Speech on Farm Policy Still True Today
Two centuries later, a handful of agriculture conglomerates work to drive
small farmers off their land by paying them less for their produce than it
costs to grow, moving them into a cycle of loans, mortgages, foreclosures,
repossessions and the sale of land to corporate-controlled agribusiness.
In 1962, a committee of the most powerful corporate executives in the
United States issued ""An Adaptive Program for Agriculture,"" a plan to
eliminate farmers and farms. Called the Committee for Economic Development,
this group represented oil and gas, insurance, investment and retail
concerns as well as the food industry. Industry giants such as Campbell
Soup, General Foods, Pillsbury and Swift lobbied Congress with the message
that the biggest problem in agriculture was too many farmers. The U.S.
government encouraged farmers to move off their farms and retrain, allowing
their land to be consolidated in the ownership of fewer and fewer
corporations.
In the 1970s, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz called on farmers to
""Plant fence row to fence row."" Giant grain companies were selling
U.S.-grown food to Europe, the former U.S.S.R. and the Third World. Prices
were up; farmers experienced their most profitable years in history.
But Secretary Butz also said, ""Get big or get out."" There was no reason not
to trust him. Farmers began to buy all the available land they could find.
To pay the rapidly rising prices, they mortgaged their farms and equipment.
Inflation was driving up land values faster than interest rates were
rising; loan experts claimed that those who didn't take advantage of that
were fools.
But those who made their fortunes on interest were losing ground. Inflation
was eroding their wealth, and they blamed the Federal Reserve. The Fed's
only recourse was to apply the brakes, pull money out of the system, drive
up interest rates and push the economy into a deep recession.
""Severe injustice""
On October 8, 1979, Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave the
banks and financiers what they wanted. The nation's wealthy were the
winners; the nation's middle and lower classes particularly those in rural
America watched themselves lose.
Farmland values fell sharply while interest rates on farm loans shot
through the roof. Diminished land value left mortgages under-collateralized
and loans were called in. Interest rates as high as 15 percent pushed farm
families into foreclosure. After denying them refinancing, the banks resold
their farms with lower-interest loans.
At that point the Reagan Administration moved to practice its economic
theories on rural America. The 1985 Farm Bill decreased government
subsidies. Prices for crops fell almost overnight by as much as 46 percent.
Processors and international exporters experienced a financial boom. The
farmers' money went into the pockets of the multinationals.
To secure their gains, these corporations lobbied hard to have the changes
written into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). As a
result, 600,000 family farms failed before the end of the decade, their
land consolidated into corporate mega-operations hundreds of thousands of
acres in size.
In 1990, George Washington University reported in its Intergovernmental
Health Policy Project that this social engineering had taken a heavy human
toll: collapse of farm-related businesses and rural communities,
unemployment and underemployment, substandard housing, hunger, mental
illness, child abuse, substance abuse, anxiety disorders and depression. By
1989 suicide was the leading cause of death on family farms, three times
the rate of the general population. And that didn't include the ""accidents.""
Buy local, buy often
Those in positions of power consider the collapse of rural America as a
necessary and inevitable result of a global economy. From their point of
view it would be counterproductive to reduce the suffering or mitigate the
effects, let alone reverse the policies.
Multinational corporations assume that we won't make the effort to buy food
directly from local producers or look for retailers who do so. Without
competition, the corporations can pay farmers as little as they choose and
charge us whatever they want. By the time we decide prices are too high and
start looking for the farmers, they may be gone.
Jody Aliesan is the Director of the
" 2 2003-12-19 705 Italy's Textile Community Crumbling Under Chinese Competition \N "December 17, 2003
PAGE ONE
TRADE WITH CHINA
Threat From China Starts to Unravel
Italy's Cloth Trade
Close-Knit Industry Became European Powerhouse;
Now, Quality Gap Narrows
By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BIELLA, Italy -- For more than 600 years, the icy rivers that roar through
this Alpine town have made it a natural for weavers, who used the fast-flowing
waters to power looms and clean wool. Over time, the region bred some of the
most famous names in Italian clothing, including Zegna and Cerruti.
The manufacturing towns of northern Italy are built on clusters of small,
often family-run firms that share information, know-how and business. Como has
its silk industry, Lucca its leather goods, Montebelluna its shoes and Biella
its wool, to name a few. In the past, the communal approach was admired for
its flexibility and shared economies of scale.
Now a new factor is radically remaking this arrangement: China. The
competitive threat of its factories is bearing down on Biella and other towns
that for more than a century helped power the Italian economy. Trades built on
craftsmanship and cachet, such as cashmere and leather, for years dismissed
the threat from low-wage countries. But they are suffering today as China
steadily narrows the quality gap.
In the past, the region's strength depended on unity. The impact of China is
scattering Biella companies in different directions. Botto Poala SpA, part of
a group of wool companies started in 1876, is moving more production in-house
to ensure high quality and has laid off workers for the first time in its
history. Ermenegildo Zegna SpA, the men's fashion designer, has moved much of
its business away from Biella and is focusing on building its brand-name,
rather than that of Biella. Fratelli Piacenza SpA, a 270-year-old firm that
specializes in cashmere, is shifting new production to China. In the future,
its executives predict, firms will replace "Made in Italy" with "Created in
Italy" labels to signal that their designs -- if not the production -- remain
home-grown.
The American economy's size, flexibility and embrace of technology have
allowed it to absorb -- and in many ways benefit from -- the effects of
China's emergence, through relocating production or selling more goods to
China. For Italy, the world's sixth-largest economy, China's arrival is
tougher. Inflexible labor laws constrain Italian companies from firing workers
and moving jobs abroad. The majority of manufacturers remain family-run
outfits with fewer than 100 workers. Uprooting to distant China remains out of
the question for many. And many Italian firms believe that what sells their
products -- whether a Versace dress, a Gucci bag or marble sinks -- is that
they bear "Made in Italy" labels.
Home to more than half of Europe's textile companies along with other low-tech
manufacturing industries, such as shoes, Italy lies squarely in the path of
the charging Chinese economy. China last year exported $20 billion in textile
products, a 53% increase from three years earlier, making it the world's
second-largest textile exporter behind the European Union. China also imports
textiles but in far smaller quantities.
Located in the foothills of the Italian Alps, Biella's textile traditions date
back at least to the 14th century. Toward the end of the 19th century, the
region borrowed technology and factory designs from England, erecting massive
mills along the rivers.
After World War II, lower trade barriers drove a continent-wide economic boom.
Italian clothiers traveled to Paris, the capital of fashion, to learn the
latest weaves and styles. Italy's own growing wealth fueled the rise of Milan,
Rome and Florence as fashion hubs. Even as some high-wage European countries
began scaling back their textile industries in the 1960s and 1970s, Italy's
was flourishing. In Biella, more than a thousand textile companies helped to
make the region one of the richest industrial districts in Italy.
Europe felt the first rumblings from China in the late 1980s, when it ramped
up production of silks, a traditional Chinese product. The ensuing glut drove
many European firms out of business, but buyers then rejected the Chinese
silks for their poor quality. The Italian companies rode out a dip in sales
and then thrived.
In the past three years, the Chinese have returned with much higher quality.
"The second shock has begun," says Michele Canepa, president of the
International Silk Association. Some longtime silk makers in Como have given
up producing silk altogether. E. Boselli & C. SpA, located in the hills
overlooking Lake Como, now just makes polyester blends. Such materials allow
for more innovation, which the company believes is the only way to stay ahead
of the Chinese. "We have to keep looking for new ways," says Giulio Balossi
Restelli, a senior executive, sitting among racks of colorful polyester.
"That's the only way to survive."
Now, China has turned to wool -- making it Biella's turn to feel the consequences.
Biella, which is the name of both the town and the surrounding province, has
about 200,000 people living in the foothills of the snow-capped Alps. Many
residents live in tiny villages that cling to narrow mountain roads. For
centuries, pilgrims have come to pray at its numerous mountain sanctuaries.
But it's the wool and other textile factories, which today provide work for
about one-third of the province's total work force, that put Biella on the
map. Outlet stores selling sportswear, pajamas and blankets clutter the main
road leading into town.
At Botto Poala's mill in the center of a tiny mountain village, sales are down
10% from two years ago and show no sign of improvement. Rodolfo Botto Poala,
whose grandfather started the firm, says he has no choice but to bring more
business in-house. The answer to the Chinese threat, he believes, is focusing
on quality, which calls for more internal production and less outsourcing. The
company now does its own dyeing where in the past it contracted that work out
to others.
But Silvio Botto Poala, Rodolfo's 37-year-old son who handles several business
lines, counters that "quality is no longer enough." The Chinese are winning
business from Botto Poala in nearly every segment, he says, and they are
increasingly competing on quality and design rather than just price. The
decline in sales has prompted the firm's first-ever job cuts, of more than 50
of its 290 workers in the past year.
Across the street, wool company Lanificio di Lessona SpA is also feeling the
pinch. While some specialty customers are sticking with the Italians, more and
more bulk orders -- from major U.S. customers like Calvin Klein and clothing
chain Men's Wearhouse -- are going to the Chinese. "The effect was, 'Ouch!' "
says Elena Crotti, a senior executive at the firm. Men's Wearhouse told her
two years ago it wanted its usual shipment but that it had received a Chinese
offer at half the normal price. "I told them we can't do that, so go for it,"
says Ms. Crotti. "And they went for it." A spokesman for Calvin Klein says
that the company still places many orders with Italian suppliers.
When orders dry up at Botto Poala and Lanificio di Lessona, two of the bigger
producers in these hills, the effect travels immediately several miles up the
mountain road to Rammendo Terzoglio Snc, a small workshop of 16 workers. The
firm is run by Mariangela Terzoglio, a 55-year-old woman with bushy dark hair
and reading glasses draped around her neck; her husband and son also work here.
The company relies on other companies having too much to do. They send her
nearly finished fabrics to check and fix any flaws. Several carts containing
stacks of cashmere and wool clutter the small work area. Still, orders are
down a third from 18 months ago. Ms. Terzoglio has begun to fret about meeting
mortgage payments on the building. She is waiting until next month, after
orders for the next winter season come in, before deciding whether to lay off
staff.
"Everyone is worrying now, that's what's different," she says, smoothing her
soft hands over a large piece of dark, pin-striped wool stretched over her
examining table. "It's not just one or two firms."
Many Biella textile firms have already cut workers. Two thousand textile jobs,
about 8% of the total, have been lost in the past year, according to the
Biella industrial association. Though the local unemployment rate is just
4.8%, that's up from 3.8% a year earlier.
The drop in sales could be cyclical in part. The three-year global economic
slump has persuaded many consumers to put off purchases such as an expensive
suit. The rise of the euro against the dollar and other currencies has made
European exports more expensive abroad. And wool has lately fallen out of
fashion, pushing down prices.
But Biella companies say something more lasting is at work. For years, the
Italian textile makers were the only low-cost providers within the EU. "We
used to be the Chinese of Europe," says Carlo Piacenza, who runs cashmere
company Fratelli Piacenza with his brothers. "In the 1950s and 1960s, we took
the market from England and France. Now we have to be prepared to leave this
to someone else." Since the last remaining global textile quotas will be
abolished in January 2005, as part of trade liberalizations agreed to under
the World Trade Organization, Mr. Piacenza believes the surge of Chinese
textiles will only get worse.
Piacenza, located in a field just outside the main town of Biella, is
transforming its business in response. Since the strength of the Chinese still
lies more in copying products than in making new ones, he says, the company
has changed 70% of its product line in just the past two years, introducing
new blends, dyes and fibers. In the past, such an overhaul would have taken a
decade.
Mr. Piacenza figures that the 224 workers in Biella will increasingly focus on
design and innovation. Production will go to China, where the company opened
its first mill in 1994, employing 200 in Beijing. Mr. Piacenza expects to
transfer "more and more" production there, he says.
The Biella district is trying to fight back. In September, it launched a
marketing campaign at the Milan fashion show to inform customers of the
quality and standards behind its fabrics, including better working conditions
and environmental practices at its factories, compared with those in China.
The local industry association has put out a compact disk with a jingle
touting Biella's excellence; a new Web site bears the slogan "E l'arte di
emozionare," or "It's the art of creating excitement."
But many others are turning their backs on Biella. For Ermenegildo Zegna,
China is a huge opportunity. The company has teamed up with a Chinese garment
company to make clothing there, and it's also opening retail stores to
capitalize on the country's growing wealth. Zegna plans to have 46 such stores
in major Chinese cities by the end of this year, and 60 by the end of next
year, says Paola Zegna, the company's co-chief executive.
The company is pouring its advertising into building its own name; a recent ad
campaign features Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody. Though Biella is where the
company got its start, "If you ask me if we really need it, the answer is no,"
says Mr. Zegna.
For others, the response is even more drastic. Lanificio Alfredo Pria SpA was
one of the biggest mills in Biella, employing more than 1,000 people by World
War II. It later sold its wools to the best houses, including Yves Saint
Laurent and Christian Dior.
But sales declined, in large part due to rising competition from China. In
1999, owner Guido Azario, a relative of the founder, laid off the remaining
200 workers and shut down the plant. Today, Mr. Azario and his wife, Anna,
still live in the building and rent part of it to a call center, an
architecture firm and an art gallery.
One of the rooms houses a renowned archive of more than a thousand
leather-bound volumes, containing textile patterns and other specialized
knowledge on making fabrics. Leafing through the dusty, cracking books, Ms.
Azario said the Chinese are among the most frequent visitors to the room.
"They are taking our ideas," she said. "I don't like to open it to the Chinese
anymore, unless they bring a lot of money."
--Carlta Vitzthum in Madrid contributed to this article.
Write to Christopher Rhoads at christopher.rhoads@wsj.com
Copyright 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
" 2 2003-12-17 706 Court Blocks Sierra Logging Project \N "Court Blocks Sierra Logging Project
Appellate panel agrees with activists that U.S. overestimated number of
dead trees after fire.
By Henry Weinstein
Times Staff Writer
December 12, 2003
A federal appeals court blocked a large logging project Thursday in the
Sierra Nevada, siding with environmentalists who argued that the U.S.
Forest Service had overestimated the number of dead trees that needed to be
cut after a 2001 forest fire.
The federal government had sold logging rights to a private company to
clear dead trees from the 17,000 acres that burned west of Lake Tahoe in
the Star fire. But the John Muir Project, an environmental group that
monitors such salvage contracts in California, said the Forest Service had
overestimated the destruction, allowing more logging than would have been
allowed under the state's comprehensive forest plan.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2 to 1 in
favor of the Muir Project and reaffirmed an order blocking the contract
that it issued last year.
The judges found that the John Muir Project had demonstrated a reasonable
probability of success that the Forest Service had misstated the conditions
in the El Dorado National Forest in creating the preconditions for a
salvage sale of timber after a major fire.
A key question in the case is just what constitutes a dead tree. The Muir
Project asserted that the Forest Service, in an effort to expand a salvage
project, approved the removal of live trees. The Forest Service sharply
disagreed.
The case arose in the aftermath of an August 2001 wildfire that began on
private land and swept through the El Dorado National Forest and Tahoe
National Forest for 23 days.
Subsequently, Forest Service personnel developed a restoration plan that
spawned two ongoing federal lawsuits.
In this case, the Muir Project challenged the conclusions of the Forest
Service that logging large trees would reduce the potential for damage from
future fires.
The Muir Project contended that the relevant scientific studies focus
solely on smaller trees, while the few studies discussing larger trees
concluded that they should not be logged.
Muir Project attorney Rachel Fazio also asserted that the Forest Service
deliberately used scientifically questionable mortality standards to
overestimate the level of tree destruction in the project area, which is
about 20 miles west of Lake Tahoe and south of Interstate 80 along the
Upper Middle Fork of the American River.
The Muir Project, affiliated with the Earth Island Institute of San
Francisco, also contended that scientific literature overwhelmingly
suggested that a large percentage of trees categorized as dead by a Forest
Service biologist would survive.
The Forest Service countered that the project would salvage dead timber
that was still standing.
In addition, Assistant U.S. Atty. Edmund Brennan, representing the agency,
said the project would restore burned soil and reduce wood fuels.
U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr., an appointee of President George
W. Bush, rebuffed the Muir Project's request to halt the logging.
Emergency Stay
In November 2002, the 9th Circuit issued an emergency stay, halting logging
of any trees "which have any percentage of green foliage and/or crown
remaining," while a full appeal was considered.
The appellate majority ruled that England had failed to consider "the
broader public interest in the preservation of the forest and its
resources" when making his ruling.
Judge Sidney R. Thomas, joined by Judge John T. Noonan, a President Reagan
appointee, ruled that England had applied the wrong legal standards in
assessing whether the plaintiffs were entitled to a preliminary injunction.
They also ruled that Judge England had erred in permitting the Forest
Service to annul a protected zone for spotted owls on the grounds that the
area was no longer habitable for the birds.
In a concurring opinion, Noonan questioned whether the Forest Service had a
serious conflict of interest "because of its financial interest in the
sale" of the timber.
"In deciding whether or not a sale should be made, the Forest Service
determines the legal rights of a private corporation and the legal rights
of those seeking to enforce the statutes protecting the environment. The
Forest supervisor and the Regional forester making this determination are
not judges in a black gown sitting on a bench, but as surely as such
traditional figures they are applying law to resolve a legal controversy,"
Noonan wrote.
'Further Investigation'
He said the Forest Service is dependent for some of its budget on timber
sales and from them derives "many millions of dollars" a year.
"Any governmental agency would put a premium on an operation that gives it
a perpetual revolving fund not dependent" on a congressional appropriation,
Noonan wrote. "Further investigation of the budgetary process of the forest
and the impartiality of the service appears appropriate," when the case
goes back to Judge England, Noonan added.
Judge Richard R. Clifton, a George W. Bush appointee, dissented. He said
that England had used the correct legal standard and that the plaintiffs
had failed to show the likelihood of irreparable harm if the injunction was
not granted.
Muir Project attorney Fazio praised the ruling, saying that she was
particularly pleased about Noonan's concurrence. The organization has long
expressed concern about the Forest Service's decision-making in reviewing
proposed logging projects such as this one.
The decision was criticized by Justice Department lawyer Brennan and David
Dun, the attorney for Sierra Pacific Industries, which had been awarded the
logging contract. Both attorneys said England's rulings had been correct.
They also said that Congress had decades ago created the program that the
Forest Service operates and that no one had found any evidence that it was
run improperly.
Brennan said the government has not decided yet whether it will ask the 9th
Circuit to review the decision with a larger panel of judges.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-12-12 707 Paper Cos' Tree Massacre \N "The Tennessee Tree Massacre
by Alex Shoumatoff
The paper industry is destroying one of America's last great stands of native forest to bring you fresh shopping bags and toilet paper.
THE FLYOVER
If there were an international tribunal that prosecuted crimes against the planet, like the one in The Hague that deals with crimes against humanity, what is happening on the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Tennessee would undoubtedly be indictable.
The crime -- one of many clandestine ecocides American corporations are committing around the world -- has taken place over three decades. About 200,000 acres on this tableland have already been clear-cut by the paper industry, and the cutting continues. Where once grew some of the most biologically rich hardwood forest in North America's Temperate Zone (which extends from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Canada), there are now row after row of fast-growing loblolly pine trees genetically engineered to yield the most pulp in the shortest time. But the paper industry's insatiable appetite for timber has met with unexpected competition from an equally voracious insect. In the last four years, an estimated 50 to 70 percent of the pines planted on the plateau have been devoured by the southern pine beetle. The entire South has been ravaged by the worst outbreak in its history of this native predator of pine trees, caused by the tremendous increase in the amount of pine available for it to eat on the industry plantations that have replaced the native forest. Unable to salvage its dead timber, the paper industry has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet it seems still committed to destroying what remains of the extraordinarily lush forest on the Cumberland Plateau, which, along with eastern Tennessee's Great Valley and the Cumberland Mountains, has the highest concentration of endangered species in North America. The loss of biodiversity is tragic but also absurd economically; it doesn't even make good business sense.
Not many people are aware of what is taking place. Nearly 90 percent of the Cumberland Plateau is in private hands and exempt from all but a few government regulations. The federal and state agencies that are supposed to be regulating the paper, timber, and mining industries are populated with these companies' former executives and have come to view these industries as clients whose permits and projects should be facilitated rather than scrutinized. The cozy relationship that exists between Tennessee's public and private sectors, and the impunity and magnitude of the environmental destruction taking place on the plateau, are what you might expect in Guatemala or deep in the Brazilian Amazon, not in our republic, where there are supposed to be laws that protect our wilderness treasures and prosecute conflicts of interest. But a quarter of the world's paper and 60 percent of America's wood products are being produced in the South, and the will to address the abuses of the paper industry, which contributes millions of dollars to the campaign coffers of politicians around the country, just isn't there -- certainly not in Tennessee.
There's another reason for the lack of public awareness: Much of the devastation is hidden from view by thin "beauty strips" of native forest left along the plateau's highways. The only way to get the full picture is to go up in a small plane and see it from the air.
Species on the Cumberland Are Facing New Threats
The Cumberland has the highest number of endemic species anywhere in North America. Some animals, above, are already rare (the cougar) or endangered; the red wolf is locally extinct due to overhunting. The pine plantations that replace forests after they're clearcut -- "environmental disaster zones," says plant ecologist David Haskell -- will only make it worse.
So early this past September I took off from Knoxville in a Cessna 182 piloted by Hume Davenport, the founder of a nonprofit, conservation-minded aviation service called SouthWings. Hume, whose ancestors came to the Cumberlands in l801, has provided his "flying classroom" to dozens of journalists, environmentalists, and policymakers trying to grasp the enormity of what is happening on the plateau.
The Cumberlands (some dispense with the s) are made up of the Cumberland Plateau and the mountains and foothills on its edges. The plateau itself is a 400-mile-long tableland that is the tail end of the Appalachian Plateau; it extends from West Virginia and Virginia down into Kentucky and Tennessee on a southwesterly diagonal and peters out in Alabama. The part in Tennessee tapers from 55 miles wide to about 38 and covers 6,875 square miles -- an area larger than the state of Connecticut. About 85 percent of it is still covered with the native woodland. Some of the last remaining large stands of the Appalachian mixed mesophytic forest (where a variety of hardwoods grow in moderately moist conditions) are here, but the plateau was "pretty much raked over the coals a century ago," Hume explained, and most of the trees are second growth. East of the plateau, plunging a thousand feet in a steep escarpment that was a formidable barrier for the westering pioneers until Daniel Boone forged a route through the Cumberland Gap in l769, is the Great Valley of East Tennessee, where Knoxville and Chattanooga are and where the Tennessee River winds.
Soon we were over the Cumberland Mountains, whose peaks range from 2,000 to 4,000 feet. Hume's aeronautical map indicated "numerous strip mines," and we could see that some of the mountains had been cored like apples. Others had been decapitated, or "cross-ridge mined" in the industry's euphemism. The heyday of the mining was between l920 and l970, and its scars are mostly overgrown with vegetation. But mining is making a comeback. We circled Zeb Mountain, which the Robert Clear Coal Corporation had just gotten a permit to cross-ridge mine. Roads and sediment ponds had been put in on its slopes, and the trees had been clearcut, like a person who'd been shaved before an operation. Mud was oozing down into a stream below, smothering the habitat of a striking little fish called the blackside dace, which is found in only 30 streams on earth.
"Mining and clearcutting go hand in hand," Hume explained.
In nearby Pioneer, we made a few passes over the Royal Blue chip mill, owned by International Paper, the biggest paper company in the world. A chip mill is a satellite facility, where hardwoods of smaller diameter and plantation pines are diced into wafers that are taken to a mother mill, to be dissolved into pulp. The larger hardwoods are sawed into boards at another mill.
There are 156 chip mills and 103 pulp mills in the 13 southern states. More than a hundred of the chip mills were constructed between l987 and l997, when chip exports (mostly to Japan) escalated by 500 percent. Eleven mills get their wood from the plateau. Royal Blue alone eats up 7,000 acres of hardwood trees a year -- oaks, tulip poplars, and half a dozen other species -- from within a 75-mile radius. We could see two miniature logging trucks coming down the highway far below us, another being unloaded, and four waiting behind it. A huge claw suspended from a crane picked up the logs and fed them into the chipper, which spewed the chips out a pipe directly onto railroad cars that would take them to the Blue Ridge Paper Company's Pigeon River mill in Canton, North Carolina. Most of the wood here is "gatewood": Few, if any, questions are asked about where the timber comes from or the manner in which it was harvested.
We banked southwest and, heading right down the middle of the plateau, began to see massive devastation. "This isn't Ma-and-Pa, let's-clear-40-acres stuff," Hume yelled through the headphones. "It's big, industrial tree farming. When they took out the big trees a century ago, at least they left the little ones to take their place. But now they're scraping off the soil, right down to the bedrock. Because it's thin and sandy, they have to spray massive amounts of fertilizer from crop dusters so the pine trees can grow. It's complete insanity. Most of the trees they're planting are being chewed up by beetles. Look at these plantations. It's a graveyard."
Below us, vast stands of dead gray loblolly pine, covering hundreds of acres, had been skeletonized by the southern pine beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis. The beetle breaks out every 10 to 30 years -- what triggers the outbreak is not understood -- and attacks native longleaf, shortleaf, Virginia, black, yellow, Table Mountain, and white pines that are sparsely scattered in the hardwood forest. But with many tens of thousands of acres of monoculture pine on the plateau, the beetles have been having a field day. The beetles are even chewing up saplings and the prize conifers in people's yards. In a race against the plague, the paper companies are forced to harvest their timber before it is mature, creating a glut of scrawny "bugwood" on the market. This has severely depressed the price of pulp. Couple this with the hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue from the timber the beetles have beaten them to, and competition from Canada's timber, and it' clear why the South's paper companies are in trouble.
The biggest landowner on the southern plateau is Bowater, the biggest manufacturer of newsprint in the country and one of the largest producers of the free-sheet coated paper used for glossy magazines and catalogs. Now, as we flew south over Crossville, the commercial hub of the southern plateau and a burgeoning retirement community, houses abruptly gave way to Bowater's industrial tree farms and huge squares of mangled wasteland that had been hacked out of the forest and not yet replanted. "This plateau has been ransacked," Hume said sadly. He took us over a particularly vast mutilated swath that some activists have dubbed the Triangle of Destruction, but it is only one of many.
The only clearcutting I had seen on this scale was in the Amazon 25 years ago. Every merchantable stick below us had been taken, streambeds and banks had been torn up and gouged by recklessly driven machines, and the understory shrubs and stripped-off branches and other debris had been bulldozed into windrows, some of which had been torched and were shooting up sooty flames. "It used to be just Bowater," Hume said, "but in the last few years International Paper and J.M. Huber -- a wood products company -- have gotten into the act. When Huber showed up in '97, we saw a vast increase, maybe a doubling, of the clearcutting." Four million additional acres of the South's forests are being converted to pine plantations each year, according to the U.S. Forest Service, and the conversion rate is expected to double by 2040.
On the plateau, this translates to an annual holocaust of about 3 million trees, 14 million if you count smaller trees and pines. What's driving this? Consider that a quarter of the world's paper is produced in the South. The average American consumes about half a ton a year -- that's factoring in toddlers and oldsters and people on life support. This is 111 times the per capita consumption in India, 300 times that of some African countries. Much of this consists of glossy catalogs and other junk mail, which I get a two-foot stack of each week; the sections of the paper that I chuck without even glancing at them (the Washington Post and other newspapers are printed on Bowater paper taken straight from the plateau); the inch-high stack of napkins we're handed whenever we get takeout; the 10 feet of toilet paper we rip off to clean ourselves. As one environmentalist put it arrestingly: "We're wiping our asses with habitat."
" 2 2003-12-10 708 In Memorium:Terrific JFK Speech on Liberalism \N "QUOTE:
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose,
in human liberty as the source of national action,
in the human heart as the source of national compassion,
and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas."
=======================================================
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/35_kennedy/psources/ps_nyliberal.html
JOHN F. KENNEDY, 35th President of the United States
Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination
September 14, 1960
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by
"Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in
his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned
with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members
demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they
mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas
without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people --
their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights,
and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the
stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what
they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean
and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what
it means in the presidential election of 1960.
In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in
Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take
the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the
state and the citizen. This is my political credo:
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty
as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national
compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our
ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and
as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not
so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude
of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his
reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of
justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.
I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it
contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so
abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill
the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all
mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which
are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence
of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in
others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can
do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which
exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and
a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it.
And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of
achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our
responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with
political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that
liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal
society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a
strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed
to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short,
can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our
national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether
our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we
will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of
doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry
Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.
Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended
from that segment of the American population which was once called an
immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do
not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any
group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented
the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new
opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the
despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who
came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a
living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the
entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new
world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.
Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that
spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for
all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961.
Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of
the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who
struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for
their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools;
they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future,
brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their
children's time, suburb by suburb.
Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and as a reminder
that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that
goes on in our day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself
with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at
home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every
morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every
American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or
that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be
needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or
increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good
intentions, for we know where that paving leads.
In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from
them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."
And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman for the effort
to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. Our opponents would like the people
to believe that in a time of danger it would be hazardous to change the
administration that has brought us to this time of danger. I think it would be
hazardous not to change. I think it would be hazardous to continue four more
years of stagnation and indifference here at home and abroad, of starving the
underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense but our
image abroad as a friend.
This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century
-- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New
York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be
associated with us in this great effort. The reason that Woodrow Wilson and
Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad,
and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this
country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United
States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the
people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.
I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our
national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of
our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history
of the great Republic.
Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over
again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to
move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the
new frontiers of the 1960s.
" 2 2003-11-23 709 Bush Gang's Crimes Against Nature, Kennedy \N "December 11, 2003
Rolling Stone
Crimes Against Nature
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (8,486 words)
George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental
president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has
initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws,
weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and
wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the
public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important
environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican
pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its
anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople,
secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack
was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental
record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in
air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six
years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which
enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the
quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to
America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit,
diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.
I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I
watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they're comparatively
lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this
affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the
insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are
among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American
experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most
freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption
advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as
asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that
President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.
Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies
encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars,
diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks
and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise
democracy and are hated by their own people.
When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in
2000, movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to
do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and
regulations that protect the environment. For twenty-five years it has been
like the zombie that keeps coming back from the grave.
The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush's chief of staff
and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium
on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted
every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated
effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical
industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate
agribusiness and other industries.
Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two
environmental standards, the federal Department of Agriculture has stopped
work on fifty-seven standards, and the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration has halted twenty-one new standards. The EPA completed just two
major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry
request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration
and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.
This onslaught is being coordinated through the White House Office of
Management and Budget -- or, more precisely, OMB's Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, under the direction of John Graham, the engine-room
mechanic of the Bush stealth strategy. Graham's specialty is promoting changes
in scientific and economic assumptions that underlie government regulations --
such as recalculating cost-benefit analyses to favor polluters. Before coming
to the White House, Graham was the founding director of the Harvard Center for
Risk Analysis, where he received funding from America's champion corporate
polluters: Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto, Alcoa, Exxon, General Electric and
General Motors.
Under the White House's guidance, the very agencies entrusted to protect
Americans from polluters are laboring to destroy environmental laws. Or
they've simply stopped enforcing them. Penalties imposed for environmental
violations have plummeted under Bush. The EPA has proposed eliminating 270
enforcement staffers, which would drop staff levels to the lowest level ever.
Inspections of polluting businesses have dipped fifteen percent. Criminal
cases referred for federal prosecution have dropped forty percent. The EPA
measures its success by the amount of pollution reduced or prevented as a
result of its own actions. Last year, the EPA's two most senior career
enforcement officials resigned after decades of service. They cited the
administration's refusal to carry out environmental laws.
The White House has masked its attacks with euphemisms that would have
embarrassed George Orwell. George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests" initiative
promotes destructive logging of old-growth forests. His "Clear Skies" program,
which repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act, allows more emissions. The
administration uses misleading code words such as streamlining or reforming
instead of weakening, and thinning instead of logging.
In a March 2003 memo to Republican leadership, pollster Frank Luntz frankly
outlined the White House strategy on energy and the environment: "The
environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general and
President Bush in particular are most vulnerable," he wrote, cautioning that
the public views Republicans as being "in the pockets of corporate fat cats
who rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute
America for fun and profit." Luntz warned, "Not only do we risk losing the
swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well." He
recommended that Republicans don the sheep's clothing of environmental
rhetoric while dismantling environmental laws.
I prosecute polluters on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council,
Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance. As George W. Bush began his presidency,
I was involved in litigation against the factory-pork industry, which is a
large source of air and water pollution in America. Corporate pork factories
cannot produce more efficiently than traditional family farmers without
violating several federal environmental statutes. Industrial farms illegally
dump millions of tons of untreated fecal and toxic waste onto land and into
the air and water. Factory farms have contaminated hundreds of miles of
waterways, put tens of thousands of family farmers and fishermen out of work,
killed billions of fish, sickened consumers and subjected millions of farm
animals to unspeakable cruelty.
On behalf of several farm groups and fishermen, we sued Smithfield Foods and
won a decision that suggested that almost all of American factory farms were
violating the Clean Water Act. The Clinton EPA had also brought its own
parallel suits addressing chronic air and water violations by hog factories.
But almost immediately after taking office, the Bush administration ordered
the EPA to halt its Clean Air Act investigations of animal factories and
weaken the water rules to allow them to continue polluting indefinitely.
Several of my other national cases were similarly derailed. Eleven years ago,
I sued the EPA to stop massive fish kills at power plants. Using antiquated
technology, power plants often suck up the entire fresh water volume of large
rivers, killing obscene numbers of fish. Just one facility, the Salem nuclear
plant in New Jersey, kills more than 3 billion Delaware River fish each year,
according to Martin Marietta, the plant's own consultant. These fish kills are
illegal, and in 2001 we finally won our case. A federal judge ordered the EPA
to issue regulations restricting power-plant fish kills. But soon after
President Bush's inauguration, the administration replaced the proposed new
rule with clever regulations designed to allow the slaughter to continue
unabated. The new administration also trumped court decisions that would have
enforced greater degrees of wetlands protection and forbidden coal moguls from
blasting off whole mountaintops to get at the coal beneath.
The fishermen I represent are traditionally Republican. But, without
exception, they see this administration as the largest threat not just to
their livelihoods but to their values and their idea of what it means to be
American. "Why," they'll ask, "is the president allowing coal, oil, power and
automotive interests to fix the game?"
Back to the Dark Ages
George w. Bush seems to be trying to take us all the way back to the Dark Ages
by undermining the very principles of our environmental rights, which
civilized nations have always recognized. Ancient Rome's Code of Justinian
guaranteed the use to all citizens of the "public trust" or commons -- those
shared resources that cannot be reduced to private property -- the air,
flowing water, public lands, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.
When Roman law broke down in Europe during the Dark Ages, feudal kings began
to privatize the commons. In the early thirteenth century, when King John also
attempted to sell off England's fisheries and erect navigational tolls on the
Thames, his subjects rose up and confronted him at Runnymede, forcing him to
sign the Magna Carta, which includes provisions guaranteeing the rights of
free access to fisheries and waters.
Clean-air laws in England, passed in the fourteenth century, made it a capital
offense to burn coal in London, and violators were executed for the crime.
These "public trust" rights to unspoiled air, water and wildlife descended to
the people of the United States following the American Revolution. Until 1870,
a factory releasing even small amounts of smoke onto public or private
property was operating illegally.
But during the Gilded Age, when the corporate robber barons captured the
political and judicial systems, those rights were stolen from the American
people. As the Industrial Revolution morphed into the postwar industrial boom,
Americans found themselves paying a high price for the resulting pollution.
The wake-up call came in the late Sixties, when Lake Erie was declared dead
and Cleveland's Cuyahoga River exploded in colossal infernos.
In 1970, more than 20 million Americans took to the streets protesting the
state of the environment on the first Earth Day. Whether they knew it or not,
they were demanding a return of ancient rights.
During the next few years, Congress passed twenty-eight major environmental
statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered
Species Act, and it created the Environmental Protection Agency to apply and
enforce these new laws. Polluters would be held accountable; those planning to
use the commons would have to compile environmental-impact statements and hold
public hearings; citizens were given the power to prosecute environmental
crimes. Right-to-know and toxic-inventory laws made government and industry
more transparent on the local level and our nation more democratic. Even the
most vulnerable Americans could now participate in the dialogue that
determines the destinies of their communities.
Earth Day caught polluters off guard. But in the next thirty years, they
mounted an increasingly sophisticated and aggressive counterattack to
undermine these laws. The Bush administration is a culmination of their
three-decade campaign.
Strangling the Environment
In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan declared, "I am a Sagebrush Rebel," marking a
major turning point of the modern anti-environmental movement. In the early
1980s, the Western extractive industries, led by one of Colorado's worst
polluters, brewer Joseph Coors, organized the Sagebrush Rebellion, a coalition
of industry money and right-wing ideologues that helped elect Reagan
president. The big polluters who started the Sagebrush Rebellion were
successful because they managed to broaden their constituency with
anti-regulatory, anti-labor and anti-environmental rhetoric that had great
appeal both among Christian fundamentalist leaders such as Jerry Falwell and
Pat Robertson, and in certain Western communities where hostility to
government is deeply rooted. Big polluters found that they could organize this
discontent into a potent political force that possessed the two ingredients of
power in American democracy: money and intensity. Meanwhile, innovations in
direct-mail and computer technologies gave this alliance of dark populists and
polluters a deafening voice in American government.
Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976 to bring lawsuits
designed to enrich giant corporations, limit civil rights and attack unions,
homosexuals and minorities. He also founded the right-wing Heritage
Foundation, to provide a philosophical underpinning for the anti-environmental
movement. While the foundation and its imitators -- the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, the
Federalist Society, the Marshall Institute and others -- claim to advocate
free markets and property rights, their agenda is more pro-pollution than
anything else. From its conception, the Heritage Foundation and its
neoconservative cronies urged followers to "strangle the environmental
movement," which Heritage named "the greatest single threat to the American
economy." Ronald Reagan's victory gave Heritage Foundation and the Mountain
States Legal Foundation immeasurable clout. Heritage became known as Reagan's
"shadow government," and its 2,000-page manifesto, "Mandate for Change,"
became a blueprint for his administration. Coors handpicked his Colorado
associates: Anne Gorsuch became the EPA administrator; her husband, Robert
Burford, a cattle baron who had vowed to destroy the Bureau of Land
Management, was selected to head that very agency. Most notorious, Coors chose
James Watt, president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, as the
secretary of the interior. Watt was a proponent of "dominion theology," an
authoritarian Christian heresy that advocates man's duty to "subdue" nature.
His deep faith in laissez-faire capitalism and apocalyptic Christianity led
Secretary Watt to set about dismantling his department and distributing its
assets rather than managing them for future generations. During a Senate
hearing, he cited the approaching Apocalypse to explain why he was giving away
America's sacred places at fire-sale prices: "I do not know how many future
generations we can count on before the Lord returns."
Meanwhile, Anne Gorsuch enthusiastically gutted EPA's budget by sixty percent,
crippling its ability to write regulations or enforce the law. She appointed
lobbyists fresh from their hitches with the paper, asbestos, chemical and oil
companies to run each of the principal agency departments. Her chief counsel
was an Exxon lawyer; her head of enforcement was from General Motors.
These attacks on the environment precipitated a public revolt. By 1983, more
than a million Americans and all 125 American-Indian tribes had signed a
petition demanding Watt's removal. After being forced out of office, Watt was
indicted on twenty-five felony counts of influence-pedaling. Gorsuch and
twenty-three of her cronies were forced to resign following a congressional
investigation of sweetheart deals with polluters, including Coors. Her first
deputy, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for perjury.
The indictments and resignations put a temporary damper on the Sagebrush
Rebels, but they quickly regrouped as the "Wise Use" movement. Wise Use
founder, the timber-industry flack Ron Arnold, said, "Our goal is to destroy,
to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the
environment for private gain, absolutely."
By 1994, Wise Use helped propel Newt Gingrich to the speaker's chair of the
U.S. House of Representatives and turn his anti-environmental manifesto, "The
Contract With America," into law. Gingrich's chief of environmental policy was
Rep. Tom DeLay, the one-time Houston exterminator who was determined to rid
the world of pesky pesticide regulations and to promote a biblical worldview.
He targeted the Endangered Species Act as the second-greatest threat to Texas
after illegal aliens. He also wanted to legalize the deadly pesticide DDT, and
he routinely referred to the EPA as "the Gestapo of government." In January
1995, DeLay invited a group of 350 lobbyists representing some of America's
biggest polluters to collaborate in drafting legislation to dismantle federal
health, safety and environmental laws.
Gingrich and DeLay had learned from the James Watt debacle that they had to
conceal their radical agenda. Carefully eschewing public debates on their
initiatives, they mounted a stealth attack on America's environmental laws.
Rather than pursue a frontal assault against popular statutes such as the
Endangered Species, Clean Water and Clean Air acts, they tried to undermine
these laws by attaching silent riders to must-pass budget bills.
But the public got wise. Moderate Republicans teamed up with the Clinton
administration to block the worst of it. My group, the NRDC, as well as the
Sierra Club and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, generated more than 1
million letters to Congress. When President Clinton shut down the government
in December 1995 rather than pass a budget bill spangled with
anti-environmental riders, the tide turned against Gingrich and DeLay. By the
end of that month, even conservatives disavowed the attack. "We lost the
battle on the environment," DeLay conceded.
Undermining the Scientists
Today, with the presidency and both houses of Congress under the
anti-environmentalists' control, they are set to eviscerate the despised laws.
White House strategy is to promote its unpopular policies by lying about its
agenda, cheating on the science and stealing the language and rhetoric of the
environmental movement.
Even as Republican pollster Luntz acknowledged that the scientific evidence is
against the Republicans on issues like global warming, he advised them to find
scientists willing to hoodwink the public. "You need to continue to make the
lack of scientific certainty a primary issue," he told Republicans, "by
becoming even more active in recruiting experts sympathetic to your view."
In the meantime, he urged them to change their rhetoric. " 'Climate change,' "
he said, "is less threatening than 'global warming.' While global warming has
catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more
controllable and less emotional challenge."
