Archive for February, 2011
The GOP’s Declaration of War
The first major bill brought to the floor by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is a blatant declaration of war against environmental protection.
For all practical purposes, the GOP lawmakers are using their version of the 2011 budget extension proposal to strip the federal government of virtually all its capacity to regulate public health threats and environmental abuse. One-third of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget, along with much of its capability to enforce the Clean Air and Water Acts and regulate mountain top mining would be eliminated. So would funding for wilderness preservation and programs to combat climate change. Meanwhile, the bloated defense budget and enormous tax breaks to the oil barons would be barely touched in the Republicans’ much publicized crusade to reduce the national debt.
Behind House Republicans’ rationale for their budget extension bill is a flawed ideology in which entrepreneurial competition in a free market is deemed better equipped than regulation to keep the business community honest and foster prosperity. Ignored are the reams of empirical evidence that when the markets are allowed to operate in unfettered fashion, they present an irresistible invitation to the dark side of human nature.
Recognizing that the American people have repeatedly demonstrated they favor strong environmental and public health regulation, the GOP House lawmakers have sought to downplay their “shock and awe” assault on established law. They cast their effort in terms of cutting spending to reduce the budget deficit and lowering business’ compliance costs to free up cash for additional job creation.
Neither claim ultimately holds water. Defunding regulations designed to protect the public health and the environment only leads to ballooning medical costs and premature closing of “dirty” manufacturing facilities because of hazardous conditions. The economic ramifications would almost assuredly nullify the budgetary benefits of spending cuts. Rolling back regulations would result in a shrunken pollution abatement work force and cancellation of projects for which an underfunded EPA would no longer be able to issue permits. We would be stuck with a scenario hardly ideal for job creation.
The Republican House majority is understandably reluctant to dwell on the philosophical underpinning behind its actions, considering its value system gives precedence to immediate monetary gratification over people’s health and ecosystem viability.
Here is some more of the environmental legacy that the GOP House majority would bequeath to the American people if their budgetary extension were ever enacted into law (which mercifully is unlikely given a Democratic Senate and presidential veto).
- Defund much of the EPA’s scientific research, rather hypocritical considering the GOP’S repeated denunciation of the quality of the agency’s research.
- Emasculate virtually all of the government’s family planning programs, both domestic and international.
- Slash the budget for renewable energy by two billion dollars.
- Eliminate subsidies to the poor for home heating
- Eliminate fishery conservation programs
- To top it all off, set in motion a disengagement from the United Nations and foreign aid, thereby displaying a disturbing anachronistic isolationism in an ever more interdependent world.
My money is on the American people in the ensuing weeks recognizing the House Republican majority has engaged in a monstrous overreach that puts the maxim, “Penny-wise, pound foolish” to shame.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Egypt’s Environmental Future
In the wake of Egypt’s populist revolution, little thought has been given to how difficult it is for a fledgling democracy to flourish should its population be subject to a severe chronic food shortage. Nutritional instability can lead to political instability, and Egypt is more than half way there.
The nation’s food prices have been rising at a dizzying inflation rate, imposing a crushing burden on the 40 percent of Egyptians who earn less than two dollars a day. They have had to spend between 60 and 80 percentof their meager monthly income just to put the basic daily staples on the dinner table. Nor are the rest of the Egyptians that much better off, with the average monthly food expenditure constituting 40 percent of people’s monthly wages. Meanwhile, to feed a population that is projected to double in 25 years, a crowded and widely impoverished Egypt has been forced to import an ever increasing amount of food as it own agricultural productivity has declined because of soil erosion, salinization and toxic chemical pollution.
Even in the best of times, nature has dealt Egypt a difficult hand, considering that less than four percent of its arid land mass is suitable for farming. And these are not the best of times. The soil of more than half of Egyptian farmland is rated in medium to poor condition, leading to an inescapable conclusion. Egypt needs to slow its population growth and put a halt to rampant environmental degradation or conceivably have its incipient democracy nipped in the bud (assuming it politically gets off the ground).
The Arab state’s environmental challenge is further complicated by virtually all of its 80 million people being crammed into a narrow fertile 12 mile wide strip lining the Nile River. The river provides all the country’s water needs yet has had its quality and supply seriously compromised by pollution and manmade diversions of its normal flow.
What can we do to help Egypt stave off environmental disaster and the threat it poses to the evolution of democracy? How about a significant adjustment in our foreign assistance program! Out of the $1.5 billion we gave Egypt in 2010, 87 percent was allocated to weaponry. Of the remaining 13 percent, much of it was directed to jump-start some big business ventures, fund democracy indoctrination programs that given recent events, might be deemed overkill, and furnish currency for Egyptians to buy our exports.
Maybe we should cut back a little on propping up the military and instead invest in the sort of project proposed by Ahmed El-Naggar, editor in chief of the Egyptian Economic Strategy Trends Report. He suggests that the United States assist in clearing Egypt’s northern coast of unexploded mines, a move that he says would free up hundreds of thousands of precious arable acres for distribution to landless farmers and agriculture school graduates. Such a project would meet two of Egypt’s greatest needs, expanded food production and additional jobs in a nation plagued by massive unemployment.
