Tag: environment

Parting Gift to Oil Companies

Seth Anderson0 comment

Speaking of last minute jabs to the eye, Bush has a parting gift to his buddies at Exxon and elsewhere

Strapped On

The Bush administration, in one of its final acts, is proposing to let oil companies drill for oil and natural gas in half a dozen areas of the outer continental shelf that had been previously been off limits to drilling, a move that will reopen the debate over offshore drilling for President-elect Barack Obama.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the director of the federal agency that manages the nation’s offshore oil and gas reserves said his agency would formally open a 60-day public comment period Friday on whether to allow leasing for oil and natural gas in all of some portion of 12 areas of the shelf, including four areas off Alaska, two off the Pacific coast, three areas in the Gulf of Mexico and three more along the Atlantic coast.

Six of the sites — those located off California, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and along the Atlantic seaboard — had previously been off limits to development under a quarter-century old federal moratorium that congressional Democrats allowed to expire last fall amid intense voter anger over high gas prices.

While none of the sales would occur before 2011, the proposal puts some pressure on Mr. Obama’s administration to decide what additional areas of the outer continental shelf, if any, should be open to oil and gas production

[From Bush Administration Proposes Letting Oil Companies Drill Offshore – WSJ.com]

There’s not even a joke appropriate for these clowns

Climate Pessimists

Seth Anderson0 comment

Strangely1, the WSJ suggests that climate change is a problem, and worries about our planet’s future. I don’t think Sharon Begley is going to be invited to the Exxon-Mobile annual Climate Change Is Bogus retreat in the Bahamas this year.

Sharon Begley: Science Journal – WSJ.com

…20 years after scientists first warned that greenhouse gases would alter the planet’s climate in dangerous ways, it is possible to assess who is being more realistic. Starting with the first report of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, critics have called its projections foolishly apocalyptic. Some earlier reports did miss the mark on a few counts, but not in the way the “realists” contend. In some cases, the reality of climate change has been even worse than the alarming forecasts.

A number of greenhouse projections were spot-on, while others underestimated how radically gases such as carbon dioxide, emitted when fossil fuels burn, would alter climate by trapping heat in the atmosphere. The world’s surface temperature has increased one-third of a degree Celsius since 1990 — the upper end of projections, according to scientists led by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, in Germany. Their analysis appeared last week in the online issue of the journal Science.

With sea level, climate change has outpaced the projections. Satellite measurements show that the waters around the world rose 3.3 millimeters per year, averaged from 1993 to 2006. The IPCC foresaw 2 millimeters per year. “The main message of our [analysis] is to those who have claimed that IPCC is exaggerating climate change or is painting unduly grim future scenarios,” says Dr. Rahmstorf. “Unfortunately, this is not true; the real climate system is changing as fast as, or in some components even faster than, expected by IPCC.”

Ice in arctic seas also is melting faster than expected. (Though that doesn’t raise sea levels; melting ice on land does.) It now covers 11% less area than it did in 1978, and 20% less in the late summer. “That’s about double the mean model projection,” notes physicist Joseph Romm, author of a new book on global warming, “Hell or High Water.

…The IPCC got it right when it projected more downpours and droughts. Already, precipitation falls less often, but when it rains it pours. The basic idea that global average temperatures would rise has also been spot-on, with 11 of the past 12 years among the 12 warmest since instruments began recording temperatures in 1850. Because climate models can’t zero in on extreme weather events, though, except to say they will occur more often, they failed to foresee disasters like the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed some 26,000 people.

In focusing on global averages, climate projections make the coming changes sound gradual, slow, sedate. That’s how ozone loss was originally portrayed, too; no one foresaw the sudden ”ozone hole“ over Antarctica. It remains to be seen if climate reality, too, can suddenly tip into an extreme.

Part of the problem is so many idiots insisting on making stupid jokes about global warming every time the temperature drops, as if proving that global warming is a myth. No, you idiots, cold weather is part of the model too!