The EPA's inspector general received broad attention for his August 21st,
2003, finding that the White House pressured the agency to conceal the
public-health risks from poisoned air following the September 11th World Trade
Center attacks. But this 2001 deception is only one example of the
administration's pattern of strategic distortion. Earlier this year, it
suppressed an EPA report warning that millions of Americans, especially
children, are being poisoned by mercury from industrial sources.
This behavior is consistent throughout the Bush government. Consider the story
of James Zahn, a scientist at the Department of Agriculture who resigned after
the Bush administration suppressed his taxpayer-funded study proving that
billions of antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be carried daily across property
lines from meat factories into neighboring homes and farms. In March 2002,
Zahn accepted my invitation to present his findings to a convention of
family-farm advocates in Iowa. Several weeks before the April conference,
pork-industry lobbyists learned of his appearance and persuaded the Department
of Agriculture to forbid him from appearing. Zahn told me he had been ordered
to cancel a dozen appearances at county health departments and similar venues.
In May, the White House blocked the EPA staff from publicly discussing
contamination by the chemical perchlorate -- the main ingredient in solid
rocket fuel. The administration froze federal regulations on perchlorate, even
as new research reveals alarmingly high levels of the chemical in the nation's
drinking water and food supply, including many grocery-store lettuces.
Perchlorate pollution has been linked to neurological problems, cancer and
other life-threatening illnesses in some twenty states. The Pentagon and
several defense contractors face billions of dollars in potential cleanup
liability.
The administration's leading expert in manipulating scientific data is
Interior Secretary Gale Norton. During her nomination hearings, Norton
promised not to ideologically slant agency science. But as her friend Thomas
Sansonetti, a coal- industry lobbyist who is now assistant attorney general,
predicted, "There won't be any biologists or botanists to come in and pull the
wool over her eyes."
In autumn 2001, Secretary Norton provided the Senate Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources with her agency's scientific assessment that Arctic oil
drilling would not harm hundreds of thousands of caribou. Not long afterward,
Fish and Wildlife Service biologists contacted the Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility, which defends scientists and other professionals
working in state and federal environmental agencies. "The scientists provided
us the science that they had submitted to Norton and the altered version that
she had given to Congress a week later," said the group's executive director,
Jeff Ruch. There were seventeen major substantive changes, all of them
minimizing the reported impacts. When Norton was asked about the alterations
in October 2001, she dismissed them as typographical errors.
Later, she and White House political adviser Karl Rove forced National Marine
Fisheries scientists to alter findings on the amount of water required for the
survival of salmon in Oregon's Klamath River, to ensure that large corporate
farms got a bigger share of the river water. As a result, more than 33,000
chinook and coho salmon died -- the largest fish kill in the history of
America. Mike Kelly, the biologist who drafted the original opinion (and who
has since been awarded federal whistle-blower status), told me that the coho
salmon is probably headed for extinction. "Morale is low among scientists
here," Kelly says. "We are under pressure to get the right results. This
administration is putting the species at risk for political gain -- and not
just in the Klamath."
Norton has also ordered the rewriting of an exhaustive twelve-year study by
federal biologists detailing the effects that Arctic drilling would have on
populations of musk oxen and snow geese. She reissued the biologists' report
two weeks later as a two-page paper showing no negative impact to wildlife.
She also ordered suppression of two studies by the Fish and Wildlife Service
concluding that the drilling would threaten polar-bear populations and violate
the international treaty protecting bears. She then instructed the Fish and
Wildlife Service to redo the report to "reflect the Interior Department's
position." She suppressed findings that mountaintop mining would cause
"tremendous destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitat" and a Park Service
report that found that snowmobiles were hurting Yellowstone's air quality,
wildlife and the health of its visitors and employees.
Norton's Fish and Wildlife Service is the first ever not to voluntarily list a
single species as endangered or threatened. Her officials have blackballed
scientists and savaged studies to avoid listing the trumpeter swan, revoke the
listing of the grizzly bear and shrink the remnant habitat for the Florida
panther. She disbanded the service's oldest scientific advisory committee in
order to halt protection of desert fish in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that
are headed for extinction. Interior career staffers and scientists say they
are monitored by Norton's industry appointees to ensure that future studies do
not conflict with industry profit-making.
Cooking the Books on Global Warming
There is no scientific debate in which the White House has cooked the books
more than that of global warming. In the past two years the Bush
administration has altered, suppressed or attempted to discredit close to a
dozen major reports on the subject. These include a ten-year peer-reviewed
study by the International Panel on Climate Change, commissioned by the
president's father in 1993 in his own efforts to dodge what was already a
virtual scientific consensus blaming industrial emissions for global warming.
After disavowing the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration commissioned the
federal government's National Academy of Sciences to find holes in the IPCC
analysis. But this ploy backfired. The NAS not only confirmed the existence of
global warming and its connection to industrial greenhouse gases, it also
predicted that the effects of climate change would be worse than previously
believed, estimating that global temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4
degrees by 2100.
A May 2002 report by scientists from the EPA, NASA and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, approved by Bush appointees at the Council on
Environmental Quality and submitted to the United Nations by the U.S.,
predicted similarly catastrophic impacts. When confronted with the findings,
Bush dismissed it with his smirking condemnation: "I've read the report put
out by the bureaucracy. . . ."
Afterward, the White House acknowledged that, in fact, he hadn't. Having
failed to discredit the report with this untruth, George W. did what his
father had done: He promised to study the problem some more. Last fall, the
White House announced the creation of the Climate Research Initiative to study
global warming. The earliest results are due next fall. But the White House's
draft plan for CRI was derided by the NAS in February as a rehash of old
studies and established science lacking "most elements of a strategic plan."
In September 2002, administration censors released the annual EPA report on
air pollution without the agency's usual update on global warming, that
section having been deleted by Bush appointees at the White House. On June
19th, 2003, a "State of the Environment" report commissioned by the EPA in
2001 was released after language about global warming was excised by
flat-earthers in the White House. The redacted studies had included a 2001
report by the National Research Council, commissioned by the White House. In
their place was a piece of propaganda financed by the American Petroleum
Institute challenging these conclusions.
This past July, EPA scientists leaked a study, which the agency had ordered
suppressed in May, showing that a Senate plan -- co-sponsored by Republican
Sen. John McCain -- to reduce the pollution that causes global warming could
achieve its goal at very small cost. Bush reacted by launching a $100 million
ten-year effort to prove that global temperature changes have, in fact,
occurred naturally, another delay tactic for the fossil-fuel barons at
taxpayer expense. Princeton geo-scientist Michael Oppenheimer told me, "This
administration likes to emphasize what we don't know while ignoring or
minimizing what we do know, which is a prescription for paralysis on policy.
It's hard to imagine what kind of scientific evidence would suffice to
convince the White House to take firm action on global warming."
Across the board, the administration yields to Big Energy. At the request of
ExxonMobil, and with the help of a lobbying group working for coal-burning
utility Southern Co., the Bush administration orchestrated the removal of U.S.
scientist Robert Watson, the world-renowned former NASA atmospheric chemist
who headed the United Nations' IPCC. He was replaced by a little-known
scientist from New Delhi, India, who would be generally unavailable for
congressional hearings.
The Bush administration now plans to contract out thousands of
environmental-science jobs to compliant industry consultants already in the
habit of massaging data to support corporate profit-taking, effectively making
federal science an arm of Karl Rove's political machine. The very ideologues
who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have institutionalized dishonesty and made
it the reigning culture of America's federal agencies. "At its worst,"
Oppenheimer says, "this approach represents a serious erosion in the way a
democracy deals with science."
Inside the Cheney Task Force
There is no better example of the corporate cronyism now hijacking American
democracy than the White House's cozy relationship with the energy industry.
It's hard to find anyone on Bush's staff who does not have extensive corporate
connections, but fossil-fuel executives rule the roost. The energy industry
contributed more than $48.3 million to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle,
with $3 million to Bush. Now the investment has matured. Both Bush and Cheney
came out of the oil patch. Thirty-one of the Bush transition team's
forty-eight members had energy-industry ties. Bush's cabinet and White House
staff is an energy-industry dream team -- four cabinet secretaries, the six
most powerful White House officials and more than twenty high-level appointees
are alumni of the industry and its allies (see "Bush's Energy-Industry
All-Stars," on Page 183).
The potential for corruption is staggering. Take the case of J. Steven Griles,
deputy secretary of the Interior Department. During the first Reagan
administration, Griles worked directly under James Watt at Interior, where he
helped the coal industry evade prohibitions against mountaintop-removal strip
mining. In 1989, Griles left government to work as a mining executive and then
as a lobbyist with National Environmental Strategies, a Washington, D.C., firm
that represented the National Mining Association and Dominion Resources, one
of the nation's largest power producers. When Griles got his new job at
Interior, the National Mining Association hailed him as "an ally of the
industry." It's bad enough that a former mining lobbyist was put in charge of
regulating mining on public land. But it turns out that Griles is still on the
industry's payroll. In 2001, he sold his client base to his partner Marc
Himmelstein for four annual payments of $284,000, making Griles, in effect, a
continuing partner in the firm.
Because Griles was an oil and mining lobbyist, the Senate made him agree in
writing that he would avoid contact with his former clients as a condition of
his confirmation. Griles has nevertheless repeatedly met with former coal
clients to discuss new rules allowing mountaintop mining in Appalachia and
destructive coal-bed methane drilling in Wyoming. He also met with his former
oil clients about offshore leases. These meetings prompted Sen. Joseph
Lieberman to ask the Interior Department to investigate Griles. With
Republicans in control of congressional committees, no subpoenas have
interrupted the Griles scandals.
With its operatives in place, the Bush energy plan became an orgy of industry
plunder. Days after his inauguration, Bush launched the National Energy Policy
Development Group, chaired by Cheney. For three months, the task force held
closed-door meetings with energy-industry representatives - then refused to
disclose the names of the participants.
For the first time in history, the nonpartisan General Accounting Office sued
the executive branch, for access to these records. NRDC put in a Freedom of
Information Act request, and when Cheney did not respond, we also sued. On
February 21st, 2002, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham and other agency officials to turn over the records
relating to their participation in the work of the energy task force. Under
this court order, NRDC has obtained some 20,000 documents. Although none of
the logs on the vice president's meetings have been released yet and the pages
were heavily redacted to prevent disclosure of useful information, the
documents still allow glimpses of the process.
The task force comprised Cabinet secretaries and other high-level
administration officials with energy-industry pedigrees. The undisputed leader
was Cheney, who hails from Wyoming, the nation's largest coal producer, and
who, for six previous years, was CEO of Halliburton, the oil-service company.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was chairman of the Aluminum Company of
America for thirteen years. Aluminum-industry profits are directly related to
energy prices. O'Neill promised to immediately sell his extensive stock
holdings in his former company (worth more than $100 million) to avoid
conflicts of interest, but he delayed the sale until after the energy plan was
released. By then, thanks partly to the administration's energy policies,
Alcoa's stock had risen thirty percent. Energy Secretary Abraham, a former
one-term senator from Michigan, received $700,000 from the auto industry in
his losing 2000 campaign, more than any other Senate candidate. At Energy,
Abraham led the administration effort to scuttle fuel-economy standards, allow
SUVs to escape fuel-efficiency minimums and create obscene tax incentives for
Americans to buy the largest gas guzzlers.
Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, sat next
to Abraham on the task force. Allbaugh's wife, Diane, is an energy-industry
lobbyist and represents three firms -- Reliant Energy, Entergy and TXU, each
of which paid her $20,000 in the three months of the task force's
deliberation. Joe Allbaugh participated in task-force meetings on issues
directly affecting those companies, including debates about environmental
rules for power plants and -- his wife's specialty -- electricity deregulation.
Commerce Secretary Don Evans, an old friend of the president from their early
days in the oil business, was CEO of Tom Brown Inc., a Denver oil-and-gas
company, and a trustee of another drilling firm. Interior Secretary Gale
Norton, a mining-industry lawyer, accepted nearly $800,000 from the energy
industry during her 1996 run in Colorado for the U.S. Senate.
In the winter and spring of 2001, executives and lobbyists from the oil, coal,
electric-utility and nuclear industries tramped in and out of the Cabinet room
and Cheney's office. Many of the lobbyists had just left posts inside Bush's
presidential campaign to work for companies that had donated lavishly to that
effort. Companies that made large contributions were given special access.
Executives from Enron Corp., which contributed $2.5 million to the GOP from
1999 to 2002, had contact with the task force at least ten times, including
six face-to-face meetings between top officials and Cheney.
After one meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Cheney dismissed California Gov.
Gray Davis' request to cap the state's energy prices. That denial would enrich
Enron and nearly bankrupt California. It has since emerged that the state's
energy crisis was largely engineered by Enron. According to the New York
Times, the task-force staff circulated a memo that suggested "utilizing" the
crisis to justify expanded oil and gas drilling. President Bush and others
would cite the California crisis to call for drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Energy companies that had not ponied up remained under
pressure to give to Republicans. When Westar Energy's chief executive was
indicted for fraud, investigators found an e-mail written by Westar executives
describing solicitations by Republican politicians for a political action
committee controlled by Tom DeLay as the price for a "seat at the table" with
the task force.
Task-force members began each meeting with industry lobbyists by announcing
that the session was off the record and that participants were to share no
documents. A National Mining Association official told reporters that the
industry managed to control the energy plan by keeping the process secret.
"We've probably had as much input as anybody else in town," he said. "I have
to take my hat off to them -- they've been able to keep a lid on it."
When it was suggested that access to the administration was for sale, Cheney
hardly apologized. "Just because somebody makes a campaign contribution
doesn't mean that they should be denied the opportunity to express their view
to government officials," he said. Although they met with hundreds of industry
officials, Cheney and Abraham refused to meet with any environmental groups.
Cheney made one exception to the secrecy policy: On May 15th, 2001, the day
before the task force sent its plan to the president, CEOs from wind-, solar-
and geothermal-energy companies were granted a short meeting with Cheney.
Afterward, they were led into the Rose Garden for a press conference and a
photo op.
While peddling influence to energy tycoons, the White House quietly dropped
criminal and civil charges against Koch Industries, America's largest
privately held oil company. Koch faced a ninety-seven-count federal felony
indictment and $357 million in fines for knowingly releasing ninety metric
tons of carcinogenic benzene and concealing the releases from federal
regulators. Koch executives contributed $800,000 to Bush's presidential
campaign and to other top Republicans.
Last March, the Federal Trade Commission dropped a Clinton-era investigation
of price gouging by the oil and gas industries, even as Duke Energy, a
principal target of the probe, admitted to selling electricity in California
for more than double the highest previously reported price. The Bush
administration said that the industry deserved a "gentler approach."
Administration officials also winked at a scam involving a half-dozen oil
companies cheating the government out of $100 million per year in royalty
payments.
Southern Co. was among the most adept advocates for its own self-interest. The
company, which contributed $1.6 million to Republicans from 1999 to 2002, met
with Cheney's task force seven times. Faced with a series of EPA prosecutions
at power plants violating air-quality standards, the company retained Haley
Barbour, former Republican National Committee chairman and now governor-elect
of Mississippi, to lobby the administration to ignore Southern's violations.
The White House then forced the Justice Department to drop the prosecution.
Justice lawyers were "astounded" that the administration would interfere in a
law-enforcement matter that was "supposed to be out of bounds from politics."
The EPA's chief enforcement officer, Eric Schaeffer, resigned. "With the Bush
administration, whether or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who
you know," Schaeffer told me. "If you've got a good lobbyist, you can just buy
your way out of trouble."
Along with Barbour, Southern retained current Republican National Committee
chairman and former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot. Barbour and Racicot repeatedly
conferred with Abraham and Cheney, urging them to ease limits on
carbon-dioxide pollution from power plants and to gut the Clean Air Act. On
May 17th, 2001, the White House released its energy plan. Among the
recommendations were exempting old power plants from Clean Air Act compliance
and adopting Barbour's arguments about carbon-dioxide restrictions. Barbour
repaid the favor that week by raising $250,000 at a May 21st GOP gala honoring
Bush. Southern donated $150,000 to the effort.
Cheney's task force had at least nineteen contacts with officials from the
nuclear-energy industry -- whose trade association, the Nuclear Energy
Institute, donated $100,000 to the Bush inauguration gala and $437,000 to
Republicans from 1999 to 2002. The report recommended loosening environmental
controls on the industry, reducing public participation in the siting of
nuclear plants and adding billions of dollars in subsidies for the nuclear
industry. Cheney wasn't embarrassed to reward his old cronies at Halliburton,
either. The final draft of the task-force report praises a gas-recovery
technique controlled by Halliburton - even though an earlier draft had
criticized the technology. The technique, which has been linked to the
contamination of aquifers, is currently being investigated by the EPA.
Somehow, that got edited out of the report.
Big Coal and the Destruction of Appalachia
Coal companies enjoyed perhaps the biggest payoff. At the West Virginia Coal
Association's annual conference in May 2002, president William D. Raney
assured 150 industry moguls, "You did everything you could to elect a
Republican president." Now, he said, "you are already seeing in his actions
the payback."
Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company and a major contributor to
the Bush campaign, was one of the first to cash in. Immediately after his
inauguration, Bush appointed two executives from Peabody and one from its
Black Beauty subsidiary to his energy advisory team.
When the task force released its final report, it recommended accelerating
coal production and spending $2 billion in federal subsidies for research to
make coal-fired electricity cleaner. Five days later, Peabody issued a
public-stock offering, raising $60 million more than analysts had predicted.
Company vice president Fred Palmer credited the Bush administration. "I am
sure it affected the valuation of the stock," he told the Los Angeles Times.
Peabody also wanted to build the largest coal-fired power plant in thirty
years upwind of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, a designated UNESCO
World Heritage site and International Biosphere Reserve. With arm-twisting
from Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles and another $450,000 in GOP
contributions, Peabody got what it wanted. A study on the air impacts was
suppressed, and park scientists who feared that several endangered
At the Senate's request, Griles had signed a "statement of disqualification"
on August 1st, 2001, committing himself to avoiding issues affecting his
former clients. Three days later, he nevertheless appeared before the West
Virginia Coal Association and promised executives that "we will fix the
federal rules very soon on water and soil placement." That was fancy language
for pushing whole mountaintops into valleys, a practice worth billions to the
industry. As a Reagan official, Griles helped devise the practice, which a
federal court declared illegal in 2002, after 1,200 miles of streambeds had
been filled and
Now Griles was promising his former coal clients he would fix these rules. In
May 2002, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers adopted the language
recommended by his former client, the National Mining Association. Had Griles
not intervened, the practice of mountaintop-removal mining would have been
severely restricted. Griles also pushed EPA deputy administrator Linda Fisher
to overrule career personnel in the agency's Denver office who had given a
devastating assessment to a proposal to produce coal-bed methane gas in the
Powder River basin in Wyoming. Although Griles had recused himself from any
discussion of this subject because it would directly enrich his former
clients, he worked aggressively behind the scenes on behalf of a proposal to
build 51,000 wells. The project will require 26,000 miles of new roads and
48,000 miles of pipeline, and will foul pristine landscapes with trillions of
gallons of toxic wastewater.
Blueprint for Plunder
The energy-task-force plan is a $20 billion subsidy to the oil, coal and
nuclear industries, which are already swimming in record revenues. In May
2003, as the House passed the plan and as the rest of the nation stagnated in
a recession abetted by high oil prices, Exxon announced that its profits had
tripled from the previous quarter's record earnings. The energy plan
recommends opening protected lands and waters to oil and gas drilling and
building up to 1,900 electric-power plants. National treasures such as the
California and Florida coasts, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the
areas around Yellowstone Park will be opened for plunder for the trivial
amounts of fossil fuels that they contain. While increasing reliance on oil,
coal and nuclear power, the plan cuts the budget for research into energy
efficiency and alternative power sources by nearly a third. "Conservation may
be a sign of personal virtue," Cheney explained, but it should not be the
basis of "comprehensive energy policy."
As if to prove that point, Republicans simultaneously eliminated the tax
credit that had encouraged Americans to buy gas-saving hybrid cars, and
weakened efficiency standards for everything from air conditioners to
automobiles. They also created an obscene $100,000 tax break for Hummers and
the thirty-eight biggest gas guzzlers. Then, adding insult to injury, the
Energy Department robbed $135,615 from the anemic solar, renewables and
energy-conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House's
energy plan.
To lobby for the plan, more than 400 industry groups enlisted in the Alliance
for Energy and Economic Growth, a coalition created by oil, mining and nuclear
interests and guided by the White House. It cost $5,000 to join, "a very low
price," according to Republican lobbyist Wayne Valis. The prerequisite for
joining, he wrote in a memo, was that members "must agree to support the Bush
energy proposal in its entirety and not lobby for changes." Within two months,
members had contributed more than $1 million. The price for disloyalty was
expulsion from the coalition and possible reprisal by the administration. "I
have been advised," wrote Valis, "that this White House 'will have a long
memory.' "
The plan represents a massive transfer of wealth from the public to the energy
sector. Indeed, Bush views his massive tax cuts as a way of helping Americans
pay for inflated energy bills. "If I had my way," he declared, "I'd have [the
tax cuts] in place tomorrow so that people would have money in their pockets
to deal with high energy prices."
Looting the Commons
Although congress will have its final vote on the plan in November, the White
House has already devised ways to implement most of its worst provisions
without congressional interference. In October 2001, the administration
removed the Interior Department's power to veto mining permits, even if the
mining would cause "substantial and irreparable harm" to the environment. That
December, Bush and congressional Republicans passed an "economic-stimulus
package" that proposed $2.4 billion worth of tax breaks, credits and loopholes
for Chevron, Texaco, Enron and General Electric. The following February, the
White House announced it would abandon regulations for three major pollutants
-- mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
Early in the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney had solicited an
industry wish list from the United States Energy Association, the lobbying arm
for trade associations including the American Petroleum Institute, the
National Mining Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Edison
Institute. The USEA responded by providing 105 specific recommendations from
its members for plundering our natural resources and polluting America's air
and water. In a speech to the group in June 2002, Energy Secretary Abraham
reported that the administration had already implemented three-quarters of the
industry's recommendations and predicted the rest would pass through Congress
shortly.
On August 27th, 2002 - while most of America was heading off for a Labor Day
weekend -- the administration announced that it would redefine carbon dioxide,
the primary cause of global warming, so that it would no longer be considered
a pollutant and would therefore not be subject to regulation under the Clean
Air Act. The next day, the White House repealed the act's "new source review"
provision, which requires companies to modernize pollution control when they
modify their plants.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, the White House rollback will
cause 30,000 Americans to die prematurely each year. Although the regulation
will probably be reversed in the courts, the damage will have been done, and
power utilities such as Southern Co. will escape criminal prosecution. As soon
as the new regulations were announced, John Pemberton, chief of staff to the
EPA's assistant administrator for air, left the agency to work for Southern.
The EPA's congressional office chief also left, to join Southern's lobbying
shop, Bracewell, Patterson.
By summer 2003, the White House had become a virtual pi-ata for energy moguls.
In August, the administration proposed limiting the authority of states to
object to offshore-drilling decisions, and it ordered federal land managers
across the West to ease environmental restrictions for oil and gas drilling in
national forests. The White House also proposed removing federal protections
for most American wetlands and streams. As an astounded Republican, Rep.
Christopher Shays, told me, "It's almost like they want to alienate people who
care about the environment, as if they believe that this will help them with
their core."
EPA: From Bad to Worse
On August 30th, president bush nominated Utah's three-term Republican Gov.
Mike Leavitt to replace his beleaguered EPA head, Christine Todd Whitman, who
was driven from office, humiliated in even her paltry efforts to moderate the
pillage. In October, Leavitt was confirmed by the Senate.
Like Gale Norton, Leavitt has a winning personality and a disastrous
environmental record. Under his leadership, Utah tied for last as the state
with the worst environmental enforcement record and ranked second-worst
(behind Texas) for both air quality and toxic releases. As governor, Leavitt
displayed the same contempt for science that has characterized the Bush
administration. He fired more than seventy scientists employed by state
agencies for producing studies that challenged his political agenda. He fired
a state enforcement officer who penalized one of Leavitt's family fish farms
for introducing whirling disease into Utah, devastating the state's wild-trout
populations.
Leavitt has a penchant for backdoor deals to please corporate polluters. Last
year he resurrected a frivolous and moribund Utah lawsuit against the Interior
Department and then settled the suit behind closed doors without public
involvement, stripping 6 million acres of wilderness protections. This track
record does not reflect the independence, sense of stewardship and respect for
science and law that most Americans have the right to expect in our nation's
chief environmental guardian.
The Threat to Democracy
Generations of Americans will pay the Republican campaign debt to the energy
industry with global instability, depleted national coffers and increased
vulnerability to price shocks in the oil market.
They will also pay with reduced prosperity and quality of life at home.
Pollution from power plants and traffic smog will continue to skyrocket.
Carbon-dioxide emissions will aggravate global warming. Acid rain from
Midwestern coal plants has already sterilized half the lakes in the
Adirondacks and destroyed the forest cover in the high peaks of the
Appalachian range up into Canada. The administration's attacks on science and
the law have put something even greater at risk. Americans need to recognize
that we are facing not just a threat to our environment but to our values, and
to our democracy.
Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism
to democracy. But as we've seen from the the Bush administration, the latter
proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a
society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of
government.
America's most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate
power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in the depths of the Civil
War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, "I have the Confederacy before me and the
bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most." Franklin Roosevelt echoed
that sentiment when he warned that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if
the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes
stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism
-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling
power."
Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the
difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and
the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process,
strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.
Corporate capitalists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits,
and their surest route is to crush competition by controlling government. The
rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930s offers many informative lessons on
how corporate power can undermine a democracy. In Spain, Germany and Italy,
industrialists allied themselves with right-wing leaders who used the
provocation of terrorist attacks, continual wars, and invocations of
patriotism and homeland security to tame the press, muzzle criticism by
opponents and turn government over to corporate control. Those governments
tapped industrial executives to run ministries and poured government money
into corporate coffers with lucrative contracts to prosecute wars and build
infrastructure. They encouraged friendly corporations to swallow media
outlets, and they enriched the wealthiest classes, privatized the commons and
pared down constitutional rights, creating short-term prosperity through
pollution-based profits and constant wars. Benito Mussolini's inside view of
this process led him to complain that "fascism should really be called
'corporatism.' "
While the European democracies unraveled into fascism, America confronted the
same devastating Depression by reaffirming its democracy. It enacted
minimum-wage and Social Security laws to foster a middle class, passed income
taxes and anti-trust legislation to limit the power of corporations and the
wealthy, and commissioned parks, public lands and museums to create employment
and safeguard the commons.
The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it
allocates the goods of the land: Does the government protect the commonwealth
on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political
clout to steal the commons from the people?
Today, George W. Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for
the robber barons, doling out the commons to large polluters. Last year, as
the calamitous rollbacks multiplied, the corporate-owned TV networks devoted
less than four percent of their news minutes to environmental stories. If they
knew the truth, most Americans would share my fury that this president is
allowing his corporate cronies to steal America from our children.
For more information on the Bush administration's environmental actions, see
The Bush Record from NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council
©Copyright 2003 RollingStone.com
" 2 2003-11-20 710 Bloody Political Fight Over NJ Forests \N "Alive, wounded Highlands bill proceeds
By PHIL GARBER , Staff Writer 11/13/2003
Federal legislation to help save the Highlands has cleared two of its largest
hurdles but not without significant bloodshed.
The prime sponsor of the bill, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-11, had to run a
gauntlet through his own party colleagues who fear further federal land-grabs.
Then Frelinghuysen had to deal with Democrats who don't want further depletion
of a federal fund used to buy and preserve federal lands nationwide.
The result was approval of the bill on Wednesday, Oct. 29, by the powerful
House Resources Committee. But the committee members significantly cut the
Highlands funding.
The original bill called for $25 million for each of the next 10 years. The
compromise dropped the funding to $10 million annually, for the next decade.
The money will be divided among the four states in the Highlands, including
New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
And when the bill won approval from the House committee, it still needed
backing from the Senate.
Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J. included the Highlands bill as an amendment to the
Senate version of President George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative." The
Healthy Forests Initiative was dubbed the "Hell With Forests" bill by
environmentalists who said it will result in devastation to the nation's forests.
The full Senate passed the Healthy Forests Initiative, including the Highlands
amendment. The Sierra Club said it was "a Faustian deal."
The Highlands bill must still be approved by the full House and signed by
President Bush.
All in all, observers said, it was an example of the difficulty in passing
federal legislation and the road of compromise that is inevitably required.
Preserving Land
The Highlands Conservation Act was crafted to add to the state's effort to buy
and preserve land in the Highlands, a ribbon of two million acres of land that
stretches across northern New Jersey and New York. The area is a vital
watershed as it provides drinking water to million of people. It is also home
to numerous wildlife and represents a major recreational region.
Efforts to save the Highlands are geared toward stemming sprawl. The U.S.
Forest Service has reported that 100,000 acres in the Highlands is in emergent
jeopardy of development.
While many preservation projects in the Highlands have been limited to funding
only contained in the federal Forest Legacy Program budget, the new Highlands
legislation now allows the region to be eligible for a potentially, much
larger source of funding contained in the federal Land and Water Conservation
Fund.
Frelinghuysen said the funding for the bill was secondary to the fact that a
new source of funding has been created, specifically to help save the Highlands.
The Highlands was highlighted by Bush in his January message to the Congress
as one of nine regions around the nation that need protection because of the
high rate of development.
The new federal funds will be leveraged with state money along with private
foundation funds. Currently, Gov. James McGreevey has pledged $50 million in
aid to buy Highlands property.
Tom Gilbert, director of the Highlands Coalition, said $100 million over 10
years is significant, even if it is less than the original amount sought. In
comparison, Gilbert said the federal government provided only $17.5 million
which was used to buy and protect the 17,000 acre Stirling Forest in 1996. The
federal money was leveraged to acquire $40 million more in state and
foundation funds.
"With $100 million, you could get four Stirling Forests," Gilbert said.
"It's a huge victory," Frelinghuysen said.
Compromise Foreseen
The congressman said he knew there would be a compromise and that he never
expected the House Resources Committee would approve the full $25 million for
10 years. The committee is dominated by representatives of western states who
generally oppose further expansion of federal lands.
"We've been negotiating for a year," Frelinghuysen said. "It's such a
difficult committee for the East to get anything from. Some said it should be
$250 million or nothing but we can't have that attitude."
He said he called on Gov. James McGreevey and Rep. Robert Menendez, D-13, to
help lobby the Democratic committee members.
"We tried every angle," Frelinghuysen said.
Frelinghuysen said his job was made more difficult when McGreevey named a
state task force on the Highlands last month.
The Congressman wanted McGreevey to delay naming the task force because he
feared it force would further concern and alienate western committee members.
He said westerners might think the task force would take land from unwilling
sellers or might believe the state plan was at odds with Felinghuysen's bill.
"People might think not everything was up front," Frelinghuysen said.
A spokesman for the Republican majority on the House Resources Committee also
said the amount of funding was secondary because the money must still be
appropriated. The House and Senate appropriations committee could increase or
further cut the funds..
"The big deal here is the bill," said the spokesman. "That's the big issue.
Frelinghuysen has identified the resources and convinced people that it is
important to buy the land."
The Highlands bill would be funded under the National Land and Water
Conservation Fund. The fund is supported by a tax on off-shore oil drilling
and it is a major source of funding for federal land acquisition around the
nation.
The fund was created under the administration of President Jimmy Carter and is
authorized for as much as $900 million. President Bush has reserved $300
million in the fund, the lowest amount in many years
The committee spokesman said the Highlands bill would take a sizeable amount
from the fund.
"It's not unprecedented to take money from the federal side but the dollar
amount is unprecedented," the spokesman said.
Rep. Nicholas J. Rahall III, D-W. Va., the ranking minority member of the
House Resources Committee, was largely concerned with the amount that would be
taken from the land and water fund.
"It was just too much, based on all the other budget restrictions," said a
Rahall spokeswoman.
She said Democrats have been concerned with the land and water fund since the
U.S. Department of the Interior recommended it be "severely underfunded" this
year.
Jeff Embler, a spokesman for another committee member,Rep. Rep. George
Radanovich, R-Calif., said Democrats want to limit further aid from the land
and water fund because they fear Bush will cut the fund even more.
Another aspect of the compromise is that Rahall and the committee chairman,
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., will recommend the bill be approved quickly by
the House.
A spokesman for Rep. Frank Pallone, D-6, a member of the House committee, said
Republican members were to blame for cutting the funding.
"The conservative Republicans from the west didn't favor spending so much
money on conservation and open space," said the spokesman. "$100 million was
as high as they were willing to go."
The bill drew its sharpest criticisms from environmental groups.
Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club,
said Frelinghuysen's bill could actually mean a net loss in federal funds to
protect the Highlands.
Separate from the Highlands Act, the federal government will be providing $5
million to New Jersey for Highlands land acquisition this year. Tittel said
passage of the Highlands Act might mean cuts in other funding for Highlands
property purchase.
Since 2001, Frelinghuysen has secured $16.85 million in federal funding to
preserve significant portions of the Highlands including the Upper Delaware
Watershed, Lake Gerard, Newark Watershed and Wallkill Wildlife Refuge.
"I'm not sure if it (Highlands Act) is a gain or not," said Tittel. "It's a
victory but we don't know for how much."
Tittel reserved his harshest words for Corzine and the Healthy Forests Bill.
The House passed the bill in May.
The bill would provide $760 million to the U.S. Forest Service to lessen
dangers of fires by removing old and damaged trees. Proponents say the bill
will streamline the process so the Forest Service can do a better job of
reducing fire threats to avoid wildfires like those ravaging California.
But some critics say the bill is serving the interests of the timber industry
and has insufficient safeguards for public input.
The bill would not directly affect New Jersey which has no significant
national forest land.
"The Senate bill does next to nothing to protect homes and communities from
wildfires, removes citizen participation in forest management decisions,
doesn't protect old-growth forests and roadless areas, and increases
commercial logging," said astatement from the New Jersey chapters of the
Sierra Club and the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).
"As a result of this bill, we will see more logging in our national forest,
turning parts of them into ghosts and skeletons of their former selves," said
Dena Mottola, executive director of N.J. PIRG.
The bill passed 80-14 in the Senate and both Corzine and Sen. Frank
Lautenberg, D-N.J., said their opposition wouldn't have mattered in the final
vote.
Alex Formuzis, a spokesman for Lautenberg, said environmentalists have come to
expect little support from the Bush administration.
"Especially with the climate in Washington, environmentalists know that rarely
do you see bills dealing with the environment that are good for the
environment," Formuzis said.
Darius Goore, a spokesman for Corzine, said the decision to support the
Healthy Forests Bill was made because New Jersey will benefit.
"He (Corzine) voted for it because we got the $100 million for the Highlands
which is huge for New Jersey," Goore said. "It is rare that a bill has 100
percent of what you want and this certainly wasn't a perfect bill."
Lautenberg felt the same and a spokesman said the senator would reconsider his
support for the Healthy Forests Act if the Highlands funding is cut.
"If the bill comes back intact, he (Lautenberg) will support it," said
Formuzis. "If the New Jersey provisions are removed, he will seriously
consider voting against it."
A legislative analyst with Lautenberg said the Senate version of the Healthy
Forests Bill is better than the house version.
"Environmentalists are still concerned but it is much better," the analyst
said. "We think it's not good enough, too, but it's the very best we'll get."
Tom Gilbert, director of the Highlands Coalition, said Corzine and Lautenberg
were "pragmatic."
"Corzine saw the writing on the wall for the forest management act," said
Gilbert, whose coalition represents more than 100 groups in New Jersey. "His
vote wasn't going to make a difference. He wanted to move what was important
for New Jersey and we can't fault him for that."
The Highlands covers an area from the Delaware River, northeast through much
of Morris and Warren counties and across the Hudson River into southwestern
Connecticut. The region includes 31 of the 39 municipalities in Morris County,
including the towns served by this newspaper.
The region also includes the following 14 Hunterdon County municipalities:
Alexandria Township, Bethlehem Township, Bloomsbury, Califon, Clinton, Clinton
Township, Glen Gardner, Hampton, High Bridge, Holland, Lebanon, Lebanon
Township, Milford, Tewksbury Township and Union Township.
In Somerset County, the region includes: Bernardsville, Far Hills and
Peapack-Gladstone.
©Recorder Newspapers 2003
" 2 2003-11-14 711 Rural areas labor to save logging jobs \N "USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2003-11-12-rural-jobs_x.htm
Rural areas labor to save jobs
By Sue Kirchhoff, USA TODAY
EVELETH, Minn. Brian Zarn doesn't want a new career. He just wants to hang
on to his old job.
The brawny, 40-year-old will quit a government-funded computer training
program if the long-troubled taconite plant that closed here in May, throwing
Zarn and about 400 colleagues out of work, reopens as hoped in coming weeks.
This proud, faded town and other rural areas around the nation have lost
hundreds of manufacturing, mining and related businesses in the past several
years, erasing many of their 1990s gains. Politicians and business leaders are
responding with subsidy proposals and aggressive marketing to lure plants and
other businesses or even steal them from other states.
But they worry, and development experts warn, that such strategies are less
effective in a global marketplace in which companies have expanded access to
the cheap land and labor that has been a selling point of rural America.
Zarn realizes his decision to play it safe is a gamble here in the Iron Range,
where mining employment has shrunk from about 15,000 in 1979 to about 4,000
today. U.S. steel mills are consolidating or moving away from blast furnaces
that use taconite: a low-grade iron ore.
Illustrating the shift, a Chinese steel mill is in the market to buy the
Eveleth operation and reopen the plant. Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar, who
backs U.S. steel import tariffs, is helping broker the deal, which is also
supported by union workers who oppose much of President Bush's free trade agenda.
"My kids are all leaving (when they finish school) because I told them to get
out of here," says Zarn, who has already left and returned, twice. Still, he
sees the mine, not the classroom, as his best hope for a job that pays well in
this small town, noted for its taconite mine and processing plant, EVTAC
Mining, and a 110-foot hockey stick the world's largest.
While struggling with the same drawn-out recovery plaguing cities, rural areas
have fewer options to create jobs in a hurry. (Related story: Manufacturing is
far from dead as seen at two Midwest plants)
The biggest challenge is "getting it done quick enough," says Brian Hiti,
deputy commissioner of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Agency,
created in 1941 to spur economic development in northeast Minnesota. Hiti says
his agency is trying to develop new business, but it won't pass up a chance,
including subsidizing the EVTAC sale if needed, to save old-line employers.
"When you're dominated by large industrial enterprises, when they go down,
they're like aircraft carriers: They take a lot of people with them," Hiti says.
Turning things around
Rural areas created factory jobs more rapidly than urban areas for most of the
1990s, but lost them far faster from 1998 through the recession. The gap is
closing, but rural manufacturers are still in layoff mode, according to the
Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Telecommunications has helped smaller towns attract businesses, and health
care and other service professions are expanding. But service jobs in rural
areas are generally lower skilled than those in metro areas and often don't
pay as well as the $50,000 mining salaries leaving Eveleth.
Rural earnings growth, excluding farms, has risen less than half as fast as in
metro areas since 1993, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department, as lack
of capital, higher transportation costs and other factors hamper business
expansion. Agriculture is recovering, after years of drought, but is just 7%
of rural jobs.
Adding to the frustration, many decisions about investment are made by banks
and firms far from the rural areas affected.
"The people making decisions about us now live in Manhattan (and other
cities). They think quality of life is trees and lakes. ... They don't think
logging can also exist," says Joseph Maher, senior vice president of Blandin
Paper in Grand Rapids, Minn. "Quality of life also includes a job."
Attracting new businesses
To recover, many states are stepping up subsidies to attract or keep firms.
Minnesota recently lost a competition with next-door Wisconsin, for instance,
for a General Motors plant. Oberstar, tenacious about protecting Minnesota,
had Boeing look at the state as a possible site for a new aircraft plant. Sen.
Norm Coleman, R-Minn., tucked a provision in a major energy bill now under
debate guaranteeing loans for a huge energy plant in northeast Minnesota.
Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty pushed a bill through the state Legislature to
create tax-free zones for commercial/industrial businesses that locate or
expand in rural areas. Every eligible region applied, leaving staff scrambling
to select final sites.
"Minnesota, since the beginning of this recession, has lost somewhere around
40,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs," says Louis Jambois of the Minnesota
Department of Employment and Economic Development. "We had really quite a nice
rural resurgence in the 1990s. The job loss that we've experienced has just
about wiped out the job gains that we had."
It's understandable, rural development experts say, that states, even with
tight budgets, are willing to spend millions to attract manufacturing, which
not only creates jobs that pay well, but also gives rise to associated
employment. But, they stress, it's an increasingly tough battle.
"In a global economy, (promoting) cheap land and cheap labor isn't necessarily
a premier economic strategy," says Mark Drabenstott, director of the Center
for Rural Development. He and others instead envision rural towns banding
together to market themselves, a focus on smaller business, and cooperation
with community colleges and other research institutions to improve training
and develop more lucrative products using everything from soybeans to iron ore.
Northeast Minnesota is doing what Drabenstott suggests. Towns in and near the
Iron Range, including Duluth, a city of 90,000 on Lake Superior, jointly
applied for tax-free zones. The area has a nationally recognized community
college system; the Iron Range development agency, which has poured millions
into projects funded by a special taconite tax; lush forests and lakes and
healthy tourism.
There was enough success in recent decades that some pointed to northeast
Minnesota as an economic model. Delta Dental, Blue Cross and Blue Shield among
others have set up customer call centers. Nursing and health care jobs are
expanding, as is electronics. Grand Rapids-based ASV, which makes construction
and outdoor equipment, should more than double its revenue, from $44 million
in 2002 to over $90 million this year. Cirrus Design, which builds
sophisticated single-engine airplanes in Duluth, has over 800 employees.
"A lot of people spend all their extra money coming up here to vacation, and
here we're on vacation all the time," says Gary Lemke, president of ASV.
Losses overshadow growth
But the growth has been largely overshadowed by the decline in traditional
industries. An LTV Steel plant closed in 2001, putting 1,400 people out of
work. Blandin laid off 300 in January. Sykes Enterprises, a Florida-based call
center, shut down last year, blaming global competition, after accepting more
than $3 million in subsidies. Taconite tax funds are drying up.
