environment Politics: EPA idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 9, Day 15: Bastards.
Your Dysfunctional Senate in Action. Another attempt to gut the EPA by cutting off its funding. This just makes my blood absolutely boil. The letter below will be faxed to all Democratic members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Dear Senators,
Voting to limit the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency is a profoundly wrong-headed thing to do. In the absence of genuinely robust legislation to address the looming threat of climate change (a threat already made real, for example, to the residents of Pakistan), the EPA is one of the last defenses against climate catastrophe.
The financial and environmental irresponsibility of large energy corporations is obvious to any thinking citizen — as is the fact that these entities are ready to invest staggering sums of money, not in cleaning up after the results of their incompetence, but in maintaining their own freedom to pollute. After BP’s astonishing demonstration of ineptitude and venality, is it really such a good idea to limit the EPA’s regulatory capacity? After observing the unethical and callous behavior of Massey Coal, can we really say with a straight face that the energy sector needs less regulation?
Given that the Senate is highly unlikely to provide the climate bill we need, a stronger EPA is all that’s left to protect this country’s ordinary citizens from the environmental depredations of the world’s largest polluters.
When the matter comes up in committee, please vote against any amendments which would limit the Agency’s scope or cut its funding.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA hippie-punching regulation
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 8, Day 28: That’ll Teach You To Be Sensitive and Caring!
More hippie-punching from the current administration.
I expect it from my enemies. Getting hippie-punched by the Cheney administration was a badge of honor. Getting it from the Obama team is utterly dispiriting.
Dear President Obama,
Your administration’s brief in Connecticut v. AEP argues that regulatory action by Federal agencies negates the legal standing of states or private entities to employ common-law “nuisance” provisions to protect their interests. The Solicitor-General argues that since the EPA has begun addressing carbon-dioxide emissions, the use of nuisance law to create de facto regulation of polluters is superfluous and legally ambiguous.
That’s a pretty tenuous rationale for a legal position that amounts to siding with major polluters on the interpretation and implementation of the Clean Air Act — especially given that your Administration didn’t even need to intervene in the case to begin with. If you couldn’t see your way clear to supporting the rights of individuals to sue for regulation of nuisance pollution, why not just stay out of the way?
Yes, it would be better to have strong statutory language specifically delineating a robust regulatory policy on emissions of CO2 and other pollutants. But is climate legislation with any teeth actually going to happen in the current political climate? The chances are slim to non-existent.
Who decided to intervene in Connecticut v. AEP? And why did they not consult any members of your administration with scientific or environmental expertise?
Mr. President, I worked and donated to ensure your election. As an environmentalist, I had confidence that you recognized the genuine existential threat posed by global climate change, and would be prepared to utilize your considerable rhetorical and oratorical skills to marshal support for climate/energy legislation in the current congress. I expect to work and donate for Democrats this fall, but with greatly diminished enthusiasm; “vote for us because our opponents are even worse” is a weak political motivator.
Nuisance law has long been an important avenue for citizens to address corporate criminality on a local and regional level; your administration’s contribution to Connecticut vs. AEP is an advocacy of disempowerment — precisely the opposite of your message to the nation in the election of 2008! What (besides being justifiably concerned about the future of our species) have environmentalists done to merit such shabby treatment?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: coal EPA Lisa Jackson Mountaintop Removal
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 7, Day 9: Even Though I’m Not A John Denver Fan
The Rainforest Action Network sent me an email. They’re apparently camping out in EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s vicinity, letting her know that mountaintop removal mining is a Bad Thing. Which it is.
We’re here at the EPA today with a giant sound system playing Lisa Jackson her own words over and over at a deafening volume, mixed with the sounds of dynamite blowing apart mountains, and a little of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” for good measure. We hope this intensely emotional soundtrack filling the halls of the EPA all day long will guarantee they hear us this time.
They requested me to go to their online action site and send an email. Which I did. I’m also going to print it and fax it/send it.
Dear Administrator Jackson,
There are many reasons to oppose mountaintop removal mining. The obvious ones are local in essence: an MTR project means millions of tons of toxic debris winds up in the waterways; it means that what was once a flourishing forested area will be transformed into a blasted, dessicated moonscape; it means that once the project is over, local ecosystems and economies are blighted, perhaps beyond recovery.
Those are the obvious reasons. The less obvious reasons are national and global in essence: America and the world need to stop burning coal as soon as humanly possible, because of the extraordinary amount of harm it does through increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The goal of the EPA should be what its name implies: protecting the environment.
