SOME OPTIMISM ABOUT THE LATEST ESA REFORM PROPOSALS

Post from someone closely involved

Big Green's Big Lie is that Pombo is out to destroy the Act. Quoting an Activist Alert e-mail from the Endangered Species Coalition (ESC), "...greedy developers and the politicians they give money to are attempting to weaken America's safety net for fish, plants, and wildlife on the brink of extinction."

Never mind that Greens give far more money to Congressional races than developers. Never mind that the same e-mail from ESC solicits funds for just such a purpose.

Never mind that far-right property rights groups are just as angry at Pombo for giving into the Greens (which he didn't) as the Greens are angry at him for giving into the property rights crowd (which he didn't).

Never mind that most of the ESA fights are over species that are hardly on the brink of extinction -- like the California gnatcatcher, which is genetically indistinguishable from millions of Mexican gnatcatchers, or the fairy shrimp, which some of us remember advertised in the back of comic books as "sea monkeys."

One of the things you will hear about ESA is that thousands of scientists oppose reforming it. This claim is a hooey-pot so foul reporters should steer far, far away from mentioning it. Why? Because you don't have to know anything at all about endangered species to get on the list. Here's ESC's solicitation to sign up:

In order to show opposition to Rep. Pombo's bill from the scientific community, we are circulating a letter for signatures by scientists. If you are a scientist, please consider signing the letter. If you know of scientists who may be interested in signing, please forward this letter to them. Text of the scientist sign on letter can be found here.

What does an astrophysicist, volcanologist or electrical engineer know about ESA? Nothing, but they're all scientists. In fact, most biologists and botanists are unfamiliar with species outside their narrow window of expertise -- and they certainly don't understand how the Act works."




ANOTHER POSITIVE COMMENT ON THE NEW ESA REFORM BILL

The environmental movement's strong opposition to a key provision of Rep. Richard Pombo's Endangered Species Act reform bill suggests they aren't serious about protecting the public's "right to know," says The National Center for Public Policy Research. It also suggests environmentalists aren't serious about saving endangered species, the group says. "For perhaps the first time, Congress is considering a proposal to stop penalizing private stewardship and thus create an ESA that offers the potential of being good for both people and good for species," said R.J. Smith, senior fellow at The National Center.

The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (TESRA), which was introduced by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo and others September 19, includes a provision that would require the federal government to inform property owners within 90 days whether their proposed activities would harm species listed under the Endangered Species Act. But environmental groups such as Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity oppose the provision, arguing it would harm species.

"Environmental groups say they support the public's 'right to know,'" said David Ridenour, Vice President of The National Center for Public Policy Research. "But they apparently don't think this right should extend to American landowners-they would rather keep them in the dark." The 90-day review period could be a means of not only protecting the rights of property owners, but of saving species, according to The National Center. "So long as ambiguities exist on which activities are illegal and which are legal, which activities would harm species and which would not, property rights and endangered species will both be in jeopardy," said Peyton Knight, director of the John P. McGovern MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at the National Center. "A 90-day review period, if formulated correctly, could protect property owners by giving them the final agency decision they need to seek compensation for their losses under the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But it would also protect species in so doing."

The Endangered Species Act has failed to save endangered species because its incentives are wrong. "Today private landowners live in fear of the ESA," said Ridenour. "Those who harbor endangered species on their property often find themselves subject to severe land use restrictions." To avoid such restrictions and the losses in property values that accompany them, many landowners preemptively sterilize their land to keep rare species away.

The Pombo proposal appears to have been significantly changed from a draft released this summer. With further refinement, several provisions of the proposal could relieve property owners of some of the ESA's harsh regulatory burden. Under one provision, property owners who lose the productive use of their land due to endangered species regulations would receive 100 percent of the fair market value in compensation for their losses. The provision also notes that any "ambiguities regarding fair market value shall be resolved in favor of the property owner." "Given its failure to recover species and its enormous burden on private property owners and regional economies, you would think Congress would want to repeal the ESA," said Knight. "Strong protection of private property rights ought to be a minimum standard for the Act."

The recent bill comes on the heels of a coalition letter widely circulated last week. The letter was signed by over 80 major national and state public policy organizations voicing their concern that TESRA's first draft would not have provided meaningful reform to the ESA. Plans revealed in the early draft to introduce "invasive species" regulations to the ESA have been removed from TESRA. Knight says this removal was essential. "Adding invasive species regulations to the ESA would have had a devastating impact on landowners," he said. "We're thankful that this has been removed from TESRA."

The House Resources Committee has scheduled a hearing on TESRA for Wednesday, September 21, and plans to vote on the bill the following day. As Congress is currently conducting hearings on eminent domain abuse, this may be a critical week for property rights. "Eminent domain abuse is a terrible injustice to be sure," said Ridenour, "But when government takes your land under eminent domain, you get compensated. Under the Endangered Species Act, government can take your property without paying you a dime."

Source





GREENIE FALLACIES ABOUT POPULATION

Some excerpts from an interview with libertarian New York Times columnist John Tierney:

I was a science writer and would cover environmental issues, and I started to realize that if you really looked at the science you'd see there was all this dogmatism on one side. But the real influence on me was Julian Simon. I was assigned to do a story in 1985 for Science magazine about the population crisis, and Greg Easterbrook was assigned to do the other part of a double cover-story package out of Africa. It was going to be "The Problem: Population Growth; The Solution: Technology Transfer." And I was going to Kenya, the fastest growing country in history, to do a story about the crisis the country was in, and Greg was going to Tanzania to do a story about some new technology for helping low-income people survive. When we came back, I ended up saying: "Population growth is not the problem." And Greg said: "Technology transfer is not the solution." To the editors' credit, they ran it.

For that story, I had heard about Julian Simon, this kind of iconoclastic economist, and I had read some of his work debunking claims about endangered species. I didn't know much about population growth, but I knew I didn't just want to write yet another story about the "population bomb." I was hoping I could say something fresh about it, so I called him up. And I said to him: "You know, I'm going to Kenya, fastest growing country in history, the average woman is having eight children, the population is doubling every ten years," and I started rattling off all these disasters. And Julian interrupted me, he said: "Yes, isn't it wonderful that so many people can be alive in that country today?" It was just a whole different way to look at it.

His great advice was: "Don't look at it as an isolated problem, a current crisis. Try to look at the long-term trends, the big picture; try to see if things are getting better or worse, not just if someone has a problem." So I went there and there were all these foreign aid workers and the usual people getting money to study the population crisis. And I was trying to find some way to tell a story, and I found this documentary that had been made about ten years earlier called Mara Goli-a village in the fastest growing part of Kenya. It was a great documentary-there was this one woman in a pink dress who wanted to have 20 children. They're all on these very crowded farmlands, and you figure there's no more room to grow, they're all going to starve to death if they all want to have these children. So I thought I'd go back to this village and see what happened ten years later. I found the woman in the pink dress, and she had four kids. She said, "Oh, I don't want to have 20 kids, we can't do it." The interesting thing was that the families that were larger actually were doing better, which is what Julian had found, that there isn't this "more people equals less wealth" relationship.

Q: Is that because people wait to have more kids until they're more prosperous, or because the kids are helping out with the work, or something else?

Tierney: Well, it's a complicated equation. At the time, I remember thinking it didn't make any sense. You can say that people have more kids when they have more money; when you can afford it you have the kid. Though at a certain point of development, of course, that changes and richer people don't have more kids. Another theory at the time was that having more kids makes you work harder. At the time I was single and childless and it didn't seem to make that much sense, but I have a mortgage now and I see exactly what this does to people and how it spurs them.

More here

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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