The layoffs, and the fact the average age at Blandin and EVTAC is about 50,
make it harder for many to take chances, or retraining, that diversify the
economy.
Joe Strlekar, head of the Steelworkers local at EVTAC, was driving to a
computer-training class several months ago when he heard a story on the radio
about tech jobs moving overseas. "I thought to myself, 'What's' left?' " he
says. Dave Ferguson, a former LTV worker, saw the decline coming over a decade
ago. He took every computer class he could and landed at Blandin.
"I invested all my extra time into educating myself and trying to diversify
myself. ... I called it insurance, I kept going after insurance. Now, we're
(Blandin) in the same boat," as his former firm, LTV, Ferguson says.
|subhead| Where to go from here |/subhead|
Joe Sertich, president of True North, the regional community college system,
spent weeks this summer scrambling to set up retraining for EVTAC workers. He
is now trying to keep the programs from unraveling as many of his new students
prepare to return to the mine and processing plant. Still, he sees positive
signs. After Sertich had surgery recently, he was wheeled out of a local
hospital by a laid-off LTV worker who had been retrained as a licensed
practical nurse at one of his campuses.
"He told me, 'The best day of my life was when LTV laid me off.' ... He ended
up saying, 'I want to be a registered nurse,' " Sertich says. The community
college is starting a registered nurse program.
John Chell, director of the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission, helped
pull together the region's proposal for 5,000 acres of tax-free zones. Three
tax-free zones are proposed near existing paper mills, like Blandin. Another
proposed zone is in a forest managed using environmentally sensitive
practices. Another would complement research into new uses for taconite.
For now, most eyes are on the EVTAC deal. But the long-term future of the
taconite industry is still cloudy.
"We can keep our mines open, and we're working to that end," says Charlie
Olson, a taconite worker and union organizer. "Change, here where we live, is
hard."
" 2 2003-11-13 712 Can logging cause landslides? \N "Wednesday, November 12, 2003
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/tribnorth/news/s_164831.html
Can logging cause landslides?
[Of Course logging frequently, if not usually, causes landslides when forests
are clearcut on steep slopes with retained soil as all the root systems rot
and decay at the same rate releasing the soil. TGH]
By Reid R. Frazier
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Specialists say it is hard to tell whether residents' fears that a plan to log
on slopes steeper than allowed by law will lead to backyard landslides are
warranted.
John Harper, a geologist with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources, said it depends on how the slope is logged.
"Trees do help stabilize slopes, but they're not going to stop the slopes from
sliding if the slope decides to go," Harper said. "Lumbering has the potential
to destabilize the slope, but every situation is different. Just because
someone wants to log on a slope in Shaler doesn't mean there's going to be a
landslide."
The Shaler zoning hearing board will hear an appeal of commissioners'
rejection of the logging plan at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the township office,
300 Wetzel Road.
Citing a municipal ordinance that bans logging on slopes steeper than 25
percent, Shaler commissioners denied a Hampton man's request to log the slope
last month.
Landslides are common in Western Pennsylvania -- causing tens of millions of
dollars in damage throughout the state annually -- because much of the local
bedrock tends to break down when wet, especially on steep slopes, Harper said.
"Where you find slopes in Western Pennsylvania, you find a potential
landslide," he said.
But Tom Nadolny, a logger with Trumco Inc. in Atlantic, Crawford County, said
fears of landslides are unfounded.
His company has been contracted by Don Beyerl, who owns the 27-acre site west
of Felicity Avenue and near the Hampton border, to harvest the timber.
"Their argument that we may cause a landslide is one of the weakest arguments
they have. A landslide is not going to happen there," Nadolny said.
Beyerl said he needs revenue from logging to pay property taxes. He contracted
with Trumco to harvest 253 trees from the site.
Nadolny said his company's county- and state-approved soil-erosion plan will
leave enough vegetation on the ground for the forest to quickly regenerate and
prevent landslides.
But nearby residents like Ron Caruso, disagree. They say logging on slopes
greater than 25 percent puts their property in danger.
"I think this would start a lot of land sliding down toward the creek," said
Caruso, 70, whose back yard abuts the tract and overlooks an unnamed tributary
to Pine Creek where the logging would take place.
"I don't want my back yard dropping. ... If he goes in there and clears some
of those trees back there, it's going to get worse," Caruso said.
Residents like Caruso don't have to look far to see the damage done by landslides.
A 1997 landslide above Fall Run Ravine, in which two yards and swimming pools
slid into a ravine, cost the township $230,000 to clean up.
That slide had nothing to do with logging, but it provides a nearby reminder
of the region's propensity for landslides.
Nick Pinizzotto, senior director of watershed programs at the Western
Pennsylvania Conservancy, said that logging can be done without harm to the
environment.
But landslides are a potential danger if too many trees are taken off a
hillside, Pinizzotto said.
"If you remove too much vegetation on a steep slope, water when it rains won't
have anything to absorb it ... and you end up with things like landslides,"
Pinizzotto said.
Reid R. Frazier can be reached at rfrazier@tribweb.com or (724) 779-7114.
" 2 2003-11-12 713 astonishing"" civil war on America's small farms and families \N "Quotes: "It's astonishing that a program can continue to get congressional support when it hurts virtually everybody Americans' representatives are supposed to be concerned about - small farmers, other taxpayers and poorer nations struggling to join the global economy.... Smaller farmers are also afflicted by depressed crop prices."
"Many Southern senators were eager to avoid the issue.... Southern farmers fear, rightly, that it would mean the end of the huge subsidies that allow them to export their products at prices below the cost of growing them. One West Texas cotton farmer jokingly accuses Grassley of triggering a new civil war."
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
www.iht.com
Weaning U.S. farmers off aid
NYT
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
A great rift is opening in America's once-impregnable farm lobby. It is a gap between those forms of agriculture that can prosper on their own and the ones that must be perpetually propped up by huge subsidies. This is a critical development if the United States is ever going to control the costs of its farm programs and deal fairly with poor countries that want their chance to prosper from global trade. America has to acknowledge that it can no longer continue to support hopelessly unprofitable agricultural enterprises, even if they are in states represented by powerful members of Congress.
This new schism shows up in debate over proposals to cap the amounts individual farmers can receive in government aid. Right now, some of the wealthiest American welfare recipients are farmers "earning" taxpayer subsidies in the high six figures, or more. Senator Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Finance Committee and an Iowa farmer, has long been eager to impose new limits. Unfortunately, he was unable to get the Senate to debate an amendment to the Department of Agriculture's annual funding legislation last week that would set a new cap on the overall amount farmers can obtain in federal subsidies. Many Southern senators were eager to avoid the issue.
Of course the senator is right in wanting to place tighter limits on farmers' checks, and it's important that a representative of a farm state is leading this charge. The wheat, corn and soybean farmers in Grassley's area get subsidies, but they tend to be smaller than those for capital-intensive crops like rice and cotton farming in the South and California. Midwestern farmers also are more enthusiastic about genuine global fair trade. Southern farmers fear, rightly, that it would mean the end of the huge subsidies that allow them to export their products at prices below the cost of growing them. One West Texas cotton farmer jokingly accuses Grassley of triggering a new civil war.
Even though the farm subsidies are fraudulently sold to the public as a way of propping up the small family farm, in reality they only accelerate the concentration of farming in the United States. Taxpayer handouts amount to almost half of the total net income for American farmers, but two-thirds get no subsidy. Among those who do, the top 10 percent receive 65 percent of all payments, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group.
It's astonishing that a program can continue to get congressional support when it hurts virtually everybody Americans' representatives are supposed to be concerned about - small farmers, other taxpayers and poorer nations struggling to join the global economy. According to a government report issued in September, the lack of realistic caps on individual subsidies only encourages more overproduction by large farms. Meanwhile, industrial-scale farms awash in subsidies have the incentive to accumulate more land, further inflating prices beyond the reach of modest farmers, many of whom are renters. Smaller farmers are also afflicted by depressed crop prices.
The 2002 farm bill set a $360,000 cap on an individual's subsidies, but that's widely abused as farmers create legal entities with interests in the same land, each entitled to a payment. Still, in opposing Grassley's efforts to rein in the abuses and to limit payments, earlier this year the National Cotton Council shamelessly stated that such a move would drive farmers to "make cropping decisions based on program benefits rather than market signals."
Get it? The cotton lobby would like you to think that smaller payments distort market realities more than unlimited subsidies. This is the kind of nonsensical claim underlying America's absurd farm policies. Stringent payment limits would be a step toward some semblance of sanity. Grassley should persevere.
" 2 2003-11-11 714 Liars Can Never Be Liberators \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer11nov11,1,6081358.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
COMMENTARY
In a Democracy, Liars Can Never Be Liberators
Robert Scheer
November 11, 2003
It takes stunning arrogance for a president to invade an oil-rich, politically
strategic country on the basis of demonstrable lies, put his favorite
companies in control of its economic future, create a puppet regime to do his
bidding and then claim, as George Bush did last week in a speech, that this is
all a bold exercise in spreading democracy. "Iraqi democracy will succeed, and
that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can
be the future of every nation," the president said. "The establishment of a
free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the
global democratic revolution."
Bush even invoked the blessing of a divine power, the "author of freedom,"
suggesting that he is not merely an overambitious imperial president but
rather a modern Moses armed with smart bombs and Black Hawk helicopters come
to liberate an enslaved people.
Bush presents his vision as bold and new when it is nothing of the sort.
His predecessors in the White House similarly claimed the mantle of democracy
as justification for establishing American dominance in the Mideast over the
last half a century. They used lies and secrecy and the lives of young
Americans to create, nurture and protect dictatorships that served narrow U.S.
interests above the needs and rights of their own people.
His buddies at Bechtel, Halliburton and the giant oil companies have been
ripping off the profits of Mideast oil for decades while seeking and gaining
protection from the CIA and whatever other parts of the U.S.
military-industrial complex were needed to prop up "our guy" the dictator of
the moment. Despotism in the Mideast flowered on our watch, often succeeded by
fundamentalist or nationalist regimes of great violence, or both. Every
Mideast despot exists only because his power has proved tolerable to the
economic interests that former Halliburton Chief Executive Dick Cheney and his
defense-industry friendly counterparts in previous Republican and Democratic
administrations have placed at the top of the American agenda.
Democracy is the most wonderful notion ever conceived, but Washington
considers it a dangerous threat when the people in fledging democracies vote
against U.S. interests. That's when the CIA steps in, as it did in Iran in
1953, overthrowing democratic secularist Mohammad Mossadegh and launching Iran
into decades of madness.
Or how about the cynical support under presidents Carter and Reagan of the
fundamentalist moujahedeen in Afghanistan, which morphed into the Taliban and
Al Qaeda. The CIA gave these "freedom fighters" shoulder-fired rockets,
perfect for terrorism, and Ronald Reagan declared a day of national support
for them in the U.S. Unfortunately, as the quarter of a century since has
proved, we have neither the means nor the will to bring democracy to Afghanistan.
People make their own history, and though the U.S. can help, it cannot impose.
Bush is not really interested in meaningful democracy in Iraq just as the
U.S. wasn't in Afghanistan or earlier in Iran. In Iraq, the U.S. will not
tolerate any opposition to the U.S. occupation. But that excludes democracy,
which will not cater to the whims of U.S. foreign policy.
Meanwhile, the chaos and bitterness of postwar Iraq continues without break,
all the more tragic for its predictability. In fact, we would not be in such a
mess today if the president had listened to his own father.
"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of
Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs," co-wrote
the senior George Bush in the 1998 book "A World Transformed."
"Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for
handling aggression in the post-Cold War world," he continued. "Going in and
occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would
have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we
hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could
conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
Unfortunately, because of George W. Bush, it is just that.
Democracy cannot exist without truth and genuine self-determination. A liar
cannot be a liberator if the flowering of democracy is truly the endgame.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-11-11 715 Protecting Philadelphia's Drinking Water from Logging & Sprawl \N "http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/7231113.htm
Nov. 11, 2003
Effort would preserve source of Phila. water
By Tom Avril
Inquirer Staff Writer
CUMRU TOWNSHIP, Pa. - For many Philadelphians, tap water begins its
meandering, four-day journey as rain on the Appalachian Mountains, trickling
into sparkling creeks that feed the Schuylkill.
On rocky outcrops such as Neversink Mountain here in Berks County, the soil
acts as an effective natural filter, cleansing the water of airborne pollutants.
Effective, that is, until someone paves over it.
Slowing the spread of pavement - and protecting water supplies along the
Eastern Seaboard - is a key aim of a land-preservation measure before Congress
this month.
Called the Highlands Conservation Act, it would authorize up to $100 million
to purchase and preserve forested lands in a hilly region that spans
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
Supporters across the political spectrum say the money is urgently needed not
just to protect water sources but also to preserve recreational areas and
wildlife habitat.
"It's not just a bunch of environmentalists saying this place is important,"
said Jad Daley, regional conservation director for the Appalachian Mountain
Club's mid-Atlantic office, during a recent hike up Neversink.
In a sign that the open-space movement has come of age, about the only people
with reservations about the measure are some of the environmentalists themselves.
Although some are chagrined that funds in the bill were reduced from the
original $250 million, a bigger concern is not so much the measure itself but
the company it keeps.
The Highlands measure has been tacked onto the Bush administration's Healthy
Forests initiative - a bill that, in the name of fighting forest fires, would
allow more logging and roadbuilding.
"Why don't you just tack [the Highlands] onto drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge?" said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club's New Jersey
chapter.
Tom Gilbert, executive director of the nonprofit Highlands Coalition, said the
situation is "tricky" but said the best course is to be pragmatic, given that
Healthy Forests has overwhelming congressional support.
"If the bill's going to go through, it's a good opportunity to perhaps have a
silver lining to it and get some good things done for the Highlands," Gilbert
said.
In the Senate, sponsors of the Highlands portion of the bill are Jon Corzine
(D., N.J.) and Arlen Specter (R., Pa.). In the House, the lead sponsor is Rep.
Rodney Frelinghuysen (R., N.J.).
The Senate voted 80-14 last month to approve Healthy Forests; a compromise
version is expected to be approved by both houses later this month.
And none too soon, Gilbert said.
More than 5,000 acres are developed each year in the New Jersey and New York
portions of the Highlands, according to a report last year by the U.S. Forest
Service. That works out to about 14 acres a day.
When the land is paved, rain rushes quickly into streams and rivers without
the benefit of the earth's natural filtering process, and it picks up motor
oil, lawn fertilizers and other contaminants along the way.
Much of Neversink Mountain has been preserved; environmental groups hope the
money will be used in areas such as Berks County's Oley Hills and the Big
Woods, a forested area that surrounds French Creek State Park in Chester and
Berks Counties.
Besides serving as a drinking-water source for millions of people in
Philadelphia and New York City, the scenic region provides other benefits,
according to the Forest Service:
A home to about 250 species of plants and animals considered to be "in peril."
Hiking and fishing for the one in nine Americans who live within a two-hour drive.
A flyway for migratory birds, including those with declining populations such
as the red-eyed vireo, American redstart and eastern peewee.
Nationwide, such open-space measures have traditionally been the province of
state and local governments.
But partly because of tight budgets, few new state efforts have been enacted
recently, said Larry Morandi, director of the environment, energy and
transportation program at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
One exception this year was New Jersey, where voters approved a refinancing
plan that will yield $150 million in open-space funds.
Of that amount, Gov. McGreevey has pledged one-third toward the Highlands;
environmental groups are pushing Gov. Rendell for a similar commitment.
Local measures have continued apace, such as the $150 million approved by
Montgomery County voters this month.
And now Congress appears poised to add to the pot.
Contact staff writer Tom Avril at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com.
© 2003 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com
" 2 2003-11-11 716 How Much Nature Is Enough? \N "Title: (22) How Much Nature Is Enough?
Source: Copyright 2003, New York Times
Date: November 11, 2003
Byline: ANDREW C. REVKIN
Even some ardent conservationists acknowledge that the diversity
of life on Earth cannot be fully sustained as human populations
expand, use more resources, nudge the climate and move weedlike
pests and predators from place to place.
Given that some losses are inevitable, the debate among many
experts has shifted to an uncomfortable subject: what level of
loss is acceptable.
The discussion is taking place at both the local and global
levels:
How small can a fragment of an ecosystem be and still function in
all its richness, and thus be considered preserved? And as global
biodiversity diminishes, is it a valid fallback strategy to bank
organisms and genes in zoos, DNA banks or the like, or does this
simply justify more habitat destruction? Is nature on ice a
sufficient substitute for the real thing?
Some conservation groups have strenuously avoided or even
attacked such calculations and strategies. They say there is no
safe diminution of habitat as long as human understanding of
ecology is as sketchy as it is; a fallback strategy is
unthinkable.
Furthermore, banking nature in a deep freeze or database of gene
sequences cannot capture context. For instance, even if a
vanished bird was someday reconstituted from its genes, would it
warble with the same fluency as its ancestors?
On the other side of the debate, those considering what the
smallest viable habitats are or how to expand archives as an
insurance policy say that recent trends have proved that old
conservation strategies are no longer sufficient.
A few decades ago, the issue seemed fairly uncomplicated:
identify biological ""hot spots"" or species of concern and
establish as many reserves as possible. But the picture has grown
murky.
Twenty-four years ago, Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy and other biologists
began a remarkable experiment on the fast-eroding fringe of rain
forest near the Brazilian city of Manaus. They established 11
forest tracts, ranging from 2.5 to 250 acres, each surrounded by
an isolating sea of pasture similar to what is advancing around
most other tropical forests. Among the many findings, an analysis
published last week on birds in the lower layers of greenery
found that it would take a fragment measuring at least 2,500
acres - 10 times as large as the biggest one in the experiment
- to prevent a decline of 50 percent in those bird varieties in
just 15 years or so.
In the understated language of science, the new study, in The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes: ""This
is unfortunate when one considers that for some species-rich
areas of the planet, a large proportion of remaining forest is in
fragments"" smaller than 2,500 acres.
In the face of this and other evidence, a growing group of
conservation biologists say: try everything, at the same time.
""Clearly, the most effective way to protect biodiversity is to
protect natural areas,"" said Dr. Peter H. Raven, the director of
the Missouri Botanical Garden, ""and to find those organisms most
endangered in nature and somehow protect them in type-culture
collections, botanical gardens, zoos, seed banks or whatever.""
But most important, he said, is to find ways to limit human
pressures on the world's last wild places by slowing population
growth and using resources more efficiently. One pioneer of
genetic deconstruction, Dr. J. Craig Venter, agrees with Dr.
Raven. Dr. Venter has moved from sequencing the DNA of humans and
other species to assaying genes in entire ecosystems, most
recently the waters of the Sargasso Sea.
In five 50-gallon samples gathered in February, he said, his team
had found 1 million distinct genes, quite a haul compared with
the 26,000 or so of a human being. And that is the tiniest
scratch in the surface, he added.
His is one effort among many. Britain has a Millennium Seed Bank,
a growing archive of all the country's plants. The San Diego Zoo
has its parallel Frozen Zoo, an archive of thousands of DNA
samples and cell lines from a host of species.
Nonetheless, given the overwhelming complexity of nature, Dr.
Venter added, ""we're better off trying to preserve the diversity
of what we have rather than trying to regenerate it in the
future.""" 2 2003-11-11 717 Republican Teddy Roosevelt Would Have Put His Foot Down \N "Teddy Roosevelt Would Have Put His Foot Down
How would the The former President feel in the face of natural gas drilling
by MARK HARVEY | posted 11.06.03 |
this article is from
from tidepool.org
Coal Bed Cautions by Ed Hunt
_______
When the young Theodore Roosevelt went West to become a cattle rancher in the
late 1800s, he was impressed by the flint of the Western character. In his
travels through South Dakota and the Rocky Mountains, he met mountain men and
cowboys and Indians so independent and strong-willed that even the
robuster-than-robust Roosevelt confessed he sometimes felt inadequate.
Today, watching some Westerners prostrate themselves to the Bush
administration as it encourages energy companies to devastate the most
delicate of our lands, I have to wonder what has happened to the Western
character.
My guess is that if Theodore Roosevelt were alive today, he would have a fit
over what they are doing to the Powder River Basin and the Red Desert in what
can only be called the Great Orgy to drill for the gas we know as coalbed
methane. And then he would have fought it with every fiber in his body.
The good news is that some Westerners still have that spirit and arent about
to see the glory of their mountains and deserts sacrificed at the altar of
cheap energy. If you havent heard of coalbed methane, youre missing one of
the great struggles in the short history of the American West. The Rocky
Mountains are loaded with natural gas trapped in underground coal beds, and
President Bush has told the secretary of the Interior to let the energy
companies get at it as fast as they can.
Once taken out of the ground, the methane is wonderful stuff. Its
clean-burning and in high demand by heavy industry and power generating
companies. Its also used for heating and cooling houses. But getting it out
of the ground is hell on those public lands that are still wild and intact,
its a nightmare to private landowners, and catastrophic to ground and surface
water.
First, a road has to be built. Then a hole up to 5,000 feet deep is sunk into
the ground, and water by the tens of thousands of gallons is sucked out of the
aquifer to free the gas. Each well takes about four acres; once its in
operation, youre left with the 24-hour noise of pumps and compressors and
daily truck trips.
Its hard to say which part of the development is worse. The roads cut
wildlife habitat to ribbons. Extracting salty water from the deep aquifers and
bringing it to the surface ruins good soils and clean sources of surface
water. An area that was once a wild meadow or prairie now looks like an
industrial park.
The extensive plans to develop coalbed methane in the Rocky Mountain West
should truly give you a scare if you care a whit about this land. Montana,
Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico are all being drilled, and the Bush
administration has plans to develop tens of thousands of wells in the next few
years.
The Powder River Basin, in northern Wyoming and southern Montana, gives a
preview. Energy companies have drilled over 10,000 wells there, and by 2010
that number may climb to 80,000 wells. Companies now are pumping close to two
billion gallons of water per day to the surface.
Some Westerners have reached their tipping point. All around the Rocky
Mountain West, the rush to drill the best ranchlands and prime wildlife
habitat is creating new alliances. Not so long ago here in Colorado or Wyoming
or Montana or New Mexico, you wouldnt have found ranchers working with
backpackers on what to do about the despoiling of land and water. You wouldnt
have found an ex-petroleum engineer and a liberal Boulder lawyer sharing their
outrage at a spineless public-land manager.
Cultural barriers have broken down because of a shared conviction that what
makes the West magnificent is worth fighting for -- and is far more important
than the old differences.
If Westerners dont take a strong stand right now, energy companies will leave
the finest parts of the Rocky Mountain states an unrecognizable mess of roads,
settling ponds, contaminated water and splintered habitat.
I believe that Theodore Roosevelt would have been heartbroken to see what
energy companies are already doing to his beloved West. And then he would have
acted. He was above all a reformer who shaped his life around one of his own
aphorisms: "The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any
price and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
Westerners fighting to keep coalbed methane from spoiling it all say the same
thing: What can destroy the West is cheap energy at any price.
-30-
Mark Harvey is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (emarston@hcn.org). He lives and writes in
the Aspen area of Colorado.
Writers on the Range is an op-ed service of High Country News. Writers on the
Range produces and sells three op-ed articles weekly to newspapers throughout
the American West. Please contact Betsy Marston if you are interested in
wrting or buying articles.
" 2 2003-11-10 718 Gore Urges Repeal of Patriot Act \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gore10nov10,1,579818.story
THE NATION
Gore Urges Repeal of Patriot Act
Former vice president lashes out at Bush, accusing him of 'mass violations of civil liberties' and weakening the nation's security.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2003
WASHINGTON In a blistering critique, former Vice President Al Gore accused President Bush on Sunday of eroding personal freedoms and weakening the nation's security through "mass violations of civil liberties" in the war on terrorism.
"Where civil liberties are concerned, they have taken us much farther down the road to an intrusive, 'Big Brother'-style government toward the dangers prophesized by George Orwell in his book '1984' than anyone ever thought would have been possible in the United States," Gore told an enthusiastic crowd of 3,000 that filled DAR Constitution Hall.
Gore charged that many of the domestic security policies the administration has pursued since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have actually weakened the nation's security by distracting attention from the most urgent threats.
He called for the repeal of the USA Patriot Act, legislation passed by Congress shortly after the attacks that gave federal law enforcement officials new authority to monitor and pursue suspected terrorists.
"These constant violations of civil liberties promote the false impression that those violations are necessary in order for them to take every precaution against another terrorist attack," Gore said. "But the simple truth is that the vast majority of these violations have not benefited our security at all; in fact, they have hurt the effort to improve our security."
Bush's reelection campaign referred calls on the speech to the Republican National Committee. RNC officials did not return a call seeking comment.
But in a series of speeches this year, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft defended the administration's actions as being respectful of civil liberties and effective in disrupting potential terrorist attacks.
"The Patriot Act," Ashcroft said this summer, "gives us the technological tools to anticipate, adapt and outthink our terrorist enemy."
Republican strategist Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research organization that examines terror-related issues, said Gore's critique would have been more persuasive if, rather than primarily criticizing Bush, he had also discussed how the Clinton administration could have battled terrorism more successfully during the 1990s.
May also predicted that Gore and other Democrats would get a cool reception from voters in 2004 if they campaigned against the Patriot Act and other steps taken by Bush to fight terrorism since the 2001 attacks.
"If the Patriot Act is what the election of 2004 revolves around, the Democrats are not likely to do very well, because I don't think most Americans think they have lost constitutional rights," May said. "There is a reason we haven't been attacked on American soil since 2001, and I think the Patriot Act is part of that."
Virtually all of the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates have criticized Bush's civil liberties record, but Gore's remarks are among the sharpest attacks that any Democrat has offered on the issue. Gore's comments follow an equally confrontational speech in August, when he accused Bush of misleading the country on the war in Iraq and a wide array of domestic issues.
Like that speech, Sunday's address was sponsored by MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group. It was cosponsored by the American Constitution Society, a liberal group established to offset the influence in law schools of the Federalist Society, an organization of conservative lawyers.
Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, received a sustained standing ovation when he arrived and several more throughout the speech.
Intermittent chants of "Run, Al, run" bubbled up from the crowd, but Gore, who took himself out of the Democratic race in December, waved them off without responding. He did not take questions from reporters after the address.
In the speech, Gore charged that the Bush administration "had turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head" by seeking to withhold information about its own activities, even while acquiring ever more information about the activities of private citizens.
Gore said Bush was frustrating the public's right to information about its government by resisting independent and congressional investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks; by instructing federal agencies to resist requests for documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act; and by refusing to disclose details about individuals of Arab descent detained after the attacks.
At the same time, Gore noted, the administration has pursued new authority to investigate Americans it considers security risks by monitoring their e-mail and Internet activity, their conversations with lawyers, and even the lists of library books they have checked out.
Linking his new critique to his earlier criticism of the war in Iraq, Gore declared: "It makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama bin Laden."
Gore said Bush should renounce his policy, which has been used twice, of indefinitely detaining American citizens that the president designates "enemy combatants."
Gore also said the suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be allowed to petition for status as prisoners of war, and he argued that Congress should authorize any military tribunals used against suspected terrorists. Bush has asserted the right to try suspected terrorists before such tribunals but has not yet done so.
Most important, Gore said Congress should repeal the Patriot Act, which passed the Senate, 98 to 1, shortly after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Gore equated the law with the resolution that ultimately authorized the war in Vietnam.
"I believe that the Patriot Act has turned out to be, on balance, a terrible mistake, and that it became a kind of Tonkin Gulf Resolution conferring Congress' blessing for this president's assault on civil liberties," Gore charged.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times" 2 2003-11-10 719 Global Warming's Hottest Issue Is Energy \N "http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/science/earth/04ENER.html
November 4, 2003
As Earth Warms, the Hottest Issue Is Energy
By KENNETH CHANG
uppose that over the next decade or two the forecasts of global warming start
to come true. Color has drained from New England's autumns as maple trees die,
and the Baltimore oriole can no longer be found south of Buffalo. The Dust
Bowl has returned to the Great Plains, and Arctic ice is melting into open
water. Upheavals in weather, the environment and life are accelerating around
the world.
Then what?
If global warming occurs as predicted, there will be no easy way to turn the
Earth's thermostat back down. The best that most scientists would hope for
would be to slow and then halt the warming, and that would require a
top-to-bottom revamping of the world's energy systems, shifting from fossil
fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to alternatives that in large part do not
yet exist.
"We have to face the fact this is an enormous challenge," said Dr. Martin I.
Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University.
But interviews with scientists, environment advocates and industry
representatives show that there is no consensus in how to meet that challenge.
Some look to the traditional renewable energy sources: solar and wind. Others
believe use of fossil fuels will continue, but that the carbon dioxide can be
captured and then stored underground. The nuclear power industry hopes concern
over global warming may help spur a revival.
In an article in the journal Science last November, Dr. Hoffert and 17 other
experts looked at alternatives to fossil fuels and found all to have "severe
deficiencies in their ability to stabilize global climate."
The scientists believe that technological fixes are possible. Dr. Hoffert said
the country needed to embark on an energy research program on the scale of the
Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb during World War II or the Apollo
program that put men on the moon.
"Maybe six or seven of them operating simultaneously," he said. "We should be
prepared to invest several hundred billion dollars in the next 10 to 15 years."
But to even have a hope of finding a solution, the effort must begin now, the
scientists said. A new technology usually takes several decades to develop the
underlying science, build pilot projects and then begin commercial deployment.
The authors of the Science paper expect that a smorgasbord of energy sources
will be needed, and they call for intensive research on radical ideas like
vast solar arrays orbiting Earth that can collect sunlight and beam the energy
down. "Many concepts will fail, and staying the course will require
leadership," they wrote. "Stabilizing climate is not easy."
The heart of the problem is carbon dioxide, the main byproduct from the
burning of fossil fuels. When the atmosphere is rich in carbon dioxide, heat
is trapped, producing a greenhouse effect. Most scientists believe the
billions of tons of carbon dioxide released since the start of the Industrial
Revolution are in part to blame for the one-degree rise in global temperatures
over the past century. Carbon dioxide concentrations are now 30 percent higher
than preindustrial levels.
With rising living standards in developing nations, emissions of carbon
dioxide are increasing, and the pace of warming is expected to speed up, too.
Unchecked, carbon dioxide would reach twice preindustrial levels by midcentury
and perhaps double again by the end of the century. That could force
temperatures up by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, according to computer
models.
Because carbon dioxide is colorless, odorless and disperses immediately into
the air, few realize how much spills out of tailpipes and smokestacks. An
automobile, for example, generates perhaps 50 to 100 tons of carbon dioxide in
its lifetime.
The United States produces more carbon dioxide than any other country by far.
Each American, on average, generates about 45,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a
year. That is about twice as much as the average person living in Japan or
Europe and many times more than someone living in a developing country like
Zimbabwe, China or Panama. (Even if the United States achieves President
Bush's goal of an 18 percent reduction in the intensity of carbon dioxide
emissions by 2012, the output of an average American would still far exceed
that of almost anyone else in the world.)
Even if all emissions stop, levels of carbon dioxide in the air will remain
high for centuries as the Earth gradually absorbs the excess.
Currently, the world's energy use per second is about 12 trillion watts
which would light up 120 billion 100-watt bulbs and 85 percent of that comes
from fossil fuels.
Of the remaining 15 percent, nuclear and hydroelectric power each supply about
6.5 percent. The renewable energy sources often touted as the hope for the
future wind and solar provide less than 2 percent.
In March, Dr. Hoffert and two colleagues reported in Science that to limit the
temperature increase to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, non-carbon-dioxide-emitting
sources would have to generate 7 trillion to 25 trillion watts by midcentury,
4 to 14 times as much as current levels. That is roughly equivalent to adding
a large emissions-free power plant every day for the next 50 years.
And by the end of the century, they wrote, at least three-quarters and maybe
all of the world's energy would have to be emission-free.
No existing technology appears capable of filling that void. The futuristic
techology might be impractically expensive. Developing a solar power
satellite, for example, has been estimated at more than $200 billion.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham cited the Science paper from last November in
a speech at the American Academy in Berlin two months ago. Mr. Abraham said
that merely setting limits and timetables on carbon dioxide like those in the
Kyoto Protocol could not by themselves solve global warming.
"We will also need to develop the revolutionary technologies that make these
reductions happen," Mr. Abraham said. "That means creating the kinds of
technologies that do not simply refine current energy systems, but actually
transform the way we produce and consume energy."
Too Far Away
Some long-hoped-for options will almost certainly not be ready. Fusion
producing energy by combining hydrogen atoms into helium, the process that
lights up the sun has been heralded for decades as a potentially limitless
energy source, but scientists still have not shown it can be harnessed
practically. Experimental fusion reactors do not yet produce more power than
they take to run.
Increased energy efficiency like better-insulated buildings, more efficient
air-conditioners, higher mileage cars is not a solution by itself, but it
could buy more time to develop cleaner energy.
The much-talked-about hydrogen economy, in which gasoline-powered engines are
replaced by fuel cells, is also not a solution. It merely shifts the question
to what power source is used to produce the hydrogen.
Today, most hydrogen is made from natural gas, a process that produces carbon
dioxide that is then released into the air. Hydrogen can also be produced by
splitting apart water atoms, but that takes more energy than the hydrogen will
produce in the fuel cell. If the electricity to split the water comes from the
coal-fired power plant, then a hydrogen car would not cut carbon dioxide
emissions.
Exploiting What's Here
A fundamental problem remains: how to produce electricity without carbon dioxide.
Hydroelectric power has reached its limits in most parts of the world; there
are no more rivers to dam.
Nuclear power is a proven technology to generate large amounts of electricity,
but before it could be expanded, the energy industry would have to overcome
longstanding public fears that another accident, like those at Three Mile
Island or Chernobyl, will occur. Solutions also need to be found for disposing
of radioactive spent fuel and safeguarding it from terrorists.
Marvin Fertel, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an
industry group, said warming had become such a worry that some environmental
groups were becoming amenable to new nuclear plants. "In private, that's what
we get from them," he said.
Researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif.,
espouse a major expansion of nuclear power, coupled with a switch from
gasoline to hydrogen to power cars and trucks. Electricity from the nuclear
plants would split water to produce hydrogen, and then cables made of
superconductors would distribute both electricty and hydrogen, which would
double as coolant for the cables, across the country.
"I think in 30 to 50 years there will be systems like this," said Dr. Chauncey
Starr, the institute's founder and emeritus president. "I think the advantages
of this are sufficient to justify it."
In the short run, fossil fuels will still be widely used, but it is still
possible to control carbon dioxide.
In his Berlin speech, Mr. Abraham highlighted two projects the Energy
Department was working on: carbon sequestration the capturing of carbon
dioxide before it is emitted and storing it underground and FutureGen, a $1
billion prototype coal power plant that will produce few emissions. The plant
will seek to demonstrate by 2020 how to convert coal to hydrogen on a
commercial scale that will then be used to generate electricity in fuel cells
or turbines. The waste carbon dioxide would be captured and stored.
The technology for injecting carbon dioxide is straightforward, but scientists
need better knowledge on suitable locations and leak prevention.
Sequestration, however, will probably not be cost-effective for current power
plants. The filters for capturing carbon dioxide from the exhaust gas will by
themselves consume 20 percent to 30 percent of the power plant's electricity.
Renewing Renewables
Solar is still a future promise. The cost of energy from solar cells has
dropped sharply in the past few decades. One kilowatt-hour of electricity
the energy to light a 100-watt bulb for 10 hours used to cost several
dollars when produced by solar cells. Now it is only about 35 cents. With
fossil fuels, a kilowatt-hour costs just a few cents.
But solar still has much room for improvement. Commercial cells are only 10 to
15 percent efficient. With much more research, new strategies to absorb
sunlight more efficiently could lead to cells that reached 50 to 60 percent
efficiency. If the cells could be made cheaply enough, they could produce
electricity for only 1 or 2 cents a kilowatt-hour.
Dr. Arthur Nozik, a senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory in Golden, Colo., said the advanced solar concepts were
scientifically feasible. But, echoing Dr. Hoffert, Dr. Nozik said: "We need
like a Manhattan Project or an Apollo program to put a lot more resources into
solving the problem. It's going to require a revolution, not an evolution. I
wouldn't expect to get there in 2050 if we're going at the same pace."
But if scientists succeed with a cheap, efficient solar cell, "you'd be on
Easy Street," Dr. Nozik said.
Wind power is already practical in many places like Denmark, where 17 percent
of the electricity comes from wind turbines. The newest turbines, with
propellers as wide in diameter as a football field, produce energy at a cost
of 4 or 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. Further refinements like lighter rotors could
drop the price by another cent or two, making it directly competitive with
natural gas.
Dr. Robert W. Thresher, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the
energy laboratory, envisions large farms of wind turbines being built
offshore. "They would be out of sight," he said. "There's no shortage of space
and wind."
Solar and wind power will be hampered because the sun doesn't always shine and
the wind doesn't always blow. The current power grid is not well suited for
intermittent power sources because the amount of power produced at any moment
must match the amount being consumed. To exploit the sun and wind, utilities
would have to develop devices that could act as giant batteries.
One concept is to pump compressed air into an underground cavern. When
electricity was needed, the air would be released, and the air pressure would
turn a turbine to generate electricity.
The Big Ideas
Then there are the big ideas that could change everything. To get around the
problem of the intermittency in solar power, solar arrays could be placed
where the sun shines 24 hours a day in space. The power could be beamed to
the ground via microwaves.
Another big idea comes from Dr. Klaus S. Lackner, a professor of geophysics at
Columbia University: what if carbon dioxide could be scrubbed out of the air?
His back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate it may be feasible, although he
is far from being ready to demonstrate how.
But if that were possible, that would eliminate the need to shift from
gasoline to hydrogen for cars. That would save the time and cost of building
pipelines for shipping hydrogen, and gasoline is in many ways a superior fuel
than hydrogen. (Hydrogen needs to be stored under very high pressure or at
very cold temperatures.) Owners of gas-guzzling S.U.V.'s could assuage their
guilt by paying for the scrubbing of carbon dioxide produced by their vehicles.
Eventually, the captured carbon dioxide could be processed to create an
artificial gasoline, Dr. Lackner said. Then the world would discover, much to
its surprise, that everything old would be new and clean again.
"Carbon may actually be just as clean, just as renewable," Dr. Lackner said.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
" 2 2003-11-09 720 Critics Fear Energy Plan Will Destroy a Wild Land \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-front9nov09000512,1,1999569.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Critics Fear Energy Plan Will Tame a Wild Land
By Julie Cart
Times Staff Writer
November 9, 2003
CHOTEAU, Mont. From behind her sunglasses, Gloria Flora's dark blue eyes
were trained on the unfolding vastness thousands of feet beneath her. She paid
little attention as the single-engine plane pitched and bucked in high winds
above the limestone escarpments of Montana's Rocky Mountain Front.
Like the little plane, Flora was at full throttle, calling on all her charm
and powers of persuasion to make a case to the state's Democratic candidate
for governor for keeping oil and gas exploration out of the majestic landscape
below.
"It's not comfy here. It doesn't have amenities. It's not easy to get to," she
said, pointing to the wide-hipped buttes and mesas, affection filling her
voice. "There's no cell phone service and the wind blows like hell. It's only
the very hardy and the very lucky who live here."
A 140-mile stretch of largely unbroken country, tracing the Rockies from
Helena north to the Canadian border, the front is part of the largest complex
of U.S. wild lands outside Alaska.
Flora was doing what she does best: extolling the character of a place she put
on the national political map by convincing the Clinton administration to make
it off-limits to oil and gas exploration.
At that time, she was the U.S. Forest Service supervisor of the surrounding
Lewis and Clark National Forest. Today, she's citizen Flora committed as
ever, despite an angry parting with the Forest Service and a crippling car
accident.
Her flaring cheekbones, waist-length hair and throaty voice belie a
competitive drive that made her a force to reckon with during 22 years in the
male-dominated Forest Service.
Yet, for all her talents, Flora may be on the brink of losing her battle to
save a region that, as much as any, resembles the West that Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark saw when they came through here 200 years ago.
At least three companies holding leases that predate Flora's decision are
preparing to drill for natural gas deep inside the protected area, encouraged
by rising gas prices, increasing demand and pending energy legislation that
would give oil and gas companies tax breaks and other incentives that take
some of the financial risk out of exploring.
With the Bush administration making a determined push to open wild lands to
energy exploration, dormant leases on 400,000 acres of the front could spring
to life. Petroleum engineers acknowledge that the extent of recoverable gas
along the front is not known.
"Granted, there may only be a few days' supply of gas," said Gail Abercrombie,
executive director of the Montana Petroleum Assn. "If we were to take all the
wheat Montana produces, it doesn't come close to supplying the nation's needs.
Does that mean we just quit farming wheat?"
Exploration by itself would not mar the landscape permanently. Full field
production, on the other hand, could dramatically alter the complexion of the
countryside, with drill pads, roads, pipelines, processing plants, traffic and
people.
Flora has seen the effects just across the border in Canada, where oil and gas
and related industrial development along the base of the Rockies in western
Alberta have displaced elk and mountain sheep and greatly diminished the
grizzly bear population.
Along the front on the U.S. side, virtually all of the animal species observed
by Lewis and Clark remain. This is the only place in the lower 48 states where
grizzlies still come down out of their mountain dens every spring and roam the
plains, gorging on chokecherries and occasionally picking off a stray sheep or
calf.
Yet its wildness isn't the front's only allure.
"It's a visceral reaction, really," said Bob Decker, executive director of the
Montana Wilderness Assn.
"The continent drops off into ranches and a big sky," Decker said. "Drainages
roll on for miles into public lands that are undisturbed. The waterways are
undammed. The communities are small. There's a sense of openness. Things are
clean and possible; there's room to move and you can talk to people. This is a
place where every superlative is justified."
Stoney Burk is a typical example of the passions people hold for this land.
Burk is an attorney in Choteau, calls himself a conservative, voted for
President Bush and pledges, with his voice rising: "I will crawl 200 miles on
my belly to save this front.
"I'm not an environmentalist; I've never liked people with long hair sitting
in trees and smoking a pipe," he said. "But I would consider anyone who would
violate this front my enemy. I guarantee you that if this thing goes through,
there will be a lot of us lying down in front of bulldozers and not moving."
