August 2006 Archives

Don't Go Wobbly on Us George

Posted by Steve Hayward · 29 August 2006 · Climate ~Energy

I was recently related a story of a prominent historianâ€”a liberal Democratâ€”who visited with President Bush at some length at the White House, where in the course of conversation Bush said that he had changed his mind about some things (though not the Middle East), including the environment. Our interlocutor didn't pursue this topic, being more interested in larger matters. Then, too, there have been rumors the last several days that the Administration might do something to "take global warming off the table" in the 2008 presidential election. Why they would want to do such a thing is beyond me, but there it is.

Comes today this report from Mike Allen in Time:

Previewing the final quarter of Bush's presidency, officials disclosed to TIME that the Administration is formulating a huge energy initiative designed to "change the whole nature of the discussion" and challenge the G.O.P., Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and environmentalists. An adviser said Bush's views about global warming have evolved. "Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bush and Cheney--two oilmen--can bring all these parties kicking and screaming to the table," the adviser said.

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Growing Green

Posted by Kendra Okonski · 25 August 2006 · Agriculture

Douglas Southgate and Douglas Graham, a professor and professor emeritus (respectively) in the agricultural economics department at Ohio State University, have co-written a new study for the Sustainable Development Network.

The report identifies various factors which have contributed to low agricultural yields in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, governments and donor agencies have impeded farmers' access to conventional technologies such as fertilizer and pesticides, but at the same time have engaged in punitive taxation and policy measures against farmers. Similarly, most African governments have failed to invest in rural infrastructure (roads, bridges). All of this means that millions of African farmers continue to practice subsistence agriculture -- which takes a devastating environmental and human toll.

Southgate comments:

Sub-Saharan Africa is not doomed to misery. To move from subsistence to sustainable farming, African farmers should not be discouraged from employing modern agricultural methods. Indeed, such methods are necessary to improve environmental conditions, nutrition, and to enhance economic growth.â€

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Calling Greenpeace to Account

Posted by IMGrant · 23 August 2006 · DDT/Malaria ~Environmental Risk ~International ~Precautionary Principle ~Sustainable Development

In an open letter to Greenpeace International, Richard Tren, Director of the organization "Africa Fighting Malaria", calls on Grenpeace to clarify its stance on the use of DDT for controlling malaria, and asks that it account for what it has done to follow through on its stated commitment "to seeing more effective methods for combating malaria" -- presumably because DDT is either ineffective or is saddled with unacceptable side effects.

Excerpts from the full letter follow:

[O]ver 1 million people, mostly children, die from malaria every year, and the parasites cause approximately 500 million cases annually. A highly effective method of malaria control is to spray small amounts of insecticide on the inside walls of houses -- a process known as Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) â€¦ DDT is one of the most effective public health insecticides for IRS programs ...

Thousands of studies into the possible human health effects of DDT have failed to definitively demonstrate any actual human harm attributable to DDT. [Comment by IMGrant: This is not for lack of trying. Researchers have tried to pin some adverse public health effect on DDT for half a century, and yet failed to come up with something definitive. This suggests that if DDT has an adverse impact on public health, it's pretty minor. In this case, the answer to Sherlock Holmes' question as to "why the dog didn't bark" is that there probably was no dog in the first place.] Given the colossal burden caused by malaria, any rational risk-benefit assessment would conclude that DDT should be used. [Aside: Indeed Richard Tren is right on this one. See: Indur M. Goklany, The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment (Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2001), available from Amazon.]

Due to its ongoing efficacy and its long record of safe use in malaria control, many countries continue to use DDT. Others, such as Uganda and Tanzania, are attempting to revitalize their IRS programs and use DDT, other insecticides and other interventions. The use of DDT in this way is specifically authorized by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

On 2 August, 2006, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) ran a story on the World Health Organization's (WHO) endorsement of the public health insecticide DDT for malaria control. The report quoted Greenpeace scientist Dr David Santillo's reaction to the endorsement:

"That certainly raises some quite substantial concerns and, if there's substantial funding coming from the US to support that, then that does sound very much like a step in the wrong direction â€¦ I think where that funding is better placed is in developing the availability of alternative strategies.

Richard Tren continues:

On 17 October 2004, I received correspondence from Manfred Krautter of Greenpeace Germany. Mr. Krautter was responding to a media report in which I was quoted as saying that environmentalist groups pressured aid agencies not to use insecticides such as DDT. In his letter, attached, Mr. Krautter reminded me that: " â€¦ DDT is in justified cases allowed to be used to combat mosquitoes carrying malaria. Greenpeace has no objections to these regulations on exceptions and supports this part of the Convention too ... It is therefore false to presume Greenpeace had expressed itself opposed to such emergency uses allowed in the POPs Conventionâ€¦[or] to say that Greenpeace has put pressure on other organizations not to use DDT to combat malaria in such cases."
These sentiments seem at odds with the opening sentence of a Greenpeace Statement on the Stockholm Convention and DDT, which Mr. Krautter included in his correspondence. The Statement reads:

"Any attempt to hinder or undermine world agreement to eliminate DDT under the Stockholm Convention would obstruct attempts to break the current cycle of misery related to the use of DDT for malarial vector control." [Italics added by IMGrant]

It is not clear what particular misery Greenpeace refers to with regard to the use of DDT for malaria control â€¦ To characterize the use of DDT to control this disease as â€œa cycle of miseryâ€ is entirely outrageous and seems to show that Greenpeace is at best out of touch with the risks and realities of life in Africa. At worst it demonstrates a callous disregard for human life in malarial areas.

The Greenpeace Statement goes on to call for more money to be invested in alternative solutions to DDT. Mr. Krautterâ€™s letter specifically states that:

"Greenpeace is thus committed to seeing that more effective methods for combating malaria which are more environmentally-friendly and sound with regard to health become devised and made available in the countries affected."