There really is no good reason for green-lighting the Pine Creek MTR proposal, which is projected to destroy almost a thousand acres of pristine forest and over two miles of streams. Please reverse your decision. Mountaintop removal is a bad idea in every sense, and it is time for your agency to offer genuine stewardship instead of an “Environmental Protection Racket.”
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA Howie Carr idiots Lisa Murkowski Scott Brown
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 6, Day 12: Upper-Class Twit of the Year!
My junior Senator is an idiot. The Boston Herald had a piece about the efforts of us Liberals to convince him to vote No on the Murkowski abomination. I used that as a hook for this letter, which is largely based on the Think Progress piece.
Well, despite the efforts of thousands of Massachusetts citizens (including this writer) to persuade him to move away from Republican lockstep, Scott Brown voted for Lisa Murkowski’s resolution to strip power from the Environmental Protection Agency. His reasons for voting against the wishes of his constituents became clear when he appeared on Howie Carr’s radio program and called the EPA a “non-governmental agency.” Now, the EPA can be called many things, but “non-governmental” is not one of them. Brown further claimed the Agency has the ability to “regulate churches and restaurants…the very smallest emitters…,” ignoring the fact that the EPA has so-called “tailoring rules” that limit regulations to amounts over 75,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. Churches generally emit quite a bit less — about 100 tons. Fortunately, the Murkowski resolution failed. Unfortunately, Scott Brown is an embarrassment to the Senate and to the Commonwealth.
Warren Senders
environment: EPA Mountaintop Removal
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 5, Day 20: MTR-FKR?
The EPA is collecting comments on a proposed mountaintop removal site. It would be a good idea to go to this piece on DK in order to familiarize yourself with the process; it’s worth the trouble. We have got to get off the fossil fuel habit.
Here’s the comment I submitted as an email. See my note below the block for a supplemental note.
I am writing to urge the EPA to veto the proposed surface mining operations at the Spruce No. 1 Mine. There are multiple reasons for this.
The mining industry is not in compliance with federal law regarding reclamation of Mountaintop Removal sites. While a federal statute exempts them from restoring the land to its “original contour” if the land is developed for “industrial, commercial, residential or public use,” a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that a very small percentage of the MTR sites are reclaimed. The vast majority are barren, dead, denuded.
When forests are cut down, we lose the benefit of the carbon they store. Greenhouse emissions related to MTR operations add almost twenty percent to the coal’s carbon footprint. When we are finally recognizing that excess CO2 emissions have the potential to trigger catastrophic global warming scenarios, it is the height of destructive folly to destroy a “carbon sink” in order to access coal.
Mountaintop removal is recognized to bring about devastating effects both on local ecosystems and human communities. Coal companies have a terrible track record of reclamation, as noted above — and the MTR processes leave huge areas open to massively destructive erosion, fouling of waterways, and poisonous waste deposits that have profound impacts on the health of residents.
Mining companies have terrible human rights records. For over a century, coal mining operations have routinely given pride of place to profit rather than worker safety. The violations committed by Massey Coal are just the most egregious example of what is essentially an industry tradition; when an industry treats its workers as expendable, we should not be surprised when it also treats local residents, local ecosystems, and public opinion as irrelevant.
When the true costs of fossil fuels are considered, the notion that coal is cheap is revealed as illusory. We can no longer afford such fantasies; coal is one of the most expensive fuels we’ve got — it’s just that our grandchildren are going to be paying for our prodigality. It is vital that the EPA refuse to give the go-ahead to mountaintop removal mining at the Spruce Number One site.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
The Regulations.gov site has a comment submission form with a 2000 character limit, so I had to edit the piece above (which went as an email to ow-docket@epamail.epa.gov) a little bit to make it fit. Once the form was submitted my writing went off into space. Who knows if it’s ever going to surface again?
environment Politics: Barack Obama Deepwater Horizon EPA
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 5, Day 15: Saturday POTUS
The EPA released the final draft of its regulatory rule on greenhouse gases, and it’s worth checking out. This letter to President Obama uses the EPA news as a hook for the “fossils ain’t cheap” meme. Note the introduction of the “Bank of Gaia MasterCard” theme, which I will probably use again.
Oh, and by the way: you should be sure to read this piece by Al Gore.