Glenn McCoy Idiot - Al Gore is Fat

Footnotes:
  1. a repost to test if my RSS Feedburner feed is fixed, or still fracked [↩]

Illinois coal ash sludge ponds are common

Seth Anderson0 comment

Michael Hawthorne alerts us that Illinois is at risk for a coal ash disaster as well.

Withered and Died

More than a dozen Illinois power plants store toxic coal ash in sludge ponds similar to the one that burst and spread contaminated muck over 300 acres of eastern Tennessee last month, according to a Tribune review of federal records.

The sludge dumps, all Downstate, are among hundreds of makeshift ponds across the nation that are regulated far more loosely than household garbage landfills, despite years of studies documenting how arsenic, lead, mercury and other heavy metals in the coal ash threaten water supplies and human health.

Most of the water-soaked ash—the byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity—is stored close to bodies of water, including Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, the Mississippi River and the Illinois River.

[From Coal ash sludge ponds in use at some Illinois power plants — chicagotribune.com]

The administration of President Obama might be more interested in monitoring this potentially hazardous problem, but nobody really knows yet. Obama received a lot of campaign contributions from Exelon. Also, leaks don’t have to be quick to be dangerous, slow and steady contamination is just as deadly.

The dangers here are two-fold,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who now heads the non-profit Environmental Integrity Project. “You can have the sudden spill and the dramatic disaster that Kingston represents, or you can have slow poisoning as these impoundments leach toxic metals.”

Red and Green

Illinois is in the top ten in a dubious category:

14 of the state’s power plants dumped sludge containing a combined 2,826 tons of toxic metals into Downstate sludge ponds during 2006, the last year for which figures are available from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory.

Only nine other states dumped more toxic metals in this way. Alabama led the nation with 6,680 tons; Indiana was fourth with 4,431 tons.

National environmental policies and regulations have to change, lest we all are buried underneath a veritable lake of toxic dust.

Catalogs are a Scourge

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I first heard of Catalog Choice’s service in 2007, and between our home, office, and made-up names, I cancelled over 83 catalogs. Amazing really, but direct mail firms subsidize our nation’s cheap postage.

CatalogChoice’s site, catalogchoice.org, is a free service with close to 1,000 catalogs on file that you can opt out of with one click once you register. … The consumer credit-reporting industry’s Web site, www.OptOutPrescreen.com, allows you to eliminate mailed credit-card and insurance offers. If you’re a DIY person, go to the site for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm) for directions on getting off mail lists.

Caveats: It could take from two to four months for your requests to be processed.

[From Cutting Down on Catalogs – WSJ.com]

About time to cancel another batch: our mail box is getting over-stuffed again.

Here’s what they say about their service:

Catalog Choice is a free service that allows you to decide what gets in your mailbox. Use it to reduce your mailbox clutter, while helping save natural resources.

Who we are
Catalog Choice is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center. It is endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and funded by the Overbrook Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, the Kendeda Fund, the Weeden Foundation and the Mead Foundation.

Our mission
The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unwanted catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate their mail preference for catalogs, and businesses can receive the list in a secure manner so that they can efficiently honor the requests.

Help spread the word
The collective positive impact that the Catalog Choice community has on the environment is directly related to the number of people using the service. You can help spread the word, by displaying one of our linked badges on your own website or blog. Just click the color you like best and use the HTML clipping:

[From Catalog Choice – Eliminate unwanted catalogs you receive in the mail]

Well worth the time if you get more than a few unsolicited or unwanted catalogs in your weekly mail.

Forest Service To Allow Destruction of Pristine Land

Seth Anderson0 comment

Yayy, more asphalt, less trees. Oh well, Obama can reverse this policy after the inauguration and all the trees will miraculously return, pushing through the paved roads, regenerating from their stumps.

Rain Forest Path - Alaska

The Bush administration appears poised to push through a change in U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.

Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. As a candidate, Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local governments have complained of being blindsided by Rey’s negotiating the policy shift behind closed doors with the nation’s largest private landowner.

The shift is technical but has large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

[From Forest Service Is Set to Allow the Paving of Logging Roads, Aiding Developer – washingtonpost.com]

Assholes. Destroying hunting and fishing land can’t make Western Republicans very happy either.

Obama sharply criticized Rey’s efforts during the presidential campaign, seizing on concerns that a landscape dotted with luxury homes would be less hospitable to Montanans accustomed to easy access to timberlands.

“At a time when Montana’s sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off,” Obama said.

Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Rule Obama Opposes

Seth Anderson0 comment

Is it January yet?1

I like to eat paste

The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in assessing the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather and analyze “industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during their working lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy process of developing standards to protect workers’ health.

Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay needed protections for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.

With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the transition “as smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from trying, in its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.

[From Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Rule Obama Opposes – NYTimes.com]

Footnotes:
  1. oops, forgot to post this a while ago. Still true that President is rushing to strip away as many anti-pollution regulations as his administration can, as far as I know [↩]

EPA veils hazardous substances

Seth Anderson0 comment

Oh, just lovely. Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger write:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency routinely allows companies to keep new information about their chemicals secret, including compounds that have been shown to cause cancer and respiratory problems, the Journal Sentinel has found.

The newspaper examined more than 2,000 filings in the EPA’s registry of dangerous chemicals for the past three years. In more than half the cases, the EPA agreed to keep the chemical name a secret. In hundreds of other cases, it allowed the company filing the report to keep its name and address confidential.

This is despite a federal law calling for public notice of any new information through the EPA’s program monitoring chemicals that pose substantial risk. The whole idea of the program is to warn the public of newfound dangers.

The EPA’s rules are supposed to allow confidentiality only “under very limited circumstances.”

Legal experts and environmental advocates say the practice of “sanitizing,” or blacking out, this information not only strips vital information from the public, it violates the agency’s own law.

Section 14 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the foundation for all the EPA’s toxic and chemical regulations, stipulates that chemical producers may not be granted confidentiality when it comes to health and safety data.

“The EPA has chosen to ignore that,” said Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin.

The newspaper’s findings are just the latest example of how EPA administrators more often than not put company interests above the needs of consumers.

[Click to continue reading EPA veils hazardous substances – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online]

not really news, just further confirmation that the EPA hates humanity.

Politics over Science

swanksalot0 comment

a common refrain for the last eight years

The inspector general of the Interior Department has found that agency officials often interfered with scientific work in order to limit protections for species at risk of becoming extinct, reviving attention to years of disputes over the Bush administration’s science policies.

In a report delivered to Congress on Monday, the inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found serious flaws in the process that led to 15 decisions related to policies on endangered species.

[From Report Finds Interference in Interior Dept. Actions – NYTimes.com]

Some of these actions are at least reversible, unlike other last minute fuck you’s delivered by Still-President Bush

Pollution is not Stewardship

Seth Anderson1 Comment

George Bush and his Republican lackeys envision a world without environmental regulation as a good thing, a goal worth striving for. I’m afraid they want this to happen:

The Citarum River, which winds its way through West Java past terraced rice paddies and teeming cities, is an assault on the senses. Visitors can smell the river before they see it.

Some fishermen still make their living off the river’s fouled waters, but many are no longer casting lures. Instead, they row their boats through floating garbage, foraging for old tires and other trash they can sell.

The river, considered by many environmentalists to be among the world’s most polluted, is woven tightly into the lives of the West Javanese.

…

Environmentalists blame rapid, and unregulated, industrialization and urbanization over the past 20 years for the degradation of the 5,000-square-mile river basin.The environmental damage is already costing lives; flooding, caused by deforestation and drains clogged with garbage, is a constant problem in cities along the Citarum.

