Scientists condemn US as emissions of greenhouse gases hit record level

from The Independent via ThinkProgress:

By Steve Connor

The United States emitted more greenhouse gases in 2004 than at any time in history, confirming its status as the world’s biggest polluter. Latest figures on the US contribution to global warming show that its carbon emissions have risen sharply despite international concerns over climate change.

The figures, which were quietly released on Easter Monday, reveal that net greenhouse gas emissions during 2004 increased by 1.7 per cent on the previous year, equivalent to a rise of 110 million tons of carbon dioxide.

This is the biggest annual increase since 2000 and means that in 2004 - the latest year that full data is available - the US released the equivalent of nearly 6,300 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Scientists in Britain condemned the increase, saying that it showed how the US was failing to take a lead in the international attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions despite being the worst offender.

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Asshole Murphy to Resign from Park Service

from PEER:

Deputy Director Donald Murphy, the person behind the controversial termination of U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers in 2004, has announced his resignation from the National Park Service effective the end of May, according to an internal announcement released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Murphy’s departure means that all of the officials involved in removing Chief Chambers have departed public service or have been transferred.

It was Murphy who filed administrative charges against U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers for admitting staffing shortages in a November 2002 interview with The Washington Post. Last June, Murphy had been downgraded from the principal deputy director, a position he described as "the Chief Operations Officer" for the Park Service to a new position of Deputy for Support Services with almost none of his previous management responsibilities. Since that functional demotion, Murphy has been largely absent from agency decision-making. Murphy’s new job will be as a vice chancellor for the University of California at Merced campus.

"It is now time to restore Teresa Chambers as Chief of the U.S. Park Police," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization is spearheading Chambers’ ongoing legal challenge to her termination. "The new leadership at the Department of Interior has no reason to continue defending the trumped-up vendetta against Chief Chambers waged by people who are no longer in her chain-of-command."

In addition to the departures of Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Murphy—

• Deputy Interior Secretary J. Stephen Griles has returned to lobbying. Griles, who was a pivotal witness in the Chambers case and is central to one of the four remaining administrative charges, now is enmeshed in the spreading Jack Abramoff scandal;
• Deputy Assistant Secretary Paul Hoffman, the former Dick Cheney aide who was the official that formally decided to fire Chief Chambers, has been transferred from his position overseeing the Park Service to an administrative wing in charge of preparing obscure reports for Congress; and
• Assistant Interior Secretary Craig Manson, who intervened to make his deputy Hoffman the deciding official, has returned to California to teach at a law school.

The only remaining official, Park Service Director Fran Mainella, who was bypassed by Manson, has testified that she never would have removed Chief Chambers, the first female chief of the U.S. Park Police and would take her back if given the option.

Chambers’ bid for reinstatement has awaiting a decision from the federal civil service court, called the Merit Systems Protection Board, for more than a year. Chambers was dismissed on July 9, 2004, following more than seven months of administrative leave, while Bush Administration officials decided her fate. Two of the six administrative charges lodged against Chambers have been thrown out. The remaining counts are under challenge for lacking legal and factual basis as well as violating free speech and whistleblower protections.

In addition, Murphy is the subject of a federal court action brought by Chambers to produce copies of favorable performance reviews of her by Murphy that contradicted the underpinnings of two of the four remaining administrative charges against her.

"Teresa Chambers is a career law enforcement professional with a distinguished record of achievement who is widely respected for her strong leadership abilities," added Ruch. "The rap against Chief Chambers was that she is honest, but we need honesty in federal service now more than ever."

Once Upon a Forest

from truthout:

By Kelpie Wilson

I was on a radio program out of Detroit last week and the host asked me how things were going in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. “Do people still sit in trees there?” he asked. “Are they still cutting down the big trees?”

My answer to both questions was yes. People do still sit in trees and protest logging. But these days, the protests rarely make the national news. The mainstream media has never allocated enough space to cover environmental news (while most newspapers have special sections on health, science, and technology, special environment sections are rare), and what space there is goes to the hottest issue of the moment. These days, understandably, it is global warming.

But the health and stability of the climate is intimately tied to the health and stability of forests. Destruction of forests and other wild land is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the total.

For this reason alone, the newest assault on America’s forests, House Resolution 4200, should be big news. HR 4200 passed out of the House Resources Committee last week (with the votes of 6 Democrats - showing that the timber industry spreads its influence around liberally). It goes to the Agriculture Committee for mark-up this week and then to a vote.

