MASSACHUSETTS GREENIES FALTERING

Massachusetts was once a favorite of the national environmental movement, passing some of the country's strongest laws to protect its air, water, and land. But today, after 15 years of budget cuts, it is failing to deliver key services.

Across the state, the results are apparent: almost $800 million in deferred park maintenance, a shortage of rangers and environmental police officers in state parks, and less attention to identifying hazardous waste sites, keeping streams and rivers clean, monitoring mercury contamination, and cutting levels of acid rain.

Spending on the environment has fallen, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $253 million a year in 1989 to $169 million this year -- a 33 percent drop that "cannot be sustained without significantly increasing risks to public health and the environment," according to an internal state document. The federal government recently fined the state $92,000 for a policy it said encouraged contractors to ignore contaminated waste.

"The message from the governor's office and from the legislative leadership is that environment isn't something to pay attention to anymore," said Jim Gomes, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, an environmental advocacy group. "We still have laws that stack up well compared to the rest of the country, but when we fail to fund them, when we fail to enforce them, and when we fail to give them sufficient management to make sure the promises are fulfilled . . . services suffer."

State officials acknowledge budget cuts have been severe -- but say they were necessary during recessions and as other priorities such as healthcare rose to the top. They say Massachusetts has done the best it can with less money and point to more enforcement actions, stricter air-quality laws for dirty power plants, a stepped-up effort to test for drinking water contaminants such as perchlorate, and a push to redevelop old industrial sites.

"Everyone took cuts through the budget crisis, and the environmental agencies are not immune. It forced all of us to do more with less," said Douglas Foy, secretary of the state Office of Commonwealth Development. He said skyrocketing healthcare costs consume the state's discretionary spending. "Times are tight."

Starting in the 1970s, when the environmental movement first took hold nationally, Massachusetts soon became one of the leading states, passing laws to reduce businesses' dependence on toxic chemicals, identifying new hazardous waste sites, and approving some of the most protective wetlands laws in the country. But after an initial push, observers say, the state became complacent.

"Those bursts of enthusiasm in the late '70s and early '80s have diminished," said Christopher Hardy, director of legislative affairs for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. "There has been a bipartisan collapse in state investment of environmental programs, and it's both the Legislature and executive branch."

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THOSE DAMNED SUVs AGAIN!

It might seem obvious that there should be a lot of ice near the North Pole. But scientists have struggled to explain why there is so much. A new study proposes an explanation.

A sudden fall in the average global temperature 2.7 million years ago caused the Arctic Ocean to freeze, researchers have known. Europe and North America got covered in ice, too. The cooling alone is not enough to explain why so much ice built up and has remained to this day in the far North, however.

Back then, another important climate change occurred. The difference between summer and winter temperatures changed by 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7 Celsius) within just a few centuries, the new research found.

Summer got warmer, and winter got colder. So more water evaporated from the sea during summer, making the air more humid. In turn, more snow fell in winter, and the enhanced frigidity allowed ice to build up.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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