[From Trying to Stop Pollution From Killing a Lifeline – NYTimes.com]

You might think I’m using hyperbole, but Bush doesn’t believe in being a steward of our planet: he’d rather corporations evade a few onerous regulations than protect the environment, and us.

Tim Dickenson of Rolling Stone writes:

With president-elect Barack Obama already taking command of the financial crisis, it’s tempting to think that regime change in America is a done deal. But if George Bush has his way, the country will be ruled by his slash-and-burn ideology for a long time to come.

In its final days, the administration is rushing to implement a sweeping array of “midnight regulations” — de facto laws issued by the executive branch — designed to lock in Bush’s legacy. Under the last- minute rules, which can be extremely difficult to overturn, loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.

“It’s what we’ve seen for Bush’s whole tenure, only accelerated,” says Gary Bass, executive director of the nonpartisan group OMB Watch. “They’re using regulation to cement their deregulatory mind-set, which puts corporate interests above public interests.”

While every modern president has implemented last-minute regulations, Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan. “The administration is handing out final favors to its friends,” says Véronique de Rugy, a scholar at George Mason University who has tracked six decades of midnight regulations. “They couldn’t do it earlier — there would have been too many political repercussions. But with the Republicans having lost seats in Congress and the presidency changing parties, Bush has nothing left to lose.”

[From Bush’s Final F.U. : Rolling Stone]

and despite common belief that the new President will be able to just overturn these last minute regulations, that isn’t really the case:

John Podesta, the transition chief for the Obama administration, has vowed that the new president will leverage his “executive authority” to fight Bush’s last-minute rule changes. But according to experts who study midnight regulations, there’s surprisingly little an incoming executive can do to overturn such rules. TheBush administration succeeded in repealing just three percent of the regulations finalized before Bill Clinton left office in 2001. “Midnight regulations under Bush are being executed early and with great intent,” says Bass of OMB Watch. “And that intent is to lock the next administration into these regulations, making it very difficult for Obama to undo what Bush just did.”

To protect the new rules against repeal, the Bush administration began amping up its last-gasp regulatory process back in May. The goal was to have all new regulations finalized by November 1st, providing enough time to accommodate the 60-day cooling-off period required before major rule changes — those that create an economic impact greater than $100 million — can be implemented.

Now, however, the administration has fallen behind schedule — so it’s gaming the system to push through its rules. In several cases, the Office of Management and Budget has fudged the numbers to classify rules that could have billion-dollar consequences as “non-major” — allowing any changes made through mid-December to take effect in just 30 days, before Obama is inaugurated. The administration’s determination of what constitutes a major change is not subject to review in court, and the White House knows it: Spokesman Tony Fratto crowed that the 60-day deadline is “irrelevant to our process.”

Once a rule is published in the Federal Register, the Obama administration will have limited options for expunging it. It can begin the rule-making process anew, crafting Obama rules to replace the Bush rules, but that approach could take years, requiring time-consuming hearings, scientific fact-finding and inevitable legal wrangling. Or, if the new rules contain legal flaws, a judge might allow the Obama administration to revise them more quickly. Bush’s push to gut the Endangered Species Act, for example, was done in laughable haste, with 15 employees given fewer than 36 hours to review and process more than 200,000 public comments. “The ESA rule is enormously vulnerable to a legal challenge on the basis that there was inadequate public notice and comment,” says Pope of the Sierra Club. “The people who did that reviewing will be put on a witness stand, and it will become clear to a judge that this was a complete farce.” But even that legal process will take time, during which industry will continue to operate under the Bush rules.

Clean Coal Myth

Seth Anderson0 comment

There really isn’t any such thing as clean coal, well, other than a marketing tool utilized by energy company hacks to greenwash coal, one of the dirtiest energy sources ever created. Clean coal might be created in the future, but then again, so might cold fusion1. Or robots with bees in their mouths.