Also known as the “Walden logging bill,” after its sponsor, Oregon congressman Greg Walden, HR 4200, the “Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act” would mandate logging after natural disturbances like fires, droughts and windstorms. This bill would exempt salvage logging from every relevant environmental law, including the Endangered Species Act. The bill includes no protections for old-growth reserves, roadless forests, salmon streams or other sensitive areas. Making matters worse, it is an assault on public safety that would steal taxpayer dollars from fire prevention work in order to subsidize commercial logging.

Proponents of the Walden logging bill claim they need to slash environmental protections for burned forests because otherwise environmentalists will use the protections to appeal logging plans. Often, they say, appeals can drag out long enough that the burned timber rots and becomes worthless and if the timber can’t be sold then there won’t be enough money for replanting. Thus the politicians, who know best, must override the misguided environmentalists in order to “save” the forests.

There are two very large problems with this line of reasoning: the science and the facts. Chris Mooney, in his book The Republican War on Science, has documented the Right’s extremely well-orchestrated attack on science. Republicans have invented something they call “sound science,” which is basically any science that gives them the results that they want, as opposed to independent science that gives the wrong answers.

The attacks on science have been many and varied, ranging from distorting and misrepresenting reports from agencies like the US Fish and Wildlife Service to the outright silencing of scientists like NASA’s James Hansen who try to sound the alarm about climate change. In the case of salvage logging, there is a particularly bizarre story to tell.

The story starts with the ignition of the Biscuit Fire in the Siskiyou National Forest in the summer of 2002. The fire eventually burned through about 500,000 acres. Some acres burned heavily, some burned lightly, and some not at all as the fire skipped and swirled its way through the steep, wild canyons of the Siskiyou terrain.

With so much acreage burned, environmentalists knew that the pressure to log dead and dying trees, known as “salvage logging” or “post-fire logging” would be intense. Even though such logging does not help a forest recover, they prepared themselves to work with the Forest Service to design a salvage logging program that would do the least possible damage, and a plan to log about 100 million board feet moved ahead.

The timber sale planning was almost complete by the summer of 2003, when the Forest Service put it on hold for some new information - a study paid for by the Douglas County Commissioners on behalf of the timber industry. The study, conducted by forest engineer John Sessions at Oregon State University, showed that, with advanced engineering methods, loggers could feasibly pull 2 billion board feet - twenty times more wood - out of the burned areas. This was the study that delayed the logging plan. Environmentalists had nothing to do with it.

Implementing the Sessions Report delayed the start of logging by a year. During that year, micro-organisms went to work on the ash and fallen needles, turning them to soil. Seeds sprouted and tiny fir and pine trees rooted themselves, their first bright green branches unfurling. Tall trees, blackened and dying, continued to stand and provide shade for the tender seedlings, and homes for woodpeckers and other creatures as the ancient ones slowly rotted under the remains of their cindered bark.

The upshot of this corporate-sponsored delay? By the end of 2005, about 70 million board feet had been logged. Meanwhile, a group of graduate students at Oregon State University completed a study of forest regeneration in the Biscuit burn. They found that without logging, forests were beginning to re-grow on their own, but where salvage logging had occurred, new seedlings were killed as heavy equipment scraped the ground and disturbed the soil. The study was submitted to the prestigious journal Science, and accepted for publication.

But the study enraged proponents of Walden’s logging bill, as well as some pro-salvage logging professors in OSU’s Department of Forestry (which gets about 10 percent of its funding from the timber industry). They asked the editors of Science to pull the report. Science refused. The paper had gone through the regular peer-review process and been accepted.

Then, after report appeared in Science, the Bureau of Land Management, which had funded the study, put a hold on the remaining funds left in the grant. BLM officials said the students had violated their contract by attempting to influence legislation pending in Congress - the Walden logging bill.

So, to recap the situation: when a forest engineering study that is funded by timber industry boosters is used to bolster legislation proposed by a congressman who is funded by the timber industry (Greg Walden gets more money from the timber industry than any other House member - over $100,000 in 2004 alone), that is called “sound science.”

But when a group of independent graduate students studying ecology go out and make observations and measurements on the ground and get their paper accepted for publication by the most prestigious scientific journal in America, and that paper happens to contradict assertions used to justify pending legislation, that is called “junk science.”

