Conservation Insider Bulletin
Published weekly for the Conservation Council of North Carolina
Conservation News to Peruse & Use
Editor: Dan Besse, cib@conservationcouncilnc.org
April 11, 2008
Track "muddy water watch" enforcement examples, consider key clean water legislation, and explore the sinister plot of "greenways", this week in CIB:
--Enforcement Update: Muddy Water Case Study
--Washington Watch: Clean Water Restoration Act
--The Other Side: Greenways, the Communist Plot
Enforcement Update: Muddy Water Case Study
As a part of ongoing citizen enforcement training efforts, the Neuse River Foundation (NRF) and other groups have released "case studies" which show examples of the kinds of problems which occur when sedimentation control laws are not enforced. Recently, this enforcement training effort has looked hard at examples in Cary. Discussion and photos can be found at http://www.muddywaterwatch.org/casestudies.html.
Washington Watch: Clean Water Restoration Act
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court (in 2001 and 2006) veered away from its earlier broad interpretations of the Clean Water Act, federal protections for critical waters and wetlands have been narrowing. In response, pro-environmental leaders in the U.S. Congress are trying to re-clarify the law to include the earlier broad definition of protected waters.
The resulting legislation is called the Clean Water Restoration Act (S. 1870 and H.R. 2421). Earlier this week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on the bill, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to take up the issue next week. In the view of many environmentalists, this is the most important clean water issue to come before Congress in years.
Among the North Carolina Congressional delegation, Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC1), David Price (D-NC4), Mel Watt (D-NC12) and Brad Miller (D-NC13) are co-sponsors of the House version of the bill. (CIB commends these members for their clean water leadership.)
Alas, not all the N.C. representatives are so foresighted. In particular, Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC8), a member of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, has criticized it. Hayes claims that the bill would compromise the rights of property owners, especially farmers. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC5) has also been visibly critical of the bill, again citing the usual "property rights" arguments.
As always, the "property rights" arguments elevate the rights of some to dump into public waters, and dismiss the rights of downstream and other impacted neighbors to clean water. Butterfield makes that point in support of the bill when he notes that it only limits actions that adversely impact a neighbor's water.
(Information taken from various published reports.)
The Other Side: Greenways, the Communist Plot
Sometimes the anti-environmentalists' train completely jumps the track of reality. This month the John Lockies are treating us to one of their most bizarre examples: greenways as a communist plot to steal our property rights. (Cue the "Outer Limits" theme music now.)
The Locke Foundation is pushing a "report" attacking the new Neuse River Greenway under development in Raleigh, as an uncompensated invasion of private property rights. Set aside the fact that the neighborhood supposedly "invaded" was advertised as a "greenways community". They assert, without evidence, that greenways devalue property. Odd conclusion, that—especially when a group as "property rights" oriented as the National Association of Realtors has found precisely to the contrary. In fact, proximity to greenways boosts property sale values.
The Lockies' paper is revealed as no more than an ideological tract when it asserts the sweeping claim, also without evidence, "Since greenways are commonly owned public property, they are more susceptible to crime, litter, and degradation than privately owned property." They talk of the alternative benefits of "private greenways" which would be open only to paying customers.
And there we have the truth. This is an outfit of ideologues so extreme that they reject the very premise of public parkland.
So sell off Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Yellowstone, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and the rest of those publicly-owned eyesores. Who could possibly want to live next to such a set of dumps?
Showing posts with label locke foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label locke foundation. Show all posts
7/14/2007
Conservation Insider Bulletin, July 13
Conservation Insider Bulletin
Published weekly for the Conservation Council of North Carolina
Conservation News to Peruse & Use
Editor: Dan Besse, earthvote@ccnccpac.org
July 13, 2007
Legislative Watch: Clock Ticking on Landfill Moratorium
In one of last session's big environmental victories, the General Assembly slammed a permitting moratorium on large landfills, and kicked off a major study of policy action needs in the arena of solid waste management. An extensive "stakeholder" study process ensued, ultimately resulting in a broadly hailed comprehensive legislative proposal: SB 1492, "Responsible Waste Management". The sponsors of the bill are influential State Senators Daniel Clodfelter (D-Mecklenburg) and Charles Albertson (D-Duplin).
