Environmentalists, repeatedly rejected by the democratic process and unable to pass the Kyoto Protocol or their radical agenda, are doing what liberals invariably do when defeated in the marketplace of ideas: turning to the courts. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to review Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which environmental lobbies and twelve activist states petition the Court to label everyday carbon dioxide a "pollutant" and compel the EPA to regulate it. That's right - carbon dioxide, the clear, odorless, non-toxic, natural substance that we exhale with every breath and that plants require to flourish, is now a "pollutant," according to environmentalists. Plaintiffs thus seek to impose the Kyoto Protocol via litigation, superseding the electoral process and imposing tremendous costs upon the American economy.
Even more alarming, success in this lawsuit would commence a flood of similar lawsuits, once again completely removing a critical issue from the democratic process. We've all seen how well that worked on other issues such as asbestos, tobacco and abortion. What would be next? Elimination of sports or other activities that cause heavy breathing? Strict regulation of methane gas and bovine farting?
Not surprisingly, the roster of plaintiffs includes the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Environmental Trust, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Defense, the Conservation Law Foundation, the Environmental Law Clinic, the Bluewater Network and... Elliot Spitzer. Additionally, the participating states include California, Washington, D.C., Rhode Island, Vermont, Oregon, New York, Washington, New Jersey, Illinois, Maine, New Mexico, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Notice anything that those states and Washington, D.C. have in common from the 2004 Presidential election, with the single exception of New Mexico? Just asking.
Regardless, the issue presented is whether the 1970 Clean Air Act compels the EPA to label carbon dioxide a "pollutant," thereby requiring regulation. In response, the EPA and several other states assert that carbon dioxide is a natural substance that the EPA has no authority to regulate, and that the issue must be decided through the democratic process, not the courts. For its part, the Clean Air Act itself specifically identifies 190 "pollutants" subject to regulation, carbon dioxide not among them. Not to be deterred, Plaintiffs nevertheless allege that the Act somehow implies a mandatory duty to regulate CO2. According to them, the CO2 mandate has remained dormant since 1970, until miraculously discovered by environmental lawyers in 1998. This assertion is preposterous for several reasons.
First, the Act specifically states that global warming "shall not be construed to be the basis of any additional regulation." One can scarcely imagine a more unequivocal pronouncement on this issue. Furthermore, the single reference to CO2 in the Act states that the EPA must not infer regulatory authority over it.
Second, the federal government has never regulated CO2 emissions. This is no surprise, since CO2 is the natural byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, which provides 85% of America's energy. As noted by the EPA, "virtually every sector of the U.S. economy is either directly or indirectly a source of greenhouse gas emissions" such as CO2. Consequently, regulating CO2 would require draconian changes to our economy and the way that we live, and the costs of such regulation would be catastrophic.
Third, Congress has repeatedly renounced the position advocated by Plaintiffs. The Kyoto Protocol, which calls for CO2 regulations and otherwise resembles Plaintiffs' position, was rejected in 1997 by a 95-0 Senate vote. Similarly, Congress has debated environmentalist proposals on literally hundreds of occasions, and consistently rejected proposed regulatory climate policies. In three consecutive years during the Clinton Administration, for example, Congress expressly prohibited implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.
Simply put, the current status of this issue is beyond dispute. Americans have repeatedly considered and rejected the Kyoto Protocol and other efforts that require or even authorize carbon dioxide controls, most recently in 2003. Environmentalists' assertion that Congress has latently authorized CO2 regulation is therefore absurd. This is properly an issue for the electorate to decide, not the courts. Should Plaintiffs prevail, it will constitute yet another judicially-imposed disaster upon the American economy and governmental system.
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MORE ON THE SCOTUS CASE
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case being brought by a dozen states, several major cities, and environmental groups who want carbon dioxide, widely believed to be contributing to the current global warming trend, to be designated as a pollutant. The plaintiffs are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision in 2003 that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant that would come under the regulatory portions of the Clean Air Act. That decision has been upheld by two lower court rulings. A Supreme Court decision siding with the plaintiffs could have wide-ranging consequences, since it would open the door for the regulation of myriad human activities that produce carbon dioxide, especially the use of automobiles and the production of electricity by utilities.