“Proponents of expedited logging can’t provide a significant body of evidence that a nationwide program of logging in forests recovering from disturbance is scientifically justified,” said Dominick DellaSala, PhD, a forest ecologist for the World Wildlife Fund. “Of the more than 30 scientific papers on post-fire logging published to date, not a single one indicates that logging provides benefits to ecosystems regenerating after disturbance.”

Walden’s bill is wrong on the science. And Greg Walden has lied to justify the need for his emergency logging law, blaming environmentalists for the delay in the logging plan that was actually caused by the timber industry’s logging study.

America is beginning to wake up to the fact that the scientists were right about climate change all along, and that while the media is guilty of ignoring those warnings, the Bush administration is guilty of both censoring the science and of outright lying. It would be tragic to let a similar pack of lies bring the ax down on our last native forests.

The Siskiyou Project has a gallery of images that illustrate effects of post-fire logging along with sample letters for communicating with your legislators about this issue.

EPA air-toxics plan sparks internal rift

from CSM:

By Mark Clayton

The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan that would allow so much extra industrial air pollution that 7 of 10 of the agency’s own regional air-quality directors have signed on to a memo condemning it.

While disagreement on policy issues is not unusual, former EPA officials say the regional directors used particularly strong language in criticizing the plan developed on William Wehrum’s watch in a December memo, which surfaced Monday.

The stinging internal criticism is likely to pop up Wednesday at Senate confirmation hearings for Mr. Wehrum, who is nominated to become the nation’s top air-quality officer.

The plan proposes loosening limits on toxic emissions from scores of industrial sectors, including refineries, chemical plants, steel mills, and smelters.

The changes, the memo said, would “essentially negate” today’s limits on industry toxic air emissions like arsenic, mercury, and lead, also called “hazardous air pollutants” or “air toxics.”

Such poisons are considered by the Clean Air Act to be far more dangerous to public health than air pollutants like nitrous oxides or sulfur dioxide.

Under today’s requirements, any facility emitting more than 10 tons per year of a single toxin, or 25 tons of several toxins, must install pollution control equipment to cut emissions by as much as 95 percent. The new plan would allow large polluters that previously had brought emissions down below the 25-ton limit - say, to 2-3 tons - to boost emissions, as long as they remained under 25 tons.

Criticizing the plan as an unjustified “drastic change” in emissions rules, the memo cites Wehrum’s office for a “trend of excluding” regional offices from rule and policy development that was “disturbing.”

If adopted, some environmentalists say the new plan would blow open the most significant new hole in the Clean Air Act since the Bush administration’s reinterpretation of the act’s “new source review” provision, which curbed power plant emissions.

That interpretation was struck down by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last month.

“Wehrum is the architect of a lot of changes to the Clean Air Act that have weakened environmental protections,” says Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project in New York, former head of the EPA’s office of regulatory enforcement until 2002. “This new proposal on toxics pushes past science, law, and fair public process.”

An EPA spokesman says it’s too early to assess the policy proposal.

“This is a preliminary draft that is currently under development and internal review which could change before EPA issues it as a proposal,” said John Millett, an EPA spokesman in an e-mailed statement. “EPA will seek public comment when it issues the proposal.”

Still, some like what they’ve been hearing about the draft so far.

The proposed change is “good news” for health and the environment, said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. “Without the proposal, power disincentives would exist to make these [pollution] reductions,” he said in a statement.

But enforcement could be a problem. The regional directors memo calls “unfounded and overly optimist” the new plan’s contention that toxic emissions are unlikely to rise since industry will want to “avoid negative publicity” and “maintain their appearance as responsible businesses.”

Instead, “the cost of the increased [toxic] emissions would be borne by the communities surrounding the sources,” the memo concludes.

“It’s pretty clear this plan is out of bounds,” says John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. “It’s also clear the regional directors found it to be extreme.”

On Smoking

Curing Oil Addiction: Check into the White House Detox Center

from Bob Park’s What’s New:

Two months ago in his State of the Union address, Bush lamented America’s “addiction to oil.” But on Wednesday, the White House announced that the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard for SUVs would only be raised 1.5 mpg from the current 22.5 mpg to 24 mpg by 2011. Three years ago when the CAFE standard was raised by the same amount WN called for shortening the length of the mile instead. But things are worse now. WN now suggests we leave the mile alone and tighten up the country a little. Shorten all the nation’s roads by 127 feet per mile, which achieves the same savings and cut down on asphalt.