Unfortunately, although SB 1492 was on March 27 referred to the Senate Agriculture/Environment/Natural Resources Committee (chaired by Albertson), it has not yet emerged. Meanwhile, time is running out for the moratorium, which expires August 1.
A review of SB 1492 was the lead item in this week's legislative issues bulletin, Hot List, from CCNC lobbyist Mike Nelson. Regarding the need for immediate action on this issue, Mike said, "The moratorium stopped development for a year, but the issues with waste management in the state still exist. The waste industry has proposed six huge mega-dumps be constructed in North Carolina, all located in economically depressed areas in the eastern part of the state. Three of these proposed mega-dumps would build up trash higher than the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, creating huge mountains of waste over the state's famous coastal plain. Unregulated expansion of the waste management industry would clearly be an environmental disaster for the state's most depressed regions.
"However, the moratorium passed last session expires in just a few weeks, on August 1. If the moratorium is allowed to sunset, then it would signal a return to almost unrestricted landfill development in North Carolina. While waste management is essential to the state, North Carolina cannot become a dumping ground for the rest of the country's waste, as would inevitably happen if all the proposed landfills are built. The General Assembly needs to act in this session to ensure responsible waste management continues in this state."
As described by Mike, key provisions of SB 1492 include the following:
Promotes recycling in North Carolina by diverting a portion of tip fees to support local recycling programs. A seemingly small amount -- just a dollar per ton of garbage disposed of -- will generate millions of dollars in revenue for local recycling.
Creates a new environmental safety review process for private-sector landfills, and makes public landfills subject to state-level environmental review for the first time.
Provides funding to clean up over 600 non-compliant or abandoned landfills, a clear benefit to the environment around these pre-existing sites, many of which were built before liners were required.
Places size restrictions on new landfills, requiring them to be no higher than 200 feet and ensuring that needed development will not create "mountains of garbage" and hurt the landscape.
Washington Watch: Ex-Bush Surgeon General Details Political Interference; Administration Politics Endangers More Species
Ex-Bush Surgeon General Details Political Interference: George Bush's former Surgeon General, Richard H. Carmona, told a Congressional committee this week that Bush Administration officials persistently suppressed public health reports that ran counter to their political policies. Among a list of policy areas which he said were impacted, he included global warming, as well as health-related issues like secondhand smoke, emergency contraception, sex education, and health care in the prison system. Current Bush officials went scrambling, once again, to try to deny or diminish the revelations of another ex-colleague airing the dirty laundry of an Administration plainly dedicated to trumping science with politics.
Administration Politics Endangers More Species: In a thematically related story, the Los Angeles Times this week reported on strife and disarray within the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's efforts to implement the laws protecting endangered species. According to the paper's research, the Bush Administration's political commitment to halt the expansion of endangered species protections has resulted in a waiting list of 279 candidate species for protection—species near extinction now, but lacking federal designation and protection as such. Further, about 200 of the 1,326 species currently on the endangered list are close to gone, in part because funding for their recovery has been cut. The Service has a 30 percent vacancy rate in the endangered species program's staff, and the agency's top position has been left unfilled for over a year. More program funding cuts are proposed. In sum, it's a portrait of a program in deep trouble. Perhaps the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service should be considered a candidate for endangered listing.
Campaign Watch: Lockie Bids for Local Office
The filing period for local government elections this year still has another week to run, but one of the interesting contests with potential environmental implications is shaping up in Durham. That's because an ex-leader (very recently ex-, as in last week) of one of the Art Pope organizations is running for mayor.
Thomas Stith, currently a Durham City Council Member, resigned last Friday as vice president of the John William Pope Civitas Institute in preparation for his campaign for Durham mayor. Stith will run against incumbent Durham Mayor Bill Bell.