But this place, where the tabletop Great Plains crash headlong into the shins
of the towering Rockies, contains deposits of natural gas that the industry
and the Bush administration say are a key to securing the nation's energy
independence.
The front forms the eastern edge of a much larger geologic formation: the
Montana Thrust Belt, which underlies the western third of the state. How much
gas is here is a matter of debate. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that
the area could contain as much as one-fourth of the nation's annual
natural-gas consumption.
For Flora and other opponents of drilling, the question is why in an area as
vast as the thrust belt must the industry drill in the least disturbed place?
"Why are they hellbent on drilling here with all the problems, restrictions
and lack of public support?" Flora asked, shaking her head. "They think they
can stick a pin in the vast landscape and find the one spot where there is
gas? It's hard to understand."
Industry officials say they don't have a lot of alternatives to exploring the
front. They say more than 90% of the thrust belt is closed to drilling.
Nonetheless, Flora hopes to entice them to go elsewhere. She is advocating a
federal buyout of oil and gas leases, or an exchange in which leases would be
traded for the right to explore elsewhere on federal land. It has been a hard
sell.
Despite the support of Montana's Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, buyout
legislation has gone nowhere.
As the supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in 1997, Flora
decided that maintaining the primitive grandeur of the forest and its
free-ranging wildlife had more value than the oil and gas the land might
contain. She said no new energy leases could be granted for at least 10 years
on about 350,000 acres of the 1.8-million-acre national forest, and she
allowed only restricted exploration elsewhere in the forest.
It was an act of bureaucratic bravado that made her as many enemies as
friends. There were, after all, many millions of protected acres in wilderness
areas and nearby Glacier National Park. And who was she, the critics asked, to
extend that protection a determination that is solely the province of Congress?
Flora responded that her moratorium allowed many activities, such as logging
and grazing, that are prohibited in wilderness. But she also argued that the
land covered by her moratorium was no less worthy of protection than the
adjacent wilderness.
"If they can get in here," Flora said, her voice rising over the roar of the
plane's engine, "they can get in anywhere."
Flora's presence raises the profile of the debate, but also its temperature.
The former bureaucrat so enrages some Montanans that she once required a
police escort to speak at a public forum addressing the need for civility in
public discussion.
Flora, 48, has made a career of invalidating stereotypes. In the Forest
Service's lumberjack culture, she was a singular presence. Flora's appearance
suggested Earth Mother, but her management style screamed Type A.
One minute she draws on spiritual imagery to express her communion with these
mountains; in another she displays a forensic command of the region's history,
science and natural attributes
Critics were scornful of the language she used in her written decision to
close the front to oil and gas. Preserving "a sense of place" was reason
enough to bar development, Flora wrote.
"It was a real stop-the-show kind of decision," said Abercrombie of the
Montana Petroleum Assn., which represents a $300-million-a-year industry in
the state. "That touchy-feely kind of thing fits her philosophy. There's no
way to work around somebody's 'sense of place' or to know what that means."
Bert Guthrie, who farms and ranches on 12,000 acres near Choteau, favors
energy development and said as much to Flora in public meetings.
"She's a typical bureaucrat," Guthrie said. "She's getting paid and going on
her merry way, getting accolades from the enviros, talking about being brave
and all that. What has saved the Rocky Mountain Front are the natives that
have lived here for the last 100 years and kept it as pristine as it is, not
the Gloria Floras of the world."
But a newspaper in Missoula, Mont., suggested that a monument be erected in
Flora's honor and gushed: "Montana's incomparable Rocky Mountain Front will
endure as a monument to this Forest Service official's strength and vision."
Public comment solicited by the Forest Service in advance of Flora's decision
ran 80% in favor of the moratorium.
Her ban on new energy leases withstood numerous court challenges including
an appeal by oil and gas interests to the U.S. Supreme Court, which the court
declined to hear. Nevertheless, the protections Flora put in place six years
ago are vulnerable now.
In August, the Bush administration told federal land managers to remove
bureaucratic and environmental restrictions to drilling in seven Western
areas, including the Rocky Mountain Front.
Public opinion along the front is mixed. In a recent Teton County survey, 50%
of respondents said drilling would be an economic blessing while 50% opposed it.
Mary Sexton, chairwoman of the Teton County Commission, said she has crunched
every available number, seeking to parse the benefit to her rural, financially
ailing county. She's come up with a best-case scenario of $20,000 in annual
revenues to the county.
For all of her Indian jewelry and dusty boots, Flora began as an Easterner.
Raised in Pennsylvania, she got her first look at the Rockies as a teenager on
a family vacation.
The summer after graduating from Penn State with a degree in landscape
architecture, Flora took her first job in the Forest Service, in 1977 in
California's Shasta-Trinity National Forest, where she found herself at odds
with the common logging practice of clear-cutting: chain-sawing every tree in
huge swaths of the forest.
Her objection evolved into policy. "On my forest," she said, "the rule was, if
the tree is older than you are, you have to come see me if you want to cut it."
As supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, Flora at first was
inclined to go along with her predecessor's pro-drilling policies. But after
months of public meetings revealed the impassioned anti-drilling sentiment of
many residents, Flora changed her mind.
She insists that none of her superiors in Washington, D.C., advised against
imposing the moratorium, but when her tenure in Montana ended, she was passed
over for the plum job she sought in Wyoming's nearby Bridger-Teton National
Forest.
Her career ended abruptly in 1999 after she was assigned to a forest in
northern Nevada and saddled with enforcing an unpopular road closing. The
controversy led to threats against her and her staff. Flora resigned, angry at
what she argued was a lack of official support and protection from her own agency.
Flora left the Forest Service in 1999, and with her husband, Marc, returned to
Montana, settling on 25 acres outside Helena.
Two years ago, a car accident nearly made her an invalid. A man rammed her car
head-on after losing control of his van on a mountain road.
As she lay crushed in her car, Flora, who had emergency medical training,
reacted with typical sang froid, telling her rescuers how best to divert
traffic and giving paramedics a clinical assessment of her pulverized right leg.
At first in a wheelchair, then hobbling with a cane that she shed this fall,
Flora traveled around the country trying to rouse nationwide support for the
front, still extolling its sense of place but also talking about the
residents, whose vision of the front she had come to share.
One of them is Dupuyer rancher Karl Rappold, whose grandfather spent his first
two years in Montana living under a wagon while he worked the family homestead.
Rappold, who is 51, knows there is natural gas under his 7,000 acres, but he
says he has no interest in drilling for it.
He brags about the unspoiled land that he works on horseback, ground that has
never known a wheel or been cut by a road. He tells of the wonder of watching
grizzlies, pointing to where two young males entered the yard the day before,
snuffling around for dog food.
Watching his grandson scramble into the cab of a tractor, the boy's little
boots scraping on outsized fenders, Rappold said: "My grandfather and then my
father took care of this land for me; I'm bound to take care of it for my kids
and theirs. It's that simple."
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-11-09 721 Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up? \N "November 8, 2003
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
One Senator; Many Masters
By MICHAEL DONNELLY
In these days of brand politics, all senators must have a motto. For Ron
Wyden (D-OR) it's the ecumenical slogan, "Standing up for ALL of Oregon."
It's right there at the top of his recent Press Release proudly proclaiming
his and Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) crucial role in persuading the Senate
to adopt their version of the deceptively titled Healthy Forests Initiative.
ALL Oregon? Hmmm? How does that rhetoric stack up to reality? Did ALL
Oregon support this raid on our public lands? Hardly. Polls show that the
majority of Oregonians opposed it. So, which Oregon does the Senator represent?
Maybe it's the Israeli lobby? Wyden's their Number One Senate PAC money
recipient in a state that's two percent Jewish. Probably not.
Maybe it's the Telecommunications Industry? Again, Wyden's their Number One
PAC guy, as well. The Oregon Business Journal lists but one Telecom with an
Oregon Headquarters. So, again, probably not.
Could it be Used Car dealers? He's Number Three for them.
How about Dentists? He's their Number Two man in the Senate.
Dietary Supplements? Number Three again. (No word on whether he's being
called before the Grand Jury along with Barry Bonds.)
Perhaps the Sierra Club which along with the League of Conservation Voters
(LCV) have blindly endorsed the senator in every political race he's ever run.
Maybe the National! Association of Police Organizations which made him
their Senator of the year?
Nope.
One has to go to Wyden's other Number One Senate PAC ranking -- Big Timber!
Yep. That's right. Sen. Ron Wyden hauled in more money from Timber PACs
than any other Senator this election season.
(<Source:http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?In
d>=A10&cycle=2004&recipdetail=s&Mem=Y&sortorder=U
In fact, he hauled in more timber bucks than any other US politician, save
one, George W. Bush. Now Bush will now sign into law what Wyden, himself,
proudly calls the "Wyden/Feinstein Forest Compromise," when the
environmental establishment, lapdogs of the Democratic Party, persists in
calling it Bush's so-called "Healthy Forests Initiative." For Big Timber,
Ron Wyden clearly has stood up. Perhaps Bush will hand him a souvenir pen
after he signs the logging bill into law.
When one considers that in his long tenure as Big Timber's greatest friend,
former Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR) was NEVER the industry's Number One PAC
recipient, the depth of the betrayal begins to register. At least with
Hatfield, even though he is responsible for over 10 million acres of Old
Growth stumps, he would always throw a morsel or two to conservationists.
Big meaty morsels. Wilderness Areas like Opal Creek, at that. Throughout
his long career, Wyden is responsible for exactly NO forest protection
successes. Nada. Yet, he is portrayed as a champion of the green cause.
Someone call George Orwell!
So how did this lifelong politician's vote come up for sale?
Well, the story going round for decades in Oregon is that, in 1974, as a
young University of Oregon Law grad, Wyden did a major venue shop of the
entire West Coast looking for just the right Congressional District to move
to so as to fulfill his dad's (writer Peter Wyden) cradle-imprinted
Congressional wish for him. Once the ambitious, young Ron found the right
District, Oregon's progressive Third, he quickly moved from Eugene to a
Legal Aid position in NE Portland and the rest, as they say, is history.
So how does Big Timber's Number One guy get those LCV and Sierra Club
endorsements?
Easy: the environmental movement has largely become a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Democratic Party. Consider this: Big Timber's Number One
guy has an 80% positive rating from the League of Conservation Voters,
which supposedly scores politicians on their environmental votes. But the
ratings are as rigged as the bush Star Wars test. Sure, Wyden casts the
obligatory Nay on the annual shadow dance on oil drilling in the Alaska
National Wildlife Refuge.
He DID support the great, under appreciated (hey, he is THE guy who brought
an end to Nuclear Testing!), former Rep. Mike Kopetski's (D-OR) efforts to
protect the magnificent Ancient Forests of Opal Creek. This action bought
Wyden a lot of cover. Even when running against him in the Primary fight
for the disgraced Sen. Bob Packwood's senate seat, I couldn't bring myself
to go after Wyden on the environment, simply because of Opal Creek. In
retrospect, not such a bright move on my part.
But talking about not so bright moves, how is it that after a year of
declaring "stopping Bush's HFI" to be their collective "Number One
Priority"and raising some $5+ million to fight it, the Big Greens were
smoked in a lopsided 80 -- 14 vote? Simple. They were backstabbed from
within. Wyden and Feinstein (along with Montana's Sen. Max Baucus) did what
Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) couldn't: shepherd the
logging bill past a potential Senate filibuster. Bush unveils it August 22,
2002 and LCV darlings Wyden and Feinstein seal the deal and the fate of the
forests a year later. This is what the combined forces of Big Green
produced on their top priority.
How much did Wyden's vote cost? That Number One ranking came cheap. He took
in a mere $32,500 (Bush got $213,000). Methinks the Big Greens need some
strategic rethinking. They could lay off but one of their incompetent staff
and use the bloated salary to buy a few Wydens at that price.
The Big Greens get defeated on forests every time and every time it's by a
wider margin. Is it mere ineptness? Or is something darker going on here?
Is losing a reflex? Or are they throwing the game and blaming the loss on
Bush and Republican ultras for their own political purposes? Those are the
two choices: incompetence or collusion. When one follows Deep Throat's
famous advice and looks at the money, here's what we find: not only is
Wyden Number One, other Democrats make up seven more of Big Timber's Sweet
Sixteen, with Sen. Blanche Lincoln LCV rating = 32%) at number four; Joe
Lieberman (LCV = 88%) number six; Patty Murray (LCV = 76%) number ten; John
Kerry (LCV =92%) number eleven; Bob Graham (LCV = 64%) number twelve tied
with Mary Landrieu (LCV = 20%) and John Edwards (LCV = 68%) at sixteen.
Lieberman, Kerry and Edwards failed to vote on Wyden/Feinstein, as they
failed to vote on Bush's nomination of the slavishly pro-industry Mike
Leavitt as head of the EPA, thus preserving their records of not recording
ANY environmental votes this election year! Sen. Hilary Clinton garnered
lots of ink for her 9-11-03 "vow" to block Leavitt. Clinton sheepishly
voted a month later for Leavitt as did most Democrats in an 88 -- 8 vote.
Rather sobering. And, yes, collusion is going on here. It's all about Big
Greens covering for bad Democrats, pure and simple. When appalled activists
met to discuss reprising the entertaining and media-successful Weenie Roast
they held outside Wyden's office after he went along with previous Big
Timber "salvage" giveaways, the Sierra Club nixed the idea as "he's our
friend." After the defeat on HFI, The Wilderness Society (TWS) went public
with their sentiment, telling the Idaho Statesman the "bill offers workable
solutions to forest problems, as long as the government follows through
with its promises." In California, TWS staffer Jay Watson said it was a
bill "we can work with." Talk about Weenies!
Grassroots activists, however, did show up at Wyden's office on Halloween,
the day after the Senate bloodbath. They made their displeasure known and
were able to get local media coverage of their outrage and the fact that
they are still cutting Big, Old Trees a decade after the Big Greens
declared it "our greatest victory" that Bill Clinton had "saved the Ancient
Forest." Ivan Maluski, dressed in a salmon outfit said, "The bill that
passed the Senate last night is a logging bill. It opens up 20 million
acres and who knows how many of those are going to be in Oregon and a lot
of that is going to be in the backcountry far away from homes and
communities. The way we read some of the old growth provisions -- it
actually targets old growth forest for logging and that's really dangerous."
One thing one has to give the Big Greens credit for is that their original
analysis of the provisions of the HFI was quite accurate. Instead of
creating healthy forests, it's clearly a huge giveaway to Big Timber and
Big Timber's more recent offshoot, privatized Big Fire prevention. Industry
will be able to go after big old trees far from any human development. As
Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth has noted, it makes no sense
economically otherwise. Somehow, these folks have sold the notion that
cutting the biggest, most fire-resistant trees will somehow make the
forests less vulnerable to fire.
And Big Fire prevention, a highly unregulated industry that is totally
dependent on there being fires and often has seen its employees become the
arsonists that start them, will get an additional $760 million, pushing the
total set aside for fire prevention to over $1.2 billion for the fiscal
year. And, wait a minute. Yes, indeed, it becomes more clear. Over 80% of
all the private companies in this industry are headquartered in Oregon.
Under Wyden/Feinstein, these companies, many direct offshoots of timber
firms, will become triple dippers: paid to "prevent" the fires with "fuel
reduction projects," paid to fight the fires and, then paid for the
"salvage and restoration logging" that inevitably follows.
Big Fire benefits greatly from the Senator for ALL Oregon's compromise.
But, just how effective is this industry? Who put out the California fires,
anyway? Mother Nature, as always -- this time in the form of rain, mists
and snow. Yet, Wyden still believes the best way to fight a fire is to
smother it with federal dollar bills.
Even though Wyden has been named one of the dumbest members of Congress, he
is something of an idiot savant when it comes to having his cake and eating
it too. Wyden will go on to more timber PAC and other corporate money, yet
he will enjoy high LCV ratings and Sierra Club endorsements. Gordon Smith
should cry foul. They have nearly identical records on National Forest
policy (log more), yet Wyden pockets money from both Big Timber and Big Green.
Green Central will continue to blame their defeats on Bush and the
Republicans. Gordon Smith will take on more principled stands than the
craven Wyden. Ralph Nader will once again pull in over 75,000 Oregon votes
next year's presidential selection, though the Big greens will endorse one
of the nonvoting Senate Democrats. Senator-from-birth Ron Wyden will
continue his "Standing up for ALL of Oregon's" ruling elites. One senator;
many rich masters.
MICHAEL DONNELLY of Salem, OR has been a longtime champion of protecting
our Public Ancient Forests. He was a 1996 Democrat primary candidate for US
Senate. He was deeply involved in the successful effort to protect Opal
Creek. He can be reached at: <mailto:pahtoo@aol.com>pahtoo@aol.com
" 2 2003-11-08 722 Just a Match Away, Industry Gets Your Forests \N "November 5, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair11052003.html
Just a Match Away - Fire Sale in So Cal
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Sooner or later all big fires become political events.
Even before before becalmed Santa Ana winds and mountain sleet quenched the
blazes in southern California, politicians from both parties raced to exploit
the charred landscape for their own advantage--a kind of political looting
while the embers still glowed.
Republicans, naturally, pointed an incendiary finger at environmentalists,
rehashing their tired mantra that restrictions on logging had provided the
kindling for the inferno that consumed 3,600 homes (largely in Republican
districts) and took 20 human lives (the non-human body count will never be
tallied).
Not to be outdone, Democrats parroted a similar line, but in more bombastic
tones. They tried to affix the blame on Bush, alleging that our chainsaw
president had rebuffed desperate pleas from Gray Davis for money to finance
the logging off of beetle-nibbled forests in the parched San Bernadino Mountains.
So here the two parties converge once again, harmonized in their fatuous
contention that more logging will prevent forest conflagrations. It didn't
take long for this unity, soldered by the flames of southern California, to
find a way to express itself in Congress.
On Halloween Eve, the Senate passed the so-called Healthy Forest Initiative
with only a 14 votes of dissent. This bill is the no-holds-barred logging plan
crafted by Bush's forest czar, Mark Rey, a former ace timber industry lobbyist
who now oversees the Forest Service from his perch as Deputy Secretary of
Agriculture. Using fire prevention as a pretext, the legislation authorizes a
kind of pre-emptive strike of logging across more than 20 million acres of
federal lands. It also exempts the blitzkrieg of cutting from adherence to
most environmental laws and shields it from legal challenges by pesky green
groups.
Although environmentalists roundly derided the plan as a gift to big timber,
it was embraced and championed in the senate by a cohort of top rank
Democrats, including California's Dianne Feinstein, Oregon's Ron Wyden and
Montana's Max Baucus, the political playmate of celeb enviro Robert Redford.
The version of the bill that passed the senate was spun as a compromised
brokered by these three luminaries. In fact, it was essentially same the bill
that Rey dreamed up for Bush and his backers in big timber and the building
industry. Except the Democrats were more generous, increasing the funding for
the $2.9 billion plan by $289 million more than even the White House requested.
Feinstein, long a favorite of the Sierra Club, was the lead perpetrator of
soothing myths about the bill. "This legislation is not a logging bill,"
Feinstein said. "This legislation would merely allow the brush to be cleared
out." She makes it sound like a weekend clean up operation, when the reality
is more akin to the silvicultural equivalent of Shock and Awe.
There's no money in clearing brush or thinning small trees. And let's be
clear, the Healthy Forests Initiative, which should land in the PR Hall of
Fame in the category of most deceptively-titled bills, is all about making
money for timber companies. Feinstein's legislation underwrites the logging of
big trees, many of them in roadless areas far removed from even the most
advanced tentacles of suburban sprawl. In exchange, she doles out to
complacent environmentalists, the Pavlovian dogs of the political
establishment, a few tiny old-growth reserves as morsels, knowing that they
can always be logged later. Hush puppies, indeed.
So the timber industry didn't have to break a sweat to achieve their fondest
objective. Politicians from both parties, along with the media, did their work
for them. The public seems to fear fire more than other natural events, such
as earthquakes or tornadoes. Fires seem preventable. People want to believe
there's a political fix and congress is anxious to feed that illusion.
But the forests and chaparral of southern California are meant to burn. It's
an ecosystem literally born, reared and shaped by fire. Once or twice every 20
years for the past 10 millennia these forests and scrublands have been
scorched with fires at least as intense as those which blazed this autumn.
Logging off big (or little) trees won't alter that ecological reality in the
least, except, perhaps, to exacerbate it. Wildland fires are linked most
firmly to periods of prolonged drought. The longer the drought, the bigger the
fires. Indeed, logging will simply remove from the forest the hardiest trees,
the very ones that have survived previous fires. In their place will come new
logging roads which will open up tempting new avenues for forests arsonists.
The fires may also come more frequently because of economic factors. During
recessions, arson-sparked forest fires become more common. At least three of
the big California fires were deliberately set. Firefighting, which is almost
useless in combating forest fires, is big business. And increasingly it's a
corporate business. Under Clinton and Bush, firefighting has been privatized.
That business needs fires in order to prosper, the bigger the better. A
government subsidy is just a match away. Firefighting and military
expenditures are the last remnants of Keynsian economics thriving in the
American system these days. Congress blindly writes blank checks for both
enterprises regardless of their utility.
Of course, global warming also plays a role. The West is becoming drier and
hotter. In the future, scrubland and forest fires will become more frequent,
more intense and burn longer than in the past. But don't expect action from
the current crop of politicians on that front either. This congress is more
likely to hand out tax breaks for designer SUVs, than give a dime to solar
energy or raise fuel-efficiency standards. In the post 9/11 landscape, Bush
has made the conspicuous burning of fossil fuels a patriotic emblem of
American manliness.
Simply put: fire can't be excluded from these ecosystems, but the endless
march of subdivisions and mountain resorts can be halted. (Indeed, wildfires
might be thought of as a naturopathic remedy of sorts, a kind of ecological
radiation treatment for the cancer of urban spraw.) Of course, none of the
politicians on the scene today will entertain notions of restricting in the
least further development into the shrinking forests, deserts and chaparral of
the arid and fire-prone West. Instead, they try to pacify the developers and
homeowners with the comforting illusion that smart-bomb logging and beefed up
firefighting can keep the inevitable infernos in check. It's a dangerous
delusion that cost 20 lives in the last couple of weeks and left thousands
displaced.
The rich will survive to build again, bigger and sturdier structures, with
irrigated lawns, swimming pools and tile roofs. The insurance companies will
be pressed by politicians, such as the loathsome Insurance Commissioner John
Garamendi, to pay up in full so that the building trades can prosper.
But what will become of the poor and uninsured, the true human victims of
these autumn fires? One early calculation by the Los Angeles Times estimated
that 32 percent of the residents evacuated from the southern California fires
were welfare recipients, which means they were impoverished women and
children. How many more were poor men? Elderly? Migrant workers? The desperate
people who tend the homes of Riverside and Big Bear elite. Where will they end up?
The final victim in all of this is environmental movement itself. It is
clearly defunct at the operational level. The green establishment vowed that
stopping the Healthy Forest Initiative was their top legislative priority. But
their campaign, which tried to lay all the blame on Bush and his gang of
Republican ultras, was reduced to cinders with those California fires and the
carrion feeders of the Democratic Party. They got creamed 80 to 14, betrayed
by legislators, such as Feinstein, Wyden, Boxer, Murray and Baucus, who they
had previously certified as champions of the green cause. One lonely vote. The
child molester lobby wields more power on the Hill these days.
The big greens can't even go down fighting. With the blood still wet on the
floor from the slaughter in the senate, a representative from The Wilderness
Society told the Idaho Statesman that the legislation "offers workable
solutions to forest problems, as long as the government follows through with
its promises." There you have it. With one move, the Wilderness Society yanked
the rug from beneath the grassroots greens and at the same time stamped its
imprimatur on logging as a tool to fight forest fires.
Given a chance, the forests of the San Bernadinos will recover. The same can't
be said for the credibility of the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
" 2 2003-11-07 723 California's Apocalypse Now: Liar, Liar Forests on Fire \N "***********************************************
FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
California's Apocalypse Now: Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
***********************************************
Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal
http://www.EnvironmentalSustainability.info/ -- Eco-Portal
http://www.ClimateArk.org/ -- Climate Change Portal
http://www.WaterConserve.info/ -- Water Conservation Portal
November 2, 2003
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Glen Barry, Forests.org
Whipped into action by deadly wildfires ravaging Southern
California, the U.S. Senate has approved a bipartisan compromise
aimed at preventing fires by expanding forest-thinning operations
and limiting anti-logging injunctions. As the astute analysis in
CounterPunch below makes clear, "hundreds of millions of dollars
are allocated specifically for suppression, thinning, threat
reduction, and management--all fear-mongering, code words for
cutting down our national forests".
Granted, the California fires have been horrific, and one can
only have pity for its victims. Under such circumstances, the
pressure upon government to do something, anything, regardless of
merit, is intense. And neither political party is above using a
crisis to pursue their own narrow agenda - in this case corporate
welfare for logging companies. However, further fragmenting and
diminishing already extremely altered forest and other ecosystems
through intensive management will not lessen fire risk. The
American public is being sold another big lie - the falsehood
that logging forests is the best way to protect them from fire.
The truth of the matter, quoting from the first article, is that
in many cases (and certainly in Southern California):
"Fire, just like insects and disease, are a natural and
beneficial part of forest ecosystems and watersheds. Stop
timbering our forests and the fires therein will play the role
that Mother Nature and God intended them to play -- a vital role
of targeted renewal and replacement -- not one of total
devastation as we are seeing in the fires raging in southern
California today. There is no forest management plan that does
the job as efficiently or effectively as the great forces of
nature."
Southern California is a fire dominated ecosystem in the truest
sense of the word. Chaparral vegetation maintains itself through
release of flammable substances. In a relatively short time
there has been huge ecological change caused by soaring human
populations. The fuel load has grown due to fire suppression,
but this is only part of the equation. This landscape has also
undergone several years of dramatic drought, likely caused or
exacerbated by climate change. These are extremely dry lands,
and getting drier due to mercilessly little water remaining in
natural ecosystems. Lax land use planning regulations mean
people are free to build houses in beautiful but dangerous
locations. And when they burn as they eventually will, the tax-
payer is there to bail them out.
In California we see the outlines of the ecological apocalypse to
come if climate change, spatially extensive forest management,
land-use planning and water conservation are not pursued with the
urgency they deserve. It is astounding how shallow the analysis
of these issues is by media and the government. Below are two
reports on the fire, first from alternative media, and then a
mainstream report on the Senate vote.
Forty years from now, as America's forests have been logged ever
more repeatedly and are burning even more intensely, perhaps we
will be told the truth - the only way to protect America's fire-
prone forests and minimize damage from burning is to pave them,
or let them be natural forests, which often includes allowing for
fire. The former is the path we are on now.
g.b.
For more information use the Forest Conservation Portal:
http://forests.org/cgi-bin/texis.exe/webinator/search/?order=r&query=califor
nia+forest+fire&pr=forests
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
ITEM #1
Title: Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
Why Logging Exacerbates Loss of Lives and Property
Source: CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/
Date: November 1, 2003
Byline: KARYN STRICKLER and TIMOTHY G. HERMACH
Scores of people are dead, hundreds of thousands of acres are
burned, 2,600 homes destroyed, with tens of thousand more
threatened in California fires, and the toll is rising by the
minute. It's very scary and represents profound loss for the
victims. So, under the guise of fire funding or firefighting,
congressional negotiators quickly allocated $3 billion (the most
ever allocated to a one-time firefighting budget) in the coming
year to fight and prevent fire. Hundreds of millions of dollars
are allocated specifically for suppression, thinning, threat
reduction, and management--all fear-mongering, code words for
cutting down our national forests.
California's Fontana Pass and Grand Prix Fires have been blamed
on arson. Still George W. Bush and those in the U.S. Congress who
benefit from the timber industry's chainsaw windfall, capitalize
on people's fear of fire and proclaim a need for suppression,
thinning, threat reduction and management. They then grant
enormous logging contracts to cut down trees in national forests
where logging is otherwise illegal. The logging is not done in
areas where lives and property would be spared, thinning small
trees around homes, but rather in backcountry, valuable, old-
growth forests.
According to Dr Richard A Minnich, Professor of Earth Science at
the University of California at Riverside, an expert on the fire
ecology of Mediterranean ecosystems in Southern California, "The
Bush Administration's Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HR 1904)
for forest thinning in the western United States is scheduled for
a vote at a time when southern California is undergoing a massive
fire disaster. Yet this bill will give little benefit for fire
and fuel hazard management in the southern California region...
The bill is earmarked for federal lands exclusively."
As forest fires rage, so does the debate about how best to
suppress fire, reduce its threat and manage our forests. And the
answer is -- DON'T! Don't "manage" our public forests -- and
forest fires will be M-I-N-I-M-I-Z-E-D. Since George W. Bush and
the timber hungry in the U.S. Congress seem incapable of
spelling, allow us to spell it out: Stop timbering our forests
and the fires therein will play the role that Mother Nature and
God intended them to play -- a vital role of targeted renewal and
replacement -- not one of total devastation as we are seeing in
the fires raging in southern California today. There is no forest
management plan that does the job as efficiently or effectively
as the great forces of nature.
Fire, just like insects and disease, are a natural and beneficial
part of forest ecosystems and watersheds. Without these natural
processes the forest ecosystems quickly degrade. Excessive
logging removes and reduces cooling shade adding to the hotter,
drier forests along with logging debris creating a more flammable
forest. Current "forest management" practices, road building and
development cause forest fires to rage for hundreds of miles.
The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project said in a report to the U.S.
Congress that timber harvests have increased fire severity more
than any other recent human activity. Logging, especially clear
cutting, can change the fire climate so that fires start more
easily, spread faster, further, and burn hotter causing much more
devastation than a fire ignited and burned under natural
conditions. If we stop the logging and stop building fire prone
developments, we minimize the loss of lives and property suffered
by people in fires.
As long as the people of America let politicians, timber
executives, and the Forest Service get away with it - it will not
stop. Those corporations that profit will continue to lie, cheat
and steal to continue to make more money from our losses. Just
like big tobacco.
There has never been an honest and fully-costed accounting for
public land management involving the extraction, sale, or lease
of publicly owned natural resources: land, air, soil and water,
not even for the trees. The Forest Service fails to give one
penny of value in its inventory accounting to the trees
themselves. A $1.00 seedling can grow into a 500-year-old tree.
If you put $1.00 in the bank at 6% interest for 500 years, that
$1.00 would grow with compounding and interest to 4.5 trillion
dollars. A 500-year-old tree is simply not replaceable by five or
six seedlings, the way 4.5 trillion dollars are not replaceable
by five or six $1.00 bills.
The Forest Service gives away our trees to multinational
corporations to liquidate for free, simultaneously asking
taxpayers to subsidize those corporations by paying for the roads
and infrastructure necessary to cut down our trees. This
government give-away to a few, greedy corporations costs
taxpayers billions of dollars annually and destroys the soil, air
and water that only intact forests can provide. In addition, this
may cost citizens and taxpayers trillions of dollars in lost and
damaged publicly owned land and property assets. The Forest
Service does not begin to assess the very real human health cost
of dirty air, soil, and water. It's a shameless shakedown of the
American taxpayer.
Tim Hermach, co-author of this article, was recently trapped in a
forest fire that jeopardized his life and the lives of his wife,
parents, and two young sons. He knows the gut-wrenching fear that
fire can evoke. A raging forest fire came within 50 yards of his
family's campsite at Davis Lake, Oregon. For the past forty years
Tim has been making the same camping trip, an earlier time when
this forest did not have hundreds of miles of roads channeling
winds through an ever hotter and drier forest. Years of clear
cutting, logging, and fire suppression have opened vast acreages
to the hot sun and cut out the big, thick, fire-resistant
Ponderosa pine, leaving the ecosystem in chaos.
Tim strongly opposes forest "thinning," because both the logging
industry and the Forest Service have a long, dishonest, track
record. His opposition is strong even after a fire spoiled his
family's summer vacation and put their lives at risk. The Davis
Lake fire burned in a national forest that had already been
heavily logged. Rampant cutting and decades of fire suppression
have turned this area, and much of the Deschutes National Forest,
into a tinderbox of smaller trees and coarse woody debris. Go to
our Web site (<www.forestcouncil.org> ) and see aerial
photographs of the Deschutes and other national forests today.
They are a patchwork of clear cuts and usually look like a war
zone. Those who claim to protect national forests like this by
"managing" them, have turned paradise into Pandora's box -- make
that Pandora's tinderbox. Put simply: Logging does not stop fire,
as a group of scientists recently confirmed in a study that
looked at the impact of "thinning" on 250 forest fires. Logging
increases the risk and occurrence of forest fires. Yet more
logging is exactly what timber corporations, President Bush and
the Forest Service claim will stop forest fires.
Logging called for in the Bush administration's laughably named
Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HR 1904) is the same dishonest
logging that created the conditions that made the Davis Lake fire
and others across the nation so frightening. They call it
thinning, fire-risk reduction, meadow restoration, or good
management, but it all adds up to the same old theft and
destruction of America's most precious natural treasures and
life-support system: our national forests and watersheds. Thanks
to the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Restoration Act,
American taxpayers will continue to subsidize the destruction of
what little is left of our nation's forests, even those that are
publicly owned.
It is the same old dirty formula that has made corporate robber
barons and their political lackeys rich for more than a hundred
years. The only difference is that, today, they hide behind their
clever rhetoric and exploit the myth of Smokey Bear and our fear
of fire. If the intent is to seek the most environmentally sound
and cost effective means to reduce the fuel hazard and fire risk
they created, then the Forest Service should be instructed, fully
funded, and closely monitored. They should implement prescribed
burning and manual, intensive labor in underbrush removal,
without commercial logging. They should be enabled, funded, and
watched while assisting homeowners in the removal of small trees
in residential areas. The long-term goal for forests should be
full restoration of ecological processes, including fire --
Mother Nature style.
Timothy G. Hermach is the President of the Native Forest Council
in Eugene, Oregon. Karyn Strickler is a writer and political
activist. They can be reached at: zerocut1@forestcouncil.org
Copyright Timothy G. Hermach and Karyn Strickler.
ITEM #2
Title: Senators Reach Pact On Forest Thinning
Source: Copyright 2002, Washington Post
Date: October 30, 2003
Byline: Helen Dewar, Washington Post Staff Writer
Whipped into action by the deadly wildfires that are ravaging
Southern California, the Senate yesterday gave preliminary
approval to a bipartisan compromise aimed at preventing fires by
expanding forest-thinning operations and limiting anti-logging
injunctions.
The vote in favor of the compromise was 97 to 1, putting
legislation to implement the plan on track for passage by the
Senate as early as today, although the deal is subject to
amendment by dissatisfied senators.
The bill, a modified version of President Bush's "healthy
forests" initiative, establishes expedited procedures for
thinning operations on 20 million acres of fire-threatened
federal lands while also seeking to protect old-growth trees.
It authorizes, subject to future appropriation by Congress, $760
million a year for thinning operations, more than double current
expenditures. At least half of the money would have to be spent
on forested areas near populated areas. The rest would go to
watersheds, endangered-species habits, or areas that suffered
wind damage or insect infestations. Preliminary injunctions
against logging projects would be limited to 60 days, subject to
renewal after court review.
The compromise was worked out over the past few months by a
bipartisan group of 10 senators, mostly from the West, that
spanned a wide ideological spectrum. Among them were Democratic
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) as well as
Republicans Larry E. Craig (Idaho) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.).
The way was cleared for action on the measure this week when
Republicans agreed not to try to limit amendments to the bill.
With clear reference to the California fires, Both Majority
Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle
(D-S.D.) said action was urgent. "The risks of delay are simply
too high," Daschle said.
The House earlier passed a different version, which is closer to
Bush's proposal. Among other things, it would impose a 45-day
limit on preliminary injunctions. But the White House yesterday
signaled its approval of the Senate compromise as well as the
House draft, although it said it would oppose further changes in
the Senate measure.
Environmental groups remained critical of both bills, contending
the Senate compromise falls short in protecting old-growth
forests and does not provide enough protection for at-risk
communities near forested areas. They also oppose the limitations
on injunctions. Several senators plan amendments addressing these
concerns.
Environmentalists and some senators also expressed strong concern
that, no matter what the Senate does, the legislation is likely
to be tilted toward the more logging-friendly House bill when
negotiators from the two houses try to work out differences. As a
result, sponsors of the compromise warned that it could unravel
if the House insists on significant changes. Senate Democrats
will not support the House provisions and have enough votes to
block them in the Senate, Feinstein said.
The only dissenter in yesterday's vote was Sen. Jack Reed (D-
R.I.). An aide said Reed thought the bill went too far in
limiting public participation in decisions on forest policy.
###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###
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Conservation Portal at URL= http://forests.org/
Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org
" 2 2003-11-02 724 Why Does Anybody Build With Wood in a Fire Zone \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-prevent2nov02,1,7911867.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Concrete Suggestions for Surviving Wildfires
November 2, 2003
The horrendous fires that have destroyed so many homes make us ask why, in
fire-prone, relatively treeless Southern California, homes are wood-framed?
We have what seems to be the most logical house for fire protection and energy
efficiency in a hilly area. Our concrete-block house, with concrete ceilings
and roof, is earth-integrated. One side of the house is in the hillside, and
our roof is dirt-covered. We have a lovely view from the window side and have
absolutely no concern about fires destroying our structure. We neither heat
nor air-condition our comfortable house. In 1979, when we built this house, it
cost no more than standard frame construction. Again, we wonder why concrete
construction is not the norm and earth-integrated housing is not more popular.
Don and Ann Cottrell
San Diego
*
My house was destroyed in the Malibu firestorms of 1993, and I rebuilt a
no-wood house. (For details, see http://www.malibu fireproofhouse.com.)
Wood is an obsolete construction technology and should be banned in fire areas.
Donald May
Malibu
*
All of us who live in California should be aware that pampas grass looks
spectacular but is a torch waiting to be lit. Your Oct. 28 photo, "Room to
Roam," should be a reminder to us to cut back and take out all pampas grass in
our yards. If it grows close to any structure, it can be the source of major
damage.
The fluffy seeds in the plumes blow in the wind, and now pampas grass is
growing up on the hillsides of many local mountains. It is scattered
throughout the Santa Monica Mountains. We can't obliterate the native scrub
brush, but we can help keep pampas grass from covering our local park mountains.
Jean A. Allen
Pacific Palisades
*
As I walked through the eerie smoke and ash from the ferocious conflagration
in Southern California, I remembered recent television footage of people in
Asia and Australia walking through the same sort of smoke and ash donning face
masks, handkerchiefs and carrying umbrellas. It occurred to me that I could
probably use all three. Then I realized these firestorms are really a global
problem closely related to global climate with variables such as
temperature, precipitation or lack thereof, winds, humidity. Weather
conditions for these firestorms occur around the world. That puts local
conditions such as tree densities and beetle infestations in a proper perspective.
Bill McEwen
Yucaipa
*
Re "U.S. Rejected Davis on Aid to Clear Trees," Oct. 31:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency took six months to reject Gov. Gray
Davis' April 16 request for $430 million to clear dead trees from fire-prone
areas of Southern California; 24 hours later, the horrific fires that will
result in more than $2 billion in costs and damages commenced, while "For
Bush, Raising $3.3 Million Is Just a Day's Work" (Oct. 31). How shameful. How
tragic.
Mary Louise Blackstone
Arcadia
*
We have parties, parades, honk our horns, etc., for our winning teams. What
can we do to thank our firefighters? There is no way to thank them enough, but
there must be some way to let them know how very much we admire and appreciate
them.
Ginger Tauber
Los Angeles
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-11-02 725 Calif fires/No excuse for bad legislation \N "Star Tribune
Mpls., MN
Editorial: California fires/No excuse for bad legislation
http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4187497.html
Published November 1, 2003
The California wildfires have provided a new smokescreen for federal
legislation that ostensibly is aimed at reducing fire risks in national
forests, but would also expedite logging and hinder citizens' rights to
challenge management of their resources.
Photos of destruction along the California coast are dramatic, but they
say little about the problem of accumulated brush and deadfall in
woodlands where, as a matter of policy, natural fire cycles have been
suppressed for a century. There are many kinds of forestland and many
kinds of forest fire, and the chaparral landscape that constitutes most of
the burned land in California is especially atypical.
It is shrubland and grassland, not woodland, and its vegetation lacks the
commercial value that might attract business interest in removing it. The
brush is unusually adapted to fire: Most of the year, you can't get it to
burn; but when the Santa Ana winds suck out the moisture and turbocharge
the oxygen flow, you can't put it out. Prescribed burning is probably the
best method for lowering wildfire risk, but it only works in conditions
where flames are most likely to get out of control.
Despite some lawmakers' suggestion that these suburbs would be prime
beneficiaries of the fire-reduction money Congress is moving to
appropriate, there is reason to think that any such help would be almost
inadvertent.
The money would be spent for thinning brush and trees on federal lands,
which comprise perhaps a mere 15 percent of acreage in the so-called
wildland/urban interface -- the fringe of settlement where both the risk
of fire and the need to fight it are highest. Indeed, all but two of the
recent fires in California began on private land.
Worse, the legislation as proposed by the Bush administration and approved
by the House made no effort to focus prevention efforts in the interface.
The Senate version allots just half the money to this zone. That's an
improvement, but the correct figure ought to be nearer to 100 percent, and
the allocation rules ought to allow more of it to be distributed as
assistance to state and local governments, tribes and homeowners. That
would focus prevention efforts where they can do the most good, while
avoiding new incentives for timber harvest in the back country.
The images of California homes turned to ash piles, amid trees remaining
green and leafy, are striking illustrations of recent research findings
about fire in the interface. Though the common understanding is that trees
catch fire and torch the houses, it's at least as likely that an ordinary
home will lift a short-lived, ground-hugging fire into the trees.
This can be prevented if home-owners take some rudimentary steps to
fireproof their dwellings and create a low-fuel zone around them by
removing brush and small trees. The payoff from this investment is
demonstrated in photos -- exactly the opposite of those coming out of
California -- of rural homes standing intact at the center of a blackened
clearing.