A band-aid on a gusher

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/04/03/muckraker/

By Amanda Griscom Little

The Bush administration on Wednesday raised fuel-economy standards for SUVs, minivans and many pickup trucks—the most significant boost to efficiency requirements for the big vehicles in three decades.

Of course, as enviros have been quick to point out, that’s not saying much.

These final CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) rules, which are modestly stricter than draft rules released last August, will, beginning with the 2008 model year, ramp up standards for light trucks—a category that includes SUVs and minivans, and accounts for 55 percent of all vehicles sold in the U.S. last year. The vehicles will be divided into multiple categories based on size or “footprint,” each with its own miles-per-gallon target. The bigger the vehicles in the class, the lower the target. For example, smaller SUVs like the Jeep Wrangler will have to hit 26.4 mpg in the 2008 model year, gradually rising to 28.3 mpg in 2011, while bigger vehicles such the Chevy Silverado will have to reach 20.1 mpg in 2008 and 21.8 in 2011. The new rules will also, starting in 2011, apply to SUVs and vans that weigh between 8,500 and 10,000 pounds, such as the Hummer H2 and Chevy Suburban, which have until now been entirely exempt from fuel-economy standards.

Altogether, the rules are expected to yield an estimated average mileage for new light trucks of 24 mpg by the 2011 model year—an improvement of less than two miles per gallon over the 2007 standard. The current system requires each automaker to meet a single average target of 21.6 mpg for its fleet of 2006 model-year light trucks; that target will climb to 22.2 mpg for 2007.

According to the Department of Transportation, the new standards could save nearly 11 billion gallons of gasoline over the lifetime of light trucks from the 2008 to 2011 model years. That may sound like a lot, but it’s roughly equivalent to the amount of gasoline the U.S. guzzles in merely four weeks.

“It’s a bit like telling a three-pack-a-day smoker to give up one cigarette a day,” said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global-warming program.

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EPA Dumbing Down its Research

from PEER:

Shrinking Environmental Research Budget Siphoned Off to Other Tasks

Washington, DC — The ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct timely, cutting- edge research is threatened by diversion of money from a shrinking budget and by failure to defend its science from political manipulation, according to congressional testimony delivered today. After seven straight years of declining research budgets, President Bush has again proposed further cuts, aggravated by raids on the remaining research dollars to finance homeland security and public relations programs.

In addition to money woes, EPA’s research program is plagued by suppression of findings for non-scientific reasons and lack of protection for its scientists, according to testimony presented by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive Director Jeff Ruch before the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment, Technology, and Standards. The hearing examined the proposed EPA Science and Technology budget for fiscal year 2007.

“There appears to be a deliberate policy of marginalizing EPA science on issue after issue, so that the agency is becoming increasingly irrelevant to emerging environmental threats,” Ruch testified, pointing to internal surveys showing a growing pessimism by agency scientists about the direction of EPA. “EPA’s public health research agenda has been neutered.”

Among the examples PEER raised before the Subcommittee are that EPA —

• Has kept its risk assessment for dioxin, a deadly yet widespread agent, in draft form for more than 12 years. The final assessment has still not been released;
• Diluted its recommended perchlorate safety standards so that states have been forced to step in and set their own standards. Perchlorate is a defense munitions compound that has been found in drinking water supplies in more than 20 states and is considered by many the leading Clean Water Act threat of the 21st century; and
• Is giving corporate contributors direct influence over which research projects are undertaken by entering into a record number of joint ventures.

EPA currently spends $557 million directly on environmental and health research and another $173 million on environmental technologies. While the Bush administration is proposing a slight increase in the overall combined budget for science and technology,

• The scientific research budget represents a 16% decline over the past three years when adjusted for inflation. Some areas, such as ecological research, would drop by more than one-fourth;
• New security programs for water supplies are being funded wholly out of research funds, as are questionable new public relations and information technology programs; and
• EPA contends it cannot afford its $2.5 million network of libraries, which it seeks to slash by 80%.

“The one group not being asked to testify about agency science is the EPA scientists themselves,” Ruch added. “Unfortunately, EPA has forbidden its own specialists from speaking without political clearance.”