The Civitas Institute is one of the Pope network of conservative advocacy groups, which also include the better-known John Locke Foundation. According to the Durham Herald-Sun, almost 98 percent of the Civitas funding of $1.8 million in fiscal year 2005-2006 came from a Pope family foundation. The paper also notes that a polling firm with ties to Civitas conducted a survey last year on the potential for a challenge to Bell.
As a matter of standard philosophy, the Lockies are aggressively hostile to nearly all meaningful environmental regulation, so we can probably look to this race as a testing ground for their attacks on local involvement in anti-sprawl efforts, stormwater management, renewable energy initiatives, and the like. CIB will plan to follow the details of the contest for environmentally relevant themes and developments.
Published weekly for the Conservation Council of North Carolina
Conservation News to Peruse & Use
Editor: Dan Besse, earthvote@ccnccpac.org
July 13, 2007
Legislative Watch: Clock Ticking on Landfill Moratorium
In one of last session's big environmental victories, the General Assembly slammed a permitting moratorium on large landfills, and kicked off a major study of policy action needs in the arena of solid waste management. An extensive "stakeholder" study process ensued, ultimately resulting in a broadly hailed comprehensive legislative proposal: SB 1492, "Responsible Waste Management". The sponsors of the bill are influential State Senators Daniel Clodfelter (D-Mecklenburg) and Charles Albertson (D-Duplin).
Unfortunately, although SB 1492 was on March 27 referred to the Senate Agriculture/Environment/Natural Resources Committee (chaired by Albertson), it has not yet emerged. Meanwhile, time is running out for the moratorium, which expires August 1.
A review of SB 1492 was the lead item in this week's legislative issues bulletin, Hot List, from CCNC lobbyist Mike Nelson. Regarding the need for immediate action on this issue, Mike said, "The moratorium stopped development for a year, but the issues with waste management in the state still exist. The waste industry has proposed six huge mega-dumps be constructed in North Carolina, all located in economically depressed areas in the eastern part of the state. Three of these proposed mega-dumps would build up trash higher than the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, creating huge mountains of waste over the state's famous coastal plain. Unregulated expansion of the waste management industry would clearly be an environmental disaster for the state's most depressed regions.
"However, the moratorium passed last session expires in just a few weeks, on August 1. If the moratorium is allowed to sunset, then it would signal a return to almost unrestricted landfill development in North Carolina. While waste management is essential to the state, North Carolina cannot become a dumping ground for the rest of the country's waste, as would inevitably happen if all the proposed landfills are built. The General Assembly needs to act in this session to ensure responsible waste management continues in this state."
As described by Mike, key provisions of SB 1492 include the following:
Promotes recycling in North Carolina by diverting a portion of tip fees to support local recycling programs. A seemingly small amount -- just a dollar per ton of garbage disposed of -- will generate millions of dollars in revenue for local recycling.
Creates a new environmental safety review process for private-sector landfills, and makes public landfills subject to state-level environmental review for the first time.
Provides funding to clean up over 600 non-compliant or abandoned landfills, a clear benefit to the environment around these pre-existing sites, many of which were built before liners were required.
Places size restrictions on new landfills, requiring them to be no higher than 200 feet and ensuring that needed development will not create "mountains of garbage" and hurt the landscape.
Washington Watch: Ex-Bush Surgeon General Details Political Interference; Administration Politics Endangers More Species
Ex-Bush Surgeon General Details Political Interference: George Bush's former Surgeon General, Richard H. Carmona, told a Congressional committee this week that Bush Administration officials persistently suppressed public health reports that ran counter to their political policies. Among a list of policy areas which he said were impacted, he included global warming, as well as health-related issues like secondhand smoke, emergency contraception, sex education, and health care in the prison system. Current Bush officials went scrambling, once again, to try to deny or diminish the revelations of another ex-colleague airing the dirty laundry of an Administration plainly dedicated to trumping science with politics.