To examine the role that carbon dioxide plays in our daily lives, let's review a little basic science. Whether we like the sound of it or not, everything is made of chemicals; including people. Many chemicals are absolutely necessary for humans to live, for instance oxygen. Just as necessary, human metabolism produces by-products that are exhaled, like carbon dioxide and water vapor. So, the production of carbon dioxide is necessary, on the most basic level, for humans to survive. (We haven't heard yet whether the plaintiffs will later want to see water vapor regulated, which is by far the Earth's most important greenhouse gas.) Moving beyond our body's needs, for humans to thrive we use a variety of fuels to get the necessary work done. Burning of these fuels releases larger amounts of carbon dioxide than do our bodies, and as a result the CO2 concentration of the global atmosphere has risen by about 30% over the last 100 years: from 300 parts per million (ppm) in the early 1900's, to its present value of about 380 ppm.
The carbon dioxide that is emitted as part of a wide variety of natural processes is, in turn, necessary for vegetation to live. It turns out that most vegetation is somewhat 'starved' for carbon dioxide, as experiments have shown that a wide variety of plants grow faster, and are more drought tolerant, in the presence of doubled carbon dioxide concentrations. Fertilization of the global atmosphere with the extra CO2 that mankind's activities have emitted in the last century is believed to have helped increase agricultural productivity. Doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will probably occur late in this century. And even though carbon dioxide formation requires oxygen, there is no danger that the production of carbon dioxide will deplete the vast store of atmospheric oxygen, which is 550 times as abundant as CO2. In short, carbon dioxide is a natural part of our environment, necessary for life, both as 'food' and as a by-product.
Yet, the possibility that there might be some negative consequences associated with its production has led some to want to regulate it. This harkens back to the 'precautionary principle': if something has potential negative side effects, don't do it. Those that advocate the precautionary principle apparently haven't noticed that no one lives his life according to it. Central to the argument that CO2 be regarded as a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act is that it "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." This will be difficult to prove scientifically, since we have no way of proving that current global warmth is due to carbon dioxide emissions. While some theoretical modeling research that has suggested that all of the current global warmth could be explained by the extra CO2 we have produced, there is an element of circularity inherent in this type of science. The computer models built to predict climate fluctuations were based upon knowledge of what the answer was to begin with. Natural climate fluctuations (such as a small change in cloudiness) can also cause temperature changes, but since we don't understand what causes them, we can't model them.
But even if the 1 deg. F warming in the last 100 years can be convincingly demonstrated to be due to humans, it will be just as difficult to prove harm to human health and welfare. This is why the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs last year. Proving harm from global warming is confounded by natural climate fluctuations that are so large that the global warming signal becomes lost in the noise. Note that the 1 degree of warming in the last century is much less than what humans routinely endure as part of normal weather variations and the progression of the seasons. And throughout human history, warm has always, on balance, been better than cold.
And, contrary to what Al Gore's movie implies, we have always had droughts, floods, major hurricanes, tornadoes, and ice calving off glaciers and falling into the ocean. There is no convincing evidence that weather has gotten more severe, more drought-prone, or more flood-prone, as a result of global warming. Yet we are exposed to claims that 'global warming is killing people now'.
Even if CO2 production has some negative consequences, it is not at all clear at what level the costs associated with increasing carbon dioxide concentrations would even come close to the benefits associated with its production. Our risk-adverse culture tends to forget that our daily lives involve balancing a wide variety of risks and benefits. The risks and benefits of one possible decision are weighed against the risks and benefits of another decision. It would be hard to find a more beneficial natural resource, with fewer risks, that has elevated humanity to new heights in prosperity, health, and longevity, than fossil fuels.