EPA Closing its Midwest Library

from PEER:

Holding Will Be Stored Indefinitely; Public Access to Research Compromised

Washington, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Midwest Regional Library serving universities, the public and its own staff in a six-state area, according to an internal email released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The agency is acting without waiting for Congress to approve the proposed budget cuts that are the basis for dismantling EPA’s entire library network.

In a March 13, 2006 memo to employees, EPA Midwestern Regional Administrator Thomas Skinner wrote that “the library will close in the near future” so as “to allow time for an orderly relocation of our library collection.” The affected library located in the Chicago regional headquarters serves the six-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The memo cites a 90% loss of funding for the regional library in President Bush’s proposed 2007 budget as the reason for closing the library, even though the proposal has yet to be voted on by Congress and the new federal fiscal year does not begin until October 1, 2006. The Midwest Regional Library is one of 27 libraries across the country whose budget the administration has proposed to reduce by 80%.

“By putting its research collections into indefinite storage, EPA might as well start burning books because these works are not likely to see the light of day again,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the agency has allocated no money for moving collections to other libraries or digitizing the holdings so that they would be available online. “The loss of access to this research will remove potentially key information from the hands of researchers, inspectors and decision-makers.”

The plan to slash library funding is among the $300 million in EPA budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration. As originally proposed, the plan would also have de-funded the electronic catalog maintained by the EPA Headquarters library. When it was pointed out that eliminating the electronic catalog would make it impossible to find any holding within the network, EPA announced last week that it would restore the $500,000 reduction to its headquarters for the catalog. Unfortunately, EPA indicated that it would compensate for this action by spreading even deeper cuts cut among the other libraries.

In his email, Regional Administrator Skinner pledged that limited electronic access to research will remain available to EPA’s own staff but it is unclear what happens to the tens of thousands of research reports that are now only available as hard copies. At the same time, employees in other EPA regions are reporting parallel scrambles to cutback library services in anticipation of adoption of the agency’s FY 2007 budget.

“EPA might want to wait for Congress to act before its shutters its libraries,” Ruch added, noting that EPA spends more than a half-billion dollars a year on research and the total library network budget is only $2.5 million. “EPA’s national research plan is supposed to build on what we already know; but effectively deploying our existing knowledge base will be increasingly difficult if decades of research are locked away in storage.”

Read the email announcing the library closure (pdf)

Learn more about the Bush plan to close the EPA library network

Rewriting The Science

from 60 Minutes:

As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn’t want you to hear but he’s going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world’s leading researcher on global warming. He’s the head of NASA’s top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

But he didn’t hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.

Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: “Or they’re censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I’m allowed to say it.”

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

“There’s no doubt about that, says Hansen. “The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface.”

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

“In my more than three decades in the government I’ve never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public,” says Hansen.

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From Teapot Dome to Gale Norton

from truthout:

By Kelpie Wilson

The rights of the public to the nation’s natural resources outweigh private rights.
—Teddy Roosevelt

Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded.
—John Muir

As the Teapot Dome scandal of Warren G. Harding’s presidency was one milestone in the history of American resource piracy, the tenure of Gale Norton as Secretary of the Interior is surely another.

Harding’s Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, failed in his scheme to sell off the Teapot Dome oil reserves and pocket the money. He was prosecuted and sentenced to a year in prison. Gale Norton’s timely exit on the heels of the Abramoff scandal that implicates top Interior Department officials could mean that she is worried, but it is not likely that she will face any prosecution for her giveaways to industry.

Harding, like G.W. Bush, had little regard for proper English - Harding called for a return to “normalcy,” while Bush says we should not “misunderestimate” him. On Harding’s death, the poet E. E. Cummings said: “The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.” But just as Bush surpasses Harding as a mangler of language, so the Bush administration far outstrips the Harding administration in the game of looting.

Gone are the days when corrupt officials took payments in “little black bags,” as Albert Fall received his $100,000 payment for the Teapot Dome oil lease from Harry F. Sinclair. Fall also received a shipment from Sinclair of “six heifers, a yearling bull, two six-months-old boars, four sows and ... an English thoroughbred horse.”

Today our new reality is that the tycoons and the officials are actually the same persons, or at least part of the same hive. Like insects that go through a complex life cycle from larva to pupa tof egg-laying adult, people like Gale Norton and her deputy secretary Stephen J. Griles will go from lobbyist to regulator to corporate board member. At every stage of the life cycle they have one purpose: to direct the flow of resources back to the corporate nest.