Administration Politics Endangers More Species: In a thematically related story, the Los Angeles Times this week reported on strife and disarray within the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's efforts to implement the laws protecting endangered species. According to the paper's research, the Bush Administration's political commitment to halt the expansion of endangered species protections has resulted in a waiting list of 279 candidate species for protection—species near extinction now, but lacking federal designation and protection as such. Further, about 200 of the 1,326 species currently on the endangered list are close to gone, in part because funding for their recovery has been cut. The Service has a 30 percent vacancy rate in the endangered species program's staff, and the agency's top position has been left unfilled for over a year. More program funding cuts are proposed. In sum, it's a portrait of a program in deep trouble. Perhaps the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service should be considered a candidate for endangered listing.
Campaign Watch: Lockie Bids for Local Office
The filing period for local government elections this year still has another week to run, but one of the interesting contests with potential environmental implications is shaping up in Durham. That's because an ex-leader (very recently ex-, as in last week) of one of the Art Pope organizations is running for mayor.
Thomas Stith, currently a Durham City Council Member, resigned last Friday as vice president of the John William Pope Civitas Institute in preparation for his campaign for Durham mayor. Stith will run against incumbent Durham Mayor Bill Bell.
The Civitas Institute is one of the Pope network of conservative advocacy groups, which also include the better-known John Locke Foundation. According to the Durham Herald-Sun, almost 98 percent of the Civitas funding of $1.8 million in fiscal year 2005-2006 came from a Pope family foundation. The paper also notes that a polling firm with ties to Civitas conducted a survey last year on the potential for a challenge to Bell.
As a matter of standard philosophy, the Lockies are aggressively hostile to nearly all meaningful environmental regulation, so we can probably look to this race as a testing ground for their attacks on local involvement in anti-sprawl efforts, stormwater management, renewable energy initiatives, and the like. CIB will plan to follow the details of the contest for environmentally relevant themes and developments.
5/26/2007
Locke Foundation vs. Science
[from Conservation Insider Bulletin]
Tar Heel Heads Sierra Club: UNC professor Robert Cox this week was elected as president of the national Sierra Club. This marks the third time that Cox has been chosen to head the 1.3 million member organization, having served as its president previously from 1994 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2001. Cox told the press, "The number one priority is global warming."
The Other Side: Global Dumbing Tour
The Locke Foundation (North Carolina's very own version of the Flat Earth Society) announced with much fanfare a multi-stop "Global Warming Tour" of presentations by "highly respected American Enterprise Institute scientist and environmental consultant Joel Schwartz" to debunk Al Gore on global warming. (Good Old Al is the wacky anti-environmentalists' favorite whipping boy, especially since the release of his award winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth".)
Now, we're sure that Mr. Schwartz (no doctorate of any kind) is a fine fellow and an entertaining speaker. But to trot him out as your top gun scientist to confront the world's genuine scientific community on the reality of climate change?
Out of curiosity, we checked Mr. Schwartz's own website for his background. Without doubt, he is a professional in his field--but that field is advocacy on behalf of anti-regulatory organizations: American Enterprise Institute, Reason Public Policy Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, John Locke Foundation, etc. He has authored a host of articles for such groups critical of the case for stronger air pollution rules.
His scientific credentials to do so, or to critique the mainstream scientific community's conclusion that global warming is taking place and is human-related, are less impressive. Schwartz's online resume reveals no special training or research in climatology; no teaching positions; no academic professional posts (unless one counts a year as a research associate 6/86 to 5/87 immediately following his BA); and no involvement since 1991 in any publication which appears to include peer-reviewed scientific research.
Mr. Schwartz does have a master's degree, in Planetary Science, and his earliest post-graduate work seems to reflect that field--small parts in articles on Uranus, Neptune, and Titan. That's a fascinating field, but we suppose it's a tough gig in which to make a long-term living. In any event, he quickly turned to writing instead on topics like welfare reform, charter schools, child development--and air pollution control policies.
The point of our uncharitable critique of Mr. Schwartz's credentials is this: The Locke Foundation and its organizational peers are trying to get away with portraying a scientific squirt gun as a Niagara Falls. It's a mismatch of quality which typifies their advocacy, yet they are consistently granted equal-time quotes by major media to present their ideology as science.
They attack N.C.'s Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, and DENR's Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPAG), as scientifically biased because they decline to treat the Lockies' politicized "experts" as sources of real scientific information. They even have the gall to challenge DENR's contract facilitators for the CAPAG process, the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), as a biased advocacy group.