What about offering more assistance in expanding drought resistant crops and water conservation programs? We could allocate funding for facilities in which farmers would recycle rice straw for insulation purposes instead of burning the material and creating severe air pollution over Egyptian cities. Perhaps more money could be directed to Egyptian renewable energy ventures and waste treatment plants.
Our leaders need to recognize the integral link between Egypt’s environmental health and its ultimate political destiny. So far, Washington’s track record has left much to be desired.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Imbalanced
Former House Speaker and likely presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich has it backwards.
He believes business is being unfairly burdened by environmental regulations and consequently, wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and replace it with a new, more “even-handed” governmental unit.
The reality is that it is the economically disadvantaged, especially minorities, not the business community, who are suffering under the current regulatory regime. If any change is forthcoming, the EPA should be tightening enforcement and receiving more resources to protect the downtrodden.
Gingrich’s assertion that the EPA “blocks economic progress and job growth… at every turn” is pure poppycock. For example, since 1970, the federal Clean Air Act has cut polluting emissions by more than 60 percent while the economy has grown by more than 200 percent. If business is being persecuted, you would never know it from the stock market’s performance in the last four decades.
Environmental regulations may have caused some employment displacement, but more jobs have been saved by forcing industries to modernize facilities and thereby prolong their facilities’ operational life. In addition, the need to comply with environmental regulations has created a broad array of new vocational opportunities. Temporary unemployment benefits and government subsidized retraining programs can and have mitigated any remaining negative impacts.
While environmental progress has been made, we still have a long way to go to achieve “environmental justice.” What seems to have eluded Gingrich is that whether through shoddy enforcement or insufficient regulation, the economically disadvantaged have been disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards. As a result, they have experienced above average rates of cancer, asthma, and lead poisoning. Scientists attribute much of this health scourge to excessive exposure to toxic emissions from hazardous waste dumps, industrial facilities, and heavily congested highways situated in close proximity to low income neighborhoods. Infant mortality is also higher and life expectancy lower in these locales, and again, environmental causation is implicated.
The EPA has been periodically criticized for a less than stellar effort in enforcing environmental justice. In a timely response, current EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has assigned high priority to the issue. Consider that it takes unduly long for minority communities to get illegal hazardous sites cleaned up, and the fines levied against such operations are routinely less severe than in other locations.
On the bright side, it appears that the overwhelming majority (including Republicans) of Americans reject outright Gingrich’s proposed dismembering of the EPA. According to a recent nationwide survey by the Opinion Research Corporation, almost two-thirds of those queried want the EPA to do more, not less, in regard to “holding polluters accountable and protecting the air and water.”
Where does that leave Gingrich? If he persists with his convoluted notion of environmental justice, he will simply erect another roadblock on an already precarious route to the Republican presidential nomination.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Bloomberg: Cautionary Tale
The sixth worst snow storm in New York City’s history that crippled the Big Apple the day after Christmas is a cautionary environmental tale.
If global warming is left largely unchecked, the scientific consensus is that we shall experience a greater frequency of intense weather events that could conceivably dwarf New York’s post-Christmas blizzard. In the worst case, even the best of local efforts to withstand such meteorological punishment would likely be overwhelmed.
Hence, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s travails with the recent blizzard hint of what could lie ahead. Here was a guy who was trying to do the right thing in our confrontation with climate change. His blueprint for the city included measures to reduce urban greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing significantly to the accelerated warming of the planet. Yet good intentions could not prevent his reputation from being buried under a mass of snow drifts.
Temporarily lost in the bad publicity was Bloomberg’s professed goal to make New York City the first environmentally sustainable metropolis. He had drafted 127 proposals to bring about the desired change, some of which were already in effect. Certain downtown streets have been permanently or periodically closed to vehicles in order to reduce air pollution and encourage foot traffic. Corridors for bicycles have been widened and expanded to facilitate that “clean” mode of transportation.
Bloomberg is in the process of expanding renewable energy with the goal of New York City generating electricity primarily from that source. He has commissioned a study to determine how windmills, solar panels, and tidal turbines could be installed in and around the metropolis. On the fiscal front, he has proposed elimination of city sales taxes on hybrid vehicles, and the introduction of tax incentives for making roofs “green”. [One of his most ambitious proposals, an eight dollar fee on any vehicle entering downtown Manhattan as a traffic decongestion strategy has unfortunately been shelved by a recalcitrant state legislature.]
Bloomberg is not alone in displaying prescient environmental tendencies. Governors of more than half the states and mayors of at least 142 cities have begun in varying degrees to institute mandatory measures to reduce polluting greenhouse gases.
What Bloomberg and these officials are doing is important, but it is only a first step. Their actions alone are not going to spare their constituents enormous grief from the elements unless part of a broader effort that is global in scope. It will take nothing less to counter a threat that knows no boundaries.
Edward Flattau’s fourth book Green Morality is now available.
Evolution of a Columnist
Peering Through the Bushes
Tracking the Charlatans