Some are criticizing the Californians who built or bought homes in the
chaparral for tempting the fates that have now befallen them. But a better
target is the people who keeping building far beyond established
settlement, then refuse to take responsibility for mitigating the fire
risks they introduce.
Congress should adopt policies that discourage such practices, the
contemporary equivalent of building in a flood plain and expecting a
taxpayer bailout when the waters rise. But here again, the present
legislation misses an opportunity to focus fire-reduction efforts for
maximum effect.
© Copyright 2003 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
" 2 2003-11-01 726 Great USGS News Release re - California Fires and Chaparrel Ecosystems \N "Catherine Puckett
USGS, Western Region
Office of Communications
371 Redmond Rd.
Eureka, CA 95503
PHONE: 707-442-1329
FAX: 707-442-6021
EMAIL: catherine_puckett@usgs.gov
U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Department of the Interior
News Release
Date:Oct. 30, 2003
Contact:Gloria Maender, 520-670-5596, gloria_maender@usgs.gov;
Jon Keeley, 559-565-3170, jon_keeley@usgs.gov
___________________________________________________________________
USGS Research Indicates Fire Suppression and Fuel Buildup are Not
Responsible for Chaparral Shrubland Fires in Southern California
With the loss of life and property being experienced in the fires
burning in four Southern California counties, research by the U.S.
Geological Survey on fire in the region reveals that to effectively
manage fires to help prevent loss of life and property in Southern
California shrublands, it is essential to understand the natural role
of fire in chaparral ecosystems.
Large, high-intensity fires sweep the chaparral landscape in this
region each year, threatening lives and homes, as is occurring with
such devastation in this area. Ecologists have long known that
chaparral ecosystems burn extensively and often, and that much of the
dominant vegetation in these systems is highly adapted to a fire-prone
environment. Many native plants here have seeds that require fire to
germinate, or need the kind of disturbed habitat fires leave behind to
grow. It was long thought that fire suppression played the same role
in chaparral shrublands as it has in forests, creating a build-up of
fuels that can eventually lead to more destructive fires.
"Past fire suppression is not to blame for causing large shrubland
wildfires, nor has it proven effective in halting them," said Dr. Jon
Keeley, a USGS fire researcher who studies both southern California
shrublands and Sierra Nevada forests. "Under Santa Ana conditions,
fires carry through all chaparral regardless of age class. Therefore,
prescribed burning programs over large areas to remove old stands and
maintain young growth as bands of firebreaks resistant to ignition are
futile at stopping these wildfires."
In recent studies Keeley and his colleague, C. J. Fotheringham of the
University of California, Los Angeles, analyzed historical records for
counties dominated by shrublands subject to periodic high-intensity
wildfires, from Monterey County in the north to San Diego County in
the south. They found that although fire suppression is critical to
protect homes, buildings and other structures, fire suppression does
not prevent large wildland fires in southern California shrublands
because these fires usually occur with powerful Santa Ana winds that
blow at high speeds from the desert to the coast. In the present fire,
hot Santa Ana winds of over 60 mph greatly increased the intensity and
the movement of the fire. These winds occur each autumn, at the time
when natural fuels are driest.
A close analysis of state fire records reveals the real story, said
Keeley. Since 1910, chaparral fires have become more frequent as the
human population has grown but fire size has not increased. The
researchers found that large, intense fires were equally common in the
years before widespread fire suppression as today, and do not appear
to be the result of fuels build-up. In this highly fire-prone
ecosystem, suppression efforts appear not to have greatly altered
patterns of fire incidence. Keeley notes that the greater financial
cost of fires today is most likely the result of constant urban
expansion into areas subject to frequent burning.
For example, written documents reveal that during the 19th century
human settlement of southern California altered the fire regime of
coastal California by increasing the fire frequency. This was an era
of very limited fire suppression, and yet like today, large crown
fires covering tens of thousands of acres were not uncommon. One of
the largest fires in Los Angeles County (60,000 acres) occurred in
1878, and the largest fire in Orange County's history, in 1889, was
over half a million acres.
The main ignition source of chaparral wildfires under natural
conditions is lightning, but lightning-ignited fires are of an order
of magnitude fewer in coastal ranges than in interior ranges of
California and much of the western United States, said Keeley. Keeley
hypothesized that before the arrival of humans, the majority of area
burned occurred at overlaps of summer and autumn weather events. Small
lightning-ignited fires of summer occasionally persisted until the
arrival of autumn Santa Ana conditions. Such fires then rapidly
increased in size and might continue to burn until winter rains
finally doused them.
Most fires in California shrublands are human-caused, and the
beginnings of human influence on the natural fire regime date to
pre-Columbian peoples, who used fire to convert the dense shrubland to
a more open mosaic of shrubland and grassland, long before the arrival
of Euro-Americans, said Keeley.
Fotheringham and Keeley noted that that throughout much of the
shrubland landscape humans play a dominant role in promoting fires
beyond what was likely the natural fire cycle. Future fire management,
they said, needs to take a strategic approach to prefire fuel
manipulations and move beyond evaluating effectiveness strictly in
terms of area treated. Fire management should consider designing
strategies tailored to different regions, as there are marked
differences between the central coastal region and southern California
in source of ignition, season of burning, and historical patterns of
population growth and burning.
In terms of management implications, the fire researchers note that:
· The contemporary fire regime in these shrublands mirrors the
natural crown fire regime far more than is generally accepted and that
catastrophic crown fires may be an inevitable feature of this
landscape.
· There may be little justification for using fire for resource
benefit, since vast portions of shrubland landscape currently
experience a higher-than-normal fire frequency.
· While landscapes managed by rotational prescription burning may
contribute to easier containment of fires burning under moderate
weather conditions, they are of limited value during severe weather
such as the Santa Ana winds causing such destruction to life and
property now.
· Limited and strategically placed prescription burns are the most
cost-effective way to help prevent large catastrophic wildfires in
southern California chaparral habitat.
The USGS serves the nation by providing reliable scientific
information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of
life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological,
energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of
life.
To receive USGS news releases go to
www.usgs.gov/public/list_server.html.
" 2 2003-10-31 727 Consent of the Governed: The reign of corporations, Orion, Nov/Dec 2003 \N "
Consent of the Governed
The reign of corporations and
the fight for democracy
JEFFREY KAPLAN
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-6om/Kaplan.html
This article has been abridged for the web. To read the full article, Click Here
to receive a Free Trial copy of the current issue of Orion magazine.
DESCRIBING THE UNITED STATES of the 1830s in his now-famous work, Democracy in America, the young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville depicted a country passionate about self-governance. In the fifty years since sovereignty had passed from the crown to the people, citizens of the new republic had seized upon every opportunity "to take a hand in the government of society and to talk about it....If an American should be reduced to occupying himself with his own affairs," wrote de Tocqueville, "half his existence would be snatched from him; he would feel it as a vast void in his life."The reign of corporations and
the fight for democracy
JEFFREY KAPLAN
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-6om/Kaplan.html
This article has been abridged for the web. To read the full article, Click Here
to receive a Free Trial copy of the current issue of Orion magazine.
Photograph: Mary Schjeldahl
At the center of this vibrant society was the town or county government. "Without local institutions," de Tocqueville believed, "a nation has not got the spirit of liberty," and might easily fall victim to "despotic tendencies."
In the era's burgeoning textile and nascent railroad industries, and in its rising commercial class, de Tocqueville had already detected a threat to the "equality of conditions" he so admired in America. "The friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed," he warned, on an "industrial aristocracy....For if ever again permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy make their way into the world it will have been by that door that they entered." Under those conditions, he thought, life might very well be worse than it had been under the old regimes of Europe. The old land-based aristocracy of Europe at least felt obliged "to come to the help of its servants and relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy... when it has impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in a time of crisis."
As de Tocqueville predicted, the industrial aristocrats have prevailed in America. They have garnered enormous power over the past 150 years through the inexorable development of the modern corporation. Having achieved extensive control over so many facets of our lives -- from food and clothing production to information, transportation, and other necessities -- corporate institutions have become more powerful than the sovereign people who originally granted them existence.
As late as 1840, state legislators closely supervised the operation of corporations, allowing them to be created only for very specific public benefits, such as the building of a highway or a canal. Corporations were subject to a variety of limitations: a finite period of existence, limits to the amount of property they could own, and prohibitions against one corporation owning another. After a period of time deemed sufficient for investors to recoup a fair profit, the assets of a business would often revert to public ownership. In some states, it was even a felony for a corporation to donate to a political campaign.
But in the headlong rush into the Industrial Age, legislators and the courts stripped away almost all of those limitations. By the 1860s, most states had granted owners limited liability, waiving virtually all personal accountability for an institution's cumulative actions. In 1886, without comment, the United States Supreme Court ruled for corporate owners in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, allowing corporations to be considered "persons," thereby opening the door to free speech and other civil rights under the Bill of Rights; and by the early 1890s, states had largely eliminated restrictions on corporations owning each other. By 1904, 318 corporations owned forty percent of all manufacturing assets. Corporate owners were replacing de Tocqueville's "equality of conditions" with what one writer of the time, W. J. Ghent, called "the new feudalism... characterized by a class dependence rather than by a personal dependence."
Throughout the twentieth century, federal courts have granted U.S. corporations additional rights that once applied only to human beings -- including those of "due process" and "equal protection." Corporations, in turn, have used those rights to thwart democratic efforts to check their growth and influence.
CORPORATE POWER, largely unimpeded by democratic processes, today affects municipalities across the country. But in the conservative farming communities of western Pennsylvania, where agribusiness corporations have obstructed local efforts to ban noxious corporate farming practices, the commercial feudalism de Tocqueville warned against has evoked a response that echoes the defiant spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
In late 2002 and early 2003, two of the county's townships did something that no municipal government had ever dared: They decreed that a corporation's rights do not apply within their jurisdictions.
The author of the ordinances, Thomas Linzey, an Alabama-born lawyer who attended law school in nearby Harrisburg, did not start out trying to convince the citizens of the heavily Republican county to attack the legal framework of corporate power. But over the past five years, Linzey has seen township supervisors begin to take a stand against expanding corporate influence -- and not just in Clarion County. Throughout rural Pennsylvania, supervisors have held at bay some of the most well-connected agribusiness executives in the state, along with their lawyers, lobbyists, and representatives in the Pennsylvania legislature.
Linzey anticipated none of this when he cofounded the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a grassroots legal support group, in 1995. Initially, CELDF worked with activists according to a conventional formula. "We were launched to provide free legal services to community groups, specifically grassroots community environmental organizations," Linzey says. "That involved us in permit appeals and other typical regulatory stuff." But all that soon changed.
In 1997, the state of Pennsylvania began enforcing a weak waste-disposal law, passed at the urging of agribusiness lobbyists several years earlier, which explicitly barred townships from passing any more stringent law. It had the effect of repealing the waste-disposal regulations of more than one hundred townships, regulations that had prevented corporations from establishing factory farms in their communities. The supervisors, who had seen massive hog farms despoil the ecosystems and destroy the social and economic fabric of communities in nearby states, were desperate to find a way to protect their townships. Within a year, CELDF "started getting calls from municipal governments in Pennsylvania, as many as sixty to seventy a week," Linzey says. "Of 1,400 rural governments in the state we were interacting with perhaps ten percent of them. We still are."
But factory hog farms weren't the only threat introduced by the state's industry-backed regulation. The law also served to preempt local control over the spreading of municipal sewage sludge on rural farmland. In Pittsburgh and other large cities, powerful municipal treatment agencies, seeking to avoid costly payments to landfills, began contracting with corporate sewage haulers. Haulers, in turn, relied on rural farmers willing to use the sludge as fertilizer -- a practice deemed "safe" by corporate-friendly government environmental agencies.
Pennsylvania required the sewage sludge leaving treatment plants, which contains numerous dangerous microorganisms, to be tested only at three-month intervals, and only for E. coli and heavy metals. Most individual batches arriving at farms were not tested at all. It was clear, from the local vantage, that the state Department of Environmental Protection had failed to protect the townships, turning many rural communities into toxic dumping grounds -- with fatal results. In 1995, two local youths, Tony Behun and Danny Pennock, died after being exposed to the material -- Behun while riding an all-terrain vehicle, Pennock while hunting.
"People are up in arms all over the place," said Russell Pennock, Danny's father, a millwright from Centre County. "They're considering this a normal agricultural operation. I'll tell you something right now: If anyone would have seen the way my son suffered and died, they would not even get near this stuff." After a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist linked the two deaths to a pathogen in the sludge, county supervisors tried to pass ordinances to stop the practice, but found that the state had preempted such local control with its less restrictive law.
The state's apparent complicity with the corporations outraged local elected officials. People began to understand, Linzey recalls, "that the state was being used by corporations to strip away democratic authority from local governments."
MANY SMALL FARMERS in rural Pennsylvania were already feeling the devastating effects of increasing corporate control over the market. They often had no choice but to sign contracts with large agribusiness corporations -- resulting in a modern form of peonage. By the corporate formula, a farmer must agree to raise hogs exclusively for the corporation, and to borrow $250,000 or more to build specialized factory-farm barns. Yet the corporation could cancel the contract at any time. The farmer doesn't even own the animals -- except the dead ones, which pile up in mortality bins as infectious diseases ravage the crowded pens. The agribusiness company takes the lion's share of the profits while externalizing the costs and liabilities; the farmer left financially and legally responsible for all environmental harms, including groundwater contamination from manure lagoons.
Even if farmers could find a way to market their hogs on their own, loan officers often deny applications from farmers unless they are locked into a corporate livestock contract. "The once-proud occupation of 'independent family farmer' has become a black mark on loan papers," Linzey writes on the CELDF website.
A bespectacled thirty-four-year-old, Linzey speaks with a tinge of southern drawl. Under the tutelage of historian Richard Grossman of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, he has become an eloquent speaker on organizing tactics, constitutional theory, and the history of corporations in this country. But he is also an excellent listener. He heard the indignation as incredulous supervisors came to understand their lack of authority in the regulatory arena. The rights and privileges that corporations were able to assert seemed incomprehensible to them. "There's disbelief," he says. "Then the clients attack you, and then you have to explain it to them, giving prior examples of how this works."
Township supervisors were quick to see that the problem was not simply factory farms or sludge, "but the corporations that were pushing them," Linzey says. Enormously wealthy corporations were able to secure rulings that channeled citizen energies into futile battles. The supervisors started to realize, according to Linzey, "that the only thing environmental law regulates is environmentalists."
By 1999, with CELDF's help, five townships in two counties had adopted a straightforward ordinance that challenged state law by prohibiting corporations from farming or owning farmland. Five more townships in three more counties followed suit. Also in 1999, Rush Township of Centre County became the first in the nation to pass an ordinance to control sludge spreading. Haulers who wanted to apply sewage sludge to farmland would have to test every load at their own expense -- and for a wider array of toxic substances than required by the weaker state law. Three dozen townships in seven counties have unanimously passed similar sludge ordinances to date. Citing a township's mandate to protect its citizens, Licking Township Supervisor Mik Robertson declares, "If the state isn't going to do the job, we'll do it for them."
So far, the spate of unanimous votes at the municipal level has halted both new hog farms and the spreading of additional sludge in these townships.
IN DE TOCQUEVILLE'S TIME, local communities like those in Clarion County had enormous strength and autonomy. The large corporation was nonexistent, and the federal government had little say over local affairs. Americans by and large reserved patriotic feelings for their state. People, at least those of European descent, played a more active role in local governance than they do today. Their only direct experience with the federal government was through the post office. As de Tocqueville pointed out, "real political life" was not concentrated in what was called "the Union," itself a telling term; before the Civil War the "United States" was a plural noun, as in, "The United States are a large country."
Since the consolidation of the Union and throughout the twentieth century, the autonomy of state and local governments has continued to wane as corporations have grown larger and gained more extensive rights under the U.S. Constitution. In two decisions in the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court affirmed a corporation's right to make contributions to political campaigns, considering money to be a form of "free speech." And over the past few decades, corporations have won increasingly generous interpretations of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Originally intended to prevent individual states from obstructing the flow of goods and people across their borders, the clause has been used by corporations to challenge almost any state law that might affect activity across state lines. In 2002, for example, the federal courts ruled that a Virginia law prohibiting the dumping of trash from other states violated a waste hauler's rights. In early 2003, Smithfield Foods, one of the nation's largest factory-farm conglomerates, sued on similar grounds to overturn Iowa's citizen initiative banning meatpacking companies from owning livestock, a practice the citizens believed undercut family farms.
Elsewhere, corporate rights have posed increasingly absurd threats to sovereignty. In 1994, for example, Vermont passed a law requiring the labeling of milk from cows that had received a bioengineered bovine growth hormone; in 1996 the federal courts overthrew that law, saying that the mandated disclosure violated a corporation's First Amendment right "not to speak." Four years later, a Pennsylvania township tried to use zoning laws to control the placement of a cell-phone tower; the telecommunications company sued the township and won, citing a nineteenth-century civil rights law designed to protect newly freed slaves.
Until recently, these incidents might have been seen simply as aberrations or "corporate abuse." But an increasing number of Americans have begun to consider a whole range of single-issue cases as examples of "corporate rule." The role that government has played, in their view, is merely that of a referee who enforces the rules defined by corporations for their own benefit rather than the public's.
It was this perception that motivated the townships to take their revolutionary stand. But their successes in halting factory farming and sludge applications within their borders didn't prohibit corporations from attempting to press their case in the courtroom.
In 2000, the transnational hauler Synagro-WWT, Inc. sued Rush Township, claiming its antisludge ordinance illegally preempted the weaker state law and violated the company's constitutional right of due process. It also sued each supervisor personally for one million dollars. In response, Linzey recalls, one township supervisor asked, "What the hell are the constitutional rights of corporations?" A year later, PennAg Industries Association, a statewide agribusiness trade group, funded its own suit against the factory farm ordinance in Fulton County's Belfast Township on similar constitutional grounds. Rulings on both suits are expected as early as mid-2004.
It was only after those suits had been filed that the two Clarion County townships, Licking and Porter, took the historic step of passing ordinances to decree that within their townships, "Corporations shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the Constitution of the United States," a measure that effectively declared their independence from corporate rule. For Mik Robertson, the issue is simple: "Those rights are meant for individuals." He and his two fellow supervisors later revised their ordinance to also deny corporations the right to invoke the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause; Porter Township is considering a similar amendment. Several other townships are preparing their own versions of the corporate rights ordinance, according to Linzey.
Now, when a corporation claims that an antisludge ordinance violates its rights, the townships can simply say those rights don't apply here. The corporation would then be forced to defend corporate personhood in a legal battle. That hasn't happened yet, but Linzey and his allies have energized a statewide coalition that has vowed to fight the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, raising awareness along the way about a basic question of sovereignty: By what authority can a conglomeration of capital and property, whose existence is granted by the public, deny the right of a sovereign people to govern itself democratically? Linzey predicts that such a suit could happen within a decade. That battle, he says, could ignite populist sentiment across the country -- even around the world.
Growing support for these issues was put to the test in 2002, when agribusiness interests, displeased by the spread of ordinances prohibiting factory farming, began prodding the Pennsylvania state legislature to pass an even more severe bill than the 1997 directive. This time there was no disguising it as waste-disposal regulation. The 2002 bill had one explicitly stated purpose: To strip away a township's right to control agriculture -- including sludge applications -- within its borders. When it stalled in a senate committee, the Pennsylvania legislators renumbered the bill and rammed it through before their constituents noticed. By the time CELDF found out about the bill, it was up for a vote in the house.
"We ignited opposition almost overnight," Linzey recalls. "We were working with 100-plus townships already. All we had to do was notify them."
Within two weeks, the coalition included four hundred local townships, five countywide associations of township officials, the Sierra Club, two small-farmers groups, the citizens' rights group Common Cause -- even the United Mine Workers (whose members had been sickened by sewage sludge applied on mine reclamation sites), which invited in the formidable AFL-CIO.
"It was like Sam Adams in 1766, when the Townsend Acts were passed," says Linzey. "He had already built the mob, the rabble, and just had to alert the people that this was happening as an act of oppression."
Because the issue had been defined as protection of a community's right to self-determination, the bill became unpopular and was tabled indefinitely. On Thanksgiving Eve 2002, it met its end when a mandated voting period elapsed. Astonishingly, the coalition had won.
In so defining the issue, the deliberations in Clarion County resonate far beyond its borders. In recent years, judges, mayors, and a host of local and state legislators nationwide, whose authority as democratically elected representatives is similarly threatened by the increasing legal dominance of corporations, have begun to take action:
- In Minnesota, State Representative Bill Hilty has introduced a state constitutional amendment eliminating corporate personhood.
- The Arizona Green Party is campaigning for the passage of a similar amendment in their state.
- In the northern California town of Gualala, legislators passed nonbinding resolutions in opposition to corporate personhood.
- Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have all passed laws outlawing corporate ownership of farms.
It was this other set of rights, the understanding of global "corporate rule," that brought many of the forty thousand demonstrators to the streets of Seattle in December 1999 to shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is also what incited subsequent demonstrations at the meeting of the World Bank in Prague in 2000, the meeting of the G-8 (the eight most economically powerful countries) in Genoa in 2001, the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Quιbec in 2001, and most recently, the WTO meeting in Cancun. Through it all, protesters have held fast to one principle: the right of a people to govern themselves, through their representatives, without obstruction by corporations.
One of the increasing number of public officials in the U.S. who face challenges to their sovereignty similar to those faced by their counterparts in the Pennsylvania townships is Velma Veloria, chair of the Washington State legislature's Joint Committee on Trade Policy. For fifty-three-year-old Veloria, the 1999 Seattle demonstration against the WTO was a defining event. Veloria realized that behind the tumult in the streets, "there was a whole movement that was asking for accountability and transparency." She imagined what might happen if a tanker that was not double-hulled spilled oil in Puget Sound. She and her colleagues could pass a law requiring double hulls in Seattle harbor, but under the emerging rules of the WTO, such a law could meet the same fate as a Clarion County antisludge ordinance: It could be attacked as interfering with the rights of corporations, as a barrier to trade. "It opened a whole new field for me about the sovereignty of the state," Veloria says.
California State Senator Liz Figueroa, chair of the Senate Select Committee on International Trade Policy and State Legislature, has faced similar quandaries. In 2000, Figueroa authored a bill that made it illegal for the state to do business with companies that employed slave or forced labor. Figueroa explained to the city councils and constituents in her district that foreign trade imports produced by slave labor could undercut the local economy. But as pragmatic and ethically incontestable as the bill sounds, it could potentially be challenged under the WTO's rules.
"Our job is monumental," she says, referring to her efforts to explain how trade agreements can usurp democracy. "We have to make sure our own legislative offices even know of the conflict... we have to explain the reality of the situation."
Figueroa and Veloria are not alone. International trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the WTO's General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), and the pending Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) threaten the jurisdiction of any elected or appointed representative of a sovereign people at any level of government. A National League of Cities resolution declared that the trade agreements could "undermine the scope of local governmental authority under the Constitution." Last year, the Conference of Chief Justices, consisting of the top judges from each state, wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate stating that the proposed FTAA "does not protect adequately the traditional values of constitutional federalism" and "threatens the integrity of the courts of this country." In California, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, state legislatures have expressed concern over trade agreements, as has the National Council of State Legislators. Their statements, however more discreet, nonetheless echo the chants from the streets of Seattle: "This isn't about trade, this isn't about business; this is about democracy."
DESPITE THEIR ENORMOUS ramifications, most international trade agreements remain a mystery to the average American. At the core, they are simple.
GATT and NAFTA cover the trade of physical goods between countries. They can be used to override any country's protection of the environment, for example, or of workers' rights, by defining relevant laws and regulations as illegal "barriers to trade." They provide for a "dispute resolution" process, but the process routinely determines such laws to be in violation of the agreements.
In the case of GATT, a WTO member country can sue another member country on behalf of one of its corporations, on the grounds that a country's law has violated GATT trade rules. The case is heard by a secret tribunal appointed by the WTO. State and local officials are denied legal representation. If the tribunal finds that a law or regulation of a country -- or state or township -- is a "barrier to trade," the offending country must either rescind that law or pay the accusing country whatever amount the WTO decides the company had to forgo because of the barrier, a sum that can amount to billions of dollars. In short, practitioners of democracy at any level can be penalized for interfering with international profit-making.
Through this process, WTO tribunals have overturned such U.S. laws as EPA standards for clean-burning gasoline and regulations banning fish caught by methods that endanger dolphins and sea turtles. The WTO has also effectively undermined the use of the precautionary principle, by which practices can be banned until proven safe -- in one recent instance superseding European laws forbidding the use of growth hormones in beef cattle. A WTO tribunal dismissed laboratory evidence that such hormones may cause cancer because it lacked "scientific certainty." On similar grounds, the U.S., on behalf of Monsanto and other American agribusiness giants, recently initiated an action under GATT challenging the European Union's ban on genetically modified food.
Under NAFTA, which covers Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., a corporation can sue a government directly. The case would also be heard by a secret tribunal, such as when Vancouver-based Methanex sued the U.S. over California's ban on a cancer-causing gas additive, MTBE. The company, which manufactures the additive's key ingredient, claimed that the ban failed to consider its financial interests. Since July 2001, three men -- one former U.S. official and two corporate lawyers -- have held closed hearings on the thirteenth floor of World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., to decide whether, in this instance, a democratically elected governor's executive order to protect the public should cost the U.S. $970 million in fines. The FTAA, recently fast-tracked for negotiations to put it into effect by 2005, would extend NAFTA's provisions to all of Latin America.
GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, a recent trade agreement under the WTO, takes the usurpation of democracy one step further. While GATT deals with the exchange of goods across international borders, GATS establishes certain privileges for transnational companies operating within a country. It covers "services," meaning almost anything from telecommunications to construction to mining to supplying drinking water. It even includes functions that traditionally have been carried out or closely controlled by government, like postal services and social services such as welfare -- even libraries. Activists point out that the primary focus of the GATS is to limit government involvement, "whether in the form of a law, regulation, rule, procedure, decision, administrative action or any other form," to quote the treaty itself. Public Citizen's Lori Wallach has called GATS a "massive attack on the most basic functions of local and state government."
Under GATS, any activity the fe" 2 2003-10-30 728 Ecosystem in fire zone is meant to burn \N "San Jose Mercury News
(c) Copyright 2003, San Jose Mercury News. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Ecosystem in fire zone is meant to burn;
CHAPARRAL UNIQUELY DANGEROUS
By Glennda Chui and Paul Rogers
SJ Mercury News
The fires raging across Southern California are stoking the debate over
whether and how forests should be thinned to protect the communities that
increasingly nestle up against them. Yet this week's fires have little to
do with forests. Most of the 560,231 acres that have burned so far are in
areas with few trees -- hilly expanses where homes perch amid the highly
flammable chaparral that characterizes much of California's landscape,
including the East Bay hills, the Peninsula and parts of the Santa Cruz
Mountains.
"The vast majority of these fires are burning in brush and chaparral and
grass," said Dave Reider, a U.S. Forest Service public-affairs officer.
The debate over how to prevent such fires has far more to do with the
politics of developing the housing the state's population demands. It
touches on zoning and planning, where to allow home building and how wide
to make roads, experts said.
Chaparral, from the Spanish word chaparro, or scrub oak, poses unique
problems for fire prevention. A mixture of tough shrubs such as chamise,
manzanita and sage, it is designed to burn. Many of its plants need fire to
sprout their seeds.
When left to nature, chaparral would burn every 30 to 100 years from
lightning strikes. When fire is suppressed, as it has been for a century in
populated areas of the state, shrubs grow tall, dense and, in
drought-parched summers, dangerously dry.
"There are really dense thickets of vegetation that burn quite readily,"
said Dar Roberts, an expert in remote sensing and wildfires at the
University of California-Santa Barbara. "In some areas you can hardly walk
through it. It's like one giant thick fuel bed."
State law requires rural homeowners to clear brush at least 30 feet from
their homes to reduce fire risk. Other laws include bans on highly
flammable wood shake roofs.
Property owners and government agencies also can cut fire breaks around
large brushy areas to limit the spread of flames. But in the end,
particularly when high Santa Ana winds kick up, chaparral burns and the
risk can never be eliminated, experts say.
"These are fire ecosystems. There will be fire," said Chris Rowney, deputy
director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in
Sacramento.
Philip Rundel, an ecologist at the University of California-Los Angeles,
said Southern California has made a lot of progress in trying to head off
fire disasters. In an environmental report card put out by UCLA's Institute
of the Environment in 1999, he gave the region's fire-prevention efforts a
B grade; 10 years before, he said, he would have slapped them with a D.
Still, in the face of natural forces like those at work in Southern
California, there's only so much people can do, Rundel said.
Preventive measures "will help you in an average fire," he said. "But when
you get these firestorms with 75 mph winds and abnormally dry conditions,
all bets are off."
Firefighters this week do not have precise estimates yet of exactly how
much of the fire burned in chaparral as opposed to forests. Some areas of
the Cleveland, San Bernardino and Los Padres national forests were burning,
said Reider. And ominously, the fires late Tuesday moved toward the
forested resort community of Lake Arrowhead, where overgrown pine thickets,
drought and a bark- beetle infestation have left the area extremely vulnerable.
Conditions in the Bay Area are somewhat better, experts said -- but not by
much.
"The differences are not huge," said John Radke of UC-Berkeley, who has
mapped the risk of firestorms in the East Bay hills. "Yes, we have more
moisture, but that just means we have more vegetation and it grows faster."
He said the area's steep hills encourage the spread of fire. In brush grown
thick after years of fire suppression, "a lot of the underbrush dies off
and it just sits there, like kindling in a fireplace."
And people compound the problem by planting highly flammable landscaping,
Radke said. Pull apart a juniper bush and "it's all dry, woody debris. You
may as well just put cans of gasoline outside of your house."
Despite the fact that brush has fueled these fires, the disaster has drawn
attention to proposals to thin forests.
As soon as today, Congress is expected to vote on a compromise bill to
speed logging of national forests in fire-prone areas to reduce the buildup
of flammable material.
Howard Gantman, a press officer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said
some of the $760 million in the bill could be spent in grants to states and
local governments to reduce fire risk in privately owned chaparral areas.
A related bill approved by the House, and modeled on President Bush's
"Healthy Forests Initiative," does not contain such funding for private
land grants.
"That was not the principal thrust of the president's initiative," said
Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the Forest Service.
"That's because the non-federal lands are generally in better shape than
federal lands."
Contact Glennda Chui at gchui@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5453, and Paul
Rogers at progers@ mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5045.
" 2 2003-10-30 729 Exploiting wildfires, editorial \N "http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21479~1731464,00.html#
Long Beach Press Telegram
Exploiting wildfires
Congress: Bill would do little to prevent future disasters.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003 - During a time of disaster, particularly one as
incredible as these California wildfires, the public usually looks for
something anything that might help stop it from happening again. Unfortunately
that emotion is being cynically exploited by proponents of a forest bill now
being pushed in the U.S. Congress.
The so-called Healthy Forests initiative is being fast-tracked though Congress
while the Southern California fires are still raging out of control, as houses
are still burning and people are being killed, hurt and left homeless. Since
the initiative doesn't even attempt to address what is happening in Southern
California, there is no reason (other than shameless political motives) for it
to be passed now.
The Healthy Forests bill would allow the thinning of federal forests in a
manner that logging interests have been wanting for years, and would do
nothing to address the problems of wildfire in suburban areas. The House
passed the bill earlier this year, but it stalled in the Senate. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein is pushing for a compromise that would at least add some funding to
Southern California prevention efforts, but she, too, is using the wildfires
to pressure a reluctant Senate. Sen. Barbara Boxer's competing proposal
weights much more heavily on the side of protecting homes and people.
Healthy Forests, in the form that passed the House, would simply thin federal
forests, not stage controlled burns or clear the brush and the chaparral that
act like tinder boxes in suburban hillside areas. In case Washington hasn't
been paying attention, Southern California wildfires don't start with trees
they start with dry brush and spread to trees and houses with help from the
Santa Ana winds.
Some careful thinning of older forests may indeed be part of the solution to
fire prevention, but it absolutely should not be the focus. Nature doesn't
magically thin forests by evaporating individual trees it clears whole
sections of forest though burning. When we don't allow the small, natural
burns to occur, it should come as no surprise when they flare up into much
more intense conflagrations.
Our exploitation radar also goes up when proponents of Healthy Forests, mostly
Bush Administration officials and House Republicans, use words like
"fireproofing" woodlands, as one recently said of the bill. The fires in
Southern California are the result of a combination of factors, including
drought, strong Santa Ana winds, more property development in high-risk areas,
heavy, dry fuel, and an ignition source. And, whether we like it or not, fires
are an inevitable risk for people who choose to live in hillsides and canyons.
Governmental resources can help reduce that risk, but not eliminate it.
Even if Healthy Forests were a stellar piece of legislation, this is not the
time to be passing far-reaching national fire policy legislation. We should
allow some time to let the firefighters finish the difficult task ahead, for
grieving families to mourn, homeless families to find shelter, for officials
to assess the damage, before proceeding to a debate over the future of
fire-prevention efforts.
Exploiting the Southern California wildfires for political gain leaves a worse
taste in the mouth than ash and soot. Congress should back off the Healthy
Forest initiative at least until the smoke clears.
" 2 2003-10-30 730 Fire Race Toward Arrowhead \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-main29oct29002438,1,3552823.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FIRES
Blaze Races Toward Arrowhead
Tens of Thousands Evacuate; Simi Fire Nears Stevenson Ranch
By Sue Fox, Daryl Kelley and Tony Perry
Times Staff Writers
October 29, 2003
An unrelenting wildfire jumped a fire line Tuesday in the San Bernardino
Mountains and headed toward Lake Arrowhead, devouring homes and disease-racked
forests in its path. Downcast fire officials said they appeared to be losing
their battle for the alpine resort region.
The blaze, potentially catastrophic, was one of several fires that have burned
close to 900 square miles of Southern California in the last week an area
larger than Orange County leaving 16 people dead and destroying at least
2,000 homes, state officials said. Others raged from Ventura County to Mexico,
forcing tens of thousands of additional evacuations and nearing more
communities, including the Stevenson Ranch subdivision in northern Los Angeles
County.
Fire destroyed the hamlet of Cuyamaca in the Cleveland National Forest east of
San Diego, authorities there said.
"We are experiencing a history-altering event," said James M. Wright of the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "We feel this is no
doubt the most devastating natural disaster California's faced, and also no
doubt the most costly."
A shift in the weather brought cooling marine breezes to soot-caked fire
crews. It helped arrest some fires, but fanned others in new and treacherous
directions. The National Weather Service was predicting gusty winds for this
afternoon, which could hamper firefighting efforts in some areas.
As exhausted firefighters struggled to gain some measure of control over the
fires, the head of the U.S. Forest Service sounded downhearted.
"It isn't getting better yet," Dale N. Bosworth said in an interview with The
Times in Sacramento. "It's pretty grim."
Smoke filled the sky throughout much of Southern California, turning it a
range of otherworldly colors, from a putrid grayish yellow to salmon pink.
Close to the fires, eyes stung, lungs ached.
Residents of threatened communities, many of whom moved to the fringe of
wilderness to escape urban stress, were confronted with life-and-death
decisions and wrenching heartache.
In the town of Running Springs, along Rim of the World Highway between Lake
Arrowhead and Big Bear, local fire Battalion Chief Ben Wilkins was besieged
with telephone calls from anxious residents who had evacuated and wanted
status reports on their homes and properties.
Wilkins, who recently bought a three-story log home in Running Springs, was
sympathetic but frank. "I fully expect to lose my home today," he told the
callers.
"That's the reality of the whole thing," he said. "But I've got insurance, and
I'll rebuild. Our main concern is that no one loses their life here."
Besides threatening homes, the fire at Stevenson Ranch endangered the Old
Glory oak tree, where an activist spent 71 days nearly a year ago in an effort
to save the tree from a road-widening project.
"It's gonna be gone," said Nathan Gonzales, a spokesman for the Los Angeles
County Fire Department.
John Quigley, the tree-sitting activist, said he was watching the fire on
television in his Pacific Palisades home. "Obviously this thing is much bigger
than the tree right now," he said. "I'm just here sending out some good
thoughts for the people out there."
In Washington, House and Senate negotiators tentatively agreed to provide $500
million in emergency funding to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency
respond to the California wildfires, as well as to Hurricane Isabel.
The spending was proposed by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who called it a
"down payment" on the amount that will be needed to repair and rebuild. He
estimated the cost at more than $4 billion more than twice the losses
incurred in the Oakland Hills fire of 1991, which had hitherto been considered
California's most expensive.
State officials estimated that damages from the current fires would exceed $2
billion.
Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives in the nation's capital today to meet
with members of Congress. A Schwarzenegger spokesman said the governor-elect
planned to meet Thursday with FEMA officials.
President Bush, who on Monday declared four California counties to be a
federal disaster area, promised again Tuesday to help the state.
"I express my deep concerns and sympathies for those whose lives have been
hurt badly by these fires," the president said. "The federal government is
working closely with the state government to provide the resources necessary
to help the brave firefighters do their duty."
There were some encouraging trends Tuesday, including the shift from hot, dry,
Santa Ana winds to cooler, moister onshore air flows. However, the trend
alarmed firefighters around Lake Arrowhead, who had considered the Santa Ana
winds their ally in pushing the fire down the south-facing slope of the
mountains and away from resort communities.
Firefighters gained the upper hand on the Grand Prix fire, which burned nearly
50,000 acres in San Bernardino County just west of the Old fire, the one
threatening Arrowhead. The Grand Prix was 50% contained Tuesday, and fire
commanders said they had successfully defended the communities of Mt. Baldy
Village and Lytle Creek.
"That pretty much ties up most of the Grand Prix fire," fire official Rusty
Witwer said.
A major break in the electrical transmission system was repaired, eliminating
the likelihood that rolling blackouts might add to the region's misery.
The Southwest Power Link, a major transmission line between Arizona and the
San Diego area, had been knocked out by wildfires Monday. It returned to
operation Tuesday, according to the California Independent System Operator,
which manages the state's electrical grid.
In addition, the second of two Ventura County power plants that had been
closed Sunday because of fires returned to service Tuesday, Cal-ISO
spokeswoman Stephanie McCorkle said. The other unit was turned back on Monday.
San Bernardino
The most dramatic developments Tuesday were in the mountains of San Bernardino
County, where fire officials have worried for years about the explosive
combination of brush-choked hillsides and pine forests ravaged by a bark
beetle infestation.
As an estimated 20,000 mountain residents joined in a mostly orderly
evacuation, fire roared through forests and homes in a line that roughly
paralleled Highway 18, the Rim of the World Highway, and was moving north
toward Lake Arrowhead.
"We're absolutely heartbroken," San Bernardino County Supervisor Dennis
Hansberger said. "We tried our best to prevent this, but it appears our worst
fears are being realized today."
Hansberger joined several fire and law enforcement officials at a news
conference dominated by fears that the dry, vulnerable San Bernardino National
Forest was doomed. Officials said 50,000 residences and 2,000 businesses in
the mountains were threatened.
"The chances of preventing it from going into the communities on the
mountaintop are very low," said Hal Mortier, U.S. Forest Service incident
commander of the fire.
Mortier conceded there might come a time when the flames could prove
overwhelming to fire crews on the ground, leading to a retreat and a resigned
decision by fire officials to fight the fire exclusively from the air.
By day's end, officials said some homes had been lost in the communities of
Rimforest, Crest Park and Skyforest, all along Highway 18. Tim Sappok, a
division chief with the California Department of Forestry, said Santa's
Village was also threatened but had sustained only moderate damage.
"We're at the mercy of Mother Nature right now," said Sappok. "We face
devastating fuel conditions, devastating weather. This fire hasn't done what
we want it to do. Its intensity has been surprising."
California Highway Patrol officers presided over the evacuation along Highway
18. Traffic was moderately congested, said CHP official Tom Carmichael.
>From the point where Highways 18 and 38 meet, at the western edge of Big Bear
Lake, a long stream of pickups, cars and SUVs formed a sad procession out of
town. Back seats were filled to the roof with clothes, coolers, animal
carriers and an assortment of other belongings. Dogs sniffed the smoky air.
Most stores and businesses were closed, although some gas stations remained
open and were doing a brisk business in fuel and food.
"We have no idea where we're going," said Ron Hammer, 42, owner of a Lake
Arrowhead property maintenance business, as he prepared to leave with six
family members and two dogs. "I'm just trying to get out of here."
San Bernardino County sheriffs released the names of two elderly men who had
suffered fatal heart attacks that were attributed to the fire the third and
fourth such deaths in the county.
Gene Knowles, 75, of Big Bear died Sunday and Chad William, 70, of Crestline
died Saturday night, authorities said without elaborating.
San Bernardino County sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson said the deaths could
elevate charges against two people who were being sought for setting the fire.
"We consider all four of these deaths homicides," Patterson said.
The county announced it was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading
to their capture.
San Diego
With tiny Cuyamaca gone, hundreds of firefighters and a dozen engine companies
formed a defensive line late Tuesday on the western outskirts of Julian, a
historic gold-mining town that is now a tourist destination known for its
apple festival. Julian was directly in the path of the fire, and firefighters
hoped to save the town by lighting backfires and creating fire breaks.
Fire officials said it had been the first time they could mount an organized
defense against the wildfires, rather than merely reacting as the blazes cut a
path through the county.
Authorities said hundreds of structures had been incinerated in Cuyamaca. It
was not clear how many of those were homes.
Supervisor Greg Cox, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, pleaded with
homeowners not to delay when ordered to evacuate. He said several of the
deaths caused by the fire had been the result of people's not moving fast
enough as the flames approached. Officials have made that statement several
times since Sunday, although accounts by some witnesses appear to contradict it.
"When you are requested to leave, as hard as it may be, you need to do it,"
Cox said.
As 11 damage assessment teams fanned out throughout the county to record the
destruction, officials said the number of homes destroyed by the Cedar and
Paradise fires might exceed 1,200. Some areas were still considered too unsafe
for damage assessment, officials said.
More than 4,000 firefighters fought the blazes that stretched the length of
the county, from Valley Center to the Mexican border. More than 300,000 acres
have been blackened in San Diego County.
In Scripps Ranch, an affluent neighborhood in the city of San Diego, the
number of destroyed homes was put at 345, with the inspection process not yet
completed. Many of the homes were worth more than $1 million.