Dear President Obama — it is excellent news that the Environmental Protection Agency has released the final version of its rule for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The requirement that major polluters will have to seek permits is a good step.
The fact is, though, that it’s just a step. It’s enormously gratifying to learn that the EPA will be strengthening regulatory oversight on coal-fired plants, refineries, cement manufacturers, solid waste landfills and other large polluters — but the other part of the equation is that we as a nation must learn to pollute less.
As long as we rely on oil for our energy, we are at greatly enhanced risk of disasters like the Deepwater Horizon. As long as we get our electricity from coal, we’re sure to face tragedies like the mine collapse in West Virginia. Remember, also, that fossil fuels bring with them many slower disasters as well: health effects, ecosystem loss, the destruction of mountaintops, environmental degradation and the terrifying threat of catastrophic climate change.
The EPA’s regulatory action makes the most sense in the context of a broadly based strategy to get Americans to waste less energy. The virtues of conservation in the classical sense must once again to be American virtues; the credo of the old Yankee, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” needs to be part of our thinking as a nation.
Can you imagine if George W. Bush had said something like that to the nation after September 11, 2001? Alas, what we got instead was an exhortation to go shopping. The crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is an opportunity for you to make an important statement to the nation, pointing out the folly of embracing wastefulness as a lifestyle. We cannot afford the illusory cheapness of fossil fuels and the culture of disposability they have enabled; our Bank of Gaia MasterCard is maxed out to the tune of about four quadrillion dollars.
The EPA’s regulatory structure, in such a context, becomes part of a national, multi-level effort to teach us all — humans and corporations alike — to be better global citizens.
We need it.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: coal coal ash EPA hazardous materials OMB
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 4, Day 27: Truly Vile Stuff
Coal is dirty stuff. It’s dirty when you take it out of the earth, it’s dirty when you burn it, and the stuff that’s left behind is even dirtier. Google the phrase “coal ash waste” and you’ll feel like you’ve stumbled into a stomach-churning nightmare.
Bizarrely, the Environmental Protection Agency is still trying to figure out whether it should be classified as “hazardous” or not. On one side, the entire human race — on the other, the executives of big coal companies (of whom the odious Don Blankenship is the most repulsive example).
Thanks to Daily Kos diarist DWG, I was given an opportunity to make my letter for the day a note to OMB director Peter Orszag, urging that the EPA move forward on regulating coal ash. You should do it, too!
2. Urge EPA regulation of coal ash as a hazardous waste.
The EPA will announce its decision on regulating coal ash as hazardous waste in April. At the moment, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is holding up the release of new regulations. The OMB and EPA are being barraged with pleas from the coal industry, utilities, business groups, state regulatory agencies, and politicians opposing classification of coal ash waste as a hazardous material. It would be extremely helpful if you would take a moment to drop a line to the OMB to encourage them to move forward with regulation of coal combustion waste as a hazardous material. Remind them that the patchwork of state regulatory agencies has failed to protect the public against spills and contamination, there is overwhelming evidence of heavy metal toxic contamination in water on or near containment sites, and secondary uses need to be tightly regulated using a national standard to prevent contamination of water resources.
Use this form from the Natural Resource Defense Council to provide feedback to the OMB.
Here’s what I wrote:
I write to urge that the Environmental Protection Agency move forward in regulating coal ash as hazardous waste.
There can be no doubt that coal combustion waste is incredibly dangerous. The scientific evidence is incontrovertible. Among the sources is the EPA itself, which recently found that pollution from coal ash dumps significantly increases both cancer and non-cancer health risks and degrades water quality in groundwater supplies. After examining almost two hundred sites throughout the country, the report found that unlined coal ash waste ponds pose a cancer risk 900 times above what is defined as ‘acceptable.’ The report also found releases of toxic chemicals and metals such as arsenic, lead, boron, selenium, cadmium, thallium, and other pollutants at levels that pose both environmental and human health risks.
This information alone should be enough to move coal ash waste into the “hazardous materials” category. But there’s more.
Coal contains trace amounts of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. In “whole” coal they’re not a problem, but when coal is burned, the fly ash contains uranium and thorium concentrated to up to ten times their original levels.
In a 1978 paper, J. P. McBride and his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) estimated fly ash radiation exposure around Tennessee and Alabama coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around nuclear power plants — and they found that people living close to coal plants got significantly higher dosages of radiation than those living around nuclear facilities. Depending on local factors, radiation doses were anywhere from three to two hundred times higher.
