Flat-Out Lie or Scandalous Incompetence?

July 13, 2011 Leave a comment

Fred Upton (Chair of House Energy & Commerce Committee) continued his campaign to gut the EPA with a particular attack that we hope was an intentional lie and act of grotesque political demagoguery. Because the prospect of it being an honest mistake is even scarier, indicating a scandalous level of incompetence coming from someone who heads such a huge (54 members) and hugely important legislative committee.

The short version: Upton and the chairs of three subcommittees issued a report blasting the Obama administration for EPA grants to foreign governments and organizations, claiming that millions of dollars are being wasted as the EPA has ramped up overseas handouts since the 2009 stimulus package.

The Upton report and the accompanying press release asserts that the EPA has awarded $27 million to other countries in 2009-2010.  The truth turns out to be that $21 million of that $27 million was initiated under the Bush administration. Could it be that one of the most powerful committees in Congress (its staff, its members, etc.) are unable to read a budget sheet and understand when agency grants are awarded and renewed (as in, who was President, who was EPA Administrator, etc.?).

In a letter from ranking democrat Henry Waxman to Upton on Monday (July 11), the details are explained, and a retraction of the report is requested. Some excerpts:

“Your report concludes that EPA has “intensified its foreign grants program, doling out over $27 million overseas” since February 17, 2009, which is the day the stimulus was signed into law” [Memorandum to Members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce from Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Majority Staff (June 27, 2011) (online at http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/PDFs/062711MajMem…].

“In a press release accompanying the release of the report, you state that EPA has “ramped up” foreign grants and done so “at an alarming rate.” [Committee on Energy and Commerce, Report Reveals EPA has Ramped Up Foreign Handouts, Sending Millions to China, Russia, and the United Nations Despite Record Deficits, Looming Debt Ceiling, and Soaring Unemployment (June 27, 2011)].

“Your report asserts that EPA awarded $27 million in 65 foreign grants in 2009 and 2010.  In fact, the 38 grants initiated under the Bush administration account for $21 million of the $27 million obligated for these 65 grants.”

“Far from “ramping up” grants to foreign governments, the Obama administration in most cases appears to be fulfilling grant commitments originally made during the previous administration. ”

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A sign of how congress is working: The website of the official Committee on Energy and Commerce has been run in such a partisan manner by the GOP majority, it has led the democrats to launch their own, parallel website. Click here to visit it.

Compare this to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, run by the democratic majority.

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In this earlier FOX News coverage of “EPA’s Shady Foreign Grants” during the past 10 years, no mention is made of who was President for (and therefore appointed the Administrator of the EPA, or which party controlled the congressional purse strings at which points):

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Filed under Energy Policy, EPA, Fred Upton (MI), Henry A. Waxman (CA), HR Energy & Commerce Committee

Stephen Colbert Reviews the Same Coloring Book

July 12, 2011 Leave a comment

And, of course, Colbert does a much better job than Say What? But there are some definite similarities in our post and the one I happened to catch on The Colbert Report last night.

Ours (June 27):

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Stephen Colbert’s (July 11):

click here and go to the 3:00 mark. Embedding the video is a copyright violation. Ironic under the circumstances.

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Filed under Uncategorized

Get Well, Blog Man!

July 7, 2011 Leave a comment

We interrupt our usual attitude to send sincere best wishes to Andrew Revkin for a speedy and full recovery.

 

Filed under Uncategorized

Media Coverage of Climate Science

July 7, 2011 Leave a comment

While I am on vacation until next week, I wanted to thank everyone who has sent helpful suggestions about this new blog. I am reading through the AEP v . Conn decision and will have lots to say about its legal and political ramifications when I return. In the meanwhile, here an a re-post from a guest blogger on ClimateProgress about media coverage of climate science, a topic I will continue to cover:

How the Media Gets It Wrong on Climate Change: The False, the Confused and the Mendacious

 

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Filed under Uncategorized

Who Has the Youth, Has the Future (Part III: Atmospheric Trust Litigation)

July 5, 2011 Leave a comment

More on Alec Loorz and the young people who have taken to the courts. When Loorz was 13, he founded a grassroots movement of young people called Kids vs. Global Warming, a very successful effort through which he has spoken to tens of thousands of his peers and has earned the respect of adult environmental activists. (They appear to be much too busy to keep their website updated.) Having catalyzed a growing youth movement under the umbrella of its “iMatter” campaign, Kids vs. Global Warming is now focusing on the courts.