Satanic Gift

http://www.ThisIsReality.org

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdHuB7Ovl2o

I hope Barack Obama and Joe Biden will alter their campaign positions supporting clean coal, but I’m not holding my breath.

Withered and Died

From Greenpeace:

Coal washing results in the formation of large quantities of slurry. This is placed in waste piles. Rain drains through the piles, picking up pollutants which end up in rivers and streams. This runoff is acidic and contains heavy metals.

…

Between 7 and 30 percent of coal consists of non-combustible material that just has to be eventually disposed of. “Clean coal” technologies attempt to trap these waste products before they leave the smokestalks; waste material that is trapped is then used (despite containing a number of toxic elements) or dumped as landfill.

The use of higher quality coal – lower in ash and sulphur should reduce emissions and increase efficiency, but thermal efficiency is increased by only one percent. If clean coal is used to meet the increased electricity demand predicitions of govenments instead of cleaner renewable alternatives, there will in fact be a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

According to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) mercury and its compounds are highly toxic and pose a ‘global environmental threat to humans and wildlife.’ Exposure to it has been associated with serious neurological and developmental damage to humans. The report also states that coal-fired power and heat production is the largest single source of atmospheric mercury emissions. According to the Coal Utilization Research Council ‘there are no commercial technologies available for mercury capture at coal-fuelled power plants’. Furthermore, a US Department of Energy commissioned report, states that the consistent, long-term performance of mercury control has yet to be demonstrated. Experimental removal of mercury is prohibitively expensive at $761,000/kg mercury removed and even then 10% of the mercury still remains.

…

Despite $5.2 billion of investment in the US alone , clean coal research has been plagued with difficulties. For example, of the 13 clean coal projects that the US General Accounting Office looked at, eight had serious delays or financial problems – six were behind schedule by 2-7 years and two were bankrupt and will not be completed.

The operators of the $297 million Healy Clean Coal project in the USA intend to retrofit the current clean coal plant with traditional technologies. The plant has been closed since January 2000 because safe, reliable and economical operation was not possible with the experimental technology.

Hidden Social and Environmental Costs

Social and environmental problems caused by the use of coal begin at the point where coal is mined. Mine workers are at great risk of death, injury and illness. Local communities suffer from land degradation and pollution and in many cases are forced to relocate.

At a coal-fired power plant, coal is pulverised and burnt in a high temperature furnace. Various toxic gases and tiny particles are released from the furnace into the smokestalks; pollution devices are used to try to trap pollutants before they are released into the atmosphere. The use and disposal of solid wastes trapped in the furnace and the release of gases and fine particles from the smokestacks have severe impacts on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and people’s health.

Footnotes:
  1. note, not the cold fusion discovered by Kevin Gugan late at night at Guff House after he had been up for weeks at a time snorting speed. Ok, getting off point here. [↩]

Arsenic in Water at EPA Approved Standards Linked to Heart Disease

Seth Anderson0 comment

This is the true legacy of George Bush, Dick Cheney and their evil crew: an Environmental Protection Agency that actively works towards lowering our national health.

Battle for Hearts and Minds

In the U.S., many locations are known to have groundwater containing arsenic concentrations in excess of the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard of 10 parts per billion. But now comes research that suggests the EPA’s supposedly “safe” level of arsemic allowed in water supplies for public consumption isn’t safe at all. In fact, water laced with the federally-approved amount of arsenic could be causing high blood pressure and artery-clogging arhterosclerosis.

According to animal research by University of Pittsburgh scientists set to be published in the December issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and available online now at http://www.jci.org/articles/view/35092, arsenic at EPA-approved levels for drinking water causes pores in liver blood vessels to close, potentially leading to cardiovascular disease and hypertension. This study calls into question whether present Environmental Protection Agency standards (currently based only on the risks of arsenic causing cancer) are stringent enough.