State regulatory agencies have utterly failed to protect the public against spills and contamination. When coal ash waste dams collapse, the effects are absolutely devastating, leaving behind barren, grotesque landscapes from which all life has been eradicated.
The notion that any controversy exists at all about the hazardous qualities of coal ash is bizarre. If Don Blankenship and the Board of Directors at Massey Coal think it’s such benign stuff, perhaps they could store it in the basements of their mansions — but somehow I don’t think they’d go along.
Please ensure that coal ash is designated a Hazardous Material, and likewise ensure that its storage is strictly regulated, with significant penalties levied for violations. If coal companies actually had to pay fines appropriate to the damage their waste products do, the myth of coal as “cheap energy” would vanish overnight.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA hardrock mining waste dumping
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 4, Day 3: SRSLY? WTF?
Another piece of environmental insanity caught my eye yesterday. Read on and weep:
Dear President Obama ,
I’ve already written to you this week about your decision to include offshore drilling as part of your proposed energy legislation. That was demoralizing enough, but yesterday I learned that your administration has decided to defend in court a Bush-era regulation that allows unlimited dumping of hard rock mining waste on public land.
Earthworks et al. v. Department of the Interior et al. is currently before the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This suit challenges two decisions by the Bush administration that allow private mining firms to dump waste on public land without compensating the government for any environmental damage.
Worse, the filing indicates that the White House has had an opportunity to either reverse the rule or study its effectiveness, but instead has chosen to defend it in court.
This is incomprehensible. Your admininstration has no business continuing rules from the previous administration that represent a huge liability to the taxpayer, and a massive gift to the hardrock mining industry.
The EPA has identified hardrock mining as “posing the highest financial risk for taxpayer cleanups,” noting that:
* “[T]he hardrock mining industry has experienced a pattern of failed operations, which often require significant environmental responses that cannot be financed by industry.”
* The hardrock mining industry “releases enormous quantities of toxic chemicals”—according to the 2007 Toxic Release Inventory, 28 percent of the total releases by U.S. reporting industries.
* EPA’s expenditure data shows that between 1988 and 2007, approximately $2.7 billion was spent on cleanup of hardrock mining facilities, with $2.4 billion going to National Priority List sites. The largest portion of these expenses has been incurred since 1998.
There is no excuse for your administration attempting to defend these rules, which prolong the inexcusable practice of waste dumping on public lands. Please heed the words of the EPA and reverse this decision, settling the lawsuit and revising the rule.
This would be both environmentally and fiscally responsible. The present course is anything but.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA Lisa Murkowski Time Magazine
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 2, Day 24: Backward Ran Senators Until Reeled The Mind
I read this piece in Time, noting that the hope of having an unfettered EPA with the power to regulate carbon emissions is now in danger, thanks to a bunch of coal whores moderate Democrats who are joining Lisa Murkowski’s bill to cripple the Agency.
I swear, I just want to throw something across the room some of the time. Our elected representatives can’t make rational decisions about anything further away than Washington, DC (in space) or the coming election (in time). And that is precisely the wrong sort of thinking for dealing with the climate crisis. We need global thinkers who understand the concept of centuries. And what have we got? A collection of ADHD-addled lobbyist-lickers.
It is unfortunate that President Obama’s hoped-for spirit of bipartisanship should take the form of multiple Democrats joining Lisa Murkowski in hopes of preventing the EPA from regulating carbon. America’s only chance to regain the initiative in coping with the impacts of global climate change lies in swift action; alas, the only thing our paralyzed and dysfunctional Senate seems to be able to do quickly is to prevent things from happening.
While we dither, greenhouse gas emissions accelerate; the planet warms; arctic reservoirs of frozen methane are beginning to melt and enter the atmosphere. If you like the greenhouse effect from higher CO2, you’ll love what happens when methane gets into the atmosphere. Climatologist James Hansen describes the worst outcome in a single word: Venus.
There is no doubt that global climate change is the greatest existential threat that humanity has ever faced. How does our broken political system face it? By building igloos, by mocking Al Gore; by substituting short-term calculation for long-term vision; by sacrificing the lives of our grandchildren and their grandchildren for political expediency. Since the Senate is incapable of responding to a clear and present danger with any sort of alacrity, we need the EPA to operate without restrictions; Senator Murkowski’s proposal is a disgrace to our present and a danger to our future.
Warren Senders