The federal agencies named as defendants in the federal iMatter lawsuit include the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and Defense. (Download a PDF the complaint here.)

Environmental lawyer Julia A. Olson and her colleagues at Our Children’s Trust and Wild Earth Advocates are among those spearheading a campaign of “Atmospheric Trust Litigation,” for which they have also filed suits against the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington.  (click here to download the state complaints)

The legal basis for these lawsuits is to include the atmosphere under Public Trust Doctrine, a new application of an old concept. Our Children’s Trust describes the core concept of the Public Trust Doctrine this way:

“The government has a legal obligation to preserve these trust resources and to manage them for the equal benefit of everyone, not just for the benefit of the wealthy and politically-connected corporations. The government cannot allow the privatization of the atmosphere. The Public Trust Doctrine is well-established in American law and in many other legal traditions throughout the world. The doctrine stretches all the way back to the Roman times, long before anyone understood how important and fragile the atmosphere truly is. Fifteen hundred years ago the Emperor Justininan wrote, “The things which are naturally everybody’s are: the air, flowing water, the sea, and the seashore.” The legal actions apply this deep-rooted doctrine to our modern understanding of the atmosphere, demanding that the government recognize and protect our collective right to a stable, livable climate.” (click here for more)

Question in need of analysis: What effect will the unanimous Supreme Court Decision handed down in late June in American Electric Power v. Connecticut have on these cases and on the stormy relationship between congress and the EPA? Comments encouraged!

Filed under Courts

Who Has the Youth, Has The Future, Part II (Kids vs. Global Warming Goes to Court)

July 3, 2011 Leave a comment

17 year-old Alec Loorz and a handful of other young people are suing the government. A whole bunch of federal agencies and many states. The legal theory behind the cases is at once common-sense and quite novel: The atmosphere is a “public trust” for future generations, and protecting it is an obligation to future generations.

“The legislative and executive branches of our government have failed us,” Alec said in a recent interview with the New York Times. People have been trying to push for real change at the legislative level for a long time, and nothing has worked. That’s why we’re going after it through the judicial branch of government.”

Before diving my take on how these suits are are connected to the two Supreme Court cases that address emissions of greenhouse gasses, the EPA’s authority over regulating this under the Clean Air Act, and the calls for eviscerating the EPA by GOP leaders in Congress, and politicians seeking the GOP presidential nomination, here are two videos introducing Alec — one when he was 13, and the other last year, when he was 16. (The first is 9 minutes long, and the second one almost 8 minutes. Stay with them if you have the time; it’s worth it.)

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Alec Loorz at 13:

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Alec Loorz at 16, being introduced by James Hansen:

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Filed under Courts

Coal Lobby Warns Wind Farms May Blow Earth Off Orbit

June 30, 2011 Leave a comment

Too Funny. From the Onion, via Joe Romm’s excellent ClimateProgress blog.

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Click here if you need comic relief from the earlier post

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Filed under Uncategorized

Bad Science Influences the Supreme Court?

June 29, 2011 1 Comment

Today is a word day here. Pictures and video will return soon, I promise.

I have been baffled by Freeman Dyson’s skepticism about climate change for some time now. The guy is a brilliant physicist, and his weighing in against the overwhelming consensus of a field outside his own several areas of expertise has unfortunately led credence to some very bad science. A New York Times Magazine article about Dyson’s climate skepticism has now snuck its way into a major United States Supreme Court decision as support for the view that “the science is not settled” about the effects of CO2 emissions.

But it is worse: As Douglas Kysar points out, “The court also repeated a prominent skeptical refrain about the ubiquity and supposed banality of greenhouse-gas emissions–“after all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing”–that serves only to downplay the severity and significance of industrial emissions.That the nation’s highest court would repeat this misleading refrain, and seemingly endorse Dyson’s views as equal to those of the IPCC and the EPA, simply takes the breath away.”