[From Arsenic in Water at EPA Approved Standards Linked to Heart Disease]

Rural (so-called Red States) are prime targets for the death dealers at the EPA:

The current federal standard for arsenic in public water systems not only may be too high, but it only applies to drinking water sources that serve more than 20 people. “We are especially concerned about water from individual wells in small, rural and semi-rural communities that are exempt from the EPA requirement and often contain levels of arsenic that exceed the EPA limit,” Dr. Barchowsky stated in the press release. “Our findings raise some concerns about whether current EPA-developed standards can effectively protect against cardiovascular risks posed by arsenic in drinking water.”

The study is a strong reminder that no one in the U.S. should assume that because their water supply is dubbed “safe” by the EPA that it doesn’t contain not only arsenic but other toxins. For example, most public water supplies are known to contain a host of pharmaceutical and pesticide residues,too. Testing your water or finding a proven system of safe water filtration are the only known ways to make sure you are putting pure water into your body.

New era for climate policy

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Washington At Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air (2nd Edition)” (Richard E. Cohen)

Speaking of Dingell and Waxman, Kate Sheppard writes

Next Stop: Cleaner Air

By chance, just a few days before the US election, I picked up a copy of Richard Cohen’s Washington at Work, a book documenting the nearly decade-long debate over the 1990 Clean Air Act, and which I planned to read post-election in preparation for what I figured would be next year’s battle over climate legislation.

The book highlights the antagonistic relationship between two major forces in the House Democratic caucus – the curmudgeonly, industry-friendly Michigan representative John Dingell, and a wily environmentalist from California, Henry Waxman. It’s been nearly two decades since that law passed, but the two men continued to represent the different factions in the House when it comes to passing environmental laws, a division that has long stymied action.

But then came a surprise: mere hours after the election, Waxman announced he was making an attack on Dingell’s chairmanship of the energy and commerce committee, changing the entire tenor of the House when it comes to climate legislation. Even before we get down to serious debate on climate legislation, Waxman’s success yesterday in unseating the “Dean” from his perch in the most powerful House committee signals a new era for Congress when it comes to the environment.

[From Kate Sheppard: Henry Waxman’s victory over John Dingell signals a new era for climate policy guardian.co.uk ]

Again, for Congress to actually do something about climate change, automobile fuel efficiency standards, and the like, Dingell had to be removed as chair. All eyes on you, Congressman Waxman.

Waxman Should Head Energy Panel

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Henry Waxman should succeed John Dingell – even though the Congress usually rewards longevity over competence. Dingell has been a member of Congress since 1955, but things have changed since then, and Dingell hasn’t. Dingell is part of the reason you can rent a Ford in Europe that gets 45 mpg, and cannot rent a comparably fuel-efficient Ford in the US.

Formal and solemn revocation

California Rep. Henry Waxman won backing from a key group of Democrats in his bid to unseat Michigan Rep. John Dingell as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee.

At stake is the direction of crucial legislation during a period of solid Democratic control of Congress. The committee’s mandate is broad, with oversight of everything from climate change to health care to telecommunications.

The Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee, which helps allocate committee memberships and chairmanships, voted 25-22 Wednesday to nominate Mr. Waxman for the post. The full House Democratic membership will decide Thursday whether to heed the panel’s recommendation.

The starkest difference between the men may concern so-called greenhouse gases, which trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Mr. Waxman favors stricter and faster regulation of such emissions than Mr. Dingell, who has been one of the auto industry’s staunchest allies in Congress. His ouster from the chairmanship would be a major setback for Detroit’s auto makers at a time when they are seeking assistance from Washington.

[From Key Group Backs Waxman to Head Energy Panel – WSJ.com]

Of course, the chairman hasn’t yet been rewarded; I am sure Dingell has plenty of favors to call in among the Congress members who are about to vote. Let us hope that Waxman presents a better case to those same members. From my perspective, Waxman is better fit with President-elect Obama. Danny Davis, are you listening?

