October 2004 Archives

A consent decree (the settlement document) signed by Greenpeace in a Texas case agreeing to a 7 year ban on a variety of direct actions against ExxonMobil. The Financial Times (subscriber only link) described the story on October 25. A cached Greenpeace page critical of the law suit, no longer available on Greenpeace's site, is here.

I couldn't find anything on Greenpeace's site mentioning the consent decree, although I did find things added yesterday on other topics. For some reason, they don't seem to be promoting the settlement.

The Financial Times' subhead is telling: "In a post-September 11 world, Greenpeace has agreed to a lengthy ban on 'direct action' against ExxonMobil.

Some highlights:
* the scope of the injunction is "fiarly drastic" according to Robert O'Neil of teh Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.
* Greenpeace agreed because it was worried about a longer injunction being issued by the judge: "We've been around for 30 years and we can handle a seven-year ban, but we couldn't handle a lifetime ban against one of the largest companies in the world." according to Lisa Finaldi, campaigns director for Greenpeace USA.
* Greenpeace was also worried about felony charges related to a hand injury to a 67 year old security guard. ExxonMobil says it won't press charges. No mention is made of whether the guard would like to press charges. Using corporate criminal liability against Greenpeace would certainly prompt some rethinking of the desirability of such sentences!
* Greenpeace will continue its campaign with in the limits set by the injunction. As an example, earlier this year it projected images of the effects of global warming on the side of the building in Dallas where the annual meeting was held. Note: subjecting unsuspecting passersby to The Day After Tomorrow surely violates some law!

I was quoted today in an Associated Press story commenting on the WWF's usual Malthusian gloom mongering about how mankind and America in particular were "destroying Earth's ability to sustain life." As is usual on such occasions, I got letters.

One asked:

Mr Smith is quoted as follows:

"The real question is not whether the United States is a wealthy place but rather whether it's producing more wealth than it's consuming. Obviously, we are. We're using a lot of the world's resources but we're producing far more of the world's resources."

If this is so I wonder why is it that we are the largest debtor nation and we have to import between 1.5 and 2.0 billion dollars a day to keep our economy going?

Thank you.

I replied as follows:

Read More »

PERC has released its FME scorecard of the Bush Administration.

Final Grade: C+. You can read more here.

There's no doubt that most environmental activists tend to lean left on political issues across the board. This has even been confirmed in surveys of the leadership of environmentalist organizations. But I am nonetheless bemused by the constant effort to turn various liberal issues into "environmental" issues. We see this in the Sierra Club's embrace of campaign finance reform (unless, of course, it might limit their ability to promote or oppose a candidate), RFK Jr's call to reimpose the "fairness doctrine" on the national media, and so on.

One of the most regular examples of this is the constant characterization of abortion as an "environmental" issue, as in this article from E magazine. Insofar as population is an enviromental issue in parts of the world, there is a plausible case that financial support for family planning and the like is a "green" concern. Population density, growth rates and the like clearly effect some environmental concerns in many parts of the world -- even if population numbers themselves are not the source of the problem. On the other hand, the copious data that economic growth and increased wealth reduces fertility rates might suggest that those who fret over whether federal tax dollars fund Planned Parenthood clinics overseas have misplaced priorities. In any event, this is a debatable point.

On the domestic front, however, it I find it implausible that abortion, as a domestic issue, is an intergral part of the environmental agenda, and (to use E's words) that a pro-life or "anti-choice agenda" comes at the "expense" of the environment. To the contrary, one could argue that insofar as domestic law or culture protects fetal life, there will be more support for environmental protections that address threats to fetal development. Setting aside the ultimate policy question of whether abortion should or should not be legal, constitutioally protected, regulated, encouraged, or whatever, it seems clear that many other normative questions are far more central to this issue than environmental protection. Thus, when I see E or other environmental outlets focus on abortion rights, I take it as more evidence that (too) much of the mainstream environmental agenda is simply traditional liberal politics with a green veneer.

The growth in malaria infections caused by the green left's attack on DDT has been an Achilles heel for political environmentalists, with even the New York Times suggesting that saving human lives from malaria justifies DDT use. Recent media reports have focused on the exciting development of a malaria vaccine (with funding from the Gates Foundation). The Scientist sounds a note of caution, however, on interpreting those results and concludes with a quote from the WHO's Roll Back Malaria campaign coordinator that "we'd still need vector control and effective treatment." Lots of good links on the topic included in the article, but none on DDT - find those here, the excellent web site of Africa Fighting Malaria. Roger Meiners and I also have an article on the topic in PERC Reports.