The next several posts will contain pieces of a story about the courts that will come back around to the recent legislative attacks on the EPA. The case decided by the United States Supreme Court last week, American Electric Power v. Connecticut, has been closely watched because it is only the second time our highest court has decided a case of this general kind on emissions and global warming policy, the first since Massachusetts vs EPA.

Last week’s decision could change the landscape for the initiatives against the EPA underway in the House of Representatives, and related court cases that have been filed in several states and in the federal courts.  The battle of regulating greenhouse gas emissions is a much more interesting and revealing story than it might appear to be at first glance.  And some of those court cases now pending have been led by teenagers, which will take us back to the question of “who has the youth.”  So bear with us as we start in the middle and look at this a piece at a time.

The stage is set nicely in “Supreme Court Decision on Emission is Good, Bad, and Ugly for U.S. Climate Policy,” by Yale Law School Professor Douglas Kysar. Published in both Nature and Scientific American,  it points to, among other things, the influence on the court of unjustified skeptical attacks on climate science.  Click here for Kysar’s brief and lucid analysis.  The “Ugly” part is somewhat frightening.

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Filed under Uncategorized

Who Has the Youth, Has the Future (Part I: Fracking for Children)

June 27, 2011 1 Comment

I have not yet seen the energy education curriculum that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has contracted Scholastic to publish, but in the wake of the article in the New York Times about internal natural gas industry worries about hydro-fracking, I am struck by another emerging development about fracking: A campaign to equate all the legitimate benefits of natural gas with the unconventional and controversial methods of hydraulic fracturing to extract it, but mostly, to target elementary school students with this campaign.

An article in last week’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes Chesapeake Energy’s efforts on this front (Chesapeake Charlie!), as well as the coloring book being widely distributed by the Canadian company Talisman Energy’s “Good Neighbor Program” at community picnics in Pennsylvania. “Talisman Terry’s Energy Adventure,” a “friendly Fracosaurus” explains the safety and virtues of hydro-fracking.

I have reviewed books in the past, but never a coloring book. So, in the spirit of moving to this genre, here is my 84 second review of the coloring book, along with images of the entire book itself. My thanks to Sean Bender (Harvard, class of 2014) for his excellent assistance with crayons, scissors, paste, and a few other things.

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The following video features highlights from an actual event sponsored by Encana Natural Gas.

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The full video can be found here.

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Filed under Fracking

As Deep Water Drilling Resumes in the Gulf, A Quick Look Back at the BP Gusher to Introduce our Leaders

June 26, 2011 Leave a comment

As deep water drilling resumes in the Gulf, here is a quick introduction to Rep. Ralph Hall (House Science Committee Chairman) and Rep. Joe Barton (very influential member of member of the Energy and Commerce Committee).

Science Committee Chairman (yes, I know I keep repeating that he holds that position) Ralph Hall’s reaction to the BP oil disaster as it was unfolding:

“As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out – all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day of every week – that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there – even on an explosion.”

Right. And some dead people and an ecological and economic catastrophe, too, amidst that bubbling and blossoming.

Click here for more.

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Smokey Joe Barton, as many of you will recall, was the congressman who apologized to BP executives for the way the government was treating BP after the explosion.  Specifically for the outrageous (?) idea that initial relief funds be set aside by BP.  As drilling of this type resumes, any change in liability laws for such accidents, or any real understanding yet of the magnitude of the economic and environmental impact of Deep Water Horizon?

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Special Interests? Oil and Gas $ to Joe Barton

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V.P. Biden’s response:

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In October of 2002, the Wall Street Journal described Barton as the “House GOP’s leading expert on energy policy.”  All the more remarkable if you have a look at our earlier post about his exchange with Energy Secretary Chu. If you have not watched this exchange, it is one of the things that made me think it might be worth blogging about where our political leaders stand on energy and climate policy.

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Filed under Energy Policy, Joe Barton (TX), Ralph Hall

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