County Medical Examiner Glenn Wagner said he expected the county death toll to
rise above the current 12 as investigators searched isolated pockets of homes
in the Ramona-Lakeside area, where fire rampaged early Sunday morning.
"I can't believe everybody got out of their homes," Wagner said.
Much of the area continued in a kind of voluntary lockdown. Schools and
businesses were closed. The county Health and Human Services Agency redoubled
efforts to get meals to elderly people trapped at home.
Thousands remained in temporary shelters.
The Navy ordered the nuclear aircraft carrier John C. Stennis back to port so
that sailors could return to their homes; another 800 sailors volunteered to
assist firefighters, officials said. The guided missile destroyer Mustin was
ordered to return at top speed from Pearl Harbor.
Firefighters from Northern California and other Western states began pouring
into San Diego to join local personnel. Some expressed amazement at the extent
of the devastation. "This is catastrophic," said one Nevada firefighter.
Ventura/Los Angeles
In Ventura and Los Angeles counties, the fight against the 95,000-acre Simi
fire moved onto rugged ridges overlooking Chatsworth, and a spur approached
the Stevenson Ranch subdivision in Los Angeles County, just west of Santa
Clarita. From near Interstate 5, flames could be seen curling into the sky
along the hilltops. Ash fell like snow, whirling in circles before settling on
the ground and blanketing cars.
Late Tuesday evening, fire officials said they were hopeful that they could
keep the fire from burning any homes at Stevenson Ranch.
To the northwest, fire crews near Fillmore tried to stop a second large blaze,
the Piru fire, from pushing through the Sespe Wilderness toward Santa Paula.
But the 30,500-acre Piru fire scaled Sespe Creek on Tuesday morning, and
county Fire Chief Bob Roper said it could consume 200,000 acres before it's done.
"It's now burning in brush that has not burned in 60 years," Roper reported to
the Board of Supervisors. "It's going to be tough to fight."
Heavy fire-fighting equipment is not allowed in national wilderness areas and
no hand crews were available to attack it.
Evacuation alerts were issued for the Santa Paula Canyon area, including
Thomas Aquinas College, and the Upper Ojai Valley.
But Roper said he did not think the fire would move as fast as the Simi fire
did last Saturday when it advanced 20 miles in a day. And there were signs
that cooler weather and light ocean breezes were helping firefighters by
tamping down flames.
All day long, about 1,000 firefighters also attacked hot spots near the farm
communities of Piru and Fillmore, lighting still more backfires to keep flames
away from structures.
As the Piru fire crept west, the Simi fire's eastward movement also slowed
near Chatsworth, a part of the city of Los Angeles in the northeast corner of
the San Fernando Valley, as more than 1,100 firefighters in both counties
battled it to a standstill.
Also Tuesday, Jerry Moore, a U.S. Forest Service special agent who supervises
the law enforcement division, said an arson suspect had confessed to starting
the Piru fire, which has burned more than 50,000 acres in the Los Padres
National Forest.
Moore said the U.S. attorney's office was investigating the suspect. Thom
Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said no one has been taken
into custody in connection with the fire and no one has been charged.
*
Contributing to the fire coverage were Times staff writers Fred Alvarez,
Patricia Ward Biederman, Sharon Bernstein, Miguel Bustillo, Carolyn Cole,
Amanda Covarrubias, Richard Fausset, Robin Fields, Sue Fox, Megan Garvey,
Scott Glover, Anna Gorman, Gregory W. Griggs, Carla Hall, Daniel Hernandez,
Allison Hoffman, Peter Y. Hong, Daryl Kelley, Mitchell Landsberg, Jack
Leonard, Caitlin Liu, Eric Malnic, Seema Mehta, Geoffrey Mohan, Monte Morin,
Sandra Murillo, Tony Perry, Stuart Pfeifer, Gary Polakovic, Bob Pool, Lance
Pugmire, Paul Pringle, H.G. Reza, Joel Rubin, Louis Sahagun, Kristina
Sauerwein, Ann M. Simmons, Doug Smith, Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Julie Tamaki, Wendy
Thermos, Nancy Vogel, Spencer Weiner, Janet Wilson, Tracy Wilson, Nancy Wride,
Kimi Yoshino, Nora Zamichow and Alan Zarembo.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-10-29 731 California's fires & blazing density problem \N "Christian Science Monitor
October 28, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1028/p01s01-usgn.html
California's blazing density problem
The state wrestles with age-old issues of growth amid some of the worst
fires in history.
By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
LOS ANGELES - The arc of fires that has been moving with virtual impunity
across southern California is straining the state's fire-fighting capacity
and raising age-old questions about the density of development in exurban
areas.
With hundreds of homes destroyed in what has now become one of the worst
series of wild fires in California's history, local officials are already
mulling some familiar lessons: how to improve building codes, enforcement,
and containment technology. But beneath this reexamination looms a more
basic question: Is California overbuilt for its geography?
Across the West, similar critiques now surface every time there is a
devastating fire. As more residents move into semiwilderness areas on the
fringe of cities, the ability of firefighters to protect homes - even with
more and more stringent fire codes - is becoming increasingly difficult.
Yet the challenges in southern California are particularly acute. By late
October, the region has usually gone through at least five months without
rain, turning area scrub into kindling. Then come the Santa Ana winds,
which start in the mountains of Nevada and Utah and blow across the high
desert like a hair dryer. Add in the roof peak by jowl housing
developments, and you've got a potential nightmare for any fire crew.
Yet Californians seem more willing than most to challenge the elements.
Almost reflexively, they continue to build homes amid the very grasses,
flint-dry chapparal, oily undergrowth, and wind-sucking canyons that
periodically turn hillsides into furnaces.
"The people who gravitate to California are, far more than those going
elsewhere, people on personal quests, who fly in the face of other's doubts
and attempts to straitjacket them," says Tracy Nini, who runs a
head-hunting firm in Sherman Oaks, Calif. "They have come here to answer
their highest dreams and aspirations, to seek fame and fortune, to be
pioneers. They are not people who would be happy living in Middletown, Ohio."
In other words, their motivation may be as obvious as it is defiant: a
combination of the California state of mind, geography, and weather.
Perhaps better put, it is the coincidence of the state's natural beauty,
year-round sunshine, outdoor aesthetic - and the penchant for marching to a
different drummer. Like dwellers in hurricane-prone states and the
Midwest's "Tornado Alley," residents simply feel that fire threats are part
of the natural equation and life choice of being here.
Indeed, one insurance company now says fully half of the state's
residential structures are at risk of the same kind of
neighborhood-and-freeway hopping fires that have claimed hundreds of homes
in recent days.
Take Tanya Thomas. As she watched coverage of the fires this week, the
Laguna Beach resident recalled the horrors in her own community 10 years
ago: walls of flame racing up residential streets, devouring homes,
blackening skies, and forcing evacuations of entire neighborhoods.
A decade later, the retail manager has another sobering observation. "To be
honest with you, my neighborhood probably has the exact same fire hazards
here today that we had then and that we had 20 years before that when fires
wiped out these neighborhoods ... but I would never dream of moving out."
Such resolve has been visible in recent days by owners scrambling to save
their residences from nearby fires. Donning face masks and Kevlar blankets
to resist heat, they have been hosing down their roofs and siding,
hatcheting underbrush, and spraying swimming-pool water down hillsides as
fire retardant.
Even by southern California standards, the latest fires have been unusually
destructive. By early Monday, at least six stubborn blazes were burning
from the Mexican border to the suburbs north of Los Angeles, destroying
more than 800 homes and charring some 470 square miles of land. More than a
dozen people have perished, making it the deadliest series of fires since
the 1991 conflagration in the hills of Oakland, Calif., that killed 25 and
destroyed 3,200 structures.
A state of emergency has been declared in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San
Diego, and Ventura counties. Early Monday, at least 30,000 homes remained
in danger near San Diego alone. In the land where it rarely ever snows,
residents had to cope with an eerie dusting of ash, as if from a hiccup by
Vesuvius.
Despite all the damage, many local residents are trying to learn what they
can to prevent future tragedies. Few seem inclined to move. "People don't
move blindly into these fire-prone communities," says Robert Spano, a sound
engineer for Universal Studios who used to live in Topanga Canyon, just
outside Los Angeles. "They're not stupid. They take care to be very
conscientious about brush abatement and fire regulations ... but they are
not going to move somewhere else because of fire hazards."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and
related links
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All
rights reserved.
" 2 2003-10-28 732 Stuffing the Electronic Ballot Box? \N "October 28, 2003
(NY) <http://www.mpnewspapers.com/>Messenger Post Newspapers
Stuffing the Electronic Ballot Box?
by Michael Winship
In my madcap, misspent youth, while working on a presidential campaign a
friend and I discovered it was remarkably easy to become a New York State
election inspector. All it required was filling out a form and being
deputized by some legal type.
On Primary Day, armed with official ID, we dashed around like irritating
Junior G-Men, making sure the polling places were open on time,
electioneering was kept 500 feet away and that sound trucks blaring the
virtues of various candidates were properly out of earshot. Hey, it was
upstate New York: you make your fun with what you find.
Today, though, to be an effective election inspector you may need an
advanced degree in electrical engineering or even more important, an
expertise in computer fraud. Party hacks now have the opportunity to become
party hackers.
One of the (other) outcomes of the bedlam that was the 2000 Florida
presidential election was a rush to rectify the problems of butterfly
ballots and hanging chads that so bedeviled the election officials of the
state affectionately known to many of us as America s Foot.
The solution is the DRE Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machine. Most
are computerized touch screen systems not unlike an ATM. They re supposed
to be faster, more accurate and efficient. But as with so much of our
modern technology, there are dangers and drawbacks that haven t yet been
adequately addressed nationwide. There are bugs in the system that could
negate your vote and throw elections.
Last October, President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA),
promising nearly $4 billion for states to buy the new electronic voting
machines. On the face of it, an excellent idea. But the potential for
monumental mischief makes old-fashioned ballot box stuffing seem as
innocent as soaping windows or toilet-papering the neighborhood chestnut tree.
In last year s midterm election, Georgia spent $54 million to become the
first state to use nothing but touch screens for voting. The results were
startling: although the final polls showed the incumbent Democratic
governor and Senator Max Cleland winning re-election (Cleland in a
squeaker), both were defeated.
As <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1013-01.htm>reported by Andrew
Gumbel of the British newspaper, The Independent, and others, similar
swings took place in several other states. Republicans point to last-minute
campaigning by the President, the imminent war in Iraq and other factors,
all of which may be true, but the results have many wondering if
malfunctioning or rigged electronic machines played a part.
They can only wonder because much of the technology is covered by trade
secrecy contracts and information about systems software is proprietary.
Nonetheless, a pattern of lax oversight that could permit malfunctions,
sloppy or malicious coding, the insertion of worms, viruses, "Trojan
horses" and other outside tampering has emerged. Plus, the methodology for
proper recounts remains largely lacking. Some kind of verifiable paper
receipt is imperative.
What s more, although the opportunities for political cyber-chicanery are
bipartisan, the current, big three DRE manufacturers Diebold, Sequoia and
Election systems and Software (ES&S) have each made large contributions to
the Republican Party.
Some are perturbed by a letter Diebold CEO Walden O Dell wrote inviting
Ohio Republicans to a $1000 a plate fundraiser while Diebold was bidding
for the state s voting machine business. In it, he said he was "committed
to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year." (O
Dell has since denied he meant anything to do with Diebold s product. Feel
better?)
We all must remain aware and vigilant. Perhaps companies that manufacture
the electronic voting systems should be forbidden from making political
contributions (I know the First Amendment issues inherent in such
restrictions). And New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt has introduced
legislation demanding a paper trail to verify results.
"I don t think there s wholesale election fraud going on at this time,"
Stamford University Professor of Computer Science David Dill told the
website truthout.org. "But I can t prove it, which is the whole problem. My
greatest worry is really an erosion of confidence in the elections. When
people can no longer trust the elections I think that will undermine the
legitimacy of everybody in government."
The right to vote is one of our most precious. If threatened, the old
sci-fi nightmare becomes reality: the machines and their corporate
manufacturers, not "we, the people," will be in charge.
Michael Winship is a former writer with Bill Moyers of "NOW with Bill Moyers,"
" 2 2003-10-28 733 The Perfect Fire, Davis, TomDispatch.com \N "October 28, 2003
by TomDispatch.com
The Perfect Fire
by Mike Davis
Sunday morning in San Diego. The sun is an eerie orange orb, like the eye of a hideous jack-o-lantern. The fire on the flank of Otay Mountain, which straddles the Mexican border, generates a huge whitish-grey mushroom plume. It is a rather sublime sight, like Vesuvius in eruption. Meanwhile the black sky rains ash from incinerated national forests and dream homes.
It may be the fire of the century in Southern California. By brunch on Sunday eight separate fires were raging out of control, and the two largest had merged into a single forty-mile-long red wall. The megalopolis's emergency resources have been stretched to the breaking point and California's National Guard reinforcements are 10,000 miles away in Iraq. Panic is creeping into the on-the-spot television reports from scores of chaotic fire scenes.
Fourteen deaths have already been reported in San Bernardino and San Diego counties, and nearly 1000 homes have been destroyed. More than 100,000 suburbanites have been evacuated, triple as many as during the great Arizona fire of 2002 or the Canberra (Australia) holocaust last January. Tens of thousands of others have their cars packed with family pets and mementos. We're all waiting to flee. There is no containment, and infernal fire weather is predicted to last through Tuesday.
It is, of course, the right time of the year for the end of the world.
Just before Halloween, the pressure differential between the Colorado Plateau and Southern California begins to generate the infamous Santa Ana winds. A spark in their path becomes a blowtorch.
Exactly a decade ago, between Oct. 26 and Nov. 7, firestorms fanned by Santa Anas destroyed more than a thousand homes in Pasadena, Malibu, and Laguna Beach. In the last century, nearly half the great Southern California fires have occurred in October.
This time climate, ecology, and stupid urbanization have conspired to create the ingredients for one of the most perfect firestorms in history. Experts have seen it coming for months.
First of all, there is an extraordinary supply of perfectly cured, tinder-dry fuel. The weather year, 2001-02, was the driest in the history of Southern California. Here in San Diego we had only 3 inches of rain. (The average is about 11 inches). Then last winter it rained just hard enough to sprout dense thickets of new underbrush (a.k.a. fire starter), all of which have now been desiccated for months.
Meanwhile in the local mountains, an epic drought, which may be an expression of global warming, opened the way to a bark beetle infestation which has already killed or is killing 90% of Southern California's pine forests. Last month, scientists grimly told members of Congress at a special hearing at Lake Arrowhead that "it is too late to save the San Bernardino National Forest." Arrowhead and other famous mountain resorts, they predicted, would soon "look like any treeless suburb of Los Angeles."
These dead forests represent an almost apocalyptic hazard to more than 100,000 mountain and foothill residents, many of whom depend on a single, narrow road for their fire escape. Earlier this year, San Bernardino county officials, despairing of the ability to evacuate all their mountain hamlets by highway, proposed a bizarre last-ditch plan to huddle residents on boats in the middle of Arrowhead and Big Bear lakes.
Now the San Bernardinos are an inferno, along with tens of thousand acres of chaparral-covered hillsides in neighboring counties. As always during Halloween fire seasons, there is hysteria about arson. Invisible hands may have purposely ignited several of the current firestorms. Indeed, in Santa Ana weather like this, one maniac on a motorcycle with a cigarette lighter can burn down half the world.
This is a specter against which grand inquisitors and wars against terrorism are powerless to protect us. Moreover, many fire scientists dismiss "ignition" -- whether natural, accidental, or deliberate -- as a relatively trivial factor in their equations. They study wildfire as an inevitable result of the accumulation of fuel mass. Given fuel, "fire happens."
The best preventive measure, of course, is to return to the native-Californian practice of regular, small-scale burning of old brush and chaparral. This is now textbook policy, but the suburbanization of the fire terrain makes it almost impossible to implement it on any adequate scale. Homeowners despise the temporary pollution of "controlled burns" and local officials fear the legal consequences of escaped fires.
As a result, huge plantations of old, highly flammable brush accumulate along the peripheries and in the interstices of new, sprawled-out suburbs. Since the devastating 1993 fires, tens of thousands of new homes have pushed their way into the furthest recesses of Southern California's coastal and inland fire-belts. Each new homeowner, moreover, expects heroic levels of protection from underfunded county and state fire agencies.
Fire, as a result, is politically ironic. Right now, as I watch San Diego's wealthiest new suburb, Scripps Ranch, in flames, I recall the Schwarzenegger fund-raising parties hosted there a few weeks ago. This was an epicenter of the recent recall and gilded voices roared to the skies against the oppression of an out-of-control public sector. Now Arnold's wealthy supporters are screaming for fire engines, and "big government" is the only thing standing between their $3 million homes and the ash pile.
Halloween fires, of course, burn shacks as well as mansions, but Republicans tend to disproportionately concentrate themselves in the wrong altitudes and ecologies. Indeed it is striking to what extent the current fire map (Rancho Cucamonga, north Fontana, La Verne, Simi Valley, Vista, Ramona, Eucalyptus Hills, Scripps Ranch, and so on) recapitulates geographic patterns of heaviest voter support for the recall.
The fires also cruelly illuminate the new governor's essential dilemma: how to service simultaneous middle-class demands for reduced spending and more public services. The white-flight gated suburbs insist on impossible standards of fire protection, but refuse to pay either higher insurance premiums (fire insurance in California is "cross-subsidized" by all homeowners) or higher property taxes. Even a Hollywood superhero will have difficulty squaring that circle.
Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and most recently, Dead Cities: and Other Tales.
Copyright © 2003 Mike Davis
Tomdispatch.com is researched, written and edited by Tom Engelhardt, a fellow at the Nation Institute, for anyone in despair over post-September 11th US mainstream media coverage of our world and ourselves. © 2003 TomDispatch.com
" 2 2003-10-28 734 Made to burn: Nature gets its way in California \N "Tuesday, October 28, 2003
<http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/>©2003 San Francisco
Chronicle | <http://www.sfgate.com/feedback/>Feedback
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Even though some steps may be taken to mitigate the effects, the great
wildfires now laying waste to Southern California are as unavoidable as
earthquakes, ecologists say - the price nature extracts from those who
would make this state their home.
"California's ecology is a fire ecology," said Karen Terrill, a spokeswoman
for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "This
landscape evolved with fire, and that's not going to change. This is
another example of Mother Nature letting us know she's more powerful than
we are."
Fire experts cited four reasons for the disaster:
-- Drought: Southern California is in its fourth year of drought, and dead
brush and trees are crackling dry.
-- The Santa Anas: These hot, dry seasonal winds are exceptionally strong
this year, serving as a bellows driving the fires.
-- Interface: The term wildfire experts use to describe develop ment in
wildland areas. The more interface, the more property loss from wildfires.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the more time firefighters
spend saving structures, the less time they have to stop wildfires by
digging fire breaks and setting backfires. -- Heavy fuel loads:
California's forests and brushlands are overstocked with small trees,
bug-killed big timber and chaparral. Additionally, many native brush
species are highly resinous, uniquely suited for explosive combustion.
Of these factors, only interface and fuel loads are susceptible to human
management. But the task of regulating development in wildland areas and
devising comprehensive fuel reduction policies has proved daunting, riven
by squabbling from a variety of interest groups.
A recent effort by the Bush administration to accelerate thinning in
national forests as a means of "fireproofing" woodlands has been roundly
condemned by environmental groups, who see the initiative as a stalking
horse for increased commercial logging.
The most compelling factor in the current south state fires is the Santa
Ana winds - an indirect result of autumn and winter storms in the
Northwest, said Basil Newmerzhycky, a meteorologist with the National
Weather Service who studies fire weather.
"As these systems go south and onshore, they create strong northeast wind
patterns in Southern California's mountains," Newmerzhycky said. "These
winds travel from the 9,000 foot level downslope, accelerating, warming and
drying as they go. They are highly localized. You feel them on the western
slopes, but seldom in downtown L.A. Sometimes they can reach in excess of
70 miles an hour."
Though the current Santa Anas haven't reached those velocities,
Newmerzhycky said, "they're definitely in the higher magnitude, the upper
end of the range."
With strong Santa Anas, the low humidities they bring and dry fuels, all
that is needed for catastrophe is an ignition source.
"We're seeing close to the world's record for fire spread rates down there
right now," said Larry Hood, a fire and fuels specialist with the U.S.
Forest Service in the Lassen National Forest.
"They've had spread rates of 10 miles in seven hours," said Hood. "When a
fire does that, you don't even try to fight it. You just hope you can get
all the people out of the way in time."
One way to minimize human tragedy in wildfire situations is to keep people
from living where wildfires occur. But increasing numbers of Californians
want to live in or near woodlands, whatever the risk.
"Whenever we see a new subdivision go up and the developer is boasting it
abuts national forest land, we figure our firefighters are going to be
getting to know those new homeowners up close and personal in a few years,"
said Matt Mathes, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service's California region.
"Like CDF, we try to encourage people to clear brush around their homes,
but it's hard to keep pace," Mathes said. "And when a big fire gets going,
it'll kick embers miles ahead of itself. At that point, it's triage. With a
lot of homes, you know there's no chance of saving them." CDF spokeswoman
Terrill said the growth of residential interface in the forests drains
critical resources from firefighting efforts.
"The best way to fight wildfire is to cut a line, put your firefighters
behind it, and deny the oncoming fire fuel by burning out from the line,"
Terrill said. "But increasingly, we have to deal with structures and
evacuations. ''
"Southern California just seems to do this on a quasi-regular basis," said
Bruce Cutter, a professor of forestry at the University of Missouri who
specializes in wildfire science.
"But (the state's wildfires) can't be attributed to a single factor," he
said. "It's a matter of the essential ecosystem, of the Santa Anas, recent
insect infestations, the drought, the heavy fuel loads, the growth in
infrastructure - and finally, a source of ignition. It's everything."
E-mail Glen Martin at <mailto:gmartin@sfchronicle.com>gmartin@sfchronicle.com.
" 2 2003-10-28 735 More on computerized vote fraud from Truthout \N " A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America
By Victoria Collier
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Saturday 25 October 2003
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty --Thomas Jefferson
In the 2000 election, George W. Bush stole the presidency by
combining various forms of vote fraud, not all of which could be
concealed from the American public. The month-long battle in Dade
County ended with open slaughter of the democratic process, and
the occupation of the country by a regime of what may be
accurately described as corporate fascists.
Thats the bad news.
The good news is, the 2000 election also marked a turning point
in American consciousness. Or, I might venture to say, an
awakening.
Before Ws coup, most Americans were, for lack of a better
metaphor, asleep at the wheel. This metaphor works just fine,
because our electoral process is the wheel that guides our nation,
the mechanism that allows us to control the engines of power, and
to turn our country in a new direction if, for instance, were
nearing the edge of a cliff.
Nothing is more important to an American citizen than the right
to cast a ballot.
But modern Americans have been abandoning the voting booth in
droves. Over the past fifty years, less than half of all eligible
voters went to the polls, sometimes less than 25%. However, far
more astounding is that those who voted rarely bothered to wonder
if their vote was counted accurately.
A vote cast but not counted is meaningless. The only way to know
that your vote is properly counted is to watch the entire counting
process, which is why election law requires an open, public vote
count, and makes secret ballot counting illegal. However, most
voters have eagerly abdicated the responsibility of overseeing
their vote count to a handful of extremely dubious experts and
officials. Human nature is largely to blame. November election
night in most states is cold -- and often wet. Those who manage to
make their way to the polls after work want only to go home, turn
on the TV, and let their local newscaster tell them who won. And
yet, our natural instinct to curl up on the couch cannot be wholly
to blame. Recent history has shown that the most avid political
junkies even candidates themselves -- have demonstrated a
profound disinterest in how the gears and levers work behind the
scene on election night, or who is controlling them.
It should not surprise us that vote fraud has flourished in this
vacuum of electoral vigilance. Criminals of every stripe have
slithered through the unwatched gates and into positions of power
in America. It has not taken them long to corrupt the entire
electoral process itself, securing for themselves the gates of
power. As I write this article, America is on the verge of losing
the last shreds of its democracy, with the rise of ballot-less
computerized voting machines.
One Machine to Rule Them All
Thanks in part to the recent Bush approved Help America Vote Act
(HAVA), squadrons of shiny new Touch Screen Trojan horses are
being rolled into precincts across America. Not, as we are told,
to make voting easier or more accurate, or to help disabled people
vote privately, or to save America from the dangers of hanging
chad and butterfly ballots -- no. The real reason America is being
flooded with billions of dollars worth of paperless computerized
voting machines is so that no one will ever again be able to prove
vote fraud.
These machines are not just unverifiable, they are secretly
programmed (their software is not open to scrutiny by election
officials or computer experts), equipped with modems, accessible
by computer, telephone, and satellite. They are the final product
of decades of work by the election rigging industry. When they are
installed in every precinct in America, our elections will finally
become completely meaningless, nothing more than charades behind
which criminal thugs will wield the power of this nation.
That is the plan for America. But theres a glitch.
The blatant and multi-faceted fraud of the 2000 election -- in
which the ultimate poster boy for corporate corruption stole the
highest seat in the nation -- woke the American people from their
dangerous slumber. The issue of election fraud is now smoldering
in the minds of millions. Of course the Touch Screens were
immediately offered as the solution to all our voting problems,
but thanks to the wonderful work of many new computerized vote
fraud researchers, most notably Bev Harris (author of Black Box
Voting), Americans are quickly recognizing that the solution is
worse than the problem.
Despite the best propaganda efforts of corrupt voting machine
corporations like Diebold and ES&S, even those with the worst
butterfly ballot jitters are coming to understand that destroying
the ballot altogether, erasing any verifiable record of the vote
count and making a recount impossible, is not the answer to our
problems. And, as the Touch Screen systems continue to openly
malfunction, increasing numbers of voters will begin doubting
their safety and accuracy.
Its becoming clear to Americans that, just like the aftermath
of the Enron scandal, no real government reform is forthcoming in
the area of election security. The news is out that the same
company that was used in Florida to purge voter rolls of millions
of African American votes is now being hired by other states
across the country for the same job. As you will soon see, many of
our Boards of Elections and Secretarys of State will continue to
blindly defend their collusion with shadowy corporations, and
spending billions of tax-payer dollars on unreliable machines that
patently subvert the democratic process. Why? Because they have
sold out. They have been bought by corporate interests. It
happened a long time ago.
As political events at home and around the world continue to
unfold in one devastating disaster after another, our cry for
honest elections will only grow louder. The movement toward real
election reform, and what will, in the end, amount to a revolution
by the American people, is only just beginning.
We the People are responsible for taking back the control of our
democratic process. No one else will do it for us. We cannot
afford to be naοve, or uneducated, at this time in history. In
order to fully understand the extent of the corruption we are
dealing with, and to avoid making dangerous mistakes based on
ignorance, we must understand the history, and the power
structure, behind vote fraud in America.
Votescam: The Stealing of America
One of the most mysterious, low-profile, covert, shadowy,
questionable mechanisms of American democracy is the American vote
count. --- Votescam
I grew up with two men who spent twenty-five years investigating
vote fraud in America: James and Kenneth Collier, my father and
uncle.
Their book, Votescam: The Stealing of America was published in
1992 and immediately banned by the major book chains, which listed
the book as out of print and actively worked to prevent its
sale. Votescam chronicles the Collier brothers groundbreaking
investigation into Americas multi-billion dollar election rigging
industry, and the corporate government and media officials who
control it.
Before the 2000 election, Votescam was widely read (thanks to
independent bookstores and the Internet) by the minority of
Americans still engaged in the political process, mostly members
of independent and third parties trying to break the chokehold of
the two party system. The corporate media will not give their
causes or their candidates adequate press coverage -- if any. This
censorship alone effectively controls the first stages of our
political races. If a candidate cant get T.V. coverage, he or she
has little chance of even making it out the gate. These citizens
were not surprised to learn that the media has been complicit in
rigging the final stages of our elections our vote counting and
the reporting of results -- for decades.
Down the Rabbit Hole
The Votescam investigation began in 1970, in surprise!-- Dade
County, Florida, where Ken ran for Congress (with Jim as his
campaign manager) against Claude Pepper, the Father of Social
Security.
The Colliers were researching a book they were writing for Dell
Publishing titled: Running Through the System: Ballots Not
Bullets, an idea born from their involvement in the social
upheaval of the sixties.
Jim and Ken proposed that if our Declaration of Independence,
Constitution and Bill of Rights were indeed the rule of the land,
real change could be made in America by working within the system
-- more effectively, and much more safely, than waging bloody
revolution in the streets.
Putting their ideals, love of country, and political savvy to
the test, the Colliers began their grassroots Congressional
campaign and discovered exactly why the bullet, not the ballot,
was being used to change the power structure in America.
Ken was rigged out of the election through a vote scam, which
the Colliers later discovered was used throughout the country for
decades. It went like this: The local newscaster would announce
during the broadcast of election returns that election computer
has broken down. Instead of giving official returns from the
County courthouse, the networks would be running vote
projections for the rest of the night.
Jim and Ken, who had garnered 30 percent of the vote and were
excited about running again, noticed that when the vote totals
came back on the screen after the announcement, they had
mysteriously lost 15 percentage points. They didnt get another
vote for the rest of the night.
This piqued their interest.
When they examined the official election results from the
Secretary of States office for the September primary, October
run-off and November final election in Dade County, the record
listed a total of 141,000 votes cast for the Governors race in
each election. The exact same number of total votes were cast for
three elections with a different number of candidates running each
time. The same identical figures were listed for the Senate race
122,000 votes cast in the primary, run-off and final election.
This, of course, is a statistical impossibility.
When they compared the official vote results with a print-out
of the vote projections broadcast by the TV networks on the
final election night, they found that channel 4 had projected
with near perfect accuracy the results of 40 races with 250
candidates only 4 minutes after the polls closed. Channel 7 came
even closer; at 9:31 pm, they projected the final vote total for
a race at 96,499 votes. When the Colliers checked the official
number . . . it was also 96,499.
In hockey, they call that a hat trick, the Colliers write. In
politics, we call it a fix.
The networks then made the astonishing claim that the results
from a single voting machine somewhere in Dade County were run
through a computer program in order to get these vote projections.
Elton Davis was the computer programmer responsible for the
magic formula that could convert one machines vote results into
near perfect projected vote totals for 40 races and 250
candidates. When Jim and Ken confronted Davis in his office at the
University of Miami, he responded: Youll never prove it, now get
out.
Finally the networks claimed that members of the League of Women
Voters were out in the field on election night, calling in vote
totals to channels 4 and 7.
When the Colliers confronted the head of the League, Joyce
Deiffenderfer, she admitted that there were no LWV members out in
the field that night. She broke down crying, saying I dont want
to get caught up in this thing.
But theres more.
According to the print-out of the TV networks election night
projections, the networks were not receiving any actual voting
results at any time during their broadcast, but had been using
their own projections from the moment the polls closed. When they
claimed that the courthouse computer had broken down, and they
would no longer be reporting actual vote totals, they were lying.
They had never been reporting actual vote totals.
However, the final shoe dropped months later when an official
press release appeared from Dade data processing chief, Leonard
White, which stated emphatically: The county computer at the
courthouse was never down, and it was never slow.
This was the beginning.
The Collier brothers had slammed their boat into the tip of a
giant iceberg. As they continued to investigate, they were
horrified to discover vote fraud collusion among key individuals
in every branch and on every level of the American political
system. Those who were not benefiting from the fraud were too
afraid to fight it. Their search for justice led to dead-ends.
Their lives were threatened, they were vilified as conspiracy
theorists by the mainstream press, Dell publishing cancelled their
book contract . . . and yet they persevered.
The next quarter century was spent compiling a wealth of FBI
documented evidence proving that elections in the United States
have come under the tight control of a handful of powerful and
corrupt people: Secretaries of State, Election Supervisors,
Judges, owners and editors of the major media outlets, voting
equipment corporations, and assorted key members of the elections
establishment, including the League of Woman Voters. These groups
have assured the dominance of the two party system, unfettered
corporate control over government, and media censorship of issues
most important to the American people, including the cover-up of
vote fraud evidence.
Now we understand why things have gone so terribly wrong in
this country. Its due to the corrupted vote. It is the stolen
vote that perpetuates corrupt city, state and federal governments.
When those corrupt power brokers in your town weed out that up-
and-coming politician, they are looking for a person who is
willing to play ball. Politics is playing ball. Suddenly you
find property decisions going against nature; land and water
needed for the perpetuation of life on our earth suddenly
disappear. A handful of developers get richer while the land, and
the quality of life, get poorer. -- Votescam
Jim and Ken both died young during the 90s, as heroes to many
thousands who read their book and heard them speak on the radio
and at political meetings across the country. They helped to guide
individuals and groups working for clean elections in their
communities -- some of them fighting against the first wave of
computerized voting machines.
The Colliers last hope was that Votescam would be used as
evidence in a serious Congressional investigation into election
fraud, if we should ever see the day. Many people still in power
have yet to be held accountable for their role in aiding and
abetting vote fraud. Ill give you two important examples.
When the famous Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin agreed to be Ombudsman
for the original Votescam evidence, he brought it to the Florida
assistant State Attorney at the time, Janet Reno. The evidence
included the shaved wheels of lever voting machines, forged
canvass sheets (the sheets that poll workers sign to verify the
final vote count), and pre-printed vote tally sheets that were
used in conjunction with a lever machine vote rigging device
called the Printomatic.
Reno refused to prosecute, claiming falsely that the statue of
limitations had run out on the crime. Years later, Rubin would
tell my father that behind closed doors Reno had stated that she
could not prosecute. Why? Because she would bring down many of the
most powerful people in the state.
Would the 2000 election fiasco in Florida have been avoided if
Reno had agreed to do her job thirty years earlier and root out
the vote fraud thieves?
Another notable Votescam criminal can now be found sitting on
the bench of the highest court in the nation. Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia, while still a Federal Appeals Judge,
single handedly destroyed what would have been an historic lawsuit
filed against Justice Department lawyer Craig Donsanto, who had
refused to prosecute the extensive vote fraud evidence brought to
him by the Colliers. The evidence included videotape of the League
of Women voters tampering with ballots in a close door vote
counting session. The women were illegally punching holes in
already cast ballots. When confronted by Jim and Ken, just minutes
before the two were bodily thrown from the building (which they
had snuck into), the women claimed they were only trying to remove
. . . the hanging chad.
Votescam states, Because the League of Women Voters has about
it a perfume of volunteerism and do-goodism, the fact that it is
actually a political club with a political agenda and a hungry
treasury is shrouded by the false myth that it is a reliable
Election Day watchdog.
Its no surprise to me that the League of Women Voters has
recently come out strongly in favor of the diabolical ballot-less
Touch Screen machines.
And even less shocking was the role Antonin Scalia played so
willingly in the selection of George W. Bush to office.
The Rise of Resistance/ Knowledge is Power
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from
the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is
wrong. --- Thomas Jefferson
Thanks to the 2000 fiasco, election reform is now growing as a
public battle cry . . . but who is leading the army?
This is a question that every American has the responsibility to
ask.
Various individuals and groups are seeking to guide the reform
process, including politicians, government officials, voting
machine companies, computer experts, activists, and members of the
elections establishment. It is very safe to assume they do not all
mean well. Many have agendas of their own, some obvious, others
hidden.
Many are corrupt, others are ignorant.
And some, who have the very best interests of America at heart,
are in the difficult position of having to make serious and
potentially damaging compromises in their quest for safe
elections, in order to push the issue in Washington.
Before I explore this issue in more depth, Id like to offer a
brief list of important lessons learned from twenty-five years of
fighting vote fraud in the trenches.
1) If there is any conceivable way to tamper with or rig an
election someone will attempt it. This includes average citizens
as well as officials charged with protecting the process.
2) Every voting system is open to tampering, but paper ballots
counted in public are the easiest system to protect and monitor.
(Its estimated that only 2% of Americans still vote on a hand-
counted paper ballot).
3) Secret vote counting is illegal. Remember : counting them
faster is not a justification for counting them secretly.
4) When machines began to take over our vote counting systems,
election rigging became an exciting new national industry.
5) Lever machines were the first to appear, and they were riggable
in a number of ways. One could rig the lever machine itself, or,
much more easily, the electronic scanning machines that counted
the ballots. (See the Votescam video for footage of ballot rigging
under the supervision of both parties and the Dade County Election
Supervisor).
6) Computerized voting machines are the easiest to rig. Their
software is not open to public scrutiny, or the scrutiny of
Election Supervisors (rendering their title meaningless). There
are nearly infinite ways to program the machines to count votes
fraudulently. Since they are accessible by modem, they can be
controlled from a remote, centralized location.
7) Voting machine companies operate with no federal oversight,
certification process, standards or restrictions. Controlling
members of some of the most powerful voting machine corporations
are convicted criminals, some are politicians with obvious
conflicts of interests, others are not even American citizens.
Just two companies -- Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and
Diebold Voting Systems now control about 80% of the vote count
in the U.S.
![]()
Vote fraud on a statewide and national scale is not possible
without the complicity of (among others) corrupt Election
Supervisors, Secretaries of State, Judges, voting machine
corporations, and top officials of the major media outlets.
9) Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been complicit
in vote rigging for decades, to their mutual benefit. Vote rigging
is NOT a partisan issue (though recent evidence suggests
Republicans might be gaining the upper hand in the race to control
our elections).
10) The corporate major media networks play a vital role in
perpetrating and covering up vote fraud. Media methods of vote
rigging are explored in the Votescam book, including the role of
Voter News Service (VNS). (VNS was a consortium of all the major
media outlets. It recently closed up shop and scurried off into
the shadows, but for decades, under two different corporate names,
it controlled the compilation and dissemination of national vote
totals, with the power to alter the reported results. The networks
have actually not competed for vote totals, as they claim to have
done, since 1965. They got all their numbers from VNS , which
operated behind an iron curtain of secrecy. Any questions
regarding their operation were met with the ubiquitous response:
This is not a proper area of inquiry. Most people erroneously
thought they were simply a polling organization, though no
evidence of their supposedly massive polling operation could be
found by investigators). See my interview with Bill Headline,
former head of VNS, at http://www.votescam.com/articles.html
11) Election Day media polls are untrustworthy at best, and very
likely fabricated to influence voter decisions and to support
phony vote results.
Now that Ive provided the minimal context for understanding the
current threats we face, we can begin to talk about strategies to
win back the control of our government.
Not all strategies currently on the table are acceptable. Do not
take anyones word on the reform that is needed. Do not cede your
power to government officials and so-called experts any longer.
Educate yourself. Its up to us, the American people, to decide
what strategies to support, and our goal must not fall short of
what will truly restore democracy to this sinking nation.
The Nuts and Bolts of Computerized Voting
The gravest error of judgment these days comes from those vote
reformers who honestly believe that the answer to the butterfly
ballot and hanging chad problems in the 2000 election is to
embrace the ballot-less computerized voting machine.
Lets make this clear. These machines are nothing but Trojan
horses built by and for election thieves. With the ballot-less
computer, there is no way to recount, no way to prove any
discrepancy, inaccuracy or fraud. Just the fact that companies
like ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia would even make a ballot-less
machine should be cause for a Congressional investigation. (There
are also many other reasons to investigate them. For a detailed
examination of these sinister corporations, check out http://
www.blackboxvoting.com.)
That said, the next error of judgment comes from those who
believe that all we need to make computerized voting machines safe
is a paper receipt.
Many intelligent, well-intentioned and hard working vote
reformers are supporting HR 2239, proposed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-
NJ), requiring all computerized voting machines to produce a
receipt for each individual voter. While I support the effort that
has gone into creating this bill, and I recognize the monumental
struggle it will face in Congress, I am unable to support it at
this time, for many reasons. The first of which is that, while
calling much needed attention to the dangers of ballot-less
machines, this legislation does not require actually hand-counting
the receipts altogether in each election.
Why is this a serious problem?
First of all, individual receipts are meaningless. Theyre worth
nothing if not counted altogether. A persons vote might be
verified by the slip of paper, but that person has no idea whether
the computer accurately tallied her vote along with all the other
votes. The final count still takes place inside the infamous
computerized black box, beyond the reach of public scrutiny. An
individual receipt in no way guarantees the safety of the final
vote count. It is at best a meaningless gesture that I am deeply
afraid will provide an extremely false sense of security for
voters.
As for recounting disputed elections, the obvious question is,
which ones? Every election is in dispute when counted by a
secretly programmed, modem-equipped computer!
Most of the supporters of this bill agree that the receipts
should be counted across the board in each election, which would
be the equivalent of a good old-fashioned paper ballot count. But
so far there is little incentive to demand that the provision be
added because it wont get any support in Congress. What does this
mean? Are we interested in actually making our elections safe,
accurate and verifiable, or are we willing to play political ball
to the point where we lose sight of our goal completely?
I am told that perhaps, over time, the legislation will be
strengthened. But history has repeatedly shown that as a bill
makes its way through Washington channels, its effectiveness is
more often than not watered down. Whatever teeth it might have to
begin with get filed into nubs that have no strength to tear into
corruption.
HR 2239 proposes surprise random recounts, where a small
percentage of jurisdictions are chosen for verification in each
election. Unfortunately, this is completely inadequate. Individual
machines can be manipulated, and election thieves can buy off the
people in charge of the random recount. Anyone who thinks that is
far fetched or impossible is very new to this issue.
And what if discrepancies are found? Then everyone will call
foul rightly so -- a glut of confused and disputed recounts will
ensue, and the entire elections machine will become hopelessly
tangled in its own mechanized parts. Meanwhile every election
criminal in the country will descend like vultures on the chaos.
Folks, lets look at this honestly. We are already deep into a
horrible and expensive mess that could all be avoided by skipping
the computerized middleman and simply counting paper ballots.
Paper Ballots A Radical Idea
The last, and to my mind, most grave error of judgment comes
from those who think that returning to a hand-counted paper ballot
system is somehow impossible, that we cant go back to a simple
process that works once weve stupidly and recklessly abandoned
it.
I dont know about you, but that strikes me as an extremely
dangerous perspective.