Although there has been some discussion of environmental issues, they have not figured that prominently in the election -- despite left-green activists extreme distaste for the Bush Administration's policies. Barely mentioned in the debates, hardly ever in the campaign soundbites, and rarely even in the photo ops. That is not to say there are not ritual incantations of the environment in (particularly) Kedwards' speeches, but it just doesn't seem to be a major issue. My take on this may be biased by the fact that I neither watch TV or listen to much radio, and so haven't seen or heard many ads (other than the ubiquitious "Bush is too close to the Saudi royal family radio ad here in Northern Ohio). This seems puzzling in that the left regularly says that the environment is a major wedge issue and that Gore made a comparatively bigger deal about it last time. Jonathan Adler does a good job defending the Bush record in his Inquirer article (discussed in his earlier post) but I don't think it is because the green left has surrendered. Why haven't we seen a Green 527 running ads on Bush's "trashing" of the environment? Why isn't Kerry using it more effectively, if not truthfully?

Australia's ABC reports on research that will help curb cow-fart emissions. That's one way to reduce greenhouse gases.

Walter Olson, of Manhattan Institute, Overlawyered.com and Pointoflaw.com fame, reviews RFK Jr's book for the NY Post, and he's not all that impressed.

For those with even a passing interest in public policy, the book affords the fun of a pratfall on every page, most of them occasioned by Kennedy's epic self-righteousness and astounding disregard for conventional accuracy.

Thus we learn that air pollution is a cause of Down's Syndrome, that "study after study" shows small family farmers to be "far more efficient" than battery raisers of chicken, eggs and pork and that "automakers already have the technology" to make SUVs and minivans get the mileage of passenger cars, but don't do it because, well, because they're mean.

. . . . .

The man's lack of ironic self-awareness is a marvel. In his media-criticism chapter, he has the nerve to blast the press for its absorption with celebrity culture. Yet this book, like Kennedy's entire career, is nothing if not an artifact of that culture. It would never have been acquired by a major publisher, or sent out in quantity to bookstores or reviewed in this newspaper today, if its author's name were Robert F. Snicklethwaite, Jr.

The environmental webzine Grist has launched "Gristmill: The Environmental News Blog." Welcome to the blogosphere Gristmillers, though I suspect we'll find much on which to disagree.

The Washington Post reports on the Congressional standoff on environmental legislation. Congress has done little of substance on environmental issues in years -- indeed, the gridlock dates back to 1993.

A federal district court judge has struck down the proposed ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, according to this report. More when details are available.

Thanks to Rob Bradley for pointing out this Technology Review (MIT) article. Recently, suspicions have been brewing over a possible cover-up of flawed data in original IPCC reports on climate change...

Apparently, the flaws occured in executing the simulation that ended up making the term "anthropogenic" a household word - well, sort of. (If the extent of your Monte Carlo knowledge is the Super Sport, then you may find the mathematics sections a little confusing). In any case, one can easily glean that the maths, which produced the famous 'hockey stick' of global warming, were wrong.

While finding such mistakes may not disprove climate change, they suggest we may do well to get back to the drawing board before signing economically crippling global treaties.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to see whether any scandals will emerge from the cloister of climate scientists that have relied on false data for their claims (and the magazines who shelter them).

To all my huzzlahs on tha Commonsblog:

I may be the last person on earth to hear this, but I couldn't help but be tripped out by these little kids kicking out rhymes for Norman B. It's actually not that bad, from a hiphop POV. Never was the story of the Green Revolution told with such fonk (bettah reckinize). If you haven't heard it, enjoy it for a giggle. You might even learn something.

According to the International Herald Tribune, apparently comments on this blog aren't the only place where people are questioning the decision to give the Nobel Peace Prize to an environmentalist.

See Here.

Minnesota Public Radio analyzes the environmental policies articulated in last week's debate between Bush and Kerry. The article quotes both Bonner Cohen and Terry Anderson.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a series of 20 or so editorials attacking President Bush to explain their endorsement of Senator Kerry. For balance, they're commissioning a series of op-eds takng a contrary view. They asked me to write a piece defending the administration's air pollution policies. While I have my differences with the Administration, there is so much disinformation about these issues that the piece was easy to write.

I review RFK Jr's Crimes Against Nature in the new issue of National Review. It's available here.

National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen is attempting to decipher Vladimir's Putin's strategy on Kyoto. He's just written a piece for newspapers nationwide. The Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel is the first paper to publish it.

Money quote:

The wily former spymaster may well be setting Kyoto's proponents up for one of history's grandest double-crosses by signing the treaty and grabbing the billions of dollars in promised payoffs with no intention of ever living up to its terms.

After all, the only way for the European Union or the United Nations to really determine if Russia is complying with Kyoto is to site thousands of monitors on the ground in a vast territory that spans six time zones - or to rely on Russian self-certification.

The first option is not likely to be granted by the xenophobic Russians, while the statistics generated by the second are likely to be doctored beyond all credibility.