Nevertheless, it could be argued that in some sense, all human activities, products, and by-products represent 'pollution' and pose a possible "danger to public health and welfare." Car accidents claim 40,000 lives each year in the U.S. alone. Why don't we regulate everything out of existence that has the potential to cause harm? Because the things we use on a daily basis provide benefits that greatly outweigh the risks. Assuming that CO2 is eventually classified as a pollutant, and the EPA is given regulatory authority over potential ingredients of climate change, it seems critically important to avoid past regulatory mistakes. The government has a long history of instituting regulations that end up doing more harm than good. It would be difficult to imagine a regulation that carries so much potential for harm to humanity as the regulation of carbon dioxide.
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Nature's Embrace?
Post lifted from Cafe Hayek
Cynthia Emerlye expresses a wish in this letter published in today's New York Times:
"Thomas L. Friedman struck a chord of guilt in me when he suggested that attention is a victim of our electronics-filled digital age ("The Age of Interruption," column, July 5). I offer myself as an example. I live in a stunningly beautiful rural part of Vermont. My studio sits above a flowing stream. Wildlife regularly pass beside my window.
The other night as I worked away at the computer, I was oblivious to it all. Then the electricity suddenly went out (something that happens often in the country). I groped out of my "cave" looking for a candle, tripped over the vacuum cleaner, and landed in front of the glass door.
After cursing, I looked outside. The sky was blazing with stars, and hundreds of fireflies danced above the lawn and through the meadow. I opened the door and walked outside in a trance. Such beauty and tranquillity have been available to me every day, every evening, with only a little attention required by me. Yet I have remained in my self-imposed lockup chained to a flickering computer screen.
I am hopeful that we will all wake up someday, break these electronic bonds and walk into the waiting embrace of Mother Nature.
Cynthia Emerlye
South Pomfret, Vt.,
July 5, 2006
Here's one of my deepest wishes -- that one day the likes of Ms. Emerlye and others who romanticize nature will realize that without modern commerce and industry Mother Nature doesn't warmly and lovingly embrace human beings; she strangles us in a death grip.
Consider, for example, Thomas Babington Macaulay's description of life in the 17th-century Scottish highlands -- before anything beyond rudimentary commerce and industry reach there:
His lodging would sometimes have been in a hut of which every nook would have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grain fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a cake of blood drawn from living cows.
Some of the company with which he would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia, John C. Winston Co., n.d.), page 279.
A very un-Green Prime Minister
No nonsense about the evils of dams from John Howard
Australians living in major cities should not have to tolerate water restrictions, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday. In a damning assessment of the nation's water infrastructure provided by local authorities and the states, Mr Howard suggested even the ancient Romans had superior policy in the area to modern-day Australia.
The Prime Minister, addressing the Committee for Economic Development in Sydney, also made a case for turning Australia into a global energy superpower incorporating a thriving nuclear power sector.
But he said one of the most urgent tasks was to create water projects that would deliver a genuinely "transformative impact" on water management. "If ancient Rome's 11 aqueducts 2000 years ago could deliver a billion litres of water to it millions of inhabitants every day . . . how can we seriously tolerate major water constraints in our great cities?" he said. Mr Howard said he saw little reason why large cities should be gripped by water crisis. "Having a city on permanent water restrictions makes about as much sense as having a city on permanent power restrictions," he said. "We would not tolerate it with electricity, we should not tolerate it with water."
The Prime Minister said two critical assumptions had to be overcome immediately if we were to reverse the trend - that water be used only once and that storm water be carried off to the oceans.
Mr Howard also said Australia turning its back on nuclear energy was like Saudi Arabia turning its back on oil. The Prime Minister will also oversee steps to encourage greater energy exploration. "While known oil reserves are declining, Australia remains relatively unexplored, particularly for petroleum in frontier offshore areas," he said. Mr Howard said Australia's energy exports were forecast to grow to around $45 billion in 2006-07 - more than three times what we earned last year from meat, grains and wool combined.
Greenpeace and Nature Conservation Council protesters who heckled Mr Howard outside the forum, said the PM had done nothing to increase alternative energies in a decade of power.
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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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Jim Hansen and his twin
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