At best for the Lockies, that would be the frog calling the tree leaf green. In contrast to the Locke standard-bearers, however, CCS can boast real and relevant scientific expertise among its team members. (For a review of the CCS staff and consultant credentials, go to www.climatestrategies.us.)
Be warned that the Locke "Global Warming Tour" will travel around our state the last week in June. We have no doubt that they will seek as much media attention as possible to their cavalcade of misinformation.
Without alert local watchdogs on behalf of the environment, this latest effort to dumb down public discourse on global warming could be mistaken as real science. So when the Locke flying circus comes to a media market near you, be sure to let your local reporters and editors know the facts about climate change (and about the Locke Foundation).
Flat-earthers around our nation have already stalled meaningful action on global warming for far too long.
Tar Heel Heads Sierra Club: UNC professor Robert Cox this week was elected as president of the national Sierra Club. This marks the third time that Cox has been chosen to head the 1.3 million member organization, having served as its president previously from 1994 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2001. Cox told the press, "The number one priority is global warming."
The Other Side: Global Dumbing Tour
The Locke Foundation (North Carolina's very own version of the Flat Earth Society) announced with much fanfare a multi-stop "Global Warming Tour" of presentations by "highly respected American Enterprise Institute scientist and environmental consultant Joel Schwartz" to debunk Al Gore on global warming. (Good Old Al is the wacky anti-environmentalists' favorite whipping boy, especially since the release of his award winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth".)
Now, we're sure that Mr. Schwartz (no doctorate of any kind) is a fine fellow and an entertaining speaker. But to trot him out as your top gun scientist to confront the world's genuine scientific community on the reality of climate change?
Out of curiosity, we checked Mr. Schwartz's own website for his background. Without doubt, he is a professional in his field--but that field is advocacy on behalf of anti-regulatory organizations: American Enterprise Institute, Reason Public Policy Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, John Locke Foundation, etc. He has authored a host of articles for such groups critical of the case for stronger air pollution rules.
His scientific credentials to do so, or to critique the mainstream scientific community's conclusion that global warming is taking place and is human-related, are less impressive. Schwartz's online resume reveals no special training or research in climatology; no teaching positions; no academic professional posts (unless one counts a year as a research associate 6/86 to 5/87 immediately following his BA); and no involvement since 1991 in any publication which appears to include peer-reviewed scientific research.
Mr. Schwartz does have a master's degree, in Planetary Science, and his earliest post-graduate work seems to reflect that field--small parts in articles on Uranus, Neptune, and Titan. That's a fascinating field, but we suppose it's a tough gig in which to make a long-term living. In any event, he quickly turned to writing instead on topics like welfare reform, charter schools, child development--and air pollution control policies.
The point of our uncharitable critique of Mr. Schwartz's credentials is this: The Locke Foundation and its organizational peers are trying to get away with portraying a scientific squirt gun as a Niagara Falls. It's a mismatch of quality which typifies their advocacy, yet they are consistently granted equal-time quotes by major media to present their ideology as science.
They attack N.C.'s Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, and DENR's Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPAG), as scientifically biased because they decline to treat the Lockies' politicized "experts" as sources of real scientific information. They even have the gall to challenge DENR's contract facilitators for the CAPAG process, the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), as a biased advocacy group.
At best for the Lockies, that would be the frog calling the tree leaf green. In contrast to the Locke standard-bearers, however, CCS can boast real and relevant scientific expertise among its team members. (For a review of the CCS staff and consultant credentials, go to www.climatestrategies.us.)
Be warned that the Locke "Global Warming Tour" will travel around our state the last week in June. We have no doubt that they will seek as much media attention as possible to their cavalcade of misinformation.
Without alert local watchdogs on behalf of the environment, this latest effort to dumb down public discourse on global warming could be mistaken as real science. So when the Locke flying circus comes to a media market near you, be sure to let your local reporters and editors know the facts about climate change (and about the Locke Foundation).
Flat-earthers around our nation have already stalled meaningful action on global warming for far too long.
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