March 2006 Archives

The National Center for Public Policy Research and Capital Research Center held a briefing on the Endangered Species Act on Capitol Hill today.

The National Center issued this press release afterward:

"Improve the ESA by Protecting Private Property Rights" Say Panelists at Capitol Hill Briefing on the Endangered Species Act

Washington, D.C. - At a standing room-only briefing on Capitol Hill today, several leading policy organizations advised that strong property rights protections should be included in any Endangered Species Act reform effort.

The lunch briefing was sponsored by The National Center for Public Policy Research and the Capital Research Center.

Pointing out that over 99 percent of the species listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA have failed to recover, and the devastation the Act has inflicted on private property owners, regional economies and public works projects, panelists at the event stressed that protecting property rights would not only bring relief to American landowners, but would also better protect species.

"While the Endangered Species Act has failed miserably at saving rare plants and animals, it has excelled in making life miserable for many in the human population," said Peyton Knight, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for the National Center, and a panelist.

"ESA-related costs are paid in an inequitable way," added Knight. "Although Congress determined in 1973 that the preservation of endangered species was in the interest of the U.S. as a whole, Congress did not arrange for the nation as a whole to bear the costs of recovery. Instead, these costs are largely borne by the private landowners on whose property rare species are found, regardless of the ability of any particular landowner to bear these costs."

Approximately 90 percent of all endangered or threatened species habitat is found on non-federally owned land.

The ESA's structure works against its success. The law pits species against landowners -- often the very owners of the land on which rare species live. This adversarial relationship works against the interests of both and often is referred to as the "perverse incentive" problem within the Act, because those who harbor endangered species on their property, or merely own land suitable as habitat for such species, can find themselves subject to crippling land use restrictions. To avoid such restrictions and the losses in property values that accompany them, some landowners choose to preemptively sterilize their land to keep rare species away.

"The ESA is bad for people and bad for species. Leading environmentalists, federal and state wildlife officials, and defenders of property rights have all agreed that the ESA is destructive of wildlife and habitat because its perverse incentives -- penalizing good private stewardship -- cause private landowners to be fearful of protecting endangered species," said panelist R.J. Smith, National Center Senior Fellow.

"There has been wide agreement on this for over a decade. Yet few in Congress have demonstrated the courage and statesmanship to cut through this Gordian Knot and reform the ESA so that it will actually protect endangered species by protecting landowners. It's time for a change," added Smith.

The panel, which, in addition to Peyton Knight and R.J. Smith from The National Center for Public Policy Research, included Terrence Scanlon and David Hogberg of the Capital Research Center and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agreed that, at a minimum, the "perverse incentives" problem should be addressed. This can be done by fairly compensating property owners who lose the right to use their land due to restrictions under the Endangered Species Act.

"If the government takes a person's land to build a highway, the property owner is compensated," said Knight. "If the government takes the use of a person's land to protect a rare species, however, the property owner is not compensated. This inequity must be addressed."

Last year, the House of Representatives approved an Endangered Species Act reform bill that promises to provide such restitution to landowners. The Senate has yet to put forward any comparable measure.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan, non-profit educational foundation founded in 1982 and based in Washington, D.C.

The National Center for Public Policy Research and Capital Research Center are co-hosting a briefing on the Endangered Species Act in the Senate Russell Building Monday, March 27. It is open to the public.

The Endangered Species Act: Why Protecting Property Rights Is Good For Landowners And Species

Panelists include:

Terrence Scanlon
President, Capital Research Center
Introduction

David Hogberg
Executive Director, Greenwatch
Capital Research Center
Topic: Opening Remarks

Peyton Knight
Director, Environmental and Regulatory Affairs
The National Center for Public Policy Research
Topic: Perverse Incentives in the ESA

R. J. Smith
Senior Fellow
The National Center for Public Policy Research
Topic: Critical Habitat and ESA Victims

Myron Ebell
Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Topic: House and Senate Approaches to ESA Reform

Yesterday protesters at the World Water Forum -- surprise surprise -- condemned the Forum as a corporate boondoggle. (Read press release by the Sustainable Development Network) Yet a majority of speakers and participants are individuals who have dedicated their own intellectual and entrepreneurial skills to tackling important water issues.

Just once, instead of banners, I'd like to see these activists (who include public sector trade unions from wealthy countries) put up a screen and a PowerPoint presentation which outlines their specific strategy for delivering water to the poor. My guess is that it would be blank.