The various inconsistent and contradictory statements beg several questions:

First, if, as Mr. Krautter asserts, Greenpeace should not be characterized as opposed to the use of DDT in malaria control, why should the organization describe its use in malaria control as a "cycle of misery?" Furthermore, why does Dr Santillo consider that the restricted and careful use of DDT for malaria control is "a step in the wrong direction?"

Second, please, could you detail the financial commitment that Greenpeace itself has made to developing new malaria control technologies, and include any details of the success achieved? Given that Greenpeace informs us that it is "committed to seeing more effective methods for combating malaria," we assume that it has followed that up with actual investment.

Third, please, could you detail the lobbying and advocacy efforts that Greenpeace has undertaken to ensure that public and private funds are invested in the search for chemical alternatives to DDT?

Africa Fighting Malaria applauds the constructive and positive role that [some other environmental] organizations have taken with regard to DDT for malaria control. The criticism that Greenpeace has leveled at the WHO, and by implication, some of the world's leading malaria experts and scientists is damaging to malaria control programs and ultimately will cost lives in Africa.

It will be interesting to see Greenpeace's response.

Notably, Greenpeace's Donations website (for the USA) carries the following statement: "Greenpeace Inc. is a non-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) organization. As a result of our effective work for new environmental policies, contributions are not tax-deductible." As a taxpayer, I am heartened by the second sentence, but I wonder what social function is served by providing tax exempt status to an expressly misanthropic organization such as Greenpeace.

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Markets and tigers

Posted by Kendra Okonski · 21 August 2006 · Extinction ~International ~Private Conservation ~Sustainable Development ~Tragedy of the Commons ~Wildlife

Barun Mitra, director of the Liberty Institute in New Delhi, India, recently visited China to find out about the country's efforts to save the tiger. He wrote about how China is "applying free-market principles to wildlife preservation and, in the process, improving the survival chances of a long-endangered species while giving its economy a boost" in the New York Times on August 15.

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Citizen Suits and a Hiatus

Posted by J. Bishop Grewell  ·  13 August 2006  ·

Bruce Benson, who is visting at PERC, questions the incentives that citizen suits have created for environmental organizations that bring such suits in this article at OpinionJournal.

In other news, I have been blogging sporadically the last few months as I completed my degree at Northwestern and then studied for the Illinois Bar. With both of these tasks out of the way, I unfortunately must blog even less the next year, read: zero, as I will be spending the next year clerking on the 10th Circuit. I hope to see an upswing in blogging from the rest of the Commons, however, as the fall school season arrives. Thanks to all of those who have taken the time to comment and critique on posts that I have made here in the past, and hopefully in another year, I can return to blogging.

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Rapanos Editorial

Posted by J. Bishop Grewell  ·  13 August 2006  ·  Water

Two of my professors from Northwestern Law wrote this article at the end of July on the Supreme Court's Rapanos decision. Koppelman and Dana open their opinion piece by claiming that, under the Rapanos interpretation of Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and Roberts, "Americans would have to drink contaminated water, that New Orleans would have to sink into the sea, and that Congress would have no power to do anything about either." They are unhappy with the Commerce Clause jurisprudence of those four justices (though given his concurrence, I have some doubt how wedded Justice Roberts is to the Commerce Clause line that the two would have him tow.)

I take issue with three of Koppelman and Dana's assumptions. Their first problematic assumption is that the states and private actors would not step up in the absence of federal action to protect drinking water or the city of New Orleans or to protect wetlands as challenged under Rapanos. Reliance on the federal government to solve these problems also seems ill-placed given that federal flood insurance and the work of the Army Corps of Engineers created many of the dangerous situations in areas such as New Orleans by encouraging people to move into areas where otherwise sensible Americans would not attempt to live. Federal subsidies for swamp busting throughout history destroyed many of the wetlands that the federal government now purports to save, which then led to the Rapanos litigation. And historically, the states and localities have engaged in the actual work of providing clean drinking water. It is true that states and private actors have joined the federal government in efforts to destroy wetlands, but they also engaged in restoring and protecting such wetlands --- often before the federal government took any action. State efforts to protect wetlands began in the 1960's, while the federal efforts did not get really going until the mid-1970s (See fellow Commons' contributor Jonathan Adler's piece here. To assume that wetlands would not be protected absent federal action or that our drinking water would not be potable is unsupportable.

Second, it is not accurate to assume that a more limited Commerce Clause interpretation would extinguish all federal efforts at wetland protection, providing clean drinking water, or protecting hurricane-prone ports. The taxing and spending power would still allow for block grants to the states for different projects that could fund both wetland preservation and restoration, the cleaning of drinking water, and port protection. As Adler notes, the Wetland Reserve Program and the Partners for Wildlife program funded by Congress have led to successful voluntary wetland restoration --- and generally at a much more cost-effective rate of wetland protection than under the Clean Water Act provisions of Section 404 that Koppelman and Dana are worried the more conservative justices' Commerce jurisprudence would undermine.

Third, the two authors give short shrift to the ability to amend the Constitution. It is indeed a difficult process to amend the Constitution to provide Congress with greater powers as Koppelman and Dana note. But it is meant to be difficult as the founding fathers were frightened of increased government efforts to encroach into the private sphere. But if it is ridiculous to think that Congress could not regulate the quality of drinking water as Koppelman and Dana claim, then getting the super-majority required to provide such powers though amendment should not be impossible since persuading a sufficient majority of the representative public about such ridiculousness should not prove difficult. Unless, of course, a large enough majority disagrees with Koppelman and Dana's assessment and thinks in fact that the ridiculous notion is that we need the federal government to take care of every problem.

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