal fees before it is settled – again.  There are hundreds of examples like it every year.

 

At LeaderBridge we deal frequently with companies frustrated by such seemingly endless processes involving endangered species. The Endangered Species Act is the biggest tool in the toolbox for those who seek to stop business activity, and many business leaders wonder if there is ever an endgame. We show them ways to mitigate the impacts of their projects, negotiate the regulatory minefields, and even more important, ways to actually recover species so they can be removed from the endangered list, thereby removing the tool for stopping things.

We can’t force people to stick to agreements once made; we can’t force others to act with civility or keep their word. But there are plenty of ways to deal with the world as it is and ensure the right outcome.

Save the Dead Trees!

This week in Denver, I attended an annual gathering of timber industry leaders and U.S. Forest Service officials, all talking about ways to restore our national forests that are dying, falling down and burning up – a disaster Ken Salazar aptly called the “Katrina of the West.”  Unfortunately, not much progress has been made in the years since environmental zealots stopped almost all logging, chanting slogans like “save the old growth.”  In the past ten years bark beetles have marched across millions of acres of forests from northern New Mexico to British Columbia, leaving a trail of destruction that would make Sherman blush.  My home state of Colorado now has over 2 million acres of dead trees.

Once these trees die, and even if they burn in today’s all-too-common catastrophic wildfires, they still have commercial value for several years if managers move quickly enough to get them harvested before they rot.  Today, however, even that normally valuable wood is worthless because the recession has all but stopped home construction, tanking the price of lumber to all-time lows and devastating a timber industry already on its last gasp.  Weakened from years of no available timber – caused by environmental appeals, lawsuits, and regulatory delay – the few sawmills left in public lands states (Colorado has only two of commercial size) are on the verge of collapse.  It is appalling that the process is now so complicated that managers cannot even get approval for the sale and removal of dead trees.  Are we now officially protecting dead landscapes?

Just as all hope seemed lost, though, the new Obama Administration suddenly pumped over $1 Billion into the Forest Service to save and create new jobs through projects badly needed to restore the health of the national forests.  Relief for both dying forests and dying timber companies?  Sadly, the first third of that money has been absorbed by the agency for in-house projects, and given out in grants for projects that have nothing to do with either jobs or healthy forests – including a grant for a Girl Scout camp, and funding for outdoor youth programs.  Worthy perhaps, but they have nothing to do with forest restoration, and they do not create or save jobs in the industry with which the government must partner to manage our forests.  Some funds were targeted for clearing dangerous dead trees from roadsides, campgrounds and power lines – but the money went to out of state contractors while local loggers are going out of business.

The good news is that two-thirds of the money has not yet been spent.  That means there is still time for the Forest Service to save hundreds of good jobs by merging economic recovery with the desperate need to clear dead trees and restore healthy forests.  There may yet be a success story in the making.  But if they don’t get this right, our leaders will have saved nothing but hundreds of miles of dead trees.