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Environment Tag

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 24, 2016 17 Comments
While Democratic members of Congress built a pillow fort on the floor of the House to oppose gun rights, the Republicans continued their work on behalf of the American people.
At about 1 am on Thursday, while drowned out by cries of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" from Democrats and partially blocked from C-SPAN’s cameras by protest signs, Ryan held some procedural votes on when the House would reconvene to vote on emergency funding to address the Zika virus. The votes were held at 2:30 am, and the Zika bill passed.
The need for a robust response to Zika is becoming more evident each day, as reports of more outbreaks in this country continue to mount.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 07, 2016 11 Comments
I have been following the progressive legal exploits in using racketeering statutes against Big Oil, making the analogy that gasoline producers hid climate data they collected the same way tobacco companies repressed carcinogenicity data. Of course, the eco-activists extraordinaire of Greenpeace were major cheerleaders:
Greenpeace media officer Cassady Sharp called upon the Justice Department to undertake a “broad” investigation to “look into the role of [ExxonMobil and] other fossil fuel companies, trade associations, and think tanks in sowing doubt about the risks of climate change.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 25, 2016 11 Comments
The last time we checked the regulatory runoff from the Animas River spill, a 132-page report by the Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation laid the blame for the contamination at the doorstep of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, the legal runoff is about to hit.
New Mexico is seeking more than $136 million from the Environmental Protection Agency and the owners of Colorado’s Gold King Mine, noting that dangers from contaminants spewed into the Animas River by the Aug. 5 mine spill are still lurking in New Mexico waters. In a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, Attorney General Hector Balderas and the New Mexico Environment Department cite economic setbacks and environmental damage suffered by the state after more than 3 million gallons of toxic waste was dumped into the river. It demands reimbursement of $889,327 for short-term emergency-response costs paid by the state, more than $6 million to pay for long-term monitoring of the Animas and San Juan rivers and $130 million for lost income, taxes, fees and revenues suffered by the state because of the spill.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 21, 2016 13 Comments
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world's largest solar plant, has had its share of troubles, including reports that it was scorching birds that flew over it, that it wasn't producing the energy it was projected to produce, and that it was in dire financial difficulty.  This week may well top all of that . . . the solar plant set itself on fire. The LA Times reports:
A generating tower at the world's largest solar energy plant was shut down Thursday after a mirror misalignment caused sunlight to burn through electrical wiring and start a small fire, according to officials. The blaze at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert broke out around 9:30 a.m., according to the San Bernardino County Fire Department. In a Facebook post, officials said that flames could be seen near the ninth floor of the Unit 3 tower, but that they had apparently died out by the time firefighters arrived.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 20, 2016 10 Comments
I have previously reported that a coalition of 17 state attorney generals has formed (AGs United for Clean Power), which intends to promote the climate change agenda by targeting the fossil fuel industry. The first victim of the Climate Change purge was the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a non-profit organization that has assisted businesses in countering climate justice activism, when Attorney General Claude E. Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands issued a subpoena in an attempt uncover the content of CEI’s comprehensive work on climate change policy.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 19, 2016 7 Comments
The last time we looked at Flint, the courts arraigned three bureaucrats over their roles in allowing lead-infused water to contaminate the municipal drinking water supply. Now, in an apparent bid to regain some relevancy, one national group is filing a lawsuit over the water-crisis.
Another big name has surfaced in the tsunami of Flint water lawsuits: the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], which is suing several state officials and two engineering firms, alleging they poisoned a city with toxic drinking water by failing to detect that something was wrong, pretending a problem didn't exist and ignoring numerous red flags. "Just the color of Flint's water should have led any reasonable engineer to the conclusion that Flint's pipes were dangerously corroded," the 103-page lawsuit states. The NAACP announced the lawsuit today, though it was filed on March 31 in U.S. District Court, where at least two dozen other Flint-related lawsuits are pending. This one blames Gov. Rick Snyder, several state officials and two engineering firms for the crisis, claiming they engaged in "gross negligence" and "outrageous conduct" that harmed many. Not only did officials fail to detect a water problem, the lawsuits says, but they made the problem worse by not properly treating the water. And even when they knew the water was tainted, the suit says, public officials repeatedly maintained that it was safe to drink, despite a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak linked to the water. "All the while — despite public assurances of safety — government officials in Flint quietly switched to bottled water while the citizens and businesses of Flint continued to drink dangerously contaminated water,” the lawsuit states.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 22, 2016 16 Comments
At least Ira Einhorn was consistent? My favorite inconvenient Earth Day truth (aside from the many horrendously wrong apocalyptic predictions) is the story of Earth Day co-founder Ira Einhorn. Not that I like tragic tales of death and compost, but it's hard not to enjoy the fact the day created to glorify bad science was propagated by well, a murderer. Several years after the first Earth Day in 1970, police raided Einhorn's home where they found his dead girlfriend "composting" in a trunk. What a guy, that Einhorn. When his girlfriend broke up with him in 1977, Einhorn insisted she return home to collect her belongings or he would pitch them out. She returned and was never seen again. Einhorn told police she'd gone to the co-op for tofu and vanished. 18 months later, her body was found.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 22, 2016 5 Comments
Regular Legal Insurrection readers may recall that prior to signing the new state minimum wage law, California Governor Jerry Brown was heckled at the Paris Climate Conference. Brown was challenged by a group of protesters opposed to carbon offset programs they said could hurt indigenous people. However, his enthusiasm for imposing draconian rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions has remained quite vigorous.
“This is one skirmish, but I’ll tell you, it’s increasing the intensity of my commitment to do everything I can to make sure we reduce oil consumption in California,” he said. “My zeal has been intensified to a maximum degree, and nothing, nothing is going to stop this state from pushing forward on our low-carbon fuel standard and our cap-and-trade and our ZEV [zero-emission vehicle] mandate.”
Brown's zeal was such that about a year ago he issued an executive order setting a goal for greenhouse gas emissions to be 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The California Governor's mandate was short on specifics about how his new goal will be achieved, and relied on currently undeveloped or uninvented technology to ultimately achieve the goal.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 18, 2016 35 Comments
The Environment and Public Works Committee has been gathering testimony from a wide range of witnesses (industry experts, military official, and faith leaders) to discuss the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan. Because the Senators obviously wanted listed to many different perspectives, those invited to offer input included Alex Epstein, author of A Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and President of Center for Industrial Progress, as well as Father Robert Sirico (a Catholic priest and President of the free-market supporting Acton Institute).

