Archive for January, 2011
The Deniers
The more things change, the more they stay the same”. This venerable adage applies to the newly crowned Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Despite their vows to bring transparency to political deliberations, they have emulated former Vice President Dick Cheney’s much criticized closed door sessions in which a one-sided national energy policy was formulated with industry representatives.
In the House Republicans’ case, the secret consultations with industry involved rescinding regulations imposed on those companies, an action that would directly impact everyone’s lives and as such, entitle the American people to full disclosure.
If that clandestine preferential treatment weren’t bad enough, the Tea Party loyalists in the House GOP are in even a greater state of denial towards social equity and the environmental threats that we face. One need only note that as part of that faction’s plan to reduce the national debt and create jobs, their proposed budget cuts reflect a shocking mix of ignorance and lack of compassion.
Let’s forget for the moment the devastating consequences of Republicans throwing protection of public health and environment to the winds. There is a serious question whether they could cut taxes and roll back regulation enough to entice American industry away from the lure of cheap labor abroad and the steady export of jobs to foreign shores.
Tea Party Republicans’ so-called Spending Reduction Act would eliminate funding and essentially signal the demise of virtually all high speed rail mass transit, including Amtrak. If successful, such a move would contribute to serious degradation of national air quality and lay the groundwork for even worse vehicular traffic congestion than now exists.
The Conservative Tea Party block calls for ending the weatherization program that provides the poor with protection from winter cold, a heartless budgetary deletion if ever there were one. But they don’t stop there. They advocate “power to the people”, yet acquiesce with a corporate takeover of our democracy by proposing a phase out of public financing of Presidential elections.
They seek to slash federal funding for research at the United Nations on global climate change, reflecting either ignorance or indifference towards a major environmental challenge of our times and the need for a coordinated international response.
They want to “sell excess federal property”. We know what that means. Take parcels that are potentially prized additions to our national parks and auction them off to the private sector.
They would slash the budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development to the point of crippling the agency. In doing so, they display a failure to grasp the fundamental interconnection between our fate and that of other nations in a world dramatically compacted by modern telecommunication and other technologies trans-boundary in scope.
If we need to cut spending to reduce the budget deficit, how are we going to finance the vital programs on the GOP chopping block?
We can start with our military, where the more than 500 billion dollars we spend annually on weaponry exceeds the combined total of the next 14 nations on the armaments ladder. And yes, part of the solution may well mean some form of tax increase. After all, one ultimately gets what one pays for, and we have often escaped responsibility for the bill, thanks in large part to an enormous infusion of money borrowed from the Chinese.
As the debate heats up, Washington needs to be reminded: solvency isn’t worth a damn without humanity.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Corporate Hyperbole
A guilty verdict should be rendered against the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) for misleading hyperbole associated with its defense of destructive mountaintop-removal mining. It is a verdict that would further erode the already rickety credibility of this Washington-based think tank that is an outspoken cheerleader for unfettered capitalism in general and the fossil fuel industry in particular.
The rationale for a guilty verdict stems from a ludicrous assertion by the CEI in behalf of its corporate clientele. William Yeatman, a CEI energy policy “expert” chargedthat the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) revocation of a permit for a West Virginia mountaintop mining operation “would trade jobs for protection of an insect that lives for a day and isn’t even an endangered species.”
Yeatman’s preposterous accusation suggests he doesn’t believe he has a convincing case on the merits or feels incapable of making one. His contention that the EPA is willing to “trade jobs for bugs” both literally and figuratively does not hold water. EPA’s denial of the mining permit had to do with a lot more than some short-lived insect’s survival. Its main impetus was the Mingo-Logan Coal Company gearing up to shear off the top of a mountain to get at a mother lode of carbon ore and dump the spoil into unpolluted streams in the valley below. At risk were the potability of the drinking water supply and ultimate survivability of the West Virginia communities downstream.
Yes, bugs would perish if the spoil from the company’s Spruce mine clogged and contaminated miles of mountain streams, but so would fish and the entire spectrum of wildlife dependent on that habitat.
It’s legitimate for critics to point out that 250 temporary coal mining jobs will be lost by the revocation of the permit. But that needs to be balanced against destruction of a vital renewable natural resource on which thousands of West Virginians depend for their very existence. Moreover, you’ve got to be leery when industry raises the old bugaboo that regulation will drive them out of business and destroy the nation’s economy. We have been hearing that same song and dance for the past half century, even as the majority of the regulated complainants have recorded record profits and seen their share prices soar on Wall Street.
In the case of the Spruce Coal mine, there were EPA recommendations the company could have adopted to divert spoil from the streams below and by doing so won permission to proceed. But the company stonewalled.
The Spruce Mine’s difficulties are a welcome sign of the times. Mountaintop-removal mining companies have reason to worry about the future of their vocation, and deservedly so. They are slicing off numerous mountain peaks, leaving moonscapes and polluted streams in their wake. EPA has finally recognized the devastating extent of mountaintop mining’s impact and moved in the direction of ending the practice altogether, leaving less environmentally disruptive deep mining ventures as the main method of coal extraction.
Add the emerging technologies of wind, solar and other clean renewable alternative energy sources to the national energy mix and who needs to engage in ecological desecration of Appalachia?