Friedman vs Detroit revisted

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Tom Friedman still is not going to be on Bob Lutz’s Christmas card list. He’s criticized Detroit’s stupidity before, and with good cause.

Danger Look out for cars

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being more than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

And please, spare me the alligator tears about G.M.’s health care costs. Sure, they are outrageous. “But then why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program when Hillary Clinton was pushing for it?” asks Dan Becker, a top environmental lobbyist.

Not every automaker is at death’s door. Look at this article that ran two weeks ago on autochannel.com: “ALLISTON, Ontario, Canada — Honda of Canada Mfg. officially opened its newest investment in Canada — a state-of-the art $154 million engine plant. The new facility will produce 200,000 fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines annually for Civic production in response to growing North American demand for vehicles that provide excellent fuel economy.”

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.

Indeed, if and when they do have to bury Detroit, I hope that all the current and past representatives and senators from Michigan have to serve as pallbearers. And no one has earned the “honor” of chief pallbearer more than the Michigan Representative John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who is more responsible for protecting Detroit to death than any single legislator.

[From Thomas Friedman – How to Fix a Flat – NYTimes.com]

Smart Car 2005

The Smart Car has been on the market in many other countries, but was delayed in the US as automotive lobbyists fought to keep the Smart Car off of the roads. Not to mention to electric car that GM (and Ford) stifled. [DVD; Netflix rental]

Tangents

and of course, everyone always throws in a reference to Steve Jobs using his design mojo to fix whatever industry needs some innovation:

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

EPA undercuts clean-air rule

Seth Anderson0 comment

Speaking of Still-President Bush and his anti-environment practices, Michael Hawthorne catches the EPA again letting politics trump science:

Satanic Gift

Looking to bolster the fight against childhood lead poisoning, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month approved a tough new rule aimed at clearing the nation’s air of the toxic metal.

A key part of the initiative is a new network of monitors that will track lead emissions from factories. But the Bush administration quietly weakened that provision at the last minute by exempting dozens of polluters from scrutiny, federal documents show.

Critics say the change undermines a rule that otherwise has been widely hailed as a powerful step forward in protecting children’s health.

In Illinois, at least a dozen factories that would have been monitored could now fall through the cracks, the state EPA estimates, including a steelmaking-waste recycler on Chicago’s Southeast Side and a lead-acid battery manufacturer in Naperville.

[From U.S. undercuts clean-air rule — chicagotribune.com]

Is it January yet?

I like to eat paste

Faced with a court order to act more aggressively, the U.S. EPA last month lowered the maximum amount of lead allowed in the air. The new standard, 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter, is 10 times more stringent than the old standard, set in 1978.

To help meet the new limit, the EPA had planned to require lead monitors next to any factory emitting at least a half-ton of lead a year. But after the White House intervened, the agency raised the threshold to a ton of lead or more, according to e-mails and other documents exchanged between the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget.

As a result, dozens of factories won’t be checked regularly. Federal and state officials debate the exact number, but a Tribune review of EPA records found that the number of U.S. plants monitored could drop by nearly 60 percent, from 203 to 87.

“This sleight of hand by the administration ignores major sources of a dangerous neurotoxin,” said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.

Read the whole sorry tale here, and the AP (at Wired) has slightly more on the corruption of science at the EPA, including:

President George W. Bush has made clear that he believes the Clean Air should not be used, in permitting new plants, to control greenhouse gases. It is not clear how the Obama administration will address regulating carbon dioxide. The Supreme Court has told the EPA it must decide on whether carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare, and if it does it must be regulated.

Michael Gerrard, a lawyer not involved in the Bonanza case and author of “Global Climate Change and the Law,” said the decision “will embolden the lawsuits” challenging construction of new power plants based on their impact on climate.

“It means that the appeals board recognizes that carbon dioxide regulation of power plants is a very live and open issue. It does not ban them. It puts a cloud over them, by making it clear that this is a real issue,” Gerrard said in an interview.