Decking Dirty Diesel

REP America is gratified by the new diesel cleanup standards proposed by EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. If adopted, the rules will reduce harmful pollution from non-road diesel equipment, such as bulldozers, tractors and small generators by 2014.

This welcome step toward reducing pollution will be good for public health and the American economy as well. We’re not talking small potatoes, either! The EPA estimates that the new rules will save nearly 10,000 lives per year by 2030 and up to $80 billion in health care, lost work time and other costs.

Diesel fumes contain more than 450 substances, including sooty particles and airborne toxins linked to cancer and respiratory ailments. Diesel exhaust contains nitrogen oxides that form unhealthy ozone smog. Diesel fuel contains sulfur, which forms unhealthy particles, acid rain and unsightly hazes.


Green Talk, Brown Walk

Clearly, it wasn’t intended for public consumption. It was leaked. Hooray for the leaker!

Republican strategists are finally acknowledging that despite a few good initiatives—like the EPA’s new non-road diesel rules—our party is mostly on the wrong side of environmental issues in the public eye. As GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote in his secret “Straight Talk” memo, the environment is the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and especially for George W. Bush. That realization is the good news.

The bad news is that Luntz—the creator of 1994’s famous Contract with America—doesn’t recommend that the GOP do anything other than “sound better” on environmental issues. His memo makes no recommendation that party honchos actually behave better. He just teaches them how not to scare the voters so much.

Luntz’s effort harkens back to the heyday of the “Gingrich Revolution,” when hard-talking congressional “revolutionaries” frightened the public so much that dozens of them were booted out of office. Luntz obviously wants to teach the new crop of GOP leaders not to make that mistake again.

This would all be well and good if GOP officialdom were to take its bad reputation as a warning to change the party’s ways. It’s not acceptable merely to seek ways to look better.


We Told ‘Em So!

Although the “Wise Use” folks (aka “Unwise Abusers”) would have us all believe the opposite, the American people continue to come down solidly in favor of protecting our nation’s natural resources.

The latest proof is the US Forest Service’s newly-released Survey RMRS-GTR-95, which investigated “the American public’s values, objectives, beliefs, and attitudes regarding forests and grasslands.” We quote here directly from the Abstract:*

Members of the American public were asked about their values with respect to public lands, objectives for the management of public lands, beliefs about the role the agency should play in fulfilling those objectives, and attitudes about the job the agency has been doing.

The public sees the promotion of ecosystem health as an important objective and role for the agency. There is strong support for protecting watersheds.

The public supports multiple uses, but not all uses equally. Motorized recreation is not a high priority objective, while preserving the ability to have a “wilderness experience” is important.

There is moderate support for providing resources to dependent communities. The provision of less consumptive services is more important than those that are more consumptive. There is a lack of support for subsidies for development and leasing of public lands. Preservation of traditional uses is a somewhat important objective.

Development and use of the best scientific information enjoys wide support, as does information sharing and collaboration. A national direction for the management of National Forest lands is a slightly important objective. Increasing law enforcement on National Forests and Grasslands is an important objective and an appropriate role for the agency.

The public has a strong environmental protection orientation, has a moderately strong conservation/preservation orientation, and supports some development.”

REP thanks the USFS for confirming what we and others in the conservation community have long argued— that the public supports protecting roadless areas and doesn’t want special places damaged by inappropriate ORV recreation. We hope this abstract (if not the whole document) makes it into the hands of somebody verrrrrry high-up in the Bush administration.


Incredible Shrinking Wilderness

Despite that superb USFS report, it’s hard to fathom how rapidly Gale Norton’s Interior Department has undone the safeguards that once offered hope for our nation’s last remaining unprotected wilderness areas. With mind-boggling swiftness, Norton has:

a. rescinded the BLM Wilderness Inventory and Study Procedures Handbook; denied that there is any legal authority for new inventories and wilderness reviews of BLM lands in the lower 48 states; and revoked existing protections for many wilderness-quality BLM lands;

b. instructed BLM to cease consideration of lands in Alaska for wilderness protection; and

c. adopted a regulation that could validate questionable right-of-way claims, opening the way for highways criss-crossing national parks, monuments, refuges, forests, wilderness areas and BLM lands.

Norton is also busy squashing the public’s right to weigh in on management decisions for public lands, despite the fact that this is required under the Wilderness Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

It’s beyond the scope of our Green Elephant to report all the details. Those who want to know more should visit Campaign for America’s Wilderness web site.


The Public Gets Flamed

Congress is rushing to adopt sweeping legislation to accelerate timber cutting and limit the public’s ability to hold the Forest Service accountable for obeying environmental laws.

The House Resources Committee has passed the Orwellian “Healthy Forests Restoration Act,” to allow the Forest Service to approve large-scale logging on the public’s forests without bothering to analyze alternatives, regardless of the size, potential environmental impacts, or level of public controversy.

Evaluating alternatives is the heart of the National Environmental Policy Act, the wise 1970 law that requires agencies to look before they leap into projects that may cause lasting damage to America’s natural heritage.

The bill’s loose language gives the Forest Service unprecedented discretion to expedite logging anywhere in proximity to human settlements and municipal watersheds, where trees have blown down, or where insect or disease outbreaks could threaten forest health or public lands. In other words, just about everywhere.

In a dangerous lurch away from our system of checks and balances, the bill would require courts to defer to agency claims that rushed logging projects will have long-term benefits, even in the face of clear evidence that timber removal could harm streams or wildlife.

If passed in its present form, the bill will lead to more polarization, delaying sensible, site-specific solutions for reducing wildfire hazards.


The Damage Adds Up

A new, $1.5 million National Academy of Sciences report on the 35-year history of oil drilling on Alaska’s North Slope has introduced some useful information into the never-ending debate over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Proponents of drilling say it can be done in an “environmentally-sensitive” way. What does the NAS report say?

Apparently, North Slope drilling has caused bowhead whales to change their migration patterns to avoid offshore seismic exploration, driving them beyond the hunting range of the native people. Polar bear dens have been disturbed. Female caribou are producing fewer calves, and caribou herds have shifted their calving areas to find vegetation and avoid insects. The reproductive rates of certain bird species, including snow geese, eiders and some shorebirds, have declined. Thousands of acres of fragile tundra vegetation have been destroyed, and “wilderness values” like solitude and scenery have been lost. The problem is not so much with individual wells but with the associated infrastructure, like roads, pipelines and housing. Abandoned equipment and buildings will mar the landscape for centuries.

Predators such as arctic foxes, ravens and gulls have thrived, feeding on garbage around the oil fields, but they also prey on rarer and, in some cases, endangered birds.

Here’s a perceptive comment from one of REP America’s directors who read the NAS report:

“Regarding environmental disturbances, people tend to think of immediate impacts, like thawing permafrost to put in pipes and roads, or pipes blocking caribou migration paths, but it’s the little problems that are twice or thrice removed from an immediate impact, and therefore far harder to predict. For example, importing people means importing food, which means getting rid of waste food (in open dumps maybe), which is eaten by gulls and ravens, which allows their populations to increase, which allows additional predation by these critters on other species, which ...”

Get the picture? Our leaders don’t!


Great NET Work

Green Elephant readers who would appreciate a superb follow-up to our winter issue’s Midterm Environmental Report Card* for the George W. Bush administration can now turn to a new resource. The top-notch researchers at National Environmental Trust (NET) have put together a compilation of coast-to-coast newspaper editorials—organized by topic similar to our own Report Card—on the Bush administration’s environmental policies. It’s a document worth printing out, reading and saving for future reference... available in PDF format at: http://environet.org/reports/rollbacks.html