And so, when Norton claims she is leaving the Interior Department to set “new goals to achieve in the private sector,” you know that she will be well supplied with hogs, heifers and whatever lucrative lawyering job she wants.

Gale Norton’s number one tool, which she used like a common thief slips a credit card up a door jamb to spring a cheap lock, is the ideology known as “Wise Use.” The “Wise Use” doctrine is founded on anti-government rhetoric that advocates eliminating any environmental regulations that might restrict economic development. Because she was so well known as a “Wise Use” ideologue, only John Ashcroft was a more controversial cabinet appointment in Bush’s first term.

During her tenure as Secretary, Norton advanced this agenda through regulatory rollbacks, suppression of science, preferential treatment, and collusion with industry. For the most part, she was unable to enshrine “Wise Use” principles in regulations, with the exception of her new National Park Service regulations.

Norton proceeded to revamp the Park Service regulations despite the lack of any identified need for new rules. Now in the final phase of adoption, the new directive drastically changes the mission of our national parks from preservation to commercially sponsored recreation. If these rules are adopted, park managers won’t be able to prevent development that harms wildlife and other natural features, and corporate logos will spring up like daisies.

These rules also require newly hired staff to take what amounts to a loyalty oath to the policies of the current administration. A loyalty oath may be the solution to the sticky problem of science that Norton kept running into. When her agency biologists reported that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would harm caribou, Norton rewrote the report before submitting it to Congress. She also suppressed a finding by the US Fish & Wildlife Service that new Army Corps rules for permitting development would devastate wetlands.

In fact, Norton created a climate of intimidation at the Interior Department that functions almost as effectively as an unconstitutional loyalty oath would: Last year the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility took a survey of Fish & Wildlife Service biologists and found that more than half of the respondents said agency officials had reversed or withdrawn the biologists’ scientific conclusions under pressure from industry groups.

Lying to Congress and suppressing scientific findings. How is it that these are not prosecutable offenses?

In 2001, Oregon potato farmers in the upper portion of the Klamath River suffering from a prolonged drought demanded that the Interior Department give them water dedicated to fish. Gale Norton complied, and in 2002, at least 35,000 salmon died at the mouth of the Klamath. The Klamath runs are now so low that the Fisheries Service is preparing to close the salmon fishing season, ruining a $150 million dollar industry. Gale Norton is responsible. Why can’t she be indicted for ruining a precious and irreplaceable natural resource?

Norton’s supporters, like the National Association of Manufacturers, praise her primarily for her role in opening up the West to massive amounts of new energy development. Interior Department staff began referring to Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico as the “OPEC states,” as the drilling permits multiplied and flew through the bureaucracy with minimal review and consultation with local citizens.

Norton’s own proudest accomplishment, she says, was implementing her “four C’s” program - a supposedly new approach to public involvement that included “communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation.”

Unfortunately, the four C’s seem only to apply to industry and not to local people. Take for instance the town of Grand Junction, Colorado. Last September the BLM informed the city that a few hundred acres in the town’s watershed used for drinking water supplies would be offered for oil and gas drilling. Then in December, at the end of the public comment period, the BLM told the town that actually several thousand acres would be leased for drilling. The agency withheld the information because it would otherwise “taint” the competitive bidding process. The town does not want any drilling at all in their watershed. Why can’t Gale Norton be indicted for destroying a town’s water supply?

I can testify that the same process is happening in BLM’s western forest lands where, on orders from Gale Norton, the BLM is tossing the Northwest Forest Plan out the window and preparing to log every last old growth forest that they manage in Washington, Oregon and California. Many public meetings are held, but they are all a waste of time because the communication, consultation and cooperation are not intended for local people but only for the timber industry.

Under Gale Norton’s leadership, the Department of Interior has become nothing less than a big box store for the mining, timber, oil, gas, and coal industries. As CEO, Norton has eliminated all rivals to give her corporate customers “low, low prices every day.” Meanwhile, fish and wildlife and all the rest of us who need clean air and water underwrite the true cost.

Bush’s new nominee for Secretary of the Interior, Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, is known for his animosity toward protecting the last wild roadless areas in Idaho. Unless something changes in Congress or the White House, unless Gale Norton is somehow made to pay the price for her looting of public resources, there is no doubt that he will keep the store open for business. 