An MIT/Cal Tech study done in 2001 shows that manually counted
paper ballots are the most accurate system out of the 5 systems
used in the last 4 presidential elections. They are totally
verifiable, and first-world nations across the globe still use
them, including Canada which counted their last presidential
elec" 2 2003-10-28 736 America is destroying itself, Guardian special report \N "Road to ruin
The Guardian
by Matthew Engel
America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the
population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times
the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and
road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration
do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major
investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked
Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the
planet
Matthew Engel
Friday October 24, 2003
The Guardian
On the map of the United States, just below halfway down the east coast, you
can see a series of islets, in the shape of a hooked nose. These are the
Outer Banks, barrier islands - sun-kissed in summer, storm-tossed in winter
- that stretch for 100 miles and more, protecting the main coastline of the
state of North Carolina. They are built, quite literally, on shifting sands.
Twenty years ago, these were, by all accounts, magical places, hard to reach
and discovered only by the adventurous and discerning. They are still fairly
magical, at least the seemingly endless stretch of unspoiled beach is. It is
the lure of that which causes the traffic jams on the only two bridges every
Saturday throughout the summer. The narrow strip of land behind the beach,
however, has been built up with enormous holiday homes, costing up to $2m
(£1.2m) each. And prices rose by 15-20% (25% for those on the ocean front)
in 2002 alone, according to one agent.
This is what local agents call "a very nice market", and last month their
area had a week of free worldwide publicity. Hurricane Isabel swept in,
washing out much of the islands' only road and picking up motels from their
foundations and tossing them, according to one report, "like cigarette
butts". One island was turned into several islets, with a whole town,
Hatteras Village, being cut off from the rest of the US - for ever, if
nature has its way.
Residents, journalists reported, were in shock. Many scientists were not.
Speaking well before Isabel, Dr Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology
at Duke University in North Carolina, described the Outer Banks property
boom to me as "a form of societal madness". "I wouldn't buy a house on the
front row of the Outer Banks. Or the second," agreed Dr Stephen Leatherman,
who is such a connoisseur of American coastlines that he is known as Dr
Beach.
For the market is not the only thing that has been rising round here. Like
other experts, Pilkey expects the Atlantic to inundate the existing beaches
"within two to four generations". Normally, that would be no problem for the
sands, which would simply regroup and re-form further back. Unfortunately,
that is no longer possible: the $2m houses are in the way. According to
Pilkey, the government will either have to build millions of dollars worth
of seawall, which will destroy the beach anyway, or demolish the houses.
"Coastal scientists from abroad come here and just shake their heads in
disbelief," he says.
The madness of the Outer Banks seems like a symptom of, and a metaphor for,
something far broader: the US is in denial about what is, beyond any
question, potentially its most dangerous enemy. While millions of words have
been written every day for the past two years about the threat from vengeful
Islamic terrorists, the threat from a vengeful Nature has been almost wholly
ignored. Yet the likelihood of multiple attacks in the future is far more
certain.
Earlier this year, just before he was fired as environment minister, Michael
Meacher gave a speech in Newcastle, saying: "There is a lot wrong with our
world. But it is not as bad as people think. It is actually worse." He
listed five threats to the survival of the planet: lack of fresh water,
destruction of forest and crop land, global warming, overuse of natural
resources and the continuing rise in the population. What Meacher could not
say, or he would have been booted out more quickly, was that the US is a
world leader in hastening each of these five crises, bringing its gargantuan
appetite to the business of ravaging the planet. American politicians do not
talk this way. Even Al Gore, supposedly the most committed environmentalist
in world politics, kept quiet about the subject when chasing the presidency
in 2000.
Those of us without a degree in climatology can have no sensible opinion on
the truth about climate change, except to sense that the weather does seem
to have become a little weird lately. Yet in America the subject has become
politicised, with rightwing commentators decrying global warming as "bogus
science". They gloated when it snowed unusually hard in Washington last
winter (failing to notice the absence of snow in Alaska). When the dissident
"good news" scientist Bjorn Lomborg spoke to a conservative Washington
thinktank he was applauded not merely rapturously, but fawningly.
While newspapers report that Kilimanjaro's icecap is melting and Greenland's
glaciers are crumbling, the US government has been telling its scientific
advisers to do more research before it can consider any action to restrict
greenhouse gases; the scientists reported back that they had done all the
research. The attitude of the White House to global warming was summed up by
the online journalist Mickey Kaus as: "It's not true! It's not true! And we
can't do anything about it!" What terrifies all American politicians, deep
down, is that it is true and that they could do something about it, but at
horrendous cost to American industry and lifestyle.
In the meantime, all American consumers have been asked to do is to buy Ben
& Jerry's One Sweet Whirled ice cream, ensuring that a portion of Unilever's
profits go towards "global warming initiatives". Wow!
Potential Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination have been
testing environmental issues a little in the past few weeks. Some activists
are hopeful that the newly elected Governor Schwarzenegger of California is
genuinely interested. But, in truth, despite the Soviet-style politicisation
of science, serious national debate on the issue ceased years ago.
Of course, nimbyism is alive and well. And, sure, there are localised
battles between greens and their corporate enemies: towns in Alabama try to
resist corporate poisoning; contests go on to preserve the habitats of
everything from the grizzly bear to rare types of fly; Californians hug
trees to stop new housing estates. Sometimes the greenies win, though they
have been losing with increasing frequency, especially if Washington happens
to be involved. These fights, even in agglomeration, are not the real issue.
Day after day across America the green agenda is being lost - and then,
usually, being buried under concrete.
"We're waging a war on the environment, a very successful one," says Paul
Ehrlich, professor of population studies at Stanford University. "This
nation is devouring itself," according to Phil Clapp of the National
Environmental Trust. These are voices that have almost ceased to be heard in
the US. Yet with each passing day, the gap between the US and the rest of
the planet widens. To take the figure most often trotted out: Americans
contribute a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. To meet the
seemingly modest Kyoto objective of reducing emissions to 7% below their
1990 levels by 2012, they would actually (due to growth) have to cut back by
a third. For the Bush White House, this is not even on the horizon, never
mind the agenda.
Why has the leader of the free world opted out? The first reason lies deep
in the national psyche. The old world developed on the basis of a coalition
- uneasy but understood - between humanity and its surroundings. The
settlement of the US was based on conquest, not just of the indigenous
peoples, but also of the terrain. It appears to be, thus far, one of the
great success stories of modern history.
"Remember, this country is built very heavily on the frontier ethic," says
Clapp. "How America moved west was to exhaust the land and move on. The
original settlers, such as the Jefferson family, moved westward because
families like theirs planted tobacco in tidewater Virginia and exhausted the
soil. My own ancestors did the same in Indiana."
Americans made crops grow in places that are entirely arid. They built dams
- about 250,000 of them. They built great cities, with skyscrapers and
symphony orchestras, in places that appeared barely habitable. They shifted
rivers, even reversed their flow. "It's the American belief that with enough
hard work and perseverance anything - be it a force of nature, a country or
a disease - can be vanquished," says Clapp. "It's a country founded on the
idea of no limits. The essence of environmentalism is that there are indeed
limits. It's one of the reasons environmentalism is a stronger ethic in
Europe than in the US."
There is a second reason: the staggering population growth of the US. It is
approaching 300 million, having gone up from 200 million in 1970, which was
around the time President Nixon set up a commission to consider the issue,
the last time any US administration has dared think about it. A million new
legal migrants are coming in every year (never mind illegals), and the US
Census Bureau projections for 2050, merely half a lifetime away, is 420
million. This is a rate of increase far beyond anything else in the
developed world, and not far behind Brazil, India, or indeed Mexico.
This issue is political dynamite, although not for quite the same reasons as
in Britain. Almost every political group is split on the issue, including
the far right (torn between overt xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan and the
free marketeers), the labour movement and the environmentalists. The belief
that the US is the best country in the world is a cornerstone of national
self-belief, and many Americans still, wholeheartedly, want others to share
it. They also want cheap labour to cut the sugar cane, pluck the chickens,
pick the oranges, mow the lawns and make the beds.
But the dynamite is most potent among the Hispanic community, the group who
will probably decide the destiny of future presidential elections and who do
not wish to be told their relatives will not be allowed in or, if illegal,
seriously harassed. "Neither party wants to say we should change immigration
policy," says John Haaga of the independent Population Reference Bureau.
"The phrase being used is 'Hispandering'". Yet extra Americans are not just
a problem for the US: they are, in the eyes of many environmentalists, a
problem for the world because migrants, in a short span of time, take on
American consumption patterns. "Not only don't we have a population policy,"
says Ehrlich, "we don't have a consumption policy either. We are the most
overpopulated country in the world. It's not the number of people. It's
their consumption." Ehrlich may be wrong. It is, though. somewhat surprising
that the federal government's four million employees do not appear to
include anyone charged with even thinking about this issue.
This brings us to the third factor: the Bush administration, the first
government in modern history which has systematically disavowed the systems
of checks and controls that have governed environmental policy since it
burst into western political consciousness a generation ago. It would be
ludicrous to suggest that Bush is responsible for what is happening to the
American environment. The crisis is far more deep-seated than that, and the
federal government is too far removed from the minutiae of daily life.
But the Bushies have perfected a technique of announcing regular edicts
(often late on a Friday afternoon) rolling back environmental control,
usually while pretending to do the opposite. Morale among civil servants at
the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington was already close to
rock-bottom even before its moderate leader, Christine Todd Whitman, finally
threw in her hand in May. Gossip round town was that she had endured two
years of private humiliation at the hands of the White House. Few
environmentalists have great hopes for her announced successor, the governor
of Utah, Mike Leavitt.
What is really alarming is the intellectual atmosphere in Washington. You
can attend seminars debunking scientific eco-orthodoxy almost every week.
Early in the year, there was much favourable publicity for a new work Global
Warming and Other Eco-myths, produced by the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, an organisation reputedly funded by multinational corporations.
Outside Washington, it can be far nastier. "I've never threatened anyone in
my life," a conservation activist in Montana complained to the Guardian. "I
do know, though, that I have gotten very ugly threats left on my telephone
answering machine over the past year, and twice had to scour my sidewalk in
front of the building to erase the dead body chalk outlines."
Out in the west, words such as enviro-whackos are popularised by rightwing
radio hosts such as the ex-Watergate conspirator Gordon Liddy, who passes on
to his millions of listeners the message that global warming is a lie. "I
commute in a three-quarter-tonne capacity Chevrolet Silverado HD," he
swanked in his latest book. "Four-wheel drive, off-road equipped, extended
curb pickup truck, powered by a 300hp, overhead valve, turbo supercharged
diesel engine with 520lb-feet of torque... It has lights all over it so
everyone can see me coming and get out of the way. If someone in a little
government-mandated car hits me, it is all over - for him." Fuel economy in
American vehicles hit a 22-year low in 2002.
In this country, green-minded people can't even trust the good guys. The
Nature Conservancy, the US's largest environmental group with a million
members - with a role not unlike Britain's National Trust - was the subject
of an exhaustive exposι in the Washington Post in May, accusing it of
sanctioning deals to build "opulent houses on fragile grasslands" and
drilling for gas under the last breeding ground of the Attwater's Prairie
Chicken, whose numbers have dwindled to just dozens.
On April 22, 1970 more than 20 million people attended the first-ever Earth
Day. In New York, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic and 100,000 people
attended an ecology fair in Central Park. The Republican governor of New
York wore a Save the Earth button, and Senator John Tower, another
Republican, told an audience of Texan oilmen: "Recent efforts on the part of
the private sector show promise for pollution abatement and control. Such
efforts are in our own best interests..."
So what happened next? The problem for the green movement was not what went
wrong, but what went right. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, said: "In
the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people
are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked on
now." The famine never came. And after the oil crisis came and went, and
Americans began to tire of the gloom-filled, eco-oriented presidency of
Jimmy Carter, they turned instead to Ronald Reagan, who proposed simple
solutions of tax cuts and deregulation and, lo, the world got more cheerful.
With doomsday postponed indefinitely, the politics of the Reagan years have
lingered.
Some activists remain bitter about the Clinton White House, which was only
patchily interested in green issues. "It left a bad taste in the mouth of
the environmental community," says Tim Wirth, a former senator and one-time
Clinton official. "They trimmed their sails over and over again. The old
House speaker, Tip O'Neill, had a very important political aphorism: 'Yer
dance with the person who brung yer.' They never did." This bitterness was
one of the factors that led to the hefty third-party vote for Ralph Nader in
2000, which proved disastrous for Al Gore, the inhibited environmentalist.
In the three years since then, Bush has danced like a dervish with the folks
who brung him. Yet, even now, no one dare say out loud that they are against
environmentalism: the political wisdom is that the subject can be a voting
issue among the suburban moms, ferrying the kids around to baseball practice
in their own Chevrolet Silverados. Instead, the big corporations and their
political allies have - brilliantly - manipulated the forces that the
eco-warriors themselves unleashed and turned them back on their creators.
"In the 80s they took all the techniques of citizen advocacy groups and
professionalised them," explains Phil Clapp. "That's when you saw the
proliferation of lobbyists in Washington. The environmental community never
retooled to meet the challenge. They had developed the techniques, but were
still doing them in a PTA bake-sale kind of way."
Thus every new measure passed to favour business interests and ease up on
pollution regulations is presented in an eco-friendly, sugar-coated,
summer's morning kind of way, such as Clear Skies, the weakening of the
Clean Air Act. The House of Representatives has just passed the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act, presented by the president as an anti-forest fire
measure. Opponents say it is simply a gift to the timber industry that will
make it extremely difficult to stop the felling of old-growth trees. Another
technique is to announce, with great fanfare, initiatives that everyone can
applaud, such as a recent one for hydrogen-based cars. We can expect more of
these as November 2004 draws closer. When they are scaled back, or delayed,
or dropped, there is less publicity. It is a habit that runs in the family.
Governor Jeb Bush's grand scheme to save the Florida Everglades was much
applauded; the delay from 2006 to 2016 was little noticed.
Even now the White House does not win all its battles. In the Senate, where
a small group of greenish New England Republicans has a potential blocking
veto, there are moves to compromise on the forests bill. The New England
Republicans were largely responsible for Bush's inability to push through
his plan to allow oil drilling in the Alaskan wildlife reserve.
Occasionally, there is good news: some of the small dams that have impeded
the life-cycle of Pacific salmon and steelhead trout are being demolished;
there are reports of a new alliance between the old enemies, ranchers and
greenies, in New Mexico; renewable energy is under discussion. But some of
their policies are already having their effect. Carol Browner, Clinton's
head of the EPA, claims the Bush administration has set back the campaign to
cut industrial pollution in ways that will last for decades.
"This administration has sent a signal to the polluting community, 'You can
get away with bad habits'," says Browner. "State governments in the
north-east were much tougher, so the north-eastern power stations upgraded
their emissions standards in the 90s whereas the mid-west guys, who are
their competitors, didn't. Now they're not enforcing the law."
"So what they're saying to the companies is: 'Don't go early, don't comply
with the law first. The rules might change.' Even a company that wants to do
the right thing has to look at its bottom line. If they get into a situation
like this, they think: 'We spent $1bn to meet the requirements and our
competitors didn't. Yeah, great. We're not going to do that again.'"
Under Bush, the lack of interest at every level has at last come into
balance. The US is equally unconcerned globally, federally, statewide and
locally. The environmentalists' macro-gloom has been off-beam before, of
course. Perhaps global warming is a myth; perhaps the CEI is right and there
will be a blue revolution in water use to complement the green revolution.
There is probably just as much as chance that the next big surprise will be
a thrilling one - the arrival of nuclear cold fusion to solve the energy
dilemma, say - as a disaster. Maybe biotechnology, pesticides, natural gas
and American ingenuity and optimism will indeed see everything right. It
does seem like a curiously reckless gamble for the US to be taking, though,
staking the future of the planet on the spin of nature's roulette wheel.
But it is only a bigger version of the bet being taken by the home-buyers of
North Carolina. In a country supposedly distrustful of government, the Outer
Bankers have remarkable faith in their leaders' ability to see them seem
right. Post-Isabel, a group of residents there wrote a letter demanding
government action so they can protect their livelihoods and families
"without the fear of every hurricane or nor'easter cutting us off from the
rest of the world". Quite. Who would imagine that in the 21st century the
most powerful empire the world has ever known could still be threatened by
enemies as pathetically old-fashioned as wind and tide?
Orrin Pilkey thinks it quite possible that sea levels might rise to the
point where the Outer Banks will be a minor detail. "We're not going to be
worried about North Carolina. We're going to be worrying about Manhattan."
Still, macro-catastrophe may never happen. The micro-catastrophe, however,
already has: the US is an aesthetic disaster area.
If you fly from Washington to Boston, there are now almost no open spaces
below. This is increasingly true in a big U covering both coasts and the
sunbelt. In the south-west, the main growth area, bungalows spread for miles
over what a decade ago was virgin desert. The population of Arizona
increased 40% in the 1990s, that of next-door Nevada 66%. That's, as Natalie
Merchant sang, "...the sprawl that keeps crawling its way, 'bout a thousand
miles a day", which is not much of an exaggeration.
Every day 5,000 new houses go up in America. Many of these fit the American
appetite for size, however small the plot: "McMansions", as they are known.
The very word suburb is now old-hat. The reality of life for many people now
is the "exurb", which can be dozens of miles from the city on which it
depends. In places such as California, exurban life is the only affordable
option for most young couples and recent migrants.
These communities are rarely gated but often walled, creating a vague
illusion of security and ensuring that the residents have to drive to a
shop, even if there happens to be one 50 yards away. Naturally, they have to
drive everywhere else. In August it was announced that the number of cars in
the US (1.9 per household) now actually exceeded the number of drivers
(1.75).
In many places - especially those growing the fastest - developers have to
deal only with the little councils in the towns they are taking over. There
are often minimal requirements to provide any kind of infrastructure, such
as sewage or schools, to service these new communities. The rules for
building houses in the computer game Sim City are stricter than those that
apply in most areas of the Sun Belt. Too late, some parts of the country
have concluded that this is untenable. The buzz-phrase is "smart growth",
which means no more than the kind of forethought before building that has
been routine in Europe for half a century. Even the Environmental Protection
Agency is not above being helpful: its policies for making use of brownfield
sites have seen people moving, improbably, back into the centre of cities
such as Pittsburgh.
But where it matters, no one is talking strategy. "In the really
fast-growing states, the pace of development is such that they can build
huge numbers of houses without anyone considering what it means for the
infrastructure," says Marya Morris of the American Planning Association. In
California, more than perhaps any other state, there is a debate. But while
people talk, developers act: a city catering for up to 70,000 people will
soon arise at the foot of the Tehachapi Mountains. According to the Los
Angeles Times, it would effectively close the gap between Los Angeles and
Bakersfield, theoretically 111 miles away. "Southern California is coming
over the hill," said one resident.
Americans still have a presumption of infinite space. But I have made a
curious and mildly embarrassing discovery. In states such as Maryland and
Ohio, the pattern of settlement in supposedly rural areas is such that it
can actually be quite difficult to find a discreet spot away from housing to
stop the car and have a pee. Amid the wide-open spaces of Texas, it can be
worse: the gap between Dallas and Waco is a 100-mile strip mall. The
concepts of townscape and landscape seem non-existent: there is land that
has been developed and land that hasn't - yet.
And yet. Time and again, around the US, one is struck by the stunning beauty
of the landscape, not in the obvious places, but in corners that few
Americans will have heard of: amazing rivers such as the Pearl in Louisiana,
or the Choptank in Maryland or the Lost River in West Virginia; the
Chocolate Mountains and the San Diego back country in California; the bits
that are left of the Outer Banks...
And equally one is struck by the sheer horrendousness of what man has done
in the century or so since he seriously got to work over here. In the
context of ages, the white man is merely a hotel guest in this continent: he
has smashed the furniture and smeared excrement on the walls. He appears to
be looking forward to his next night's stay with relish.
Of course, there are still huge tracts of untouched and largely unpopulated
land: in the Great Plains, where people are leaving, in the mountains,
deserts and Arctic tundra. But last spring, in another of Washington's
Friday night announcements, the Department of the Interior announced - no,
whispered - that it was removing more than 200m acres that it owned from
"further wilderness study", enabling those areas to be opened for mining,
drilling, logging or road-building. That's an area three times the size of
Britain. The New York Times did write a trenchant editorial; otherwise the
response was minimal.
Not long ago I went for a walk in the Vallecito Mountains in California.
After a while, I got myself into a position where the contours of the land
blotted out everything and, after the noise of a plane had died away, there
was no sight or sound at all that was not produced by nature. This lasted
about a minute. Then, from somewhere, a motorcycle roared into earshot.
Sure, there are still places in this vast country where it is possible to
escape, but they get harder and harder to find except for the fit, the
adventurous and those unencumbered by children or jobs. Most Americans don't
live that way. And nowhere now is entirely safe from being ravaged,
sometimes in ways that prejudice the future of the whole planet. Al-Qaida
and the Iraqi bombers have no need to bother. America is destroying itself.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
Diamond, Louisiana
Matthew Engel
Friday October 24, 2003
The Guardian
By the banks of the Mississippi, Margie Eugene-Richard showed me where she
grew up. That was where she caught crayfish as a kid. There was the place
her grandfather grew sugar cane and watermelon. And that was the tangerine
tree she planted. The sugar cane and watermelon have long gone. In their
place now they are growing ethylene and propylene.
This was the poor, historically black community of Diamond, Louisiana, now
disappearing - at its own request. Eugene-Richard lived for 50 years with
the most overbearing, most unfeeling neighbour you can imagine, she says:
the Shell Chemicals plant. Until 2001, her home was 17ft from the perimeter
fence. It was a dangerous neighbour too. One explosion, in 1973, killed two
people; another was experienced "like an earthquake" in New Orleans, 20
miles away. And always there was the smell: "Like bleach mixed with garlic
and gas," she says.
The more insidious consequences of living next to a chemicals plant remain
unclear, but Eugene-Richard has no doubt. "My sister died of sarcoidosis at
43. Then I thought about it. And you know what? Half her class had gone."
This stretch of the Mississippi - between New Orleans and the Louisiana
state capital, Baton Rouge - is known to campaigners as "cancer alley". A
huge proportion of the US's most unwelcome neighbours, especially chemical
factories and oil refineries, are concentrated here. The river ensures an
easy supply of water and transport; the oil and gas fields of the Gulf of
Mexico are close by; the residents affected are black or poor or often both;
and Louisiana politicians have long had a reputation as the most biddable in
the nation.
Eugene-Richard was unusually determined, and eventually forced Shell to give
up its policy of buying up nearby property at prices that reflected the fact
that no one wanted to live there. Instead, in 2001, an 11-year campaign
ended in an agreement to buy them out fairly.
The link between these plants and cancer is unproven - the most recent
research attributed high local disease rates to smoking. Protesters reject
these findings. Anne Rolfes runs the Bucket Brigade, which provides
residents with kits to take samples if they suspect discharges. "Next to the
refineries we find a great many sulphurs, a lot of them known to cause
respiratory diseases. We find benzene, a known carcinogen. Up and down the
streets, you find very rare cancers. Anecdotally, it's very shocking."
But fighters are rare. Ken Ford is now 66, and has lived at Chalmette, in
the shadow of the Exxon-Mobil refinery, for 40 years. He has been too ill to
work for the past 30. "I really believe that living here has made me sick.
But just try to prove it. Several people living on my block have come down
with rare cancers in the past two years. People will not complain. I try to
get them interested, and they say: 'Man, you don't want to mess with that.'"
Ford claims the Bucket Brigade's equipment showed that the refinery exceeded
permitted emissions levels 32 times between May and July this year. The
company says there were no such incidents.
A mile from Ford's home is the site of one of the US's most famous victories
over the British, the Battle of New Orleans (1815). The British came over
from where the refinery is now, and most of their dead are buried
underneath. Guides, dressed as militiamen, fire muskets and cannon towards
the refinery for the tourists, who come by paddle steamer from the city. But
it's not a whiff of grapeshot they get back. It's a whiff that smells like
rotten eggs, or hydrogen sulphide. "It does rather detract from the
historical perspective," says a guide, sadly.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
" 2 2003-10-24 737 USFS & Arson Task Force's Two Magic Bolts Theory \N "
" 2 2003-10-21 738 Making Sense Out of Zerocut, Thomas Power \N "October 21, 2003
Making Sense Out of "Zero (Commercial) Cut" on Public Forestlands
By Thomas Michael Power
Thomas Michael Power is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Montana.
He is the author of "Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place."
In the debate over how to manage our public forests, many timber industry officials, political leaders, and newspaper and other media commentators have asserted that irrational environmental obstructionists have been mindlessly shutting down the Forest Service's commercial timber program.
These environmental critics often point to the "zero cut" objective espoused by many of environmental organizations to document that obstructionist objective. These folks, we are told, want to keep any trees from being cut down on public lands. Even on lands that already have extensive lumber road networks in place, where timber has been harvested for decades, and where new commercially designed plantations of young trees are already maturing, these environmentalists want to stop timber harvests. What sense does that make?
I will leave those environmental organizations to speak for themselves. But there is a logic to a narrower version of the zero cut position, namely that commercially-motivated timber harvests should not be taking place on federal lands.
The social logic behind that position is implicit in the widespread recognition, acknowledged in our law and regulations, that our public forestlands produce a wide variety of valuable goods and services, only some of which are commercial in nature. In the past this was described in terms of "multiple-use," but today most recognize that that emphasis on "use" is too narrow. We now talk about forest health and the environmental services that natural forestlands provide to on-site visitors as well as surrounding communities.
The list of the environmental services provided by natural forestlands is lengthy, including wildlife habitat, watershed services, biodiversity, soil stability, climate stabilization, fisheries, recreation opportunities, scenic beauty, and open space. Most of these are non-commercial in character. Of course those forestlands can also provide commercial opportunities to timber, livestock, mineral, and recreation businesses. The source of the conflict over forest management policy has been the appropriate balance between the pursuit of commercial objectives and the pursuit of the non-commercial environmental services objectives.
Between 1950 and 1990, our forest managers acted on the presumption that they could pursue the commercial and non-commercial objectives simultaneously. They told us that huge sprawling clearcuts not only were the most profitable way to harvest trees but that those clearcuts were also good for the forest since they mimicked natural fires. We were told that the clearcuts would also boost water production, allow superior tree stocks to be grown, create more habitat for wildlife, and, through the road system, open more and more of the National Forests to recreation. The commercially motivated clearcut, they asserted, was really a multiple-use tool.
Since almost all of the commercial and non-commercial objectives were said to coincide, no choices had to be made between them; no tradeoffs were necessary; there were free lunches to be had by all. Unfortunately, this simply was not the case. A naοve or cynical "conspiracy of optimism" simply obscured the fact that the commercial objectives were being allowed to trump the non-commercial, to the serious detriment of the forests.
This same naοve position is being asserted today as we discuss forest health and hazardous forest fuels reduction programs. Timber interests tell us that commercial timber sales are also forest fire reduction and forest health programs. This is emphatically not the case. The prescription for a profitable timber sale involves taking the older, larger, and less flammable trees and leaving the branches, tops, and needles as well as the smaller, more flammable trees and brush. The prescription for a more stable, less fire-prone forest is to leave the older, commercially valuable trees, and remove the smaller trees and brush, much of which has no commercial value.
Pursuing one of these objectives necessarily requires that the pursuit of the other objective be at least partially abandoned. Tradeoffs have to be made. There are unavoidable costs associated with those choices. Pretending otherwise is dishonest and dangerous.
A century of growing population, the commercial or residential development of almost all private land, and the harsh treatment of industrial timberlands have also caused a shift in the role people think public lands should play. Those lands are increasingly seen as preserves where commercial and development pressures can be held at bay so that some part of our natural landscapes can be permanently managed for non-commercial purposes. This is not to say that timber would not or should not be harvested, only that the motivation behind the harvest should not be commercial in character. Only harvests justified by other noncommercial objectives such as community safety, true forest restoration, or wildlife, would take place.
There is nothing obstructionist about such a position. It is a forward-looking vision that seeks to preserve for future generations some of that natural forest values that we have all enjoyed in our lifetimes.
" 2 2003-10-21 739 Salvage-logging plan aired: Big operation targets Oregon forest, SeaTimes \N "[NOTE; this story is incomplete at best. This article raises questions about its "objectivity" and journalistic integrity it is so slanted to the industry/administration's views about "salvage" logging. It failed to mention the oft-proven and damning record of dishonesty and lies by the FS and the timber industry. It uses the word "harvest" repeatedly where it is completely inappropriate. What gives with the Times? Where are the aerial images that show the forest having been hardly burned at all and that the Biscuit Fire was a but a "gentle giant?" That would support FS comments that the FS couldn't have deliberately managed a Proscribed Burn" this beneficial? Where is the mention of the Partridge, Power or EcoNorthwest studies that have exposed and demonstrated the lack of economic and ecological honesty in the blatantly pro-industry biased John Sessions report and the FS/industry proposals for the Biscuit Fire? This "salvage" logging proposal is garbage and is far more honestly described as just another dishonest and destructive industry taking from our publicly owned national forest, rivers and streams. Is the Times becoming just another Bush mouthpiece? TGHermach]
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003, 01:16 A.M. Pacific
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001770986_biscuit21m.html
Salvage-logging plan aired: Big operation targets Oregon timber
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
The U.S. Forest Service next month will propose one of the largest salvage-logging operations of the past quarter-century to harvest timber scorched in a 2002 fire in Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest.
The "preferred alternative" calls for logging in 29,000 acres of the nearly 500,000 acres that were at least partially burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire, according to Judy McHugh, a Forest Service official in southern Oregon. The logging is expected to produce about 518 million board feet of timber, which is more than the entire 2002 Forest Service harvest in all of Western Washington and western Oregon.
The Biscuit fire of 2002 was the largest in Oregon of the past century, and it drew President Bush to southern Oregon in August of that year as he touted a new "Healthy Forests" plan aimed at speeding up thinning of forests at risk of burning.
The plan is expected to be made final by next spring, with initial logging expected to start next summer and continuing for a year or more. The new logging plan represents a more than five-fold increase from an earlier Forest Service proposal for cutting in the Biscuit-fire zone. It comes as the Bush administration has launched a broader effort to boost the timber cut on federal lands across the West.
The harvest would unfold in a rugged area that is one of the most biologically diverse forests in the Northwest. It would including logging burned-over old-growth trees, and more than 12,000 acres of the cut-zone would be in roadless areas. In any one area, up to 80 percent of the trees would be removed.
And the prospect of such large-scale logging appears certain to be challenged by conservationists.
"I think we are seeing the administration set a precedent that once an area is struck by fire, no-hold barred logging can take place," said Rolf Skar of the Siskiyou Project, a conservation group based in Cave Junction, Ore.
Conservation groups have long sought increased protection for the Siskiyou forest, which describes as a biological crossroads, where the Coast Range, Cascade Mountains and Klamath-Siskiyou mountains come together.
Forest Service officials say they will work to minimize the environmental effects of the logging. They would require the use of helicopters to reach much of the timber, with the preferred alternative building only about 2.3 miles of new roads. Those roads would be temporary
Timber officials say the harvest still represents only a small fraction of the timber scorched by the fire and that many of the dead logs may have diminished in value by the time the cutting begins. But they welcome the prospect of a surge in federal timber sales.
"We are likely to see mills from Oregon, Northern California and maybe even southern Washington bidding on the timber if it was offered at an economical price," said Chris West of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council.
Forest Service officials say the new preferred alternative for Biscuit-fire logging reflects new information gathered in recent months, including a study by John Sessions, an Oregon State University professor who called for salvage of more than 2 billion board feet. The best way to quicken the forest's recovery and reduce risk of recurring, large-scale fires is reforestation, vegetation control and removal of many dead and dying trees, Sessions concluded.
"He did provide us with significant new information," McHugh said.
The largest Pacific Northwest salvage effort of the past quarter-century occurred after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, when loggers over a period of years cut more than 1 billion board feet of timber affected by the 1980 blast.
" 2 2003-10-21 740 Klamath Tribe Seeks Justice in Lands \N "October 20, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1020/p01s02-ussc.html
Cowboys, Indians, and land: an old saga's new twist
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
ASHLAND, ORE. - Environmentalists often cite native Americans as a model for
protecting nature. The groups are working together to restore Maine's
Penobscot River and oppose natural-gas exploration on Navajo lands.
But just as the 1854 speech attributed to Chief Seattle of the Suquamish tribe
("We are a part of the earth and it is part of us") is now considered a myth,
the collaboration of environmentalists and Indians has been tenuous at best.
And today it's being tested, as some tribes assert their rights to exploit -
as well as preserve - natural resources.
This is evident in the Klamath Basin of California and Oregon, where
conservation groups oppose a plan returning extensive areas of national forest
to tribes. They worry that native Americans will abuse the land. Critics say
this has been the case in southeast Alaska, where Indian corporations have
made vast clear-cuts on land they control.
Symbolically, it's a case of cowboys and Indians representing centuries-old,
conflicting cultures: They have joined forces against a more modern version of
land conservation that puts endangered species way ahead of resource development.
After years of conflict, the Klamath Tribes have met with area ranchers to
allot water for wildlife refuges, crops, and cattle, while recognizing tribal
water rights that go back to an 1864 treaty. Since the negotiations involve
federal lands, administration officials have joined in. The heart of the plan
is a transfer of 690,000 acres - most of the Winema and Fremont national
forests - to tribal control.
The stakes are huge: more than 1,000 square miles of national forest valued at
$1.4 billion. Perhaps more important, returning control to tribal authorities
would set a precedent for tribes claiming unfair treatment under historic
treaties with Washington.
Before white settlers arrived, the tribes (the Klamath, the Modoc, and the
Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians, collectively known as the Klamath Tribes)
claimed some 22 million acres. Under pressure from homesteaders and the US
Cavalry, the tribes in 1864 gave up all but about 2 million acres in return
for the right to hunt, fish, and gather "in perpetuity."
Through force and federal legislation, this reservation was reduced to just
under 900,000 acres. Still, the tribes were one of the most economically and
socially successful native American groups in the United States.
That changed in 1954 when Congress passed a law "terminating" the tribe, on
the philosophy that Indians would do better if they became part of the
dominant culture and economy. Most tribal members took the one-time buyout.
But with no chance to buy back the land and little experience in a cash
economy, few invested or started businesses.
The land became national forest open to commercial logging; within two
decades, the tribes had high rates of infant mortality, unemployment, and
alcoholism.
Declaring the termination "morally and legally unacceptable," President
Richard Nixon in 1970 asked Congress to reverse it. The tribes were officially
recognized in 1986. Since then, the Klamaths, who number about 3,000, have
reasserted hunting, fishing, and water rights. Still, they had lost
traditional lands.
Jay Ward, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council
(ONRC), acknowledges that Indians "have suffered greatly at the hands of the
federal government." But, he says, Americans "[should not] be asked to give up
public lands, natural resources, and the ... national forest legacy."
Conservation groups, including the ONRC, offer an alternative: federal
compensation for lands and services lost to termination, in the form of cash
or local private lands. National forests would be left under federal control.
"While the Tribes claim they wish to manage the lands for multiple natural
benefits, they also seek to sustain their tribal community almost entirely by
proceeds from commercial logging," the ONRC and 17 other groups wrote to Sen.
Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon last week. "Unfortunately, history demonstrates these
two goals are incompatible."
"We support economic self-sufficiency for native peoples," the groups say.
"But we strongly oppose using publicly owned forests as a blank check ... to
right past wrongs."
Environmentalists worry that the Klamath Tribes - sovereign nations under US
law - would not be governed by the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species
Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, or the National Forest Management
Act. The laws protect hundreds of millions of acres of public land.
The tribes flatly reject the environmentalists' plan, insisting they can take
better care of the land than Uncle Sam has in a 50-year regime that has
emphasized industrial logging. "It is difficult for us to imagine ... that
lands now private, in place of the reservation lands that were designated as
National Forest lands in 1961, could be a plausible solution," says tribal
chairman Allen Foreman. "President Bush and Interior Secretary Gale Norton are
clearly correct in saying that the Klamath Basin needs a water settlement,"
says Mr. Foreman. "Even in a fairly decent water year, there simply isn't enough."
In one sense, the cowboys and Indians here, as elsewhere in the West, are
growing more alike. Many native Americans are farmers, ranchers, loggers, and
miners. And many ranchers who descended (literally or emotionally) from early
pioneers and homesteaders increasingly see themselves as an endangered species.
The main difference is that the Klamath tribes trace their ancestry back
14,000 years. They may have been temporarily "terminated" by Uncle Sam, but
they still feel very connected to a land they believe to be theirs.
"Without the restored Homelands," says the tribes' plan for restoration, "the
Klamath Peoples' spirituality, culture, economy, and community will continue
to suffer the overwhelming effects of the federal termination."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and
related links
" 2 2003-10-20 741 Our Wild Lands Can Give No More, Bass, LAT \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-bass19oct19,1,7512853.story?coll=la-news-comment
ENVIRONMENT
Our Wild Lands Can Give No More
By Rick Bass
Rick Bass is the author of "The Hermit's Story," a collection of short stories.
October 19, 2003
LIBBY, Mont. I consider myself a moderate environmentalist. I believe that
the remaining roadless lands in our national forests deserve permanent
protection. I also believe that there are selective opportunities for logging
and thinning in forests bordering cities and towns. Yet, my moderation is
beginning to crack.
It has been 27 years since wilderness in Montana has received any new
protections, even as the need for governmental protection has increased
dramatically. In California and a few other states, ecologies have been
preserved. But the national trend is increasingly disturbing: Our
environmental treasures are being stripped away. Montana is the canary in the
coal mine, alerting us to the bigger problem of an administration and Congress
trying to undo our national-resource laws, piece by piece, on the sly.
The timber industry in Montana, in particular, has gained one concession after
another. Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, has almost single-handedly gone
to bat for the industry. He strongly supports a higher softwood tariff on
Canadian timber. He sponsored stewardship forestry projects to promote
sustainable, community-based use of the state's timberland. He recommended
that environmental review of some small-scale logging projects be streamlined
to improve efficiency. And he called for increased funding to thin forests
abutting urban communities.
Though I'm grateful for Baucus' concern for Montana's timber-dependent rural
communities, such as the one in which I live, it often feels like "give,"
"give," "give," instead of "give in exchange for something else." For example,
in northwest Montana's Yaak Valley, where not a single acre of 1 million is
protected as wilderness, there are only a few roadless areas remaining, and
they are the most inaccessible and most distant from human habitation and
possess little timber value.
And now, just when you might think that moderate environmentalists have
nothing more to give, along comes one of the most shocking anti-environmental
legislative provisions ever, and possibly a dangerous national precedent. Its
author is Montana's junior Republican senator, Conrad Burns, who has a
penchant for claiming credit for, when not quashing, Baucus' collaborative
work. Burns' target is the Kootenai National Forest. His rider, attached to
the Interior appropriations bill, would allow logging of a least 2,000 acres
of old-growth forest and logging and road building in one of the most
threatened grizzly bear habitats in the nation, the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem. In
addition, it would exempt certain future salvage-logging projects in Flathead
National Forest from having to comply with the Clean Water Act. Flathead is
adjacent to Glacier National Park, one of the crown jewels of the continent.
Why this turn of events? In a lawsuit filed late last year, environmentalists
claimed that the Forest Service had not, as required by law, presented its
old-growth data on Kootenai to the public. Nor was the service dutifully
monitoring the health of the forest's old-growth-dependent species. It was an
open-and-shut case.
I was a member of an environmental group that urged the Forest Service to
settle out of court, since obtaining an injunction against timber-related
activities in the affected areas would disrupt local rural communities.
Montana's Forest Service personnel were receptive to our offer, but U.S.
attorneys weren't. Sure enough, the Forest Service lost in court and now
Burns has brought forth his rider that would nullify the court's decision to
stop five logging projects covering nearly 9,000 acres.
One of the bitterest ironies is that our group kept on trying to broker a
peace agreement with the Forest Service after it lost in court. We acted as a
liaison between the service and the plaintiffs in performing an exhaustive
evaluation to determine which timber sales might be able to still go forward.
We also helped persuade the plaintiffs to drop another lawsuit, one in which
old-growth concerns had been met. These two actions would have secured nearly
30 million board feet of small-diameter timber for local Montana mills. The
system was working fine, until Burns crushed the law.
What more can an environmentalist give? Always more, it seems, until there is
no wilderness left. The Senate is considering a compromise, co-sponsored by
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), of the Bush administration's so-called
"Healthy Forests Initiative." The initiative aims to reduce the threat of
devastating wildfires by thinning read: logging forests. But Feinstein's
bill, among other things, would make it easier to log in some roadless and
old-growth areas and weaken judicial review of Forest Service decisions. The
legislation is unneeded because the tools and authority necessary to protect
communities from fire already exist. All we need is funding.
Californians should care about what may happen in the Kootenai and Flathead
national forests, as Montanans should care about the Sierra forests, and as we
should all care about our legacy in Alaska's Tongass and Utah's red-rock
desert. Environmentalists and roadless lands and old forests have nothing
more to give other than the protections afforded by the law. If we budge on
that, the public will soon have no legal standing in the corporate takeover of
public lands.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-10-19 742 The Emperor Bush Has No Clothes, Sen Robert Byrd \N "The Emperor Has No Clothes
by US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Remarks
October 17, 2003
In 1837, Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen, wrote a wonderful fairy tale
which he titled The Emperor's New Clothes. It may be the very first example
of the power of political correctness. It is the story of the Ruler of a
distant land who was so enamored of his appearance and his clothing that he
had a different suit for every hour of the day.
One day two rogues arrived in town, claiming to be gifted weavers. They
convinced the Emperor that they could weave the most wonderful cloth, which
had a magical property. The clothes were only visible to those who were
completely pure in heart and spirit.
The Emperor was impressed and ordered the weavers to begin work immediately.
The rogues, who had a deep understanding of human nature, began to feign work
on empty looms.
Minister after minister went to view the new clothes and all came back
exhorting the beauty of the cloth on the looms even though none of them could
see a thing.
Finally a grand procession was planned for the Emperor to display his new
finery. The Emperor went to view his clothes and was shocked to see
absolutely nothing, but he pretended to admire the fabulous cloth, inspect the
clothes with awe, and, after disrobing, go through the motions of carefully
putting on a suit of the new garments.