Although I'm sure many may lament the presentation of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, I'm rather happy with it. Given that the Nobel Peace Prize committee chose an environmentalist for this year's award, Wangari Maathai is a much better choice than I would have expected the committee to make. (The committee would never pick a free-market type or a Bjorn Lomborg.) Maathai's efforts have been largely grassroots efforts to stick up to questionable government policies on forest management in Kenya. Moreover, Maathai plants forests in the hopes that they can be used by the people of Kenya for fuel, building materials, and to reduce poverty; not just for westerners to come hug when they are on vacation.

Her efforts to strengthen the roles of both women and democracy in Kenya are also quite admirable. I wish I'd been smart enough to take a class or two with her when she was teaching briefly at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies when I was there in 2002-2003.

Unfortunately, the selection of Maathai could also lead to a trend in selecting environmentalists who don't share Maathai's ideas of sustainable development, preferring instead preservation over conservation. The last thing we needs is another platform for ideas of that sort.

UPDATE: I should point out that I think Maathai's anti-GMO (genetically-modified organisms) stance is a major hinderance to her goals of reducing poverty.

The 13th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) is currently underway. Many African countries in particular have moved to property-rights based conservation for protecting endangered species and, where they have, wildlife populations have prospered. For the African elephant, however, this means that CITES continuing prohibition on the ivory trade may be its greatest hurdle to conservation.

As I write over at A Better Earth today, the ban suffers from the same flaws as "modern drug laws where illegal activity is driven underground. In the case of ivory, however, it is driven onto eBay." The September 24th Washington Post noted that approximately 1,000 eBay auctions of ivory take place daily. If those African communities that now steward their elephants could participate in those markets legally, new worlds of opportunity would arise for conservation of the elephant. "Only unowned resources are exploited to extinction."

The staying power of property-rights based conservation may be most evident in Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe has decimated institutional property rights, and yet locals continue to fight for control of their wildlife.

Environmental issues were conspicuously absent from Tuesday's Vice Presidential debate. There was no mention of Kyoto, Cheney's energy task force, the alleged "war on the environment," Yucca Mountain, oil prices, or anything else related to environmental policy. Perhaps tomorrow night's "town hall" debate in Missouri will be different. (For my general take on the debate, see here.)

Today's New York Times contains an article noting that new research undermines the claim that historical climate trends are shaped like a "hockey stick" -- that is a long period of relative climate stability followed by an large upswing in temperature in the 20th century. The story, "New Research Questions Uniqueness of Recent Warming" by Andrew Revkin, is here. Some excerpts:

A new analysis has challenged the accuracy of a climate timeline showing that recent global warming is unmatched for a thousand years.

That timeline, generated by stitching together hints of past temperatures embedded in tree rings, corals, ice layers and other sources, is one strut supporting the widely accepted view that the current warm spell is being caused mainly by accumulating heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions.

The authors of the study, published in the current issue of the online journal ScienceExpress, said they did not dispute that a sharp warming was under way and that its pace could signal a human influence. But they said their test of the methods used to mesh recent temperature records with centuries-old evidence showed that past natural climate shifts were most likely sharply underestimated.

* * *

The significance of the new analysis comes partly because the record it challenges is a central icon in the debate over whether heat-trapping emissions should be curbed. The hallmark of the original method is a graph widely called the "hockey stick" because of its shape: a long, relatively unwavering line crossing the last millennium and then a sharp, upward-turning "blade" of warming over the last century.

The new study essentially says the shaft of the stick could well be profoundly warped and the old statistical method would not notice.

During what time period did the annual mean temperature increase from about 7 degrees C to over 10 degrees C?

A. As the last ice age ended
B. The early 1700s
C. The late 1900s
D. A and C
E. It has never happened

Answer: B. From 1695-1733, the annual mean temperature as measured in central England rose from 7.25 degrees C to 10.47 degrees C.

I'll leave it to my environmentalist friends to explain how such a thing could happen prior to the Industrial Revolution.

The upper and lower houses of Germany's parliament are deadlocked over a GM plant regulation bill to implement the EU guidelines.

As we consider politicization of science in many environment-related fields, EU scientists are trying to get more control of government funded research there through a petition drive. "'Farmers organize and lobby in Brussels,' [Bart de Strooper, a Belgian scientist] said. 'Businesses organize; labor unions organize. They are in Brussels and can really push for what they want. Scientists need to do the same.'" See the report in The Scientist (with lots of links).

Most media coverage of the four hurricanes to hit Florida has focused on the toll to people and their property -- and understandably so. Yet the Associated Press is also reporting that hurricanes Frances and Jeanne was also bad for endangered sea turtles on Florida's Atlantic Coast. It is estimated the two storms destroyed over 1,300 turtle nests in or around the Canaveral National Seashore.