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Environmental Futurecast: Six Pressing Environmental Challenges
The foremost environmental issues in the coming year revolve around air pollution, especially the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions that serve as a catalyst for global warming. But what about the longer view? What are the most pressing environmental challenges facing humanity for the duration of the 21st Century?
There are six that made my list.
Climate Change: This category includes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning in stationary and mobile sources. The objective is to slow and eventually stabilize global warming, thereby mitigating drastic climate fluctuations and rising sea levels that would cause havoc. Success in controlling the increase of carbon dioxide concentrations and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would also help to curb the acidification of the oceans and destruction of coral reefs.
Energy Transition: This is closely related to climate change and involves gradually replacing polluting finite fossil fuels (like coal and oil) with clean renewable energy such as solar, wind , biomass, and if scientists can ever figure it out, nuclear fusion. Transportation is a subheading here, as we try to shift automobiles (and other modes of travel) away from dependency on oil to a reliance on cleaner natural gas, hydrogen, and in the distant future, perhaps solar power.
Family Planning: This relates to stabilizing the human population through education, contraception, and spacing of births that history shows lead to smaller family size. The idea is to avert population exceeding the capacity of the planet’s natural resource base to provide us with an adequate food supply.
Land Use Planning: Under this category, I would include preservation of the earth’s remaining biodiversity, wetlands, and prime agricultural acreage. Restoration of degraded natural resources, where possible, would be an important subheading. So would creating livable cities by providing potable water, sustainable clean energy delivery systems, adequate housing, and ample open green space while eliminating sprawl.
Reducing Global Poverty: This scourge jeopardizes a healthy sustainable relationship between human beings and the earth’s biological life support system on which we all depend. Desperation is the enemy of conservation. Poverty can be effectively combated through universal education (that leads to societal stability), technology transfer from developed to developing countries, and a modest redistribution of wealth through foreign aid that is structured as a hand up, not a handout.
Preventing the introduction and reducing the presence of industrial produced toxic chemicals in the environment: Effective regulation, technological innovation that provides benign substitutes to toxic chemicals, and rigorous enforcement play pivotal roles in cleansing a global environment plagued by widespread manmade pollution.
I think that just about covers it.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
The Tea Party: Delusional
Newly elected Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a favorite of the Tea Party, has warned his political admirers that they are “delusional” if they think they can change governmental policy overnight.
Frankly, that is the least of the Tea Party’s delusions. A more telling one involves its faith in the political correctness of its backers who hail from the corporate world.
Among the Tea Party’s basic tenets is the reduced presence of the central government. That would include the downsizing or actual dismantling of a host of federal agencies, and substantial delegation of regulatory powers to the states (which are ill-equipped to handle the many challenges that cut across state lines).
Another Tea Party mantra is to reduce the national deficit and balance the budget by selectively slashing, or in some instances eliminating altogether, the funding for federal programs. Taxes must be kept low to stimulate job growth, and the marketplace, not government regulation, is best suited to jump-start an ailing economy.
Many corporate patrons of the Tea Party are playing a duplicitous game. When federal regulation requires compliance that detracts from their bottom line, corporate backers echo the Tea Party’s outrage at Washington’s interference with the conduct of free enterprise. But when the federal government encroaches by awarding industry additional subsidies or tax breaks that give the businessmen an edge over their competitors, the silence is deafening. And if that were not enough of an ideological slight to the Tea Party, these subsidies and exemptions add to the very deficit that gives the grassroots movement such fits.
While the Tea Party is bemoaning the state of the economy, many of its corporate sympathizers are reporting record profits. Whatever additional revenues have accrued to these industrialists as a result of federal tax breaks and subsidies have yet to translate into significant job creation. Instead, many of the Tea Party’s well-heeled supporters have used these profits–courtesy of the U.S. Treasury–to fatten their company stock price and outsource their operations to overseas locations awash with cheap labor.
You’ve got corporate bigwigs using anti-Obama rhetoric to arouse the partisan passions of the Tea Party faithful and distract them from recognizing they are working against their own interests. Federal regulations to protect public health and the environment end up being opposed by Tea Party activists who would be among the many beneficiaries of such measures.
The Tea Party suffers delusions from within as well as without. Because of modern day demographics, turning back the clock as Tea Party devotees yearn to do is a pipe dream. The days are numbered in which Caucasian ethnicity automatically gives one an initial leg up in the social (and economic) pecking order.
Population growth, accelerated drain on natural resources, and technological advances in communication, transportation, and highly polluting industrial production have transformed the world into a very complex place. Many problems have become so ubiquitous in character that they can only be effectively addressed through a coordinated centralized governmental approach unfortunately detested by the Tea Party.
There are other glaring examples of self-delusion. Tea Party followers rail about the deluge of government spending, but you don’t hear many of them volunteering to dispense with their Social Security or Medicare benefits.
They are all for reducing the national budget deficit, shelling out only what the nation can afford, and keeping taxes from rising. Yet they have uttered hardly a peep about our fighting two wars that we are paying for largely by borrowing from the Chinese.
Now in a position of some authority, the Tea Party is about to clash with the political realities of Washington and the world, and it won’t be pretty.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Evolution of a Columnist
Peering Through the Bushes
Tracking the Charlatans