Throughout Latin America, these people are referred to appropriately as globofobicos (e.g. fearful of globalization). I'm a strong proponent of adopting this term in the English language.

Mexico City: The city has been overwhelmed with numerous protests by anti-corporate activists, who have flown in to coordinate the disenfranchised masses another global meeting (as if it matters, they are here to protest the IV World Water Forum in Mexico City).

I thought the world should be forewarned about these deceptively sweet-looking children (corporate liasions in training) who were spied by your correspondent at the conference center today.

Read yesterday's response by the Sustainable Development Network

Not even 10 am here in the east yet, and already two ridiculous news stories have cast a pall on an otherwise unseasonably warm (and much welcome) Friday.

First, the Washington Post offers this lame story from Eric Pianin (surely one of the most mediocre environmental reporters at any major paper) about novelist Eugene Linden, who has written a novel about climate change in the form of a "who-dunnit" murder mystery set over a span of 4,000 years. Can’t wait.

Then over at the New York Times, Sen. Jeffords (who??) and another author raise the alarm about the EPA’s proposed changes to their annual measure called the "Toxics Release Inventory" (TRI). The TRI is one of the most burdensome reporting programs of the government, and even the EPA notes its serious limitations as an indicator of chemical risk or environmental quality. Now, I actually review all 500 pages of the TRI every year, and every year the EPA prominently says this:

"This information does not indicate whether (or to what degree) the public has been exposed to toxic chemicals. Therefore, no conclusions on the potential risks can be made based solely on this information (including any ranking information)." This last clause about "ranking information" is surely directed at the green groups that misuse the TRI data (that would be you, Environmental Defense, and your "scorecard" website) to produce rankings of polluters on the local level with the explicit purpose of scaring people.

So everyone can relax. The EPA is probably doing something sensible for a change. Jeffords will soon be gone from the Senate, probably to be replaced by an open socialist (Bernie Sanders), which will at least mean truth in advertising for a change. And much deserved for Vermont.

Today we were subjected to breathless news reports that — to quote the Washington Post’s page one headline — the “Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Melting Rapidly: New Study Warns Of Rising Sea Levels”. Its author, Juliet Eilperin, goes on to state that the ice sheet “is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper ...”

So what is this "trend" based upon? The trend, reported in a paper in yesterday’s Sciencexpress [1], which offers previews of coming attractions in Science magazine, is based on data collected over a 34-month period!

Sorry, Juliet, 34 months does not a “trend” make, unless you are 3-year old, in which case you can be forgiven for thinking that’s a truly long time. like ... almost forever.

Juliet, however, does go on to restore some balance to her story by quoting Richard Alley, “One person's trend is another person's fluctuation.” Bravo!

Let’s now look at the second part of the two-punch headline, namely, the warning regarding rising sea levels. It turns out that the resulting ice melt would raise sea level by 0.4 millimeters per year. Well, that works out to 1.6 inches per century. I guess I better hurry and relocate to higher ground — I have heard you can drown in a thimble-full of water (and I don’t swim).

That also means 1.3 feet in a 1,000 years. Seems I have to live longer than Methuselah to enjoy that beachfront property. Damn!

This is the second time in a month that there has been much ado about short term trends. In mid-February, another paper in Science reported that the glaciers in Greenland were melting more rapidly than previously thought [2]. That paper estimated that Greenland ice sheet was losing 224 cubic kilometers per year. That means it will take another 5,400 years to melt the remaining 1,200,000 cubic km, which might raise sea level by 23 feet (7 meters), or so I am told. That is a sea level rise of 0.05 inches per year.

Now this second paper was based on as much as 9-years worth of data.

Phenomenal by comparison — but is this long enough?

To get an idea as to the answer, nearby I have two plots of temperature “anomalies’ (i.e., fluctuations around the long term means) from 1880 through 2005 for the Antarctic (actually everything south of 60 degrees S). The top curve provides trends for land surface temperatures. The bottom curve is a composite for land and sea temperatures, hence the difference between the magnitude of the trend (0.12 degrees C per decade vs. 0.01 degrees C per decade).

What this shows is that you can get any kind of trend you want depending on when you start your 3- or 9-year period. Ditto, if you want to work with a 50- or 60-year period.

In other words, beware long term policies based on short term data [3].

Nevertheless, the Washington Post reports that based partly on these studies, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) said yesterday that the “United States must act quickly to impose mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”

Perhaps, from the point of view of these two gentlemen, any “fluctuation” that lasts for 2 or 6 years is sufficiently long to base robust policy on.