US tries to sink forests plan.

Guardian article. Further extending the pattern of opposing any sort of international agreements, the US is planning on fighting a British-led proposal to fight illegal logging in rainforests and other endagnered areas.








McCloskey on the Endangered Species Act.

In an editorial in the LA Times, former Representative Paul McCloskey, a co-founder of Earth Day, and a Republican himself, writes of his dismay at the recent efforts by the Republicans to dismantle the Endangered Species Act. Republicans Are at Risk of Becoming an Endangered Species he says. [Free registrated req'd.] Link via The Smirking Chimp.


What's so frightening about this is not just the threat to endangered species (and to humans as well), but the contempt for the law being shown by these people. It's one thing to fight to change a law they disagree with, but to simply refuse to enforce public laws is malfeasance of the worst kind, and threatens the very fabric of American democracy. If people don't believe that the laws they get passed will be enforced, then what's the use of participating at all? Those in power will do what they want, and the law be damned. They can't just pick and choose which laws they feel like enforcing at any particular time. It just doesn't work that way.

This also illustrates that it's not just "lefties" (whatever they are) and Democrats who are appalled at Bush's actions. It's people of all ages, all stripes, all classes, all parts of America. This is a Republican speaking, not some "environmentalist" (whatever they are). George Bush took an oath promising to enforce the laws of the country, and it's disgusting that he isn't doing it. Beyond disgusting.






Feds making California's pollution worse.

In an article on the nomination of former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt as the EPA's next administrator that, after years of improvement, LA's ozone problem is getting worse again. And that it's because of federal efforts, led by the EPA, to take away Californians' right to protect their own environment.


Beyond the environmental concerns, it doesn't make any economic sense. Pollution costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year in extra health costs, clean up costs, and many other ways. Virtually any measures that reduce pollution and to clean up the environment improve the economy. Those who claim otherwise simply either don't know the facts or are lying.






Boise-Cascade stops all old-growth logging.

Via Tom Paine. The Idaho Statesman reports that Boise-Cascade has announced that it will stop all logging in old-growth areas in the US in 2004, as well as ceasing purchaes of lumber from endangered forests elsewhere in the world.


Article says they may even get out of foresty entirely. Which means, I guess, that more and more paper will be made from matereials other than wood pulp.






North Sea cod stocks about to collapse.

BBC Science/Nature news tells us that stocks are now so low that all fishing must stop if they are to survive and recover.


And yet a few fishermen are still demanding the right to continue to fish, as though a season or two of low pay compensates for the destruction of fish stocks that are essential to feeding the rest of the world.






Bush wants to eliminate the Endangered Species Act.

Writing in Counterpunch, Jeffrey St. Clair reports on the latest attacks on this essential piece of environmental legislation. At least he acknowledges that the Democrats have played a significant role in weakening it.

The Bush administration has given up on the art of pretense. There are no more illusions about its predatory attitude toward the environment. No more airy talk about how financial incentives and market forces can protect ecosystems. No more soft rhetoric about how the invisible hand of capitalism has a green thumb.

Now it's down to brass tacks. The Bush administration is steadily unshackling every restraint on the corporations that seek to plunder what is left of the public domain.

For decades, the last obstacle to the wholesale looting of American forests, deserts, mountains and rivers has been the Endangered Species Act, one of the noblest laws ever to emerge from congress. Of course, the ESA has been battered before. Indeed, Al Gore, as a young congressman, led one of the first fights against the law in order to build the Tellico Dam despite the considered opinion of scientists that it would eradicate the snail darter. Reagan and the mad James Watt did also violence to the law. Bush Sr. bruised it as well in the bitter battles over the northern spotted owl. Despite green credentials, Clinton and Bruce Babbitt tried to render the law meaningless, by simply deciding not to enforce its provisions and by routinely handing out exemptions to favored corporations.

But the Bush administration, under the guidance of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, has taken a different approach: a direct assault on the law seeking to make it as extinct as the Ivory-billed woodpecker. Give them points for brutal honesty.

On May 28, Gale Norton announced that the Interior Department was suspending any new designations of critical habitat for endangered and threatened species. The reason? Poverty. The Interior Department, Norton sighed, is simply out of money for that kind of work and they've no plans to ask Congress for a supplemental appropriation.

Nearly everyone in the government has opposed this law since it was created during the early 1970s. Public polls however have always and continue to show widespread support for it, and among voters across the political spectrum.

Bush took an oath to enforce all of the laws of this country, even those he disagrees with. That's the job. Failure to do so, by him or by any of his appointees, is illegal and is an impeachable offense. They don't have the right to pick and choose the laws they enforce.






EU makes polluters responsible for clean-up costs.

Guardian article. The EU set forth new rules requiring polluters to pay the full costs of any accidents, including the long term costs of restoring habitat and such. Naturally the corporations are up in arms, and claiming this will drive them out of business.


"Corporate Britain struggled to contain its fury." What a strange way to phrase it. One of the largest and fastest growing industries in the UK is tourism. I really doubt that the executives in this industry are "furious" at attempts to protect their business. And of course, the bias here is obvious. This could just as easily be written, "British taxpayers breathed relief at knowing that as much as £1.8bn a year in clean-up costs they have been burdened with will now be borne by the businesses responsible."

You'd almost get the impression that the UK isn't also part of the EU, that this is being forced on them by an outside power, without any British input or say-so. But there are plenty of British who support this.

They also don't seem to understand the purpose of such laws. It's not to "punish" the companies, or even to fund any necessary clean-up. It's to make it clear that it will be cheaper in the long run to prevent such accidents from happening. As far as it costing anything at all, the opposite is more likely. As they themselves point out environmental clean-up costs routinely run in the billions. So preventing them SAVES money and HELPS the economy. Not the reverse.






Hydrogen based cars take another step.

The Guardian reports on a demonstration by Ford Europe of a new model hydrogen car.


Still a long way from production models, but a mark of the continuing development. Along with a hydrogen-based engine itself, there remains a lot of work in the mass production of the hydrogen itself. But it's clear now that the technology works. The rest is just details. :)

---

End of entries.