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 10, 2016 11 Comments
Last week, I noted that a coalition of 17 state attorney generals had formed, which intended to promote the climate change agenda by targeting the fossil fuel industry. The first victim of the Climate Change purge is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a wonderful non-profit organization dedicated to protecting free enterprise from being undermined by progressive activists of all stripes. Attorney General Claude E. Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands has issued a subpoena in an attempt uncover the content of CEI's comprehensive work on climate change policy.
“CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena. It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 10, 2016 2 Comments
I attended two fascinating lectures at a local biosafety conference this week. The first talk addressed "The Zika Virus Invasion" and the second revealed a potential new weapon to control the spread of the pathogen that has been linked to birth defects and neurological disorders. The Scripps Research Institute's Biosafety Officer, Dr. Laurence Cagnon, focused on entirely on the Zika Virus in her intriguing talk. The expert on virology and microbiology discussed the history of Zika research and reviewed recommendations for working with infected samples and mosquitoes safely. "We are still limited about what we actually know about Zika," said Cagnon. "The recommendations are to treat Zika as guilty until proven innocent". Cagnon noted that before the outbreak in Brazil was widely reported, along with the associated microcephaly birth defects, only 171 professional articles mentioned the Zika Virus. In comparison, thousands were available on other well-known mosquito-borne diseases (including several I have covered here, including dengue fever, chikungunya, and Ebola).

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 05, 2016 28 Comments
Dave Bry is the author of Public Apology: In Which a Man Grapples With a Lifetime of Regret, One Incident at a Time. I suspect he is going to have one more regret to add to his list: Writing a column in The Guardian asking if its immoral to have children... because "Climate Change."
...For while the world is a wonderful place, one we humans have made nicer for ourselves with wonderful inventions like books and record players, penicillin and pizza, it’s also a really awful place, one we’ve ravaged with deforestation and smog, nuclear weapons and mountains of pizza delivery boxes and other garbage. The awfulness seems to be getting worse, especially now that climate change has sped up – sea level rise that was supposed to take centuries has recently been projected as taking just decades. This complicates the already difficult decision of whether to have a kid.... Was I complicit in the damage? I remember every extra paper towel I’ve ever unspooled from the roll, and think about a tree falling in the Amazon, and then think about my son growing up in a gray, dying world – walking towards Kansas on potholed highways. Maybe while trying to protect his own son, like the father in The Road. Will he decide to have a kid? I have foisted upon him a decision even more difficult than my own. It’s all very depressing.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 04, 2016 4 Comments
The last time we checked on Flint, we learned that the regional Environmental Protection Agency team indicated the city was "not worth going out on a limb for." Perhaps not, but the city now is facing over 50 lawsuits because the EPA decided it didn't need to take any action upon learning about the elevated lead levels in the municipal water supply.
More than 50 lawsuits have been filed since January, accusing the city of being complicit in the water crisis for not doing enough during the 18 months in which Flint was getting its drinking water from the polluted Flint River. That move was a decision made by the state, and it turned out to be a terrible one. The river's highly corrosive water wasn't treated properly by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the water corroded lead service lines, which then caused lead to seep into the drinking water and poison families.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 19, 2016 9 Comments
Happy Human Achievement Hour! The good folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute organize the hour-long event each year.
What is Human Achievement Hour? Human Achievement Hour is CEI's annual celebration of human progress! During this hour, people around the world pay tribute to human innovations that allows us to live better, fuller lives, and defend our basic human right to use energy to improve the quality of life of all people.
  • Human Achievement Hour is the counter argument to the World Wide Fund for Nature's Earth Hour, where participants symbolically renounce the environmental impacts of modern technology by turning off their lights for an hour.
  • Symbolically or not, Earth Hour does little to protect the environment and is a misguided effort that completely ignores how modern technology allows societies to develop new and more sustainable practices, helping people around the world be more eco-friendly and better conserve our natural resources.
  • Instead of looking to the “dark ages,” like Earth Hour, Human Achievement Hour promotes the idea that we should be looking to technology and innovation to help solve environmental challenges and problems.
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