Mr. Luna’s Bright Idea

Laurie David writes on HuffPo:

Not too long ago, Oprah did a show about global warming and held up a lightbulb. Not just any lightbulb, but a compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb that uses 66% less energy than a standard bulb. If every household in America changed just five of their bulbs to a CFL, it would be equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road for a year.

Ken Luna, an eighth grade science teacher in Babylon, New York saw Oprah and, along with his students, has come up with a very bright idea: give one CFL bulb to every K-12 student in America—all 50 million of them—and fight global warming one bulb at a time (not to mention saving the American people over $2.3 billion in electricity costs).

Home Depot has agreed to supply Mr. Luna’s class with enough CFL bulbs for every student in their district (that’s 5,500 free CFL bulbs). So on March 30th, in the west gym at North Babylon High School, they are having a party—clowns, music, food… and free lightbulbs.

If you are a teacher, start a similar project in your class. If you are a supplier or a retail store, donate bulbs. If you are part of the media, cover this worthwhile campaign. And if you are Oprah, know that your suggestion has sparked the ultimate in grassroots action—so please continue to follow this great story and spread the word.

stopglobalwarming.org

Forest Service to Outsource 2/3 of its Work Force

from PEER:

Washington, DC —The U.S. Forest Service is studying how to contract out more than two-thirds of its total workforce by 2009, according to agency planning documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Coming on the heels of Bush administration plans to sell off 300,000 acres of Forest Service land, the agency is also looking to potentially privatize large portions of its environmental, law enforcement, fire-fighting and research operations.

Under the agency plans, 21,350 full-time jobs will soon be under review for possible replacement by private sector firms. The Forest Service has a total of 31,625 full-time jobs, according to Office of Personnel Management figures for FY 2003:

• During the current fiscal year, 500 fire-fighting jobs in the aviation program, including the famed smoke-jumpers, will be examined for outplacement to interested contractors;
• In FY 2007, approximately half of the agency’s law enforcement agents and rangers (600 positions), the jobs of all of its geologists (500 jobs) and 1,100 biologists who prepare environmental studies on the impacts of timber sales, oil and gas leasing and other actions on national forest lands may be put out to bid;
• In FY 2008, the agency’s entire network of scientists and other researchers (2,000 slots) and 3,000 foresters and range conservation staff positions will be reviewed for outsourcing potential.

“The Forest Service appears to be having an internal fire sale, with the heart of our national forests put out for bid on eBay,” stated Jeff Ruch, PEER Executive Director. “We may soon see the Weyerhaeuser National Forest patrolled by rent-a-rangers, overseen by private consultants.”

In 2003, an outsourcing plan of similar scope, designed to meet Bush administration outsourcing quotas prior to the 2004 election, was halted by Congressional action. Then, as now, one of the major concerns was the added cost to the Forest Service to conduct the studies and stage the competitions. In its latest proposed budget, the Bush administration is cutting back Forest Service operating funds without providing any new funds to pay for this broad undertaking. In 2003, the Forest Service spent an estimated $360 million on studies but produced no identifiable savings.

Large scale outsourcing also has a dampening impact on sagging employee morale, already depressed by shrinking budgets. To make matters more contentious, the Forest Service is advancing its plan without consulting the unions representing affected employees.

“For decades, this agency has invoked the phrase ‘Forest Service family’ to connote a cohesive, close-knit organization, but this plan puts whole branches of the family on the auction block,” Ruch added, noting that effective contract management has not been one of the strong suits of the federal government. “This whole misguided effort is an example of mindless management by slogan lacking in any analysis as to how to make the Forest Service actually run better or more efficiently.”

Federal Wildlife Monitors Oversee a Boom in Drilling

from WaPo:

By Blaine Harden

PINEDALE, Wyo.—The Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of more land and wildlife than any federal agency, routinely restricts the ability of its own biologists to monitor wildlife damage caused by surging energy drilling on federal land, according to BLM officials and bureau documents.

The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands.

Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a sixfold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade.

Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields.

Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife.

“The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call ‘biostitutes,’ rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing,” said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM’s Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. “They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it.”

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The Fate of the Ocean

In Mother Jones, Julia Whitty has written an excellent, if depressing, article recounting her recent adventure on the Oceanus (a WHOI research vessel) and clueing us in on the stunning magnitude of the human attack on the oceans of the world.

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