Under a royal canopy the Emperor appeared to the admiring throng of his people
- - all of whom cheered and clapped because they all knew the rogue weavers'
tale and did not want to be seen as less than pure of heart.
But, the bubble burst when an innocent child loudly exclaimed, for the whole
kingdom to hear, that the Emperor had nothing on at all. He had no clothes.
That tale seems to me very like the way this nation was led to war.
We were told that we were threatened by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
but they have not been seen.
We were told that the throngs of Iraqi's would welcome our troops with
flowers, but no throngs or flowers appeared.
We were led to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attack on the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but no evidence has ever been produced.
We were told in 16 words that Saddam Hussein tried to buy "yellow cake" from
Africa for production of nuclear weapons, but the story has turned into empty
air.
We were frightened with visions of mushroom clouds, but they turned out to be
only vapors of the mind.
We were told that major combat was over but 101 [as of October 17] Americans
have died in combat since that proclamation from the deck of an aircraft
carrier by our very own Emperor in his new clothes.
Our emperor says that we are not occupiers, yet we show no inclination to
relinquish the country of Iraq to its people.
Those who have dared to expose the nakedness of the Administration's policies
in Iraq have been subjected to scorn. Those who have noticed the elephant in
the room -- that is, the fact that this war was based on falsehoods have had
our patriotism questioned. Those who have spoken aloud the thought shared by
hundreds of thousands of military families across this country, that our
troops should return quickly and safely from the dangers half a world away,
have been accused of cowardice. We have then seen the untruths, the
dissembling, the fabrication, the misleading inferences surrounding this rush
to war in Iraq wrapped quickly in the flag.
The right to ask questions, debate, and dissent is under attack. The drums of
war are beaten ever louder in an attempt to drown out those who speak of our
predicament in stark terms.
Even in the Senate, our history and tradition of being the world's greatest
deliberative body is being snubbed. This huge spending bill has been rushed
through this chamber in just one month. There were just three open hearings
by the Senate Appropriations Committee on $87 billion, without a single
outside witness called to challenge the Administration's line.
Ambassador Bremer went so far as to refuse to return to the Appropriations
Committee to answer additional questions because, and I quote: "I don't have
time. I'm completely booked, and I have to get back to Baghdad to my duties."
Despite this callous stiff-arm of the Senate and its duties to ask questions
in order to represent the American people, few dared to voice their opposition
to rushing this bill through these halls of Congress. Perhaps they were
intimidated by the false claims that our troops are in immediate need of more
funds.
But the time has come for the sheep-like political correctness which has cowed
members of this Senate to come to an end.
The Emperor has no clothes. This entire adventure in Iraq has been based on
propaganda and manipulation. Eighty-seven billion dollars is too much to pay
for the continuation of a war based on falsehoods.
Taking the nation to war based on misleading rhetoric and hyped intelligence
is a travesty and a tragedy. It is the most cynical of all cynical acts. It
is dangerous to manipulate the truth. It is dangerous because once having
lied, it is difficult to ever be believed again. Having misled the American
people and stampeded them to war, this Administration must now attempt to
sustain a policy predicated on falsehoods. The President asks for billions
from those same citizens who know that they were misled about the need to go
to war. We misinformed and insulted our friends and allies and now this
Administration is having more than a little trouble getting help from the
international community. It is perilous to mislead.
The single-minded obsession of this Administration to now make sense of the
chaos in Iraq, and the continuing propaganda which emanates from the White
House painting Iraq as the geographical center of terrorism is distracting our
attention from Afghanistan and the 60 other countries in the world where
terrorists hide. It is sapping resources which could be used to make us safer
from terrorists on our own shores. The body armor for our own citizens still
has many, many chinks. Have we forgotten that the most horrific terror
attacks in history occurred right here at home!! Yet, this Administration
turns back money for homeland security, while the President pours billions
into security for Iraq. I am powerless to understand or explain such a policy.
I have tried mightily to improve this bill. I twice tried to separate the
reconstruction money in this bill, so that those dollars could be considered
separately from the military spending. I offered an amendment to force the
Administration to craft a plan to get other nations to assist the troops and
formulate a plan to get the U.N. in, and the U.S. out, of Iraq. Twice I tried
to rid the bill of expansive, flexible authorities that turn this $87 billion
into a blank check. The American people should understand that we provide
more foreign aid for Iraq in this bill, $20.3 billion, than we provide for the
rest of the entire world! I attempted to remove from this bill billions in
wasteful programs and divert those funds to better use. But, at every turn,
my efforts were thwarted by the vapid argument that we must all support the
requests of the Commander in Chief.
I cannot stand by and continue to watch our grandchildren become increasingly
burdened by the billions that fly out of the Treasury for a war and a policy
based largely on propaganda and prevarication. We are borrowing $87 billion
to finance this adventure in Iraq. The President is asking this Senate to pay
for this war with increased debt, a debt that will have to be paid by our
children and by those same troops that are currently fighting this war. I
cannot support outlandish tax cuts that plunge our country into potentially
disastrous debt while our troops are fighting and dying in a war that the
White House chose to begin.
I cannot support the continuation of a policy that unwisely ties down 150,000
American troops for the foreseeable future, with no end in sight.
I cannot support a President who refuses to authorize the reasonable change in
course that would bring traditional allies to our side in Iraq.
I cannot support the politics of zeal and "might makes right" that created the
new American arrogance and unilateralism which passes for foreign policy in
this Administration.
I cannot support this foolish manifestation of the dangerous and destabilizing
doctrine of preemption that changes the image of America into that of a
reckless bully.
The emperor has no clothes. And our former allies around the world were the
first to loudly observe it.
I shall vote against this bill because I cannot support a policy based on
prevarication. I cannot support doling out 87 billion of our hard-earned tax
dollars when I have so many doubts about the wisdom of its use.
I began my remarks with a fairy tale. I shall close my remarks with a horror
story, in the form of a quote from the book Nuremberg Diaries, written by G.M.
Gilbert, in which the author interviews Hermann Goering.
"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his
attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders
who bring them war and destruction.
". . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the
policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it
is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist
dictatorship.
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some
say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United
States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any
country."
" 2 2003-10-19 743 Can a beat-Bush effort yield a strong progressive coalition? \N "[NOTE: Not if the environmental interests are represented by the Sierra
Club & LCV who will invariably pick an uninspiring, garbage "Democrat" who
they think (with their losers' perspective) is winnable. All the
environmental establishment refuses to support perhaps the only real
Democrat in the race, Dennis Kucinich. Nope. No fighting the good fight
over real issues, moral values, integrity and principles there. They have
so far not even raised the issues of a probable stolen election with
no-public-oversight electronic voting. Anyone predict another historic
low-voter turnout with a lot of improbable or strange election results? TGH]
http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/hertsgaard101503.asp
Unified Field Theory
Can a beat-Bush effort yield a progressive coalition with staying power?
by Mark Hertsgaard (2,053 words)
15 Oct 2003
Who says George W. Bush never did anything for the great outdoors? His
running for reelection could be the best thing to happen to the U.S.
environmental movement in years. The threat of four more years of Bush has
provoked a significant rethinking of the movement's tactics, according to
interviews with movement leaders, their financial supporters, and political
advisers. Not only has it energized activists like never before, it has
also produced unprecedented expressions of unity within the movement and
beyond -- specifically with labor unions, feminist organizations, and civil
rights groups. While the short-term goal is a new president in 2004, some
environmental leaders hope the Beat Bush campaign will help these groups
build working relationships that could give rise to a broad-based
progressive movement in the United States.
"George W. Bush said when he was running for president that he would be the
great unifier, not the divider, and damned if he hasn't been the greatest
unifier of the environmental movement since I've been in it," says John
Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA. "And that's true
within the entire progressive movement and beyond. From tongue-studded
anarchists to business-oriented think tanks, we've all come to realize that
Bush represents the greatest threat to all that we hold dear."
One manifestation of this new unity is America Votes, an alliance of 20
citizens groups that was organized earlier this year by leaders from
environmental, labor, and women's organizations. Members include the
AFL-CIO and other unions, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and MoveOn.org. The
environmental movement is represented in the coalition by the Sierra Club
and League of Conservation Voters.
America Votes will exercise electoral clout through a so-called 527 group
named America Coming Together. (Organizations registered under section 527
of the federal tax code are permitted to engage in voter education and
turnout work but not outright advocacy for candidates.) ACT has raised $35
million to spend on the 2004 campaign, $10 million of which was donated by
George Soros, the currency trader and philanthropist. The group hopes
eventually to raise $75 million.
"It's actually easier for us to work together on elections than on policy
work," Deb Callahan, the executive director of LCV, says of her allies
within ACT. "On a policy issue like logging or mining, we might be on the
opposite side of the fence from, say, a labor union. But an election puts
those kinds of differences in the background, because it presents a simple
choice: Do you elect this candidate or not? And we all agree that four more
years of Bush would be a disaster."
"The environmental movement traditionally hasn't focused many resources on
electoral work," observes one prominent funder of environmental
organizations who declined to be named. "The Sierra Club and LCV spent $16
million during the two-year cycle leading up to the 2000 election. But
that's dwarfed by the annual budgets of groups who do public education and
policy work, such as the National Wildlife Federation [$100 million per
year] and Natural Resources Defense Council [$50 million per year]. America
Coming Together gives environmentalists the prospect of real electoral
impact and, for the first time, real coordination with other progressive
groups."
Exactly what this new progressive unity will mean on the ground remains to
be seen. The ACT groups are only beginning to find their way, cautions the
funder quoted above: "To borrow a scientific analogy, this collaboration
began in a gaseous state and has now progressed to a liquefied state, but
it is still far from a solid state." But the groups' leaders talk about
coordinating messages and communication schedules -- for example, to make
sure that a given household doesn't get deluged with five pieces of
anti-Bush mail on a single day and then receive nothing during the next two
weeks -- and dividing up outreach responsibility for certain battleground
states to assure the most efficient use of all groups' electoral resources.
And those resources, they promise, will be unprecedented. "The scale of the
commitment is phenomenal," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra
Club. "Over the next 13 months, we are committed to doubling the number of
volunteer activists we have in the field and the number of households we
contact, and my sense is that the other organizations in America Votes are
doing the same."
Their Roots Are Showing
Not only are enviros and other progressives spending more on the 2004
election, they are also spending differently. Thirty-second television ads,
whose astronomical costs devoured budgets in the past, are being abandoned
as ineffectual because voters are no longer moved by them. Instead, says
Pope, electoral strategists of all ideological persuasions recognize that
"what works is talking to people one on one, and especially having them
hear your message from their friends and neighbors."
"Unions showed in 2000 that grassroots organizing led to a higher turnout
of their members, which made the difference in a number of key races,"
Callahan says. "The Republicans applied that lesson successfully in 2002,
and I expect the White House will do the same in 2004. Our movement's focus
traditionally has been grassroots organizing, and we've got to get back to
that. Two-thirds of my 2004 budget is for grassroots organizing. In 2002,
it was only 20 percent."
Grassroots organizing is critical; if environmental groups simply get their
own members to vote, it could make all the difference in 2004. Some 11
million Americans belong to environmental organizations. Yet surveys reveal
that in recent elections, those members have voted in no greater proportion
than other Americans. In the 17 states expected to be the decisive
battlegrounds in 2004, the Sierra Club alone boasts more members than the
margins of victory in the 2000 election. "Had every Sierra Club member
voted in 2000, not only would Al Gore be president but Tom Daschle would be
Senate majority leader and Dick Gephardt would be speaker of the House,"
says Pope.
What environmentalists haven't done is endorse a particular candidate for
president. Partly that's for legal reasons: Only so-called (c)(4) groups
(registered under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code), like LCV and Sierra
Club, are allowed to advocate voting for or against candidates, using funds
garnered from non-tax-deductible donations. But America Votes, as a 527, is
precluded from such advocacy. So are the 501(c)(3) groups that comprise the
majority of the U.S. environmental movement. (c)(3)s are restricted to
public education and policy work, giving them access to tax-deductible
donations (which is why their annual budgets are typically much larger than
those of (c)(4) groups).
"We can't take part in the 2004 electoral work, but our public education
efforts will inform that work," says Rodger Schlickeisen, the chair of Save
Our Environment, a coalition of 20 (c)(3) and (c)(4) groups that have
pooled resources and coordinated strategies to resist Bush administration
policies. SOE members include Defenders of Wildlife (where Schlickeisen is
president), Friends of the Earth, Environmental Defense, the Wilderness
Society, Greenpeace, NRDC, LCV, and Sierra Club.
A second reason no candidate endorsement is imminent is that
environmentalists want to unite behind whoever emerges from the Democratic
primaries to challenge Bush. "Any of these Democrats is better than Bush on
the environment, so we're not going to endorse any one of them yet," says
Callahan, whose organization awarded Bush the first-ever "F" on its annual
"report card" on environmental voting records. "Instead, we're building
on-the-ground infrastructure that will kick into gear for the nominee once
the general election begins."
But in their zeal to get rid of Bush, will environmentalists let Democrats
off easy?
"It's important not only to make Bush's and the Republicans' stand on
environmental issues clear, but also to hold Democratic candidates to a
much higher standard than Bill Clinton and Al Gore were," says Philip
Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, another (c)(3) group
precluded from electoral activities. "For a long time, Democrats have
talked a good game on the environment and then failed once in office to put
their political capital on the line for it. ... A campaign that simply
reiterates horror stories about Bush's policies won't accomplish its goals.
Americans want to see a vision of what needs doing over the next four years
to extend 30 years of environmental progress. That's the bar
environmentalists should hold all the candidates to."
White Flags, Green Futures
All this, insiders admit, is a marked shift from the infighting that has
often afflicted the environmental movement in recent years.
"The various groups used to scuffle over who would be the one quoted in
media reports about whatever the environmental rollback of the week was,"
says Passacantando of Greenpeace. "How dumb is that -- fighting to get
credit for a battle we're losing!" The new unity, Passacantando argues,
stems not only from the Bush threat but from the decline in donations
groups have suffered in the face of a recession and a weak stock market.
"Having less money has forced each group to focus on what it does best. So
now you see the grassroots groups doing grassroots organizing, the
lobbyists doing lobbying, and so forth. We're stronger for it."
Environmentalists also take heart from the knowledge that, as leading
Republican strategist Frank Luntz wrote in a memo that was leaked to the
New York Times earlier this year, "the environment is probably the single
issue on which Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular
-- are most vulnerable." With Bush's poll numbers dropping thanks to a
faltering economy and growing unease about Iraq, environmentalists are
convinced that he can be defeated in 2004 and that their issue can help
make it happen.
"There is no question that the president and all of the Democratic
candidates have spotlighted the environmental issue as key to reaching
certain constituencies," says Clapp. "The environment is an issue that
matters in the swing states that each side wants: Oregon, Washington,
Florida, the industrial Midwest. The president left his ranch in Crawford
three times this summer to do events to promote his Clear Skies rollback of
the Clean Air Act. And for Democrats, the environment is one of the three
or four issues each candidate lists as a key difference between him or her
and the president."
Questions remain, however, about what kind of practical results all this
high-minded talk will produce in 2004. After all, the environmental
movement is relatively inexperienced in electoral work, and it is gearing
up operations very fast. Can the Sierra Club, in a mere 13 months, really
double the number of activists it has on the ground (to 20,000) and the
number of households these activists will reach (to 800,000)? Can Save Our
Environment groups that remain largely focused on inside-the-Beltway
concerns shift to talking in plain-spoken terms to the millions of ordinary
Americans whose votes will decide the outcome on Election Day? And after
years of internal bickering and distance from other progressive groups and
issues, can environmentalists really walk the walk of unity and cooperation?
"It's nice people are working more together now, but the old ego and turf
battles haven't gone away," says one movement insider. "All the old
incentives against collaboration remain in place; groups still have to get
media coverage and other forms of credit for their accomplishments in order
to maintain funders' support and survive."
On the other hand, the environmental movement's motivation is growing
stronger by the day, fueled by the Bush administration's continued assault
on ecosystems and the laws meant to protect them. And looking toward the
long term, some environmental leaders say the Bush threat may finally force
environmentalists and other progressive organizations to learn how to work
together and thus begin building the kind of broad-based movement that
could yield real change in America.
"It's self-interest that's bringing us together," says Callahan of LCV. "If
we don't cooperate, we'll certainly fail to put a progressive in the White
House in 2004. But if we succeed, we can build relations and trust that
will continue beyond the election and result in something much larger than
ourselves. Look at how the right wing took power in this country -- by
following a long-term vision of building a movement of like-minded
organizations. It's been my dream for a long time, and we're now finally
doing the same."
- - - - - - - - -
Grist Magazine: Environmental news and humor
(c) 2003, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved.
" 2 2003-10-17 744 Experts say hatcheries hurt wild fish \N "http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/106630594364810.xml
Experts say hatcheries hurt wild fish
10/16/03
JOE ROJAS-BURKE
Fish hatcheries, which mass produce about 200 million salmon and steelhead
each year for release into the Columbia River Basin, are ignoring problems
that could undermine the survival of wild fish, according to a sweeping
report to Congress by independent experts.
Four key areas stand out:
In river zones with threatened or endangered salmon, many hatcheries remain
devoted primarily to producing a catch for commercial fisheries -- contrary
to federal guidelines calling for conservation as a priority.
Massive numbers of young hatchery fish are crowding into the relatively
small Columbia River estuary without consideration of the impact on wild
populations.
Hatchery fish are straying onto spawning grounds and mating with wild fish,
potentially undermining the genetic diversity that allows salmon
populations to adapt and survive in a changing environment.
Hatcheries are falling short of one clear goal: compensating for the
environmental challenges to migratory fish caused by the Pacific
Northwest's power-generating dams. Recently improved salmon runs remain far
below historic levels.
The report, one of the first-ever attempts to take stock of the entire
Columbia Basin and performed at the request of Congress, was released as a
draft this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, an agency
representing the governors of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. While
the council has no regulatory power, its recommendations help shape the
massive federal effort to aid depleted salmon stocks.
Its final recommendations, due in a matter of weeks, could bring big
changes in hatchery operations, for instance, by steering hatchery funding
made by Congress and the Bonneville Power Administration.
The findings were drawn by a review team led by Lars Mobrand, an
independent fisheries scientist; and Bruce Suzumoto, project manager with
the power council. Suzumoto said he hopes the report will help lawmakers
and other regional leaders think about setting new goals and deciding how
best to use hatcheries.
"Many of these programs were created 25 or 50 years ago under a different
set of goals," Suzumoto said. "Whether those goals are the still the
correct ones is open to question."
The researchers considered 227 hatchery programs throughout the U.S.
portion of the Columbia Basin, gathering a previously unavailable overview
of programs run by state fish and wildlife agencies, federal agencies and
Native American tribes with treaty rights to salmon.
Among the more than 200 million salmon and steelhead produced annually, the
report said a majority, 65 percent, get released in the lower portions of
the Columbia, from just above Bonneville Dam, to the estuary, downriver
just inland from the ocean.
One group of salmon accounts for more than half of all hatchery salmon
releases: fall chinook, mainly produced for ocean troll fishing. The report
said the uneven distribution is the result of policies set in the 1950s
favoring commercial fisheries in the lower Columbia and the coastal oceans.
Fall chinook are cheaper to produce because they require less rearing time
in the hatchery than spring and summer-run salmon.
The review team said a more balanced distribution of hatchery releases
could have advantages, such as increasing year-round fishing opportunities
and preserving a broader diversity of salmon types in the basin.
The problem of hatchery fish straying and mating with wild fish is rampant
in some areas, but largely unmonitored in much of the basin, the report said.
Reviewers divided hatcheries into two types: "integrated" programs that
attempt to use fish native to the streams where they are released; and
"segregated" programs that use traditional hatchery stocks, primarily for
fisheries, and managed to avoid mating with wild fish.
But the report found that hatchery fish make up more than 30 percent of the
spawners in nearby streams in about a third of the segregated programs.
About a fifth of such programs managed to keep the level of hatchery
straying below 5 percent of the spawning population. But managers of
one-third of the 73 segregated programs did not know the level of straying
and mating with wild spawners.
Many integrated hatcheries also fell short. The report found that 80
percent of the 102 programs considered were not meeting the targets for
including wild fish in each generation of parents and limiting the
contribution of hatchery fish to wild spawning populations.
John Thorpe, who oversees hatcheries for the Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife, said his agency recognizes the problems and is working on
remedies. The department's hatcheries release about 51 million salmon and
steelhead each year in the Columbia and other basins.
Among other changes, Thorpe said the department is attempting to control
straying, and developing more hatchery stocks native to the streams where
they will be released. And he said the department is writing hatchery and
genetic management plans that will set specific goals for each of its
hatchery programs, as required by the National Marine Fisheries Service,
the federal agency responsible for endangered salmon.
Bill Bakke, director of the Native Fish Society, said fish and wildlife
agencies are doing too little to respond to the problems highlighted in the
report.
"It's been a consistent message for years, that hatcheries are contributing
to the decline of wild salmon and steelhead, and there needs to be more
control over how many hatchery salmon are allowed to spawn with wild fish,"
Bakke said. "What I haven't seen is a very rapid change to implement the
consensus of the independent science teams."
Bakke said hatchery funding ought to be made contingent on meeting
performance standards.
Perhaps the most controversial questions the report asks is whether using
hatcheries to sustain commercial salmon fishing is still worthwhile.
"We're not saying what the goals should be, by any means, but it's
something that probably needs to be asked," Suzumoto said.
Copies of the Artificial Production Review and Evaluation report are
available on the Web at www.nwcouncil.org. The Power council will accept
public comment for 45 days and then plans to make final recommendations to
Congress.
Copyright 2003 Oregon Live. All Rights Reserved.
" 2 2003-10-16 745 LANGUAGE: Bush Gang's Malignant Propaganda \N "From: Patrick Reinsborough
October 08, 2003 - 9:47 PM
Propaganda: The Great Language Hijack
In this Post:
#1 "Let Them Eat Words: Linguistic lessons from Republican master strategist Frank Luntz"
from American Prospect Sept 2003
#2 "Lessons in how to lie about Iraq" Brian Eno waxes philosophic on propaganda
Below you will find two articles about the art of lying. It can politely be called rhetoric, posturing or even propaganda but ultimately it is just lying. These articles are important because they capture the way that language is being hijacked, exploited and manipulated to effect the tangible relationships of power in our society. Writing this post from California where a right-wing, steroid-addled, sexis,t action figure celebrity just became governor by co-opt populist resentment against the political establishment, its pretty clear that the ability to hijack language can take you a long way.
The first article is an expose on infamous Republican pollster and strategist Frank Lutz. It ran in the September edition of the liberal democratic magazine American Prospect. We do not necessarily endorse the politics of the author but think its a great (albeit one sided) analysis of the power of rhetoric (memes) to frame the debate and structure the control mythology of modern politics.
Of course we all know that Clinton and the Democrats used the same tactics. However the Bushies and the neo-conservative coup deserve some credit for removing any vestige of subtlety in state propaganda. The Bush team brought us the Healthy Forests Initiative (meaning tax payer-subsidized, liquidation logging on public lands), the Clear Skies Initiative (meaning polluters gut the Clean Air Bill) and of course the biggest whopper of them all: the War on Terror (meaning the government and their corporate buddies do whatever the hell they want for our "security" and we all shut-the-f**k-up-about-it, or else.)
Article #2 is from British artist and ambient music godfather Brian Eno and takes us beyond what we all know - they LIED about Iraq - to discuss some of the deeper implications of propaganda. Well worth the read. Eno references the excellent new book "Weapons of Mass Deception" from PR Watch team John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. If you haven't checked out this handy expose of the propaganda wing of the Iraq invasion, find out more at: http://www.prwatch.org/books/wmd.html
Enjoy, ponder and scheme!
Patrick Reinsborough
the smartMeme project/Wake Up America Campaign
www.smartmeme.com (under construction)
*****
Let Them Eat Words
Linguistic lessons from Republican master strategist Frank Luntz
http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V14/8/tannen-d.html
Deborah Tannen
I'm one of many Democrats who watch in frustration (mixed with a touch of awe) as Republicans win with words, even as the labels they devise for their policies distort or belie the facts. Take the repeal of the estate tax. An "estate" sounds like a large amount of money. Indeed, before President Bush persuaded Congress to legislate a phase out of the estate tax, only the largest 2 percent of estates were subject to this tax. But change the name to "death tax" and many more Americans become sympathetic to repeal. After all, everyone dies. Death is bad enough without being taxed.
How many would get all worked up about an exceedingly rare abortion procedure (that the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimated represents less than one-fifth of 1 percent of all abortions performed in the United States in 2000)? But attach the name "partial-birth abortion" and a second-trimester fetus becomes a half-born baby. Legislation to outlaw the vaguely described medical procedure then becomes another success in chipping away at constitutionally protected abortion rights -- as well as a wedge issue to defeat Democratic candidates. According to an insider in Al Gore's 2000 Tennessee campaign, the vice president's opposition to this legislation was one of the factors that turned many Tennesseans against their home-state candidate.
Who among us wants to call ourselves anti-life? Win the name game and you're more than halfway toward winning the battle. Win enough naming battles and you're on your way to winning the war.
During the 2000 campaign, I was a guest on a radio talk show discussing Republicans' and Democrats' appeals to women voters. A woman called in to say, "I'm for education and I'm for the environment. Bush is for education and Gore is for the environment, so I don't know who to vote for." Beyond the breathtaking oversimplification (reducing a complex set of positions and policies to being "for"), I marveled at the caller's conviction that because George W. Bush had declared himself for education -- who on earth is against it? -- his policies were necessarily more likely than Al Gore's to improve education for all American children.
Recent news reports are filled with stories of a mounting crisis in public education: t
" 2 2003-10-28 734 Made to burn: Nature gets its way in California \N "Tuesday, October 28, 2003
<http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/>©2003 San Francisco
Chronicle | <http://www.sfgate.com/feedback/>Feedback
URL:
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%0A/c/a/2003/10/28/MNGIG2KFVL1.DTL>sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/28/MNGIG2KFVL1.DTL
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object.cgi?object=/chronicle/pictures/2003/10/28/mn_fires12.jpg&paper=chronicle&file=MNGIG2KFVL1.DTL&directory=/c/a/2003/10/28&type=printable>5a741bf.jpg
Even though some steps may be taken to mitigate the effects, the great
wildfires now laying waste to Southern California are as unavoidable as
earthquakes, ecologists say - the price nature extracts from those who
would make this state their home.
"California's ecology is a fire ecology," said Karen Terrill, a spokeswoman
for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "This
landscape evolved with fire, and that's not going to change. This is
another example of Mother Nature letting us know she's more powerful than
we are."
Fire experts cited four reasons for the disaster:
-- Drought: Southern California is in its fourth year of drought, and dead
brush and trees are crackling dry.
-- The Santa Anas: These hot, dry seasonal winds are exceptionally strong
this year, serving as a bellows driving the fires.
-- Interface: The term wildfire experts use to describe develop ment in
wildland areas. The more interface, the more property loss from wildfires.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the more time firefighters
spend saving structures, the less time they have to stop wildfires by
digging fire breaks and setting backfires. -- Heavy fuel loads:
California's forests and brushlands are overstocked with small trees,
bug-killed big timber and chaparral. Additionally, many native brush
species are highly resinous, uniquely suited for explosive combustion.
Of these factors, only interface and fuel loads are susceptible to human
management. But the task of regulating development in wildland areas and
devising comprehensive fuel reduction policies has proved daunting, riven
by squabbling from a variety of interest groups.
A recent effort by the Bush administration to accelerate thinning in
national forests as a means of "fireproofing" woodlands has been roundly
condemned by environmental groups, who see the initiative as a stalking
horse for increased commercial logging.
The most compelling factor in the current south state fires is the Santa
Ana winds - an indirect result of autumn and winter storms in the
Northwest, said Basil Newmerzhycky, a meteorologist with the National
Weather Service who studies fire weather.
"As these systems go south and onshore, they create strong northeast wind
patterns in Southern California's mountains," Newmerzhycky said. "These
winds travel from the 9,000 foot level downslope, accelerating, warming and
drying as they go. They are highly localized. You feel them on the western
slopes, but seldom in downtown L.A. Sometimes they can reach in excess of
70 miles an hour."
Though the current Santa Anas haven't reached those velocities,
Newmerzhycky said, "they're definitely in the higher magnitude, the upper
end of the range."
With strong Santa Anas, the low humidities they bring and dry fuels, all
that is needed for catastrophe is an ignition source.
"We're seeing close to the world's record for fire spread rates down there
right now," said Larry Hood, a fire and fuels specialist with the U.S.
Forest Service in the Lassen National Forest.
"They've had spread rates of 10 miles in seven hours," said Hood. "When a
fire does that, you don't even try to fight it. You just hope you can get
all the people out of the way in time."
One way to minimize human tragedy in wildfire situations is to keep people
from living where wildfires occur. But increasing numbers of Californians
want to live in or near woodlands, whatever the risk.
"Whenever we see a new subdivision go up and the developer is boasting it
abuts national forest land, we figure our firefighters are going to be
getting to know those new homeowners up close and personal in a few years,"
said Matt Mathes, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service's California region.
"Like CDF, we try to encourage people to clear brush around their homes,
but it's hard to keep pace," Mathes said. "And when a big fire gets going,
it'll kick embers miles ahead of itself. At that point, it's triage. With a
lot of homes, you know there's no chance of saving them." CDF spokeswoman
Terrill said the growth of residential interface in the forests drains
critical resources from firefighting efforts.
"The best way to fight wildfire is to cut a line, put your firefighters
behind it, and deny the oncoming fire fuel by burning out from the line,"
Terrill said. "But increasingly, we have to deal with structures and
evacuations. ''
"Southern California just seems to do this on a quasi-regular basis," said
Bruce Cutter, a professor of forestry at the University of Missouri who
specializes in wildfire science.
"But (the state's wildfires) can't be attributed to a single factor," he
said. "It's a matter of the essential ecosystem, of the Santa Anas, recent
insect infestations, the drought, the heavy fuel loads, the growth in
infrastructure - and finally, a source of ignition. It's everything."
E-mail Glen Martin at <mailto:gmartin@sfchronicle.com>gmartin@sfchronicle.com.
" 2 2003-10-28 735 More on computerized vote fraud from Truthout \N " A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America
By Victoria Collier
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Saturday 25 October 2003
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty --Thomas Jefferson
In the 2000 election, George W. Bush stole the presidency by
combining various forms of vote fraud, not all of which could be
concealed from the American public. The month-long battle in Dade
County ended with open slaughter of the democratic process, and
the occupation of the country by a regime of what may be
accurately described as corporate fascists.
Thats the bad news.
The good news is, the 2000 election also marked a turning point
in American consciousness. Or, I might venture to say, an
awakening.
Before Ws coup, most Americans were, for lack of a better
metaphor, asleep at the wheel. This metaphor works just fine,
because our electoral process is the wheel that guides our nation,
the mechanism that allows us to control the engines of power, and
to turn our country in a new direction if, for instance, were
nearing the edge of a cliff.
Nothing is more important to an American citizen than the right
to cast a ballot.
But modern Americans have been abandoning the voting booth in
droves. Over the past fifty years, less than half of all eligible
voters went to the polls, sometimes less than 25%. However, far
more astounding is that those who voted rarely bothered to wonder
if their vote was counted accurately.
A vote cast but not counted is meaningless. The only way to know
that your vote is properly counted is to watch the entire counting
process, which is why election law requires an open, public vote
count, and makes secret ballot counting illegal. However, most
voters have eagerly abdicated the responsibility of overseeing
their vote count to a handful of extremely dubious experts and
officials. Human nature is largely to blame. November election
night in most states is cold -- and often wet. Those who manage to
make their way to the polls after work want only to go home, turn
on the TV, and let their local newscaster tell them who won. And
yet, our natural instinct to curl up on the couch cannot be wholly
to blame. Recent history has shown that the most avid political
junkies even candidates themselves -- have demonstrated a
profound disinterest in how the gears and levers work behind the
scene on election night, or who is controlling them.
It should not surprise us that vote fraud has flourished in this
vacuum of electoral vigilance. Criminals of every stripe have
slithered through the unwatched gates and into positions of power
in America. It has not taken them long to corrupt the entire
electoral process itself, securing for themselves the gates of
power. As I write this article, America is on the verge of losing
the last shreds of its democracy, with the rise of ballot-less
computerized voting machines.
One Machine to Rule Them All
Thanks in part to the recent Bush approved Help America Vote Act
(HAVA), squadrons of shiny new Touch Screen Trojan horses are
being rolled into precincts across America. Not, as we are told,
to make voting easier or more accurate, or to help disabled people
vote privately, or to save America from the dangers of hanging
chad and butterfly ballots -- no. The real reason America is being
flooded with billions of dollars worth of paperless computerized
voting machines is so that no one will ever again be able to prove
vote fraud.
These machines are not just unverifiable, they are secretly
programmed (their software is not open to scrutiny by election
officials or computer experts), equipped with modems, accessible
by computer, telephone, and satellite. They are the final product
of decades of work by the election rigging industry. When they are
installed in every precinct in America, our elections will finally
become completely meaningless, nothing more than charades behind
which criminal thugs will wield the power of this nation.
That is the plan for America. But theres a glitch.
The blatant and multi-faceted fraud of the 2000 election -- in
which the ultimate poster boy for corporate corruption stole the
highest seat in the nation -- woke the American people from their
dangerous slumber. The issue of election fraud is now smoldering
in the minds of millions. Of course the Touch Screens were
immediately offered as the solution to all our voting problems,
but thanks to the wonderful work of many new computerized vote
fraud researchers, most notably Bev Harris (author of Black Box
Voting), Americans are quickly recognizing that the solution is
worse than the problem.
Despite the best propaganda efforts of corrupt voting machine
corporations like Diebold and ES&S, even those with the worst
butterfly ballot jitters are coming to understand that destroying
the ballot altogether, erasing any verifiable record of the vote
count and making a recount impossible, is not the answer to our
problems. And, as the Touch Screen systems continue to openly
malfunction, increasing numbers of voters will begin doubting
their safety and accuracy.
Its becoming clear to Americans that, just like the aftermath
of the Enron scandal, no real government reform is forthcoming in
the area of election security. The news is out that the same
company that was used in Florida to purge voter rolls of millions
of African American votes is now being hired by other states
across the country for the same job. As you will soon see, many of
our Boards of Elections and Secretarys of State will continue to
blindly defend their collusion with shadowy corporations, and
spending billions of tax-payer dollars on unreliable machines that
patently subvert the democratic process. Why? Because they have
sold out. They have been bought by corporate interests. It
happened a long time ago.
As political events at home and around the world continue to
unfold in one devastating disaster after another, our cry for
honest elections will only grow louder. The movement toward real
election reform, and what will, in the end, amount to a revolution
by the American people, is only just beginning.
We the People are responsible for taking back the control of our
democratic process. No one else will do it for us. We cannot
afford to be naοve, or uneducated, at this time in history. In
order to fully understand the extent of the corruption we are
dealing with, and to avoid making dangerous mistakes based on
ignorance, we must understand the history, and the power
structure, behind vote fraud in America.
Votescam: The Stealing of America
One of the most mysterious, low-profile, covert, shadowy,
questionable mechanisms of American democracy is the American vote
count. --- Votescam
I grew up with two men who spent twenty-five years investigating
vote fraud in America: James and Kenneth Collier, my father and
uncle.
Their book, Votescam: The Stealing of America was published in
1992 and immediately banned by the major book chains, which listed
the book as out of print and actively worked to prevent its
sale. Votescam chronicles the Collier brothers groundbreaking
investigation into Americas multi-billion dollar election rigging
industry, and the corporate government and media officials who
control it.
Before the 2000 election, Votescam was widely read (thanks to
independent bookstores and the Internet) by the minority of
Americans still engaged in the political process, mostly members
of independent and third parties trying to break the chokehold of
the two party system. The corporate media will not give their
causes or their candidates adequate press coverage -- if any. This
censorship alone effectively controls the first stages of our
political races. If a candidate cant get T.V. coverage, he or she
has little chance of even making it out the gate. These citizens
were not surprised to learn that the media has been complicit in
rigging the final stages of our elections our vote counting and
the reporting of results -- for decades.
Down the Rabbit Hole
The Votescam investigation began in 1970, in surprise!-- Dade
County, Florida, where Ken ran for Congress (with Jim as his
campaign manager) against Claude Pepper, the Father of Social
Security.
The Colliers were researching a book they were writing for Dell
Publishing titled: Running Through the System: Ballots Not
Bullets, an idea born from their involvement in the social
upheaval of the sixties.
Jim and Ken proposed that if our Declaration of Independence,
Constitution and Bill of Rights were indeed the rule of the land,
real change could be made in America by working within the system
-- more effectively, and much more safely, than waging bloody
revolution in the streets.
Putting their ideals, love of country, and political savvy to
the test, the Colliers began their grassroots Congressional
campaign and discovered exactly why the bullet, not the ballot,
was being used to change the power structure in America.
Ken was rigged out of the election through a vote scam, which
the Colliers later discovered was used throughout the country for
decades. It went like this: The local newscaster would announce
during the broadcast of election returns that election computer
has broken down. Instead of giving official returns from the
County courthouse, the networks would be running vote
projections for the rest of the night.
Jim and Ken, who had garnered 30 percent of the vote and were
excited about running again, noticed that when the vote totals
came back on the screen after the announcement, they had
mysteriously lost 15 percentage points. They didnt get another
vote for the rest of the night.
This piqued their interest.
When they examined the official election results from the
Secretary of States office for the September primary, October
run-off and November final election in Dade County, the record
listed a total of 141,000 votes cast for the Governors race in
each election. The exact same number of total votes were cast for
three elections with a different number of candidates running each
time. The same identical figures were listed for the Senate race
122,000 votes cast in the primary, run-off and final election.
This, of course, is a statistical impossibility.
When they compared the official vote results with a print-out
of the vote projections broadcast by the TV networks on the
final election night, they found that channel 4 had projected
with near perfect accuracy the results of 40 races with 250
candidates only 4 minutes after the polls closed. Channel 7 came
even closer; at 9:31 pm, they projected the final vote total for
a race at 96,499 votes. When the Colliers checked the official
number . . . it was also 96,499.
In hockey, they call that a hat trick, the Colliers write. In
politics, we call it a fix.
The networks then made the astonishing claim that the results
from a single voting machine somewhere in Dade County were run
through a computer program in order to get these vote projections.
Elton Davis was the computer programmer responsible for the
magic formula that could convert one machines vote results into
near perfect projected vote totals for 40 races and 250
candidates. When Jim and Ken confronted Davis in his office at the
University of Miami, he responded: Youll never prove it, now get
out.
Finally the networks claimed that members of the League of Women
Voters were out in the field on election night, calling in vote
totals to channels 4 and 7.
When the Colliers confronted the head of the League, Joyce
Deiffenderfer, she admitted that there were no LWV members out in
the field that night. She broke down crying, saying I dont want
to get caught up in this thing.
But theres more.
According to the print-out of the TV networks election night
projections, the networks were not receiving any actual voting
results at any time during their broadcast, but had been using
their own projections from the moment the polls closed. When they
claimed that the courthouse computer had broken down, and they
would no longer be reporting actual vote totals, they were lying.
They had never been reporting actual vote totals.
However, the final shoe dropped months later when an official
press release appeared from Dade data processing chief, Leonard
White, which stated emphatically: The county computer at the
courthouse was never down, and it was never slow.
This was the beginning.
The Collier brothers had slammed their boat into the tip of a
giant iceberg. As they continued to investigate, they were
horrified to discover vote fraud collusion among key individuals
in every branch and on every level of the American political
system. Those who were not benefiting from the fraud were too
afraid to fight it. Their search for justice led to dead-ends.
Their lives were threatened, they were vilified as conspiracy
theorists by the mainstream press, Dell publishing cancelled their
book contract . . . and yet they persevered.
The next quarter century was spent compiling a wealth of FBI
documented evidence proving that elections in the United States
have come under the tight control of a handful of powerful and
corrupt people: Secretaries of State, Election Supervisors,
Judges, owners and editors of the major media outlets, voting
equipment corporations, and assorted key members of the elections
establishment, including the League of Woman Voters. These groups
have assured the dominance of the two party system, unfettered
corporate control over government, and media censorship of issues
most important to the American people, including the cover-up of
vote fraud evidence.
Now we understand why things have gone so terribly wrong in
this country. Its due to the corrupted vote. It is the stolen
vote that perpetuates corrupt city, state and federal governments.
When those corrupt power brokers in your town weed out that up-
and-coming politician, they are looking for a person who is
willing to play ball. Politics is playing ball. Suddenly you
find property decisions going against nature; land and water
needed for the perpetuation of life on our earth suddenly
disappear. A handful of developers get richer while the land, and
the quality of life, get poorer. -- Votescam
Jim and Ken both died young during the 90s, as heroes to many
thousands who read their book and heard them speak on the radio
and at political meetings across the country. They helped to guide
individuals and groups working for clean elections in their
communities -- some of them fighting against the first wave of
computerized voting machines.
The Colliers last hope was that Votescam would be used as
evidence in a serious Congressional investigation into election
fraud, if we should ever see the day. Many people still in power
have yet to be held accountable for their role in aiding and
abetting vote fraud. Ill give you two important examples.
When the famous Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin agreed to be Ombudsman
for the original Votescam evidence, he brought it to the Florida
assistant State Attorney at the time, Janet Reno. The evidence
included the shaved wheels of lever voting machines, forged
canvass sheets (the sheets that poll workers sign to verify the
final vote count), and pre-printed vote tally sheets that were
used in conjunction with a lever machine vote rigging device
called the Printomatic.
Reno refused to prosecute, claiming falsely that the statue of
limitations had run out on the crime. Years later, Rubin would
tell my father that behind closed doors Reno had stated that she
could not prosecute. Why? Because she would bring down many of the
most powerful people in the state.
Would the 2000 election fiasco in Florida have been avoided if
Reno had agreed to do her job thirty years earlier and root out
the vote fraud thieves?
Another notable Votescam criminal can now be found sitting on
the bench of the highest court in the nation. Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia, while still a Federal Appeals Judge,
single handedly destroyed what would have been an historic lawsuit
filed against Justice Department lawyer Craig Donsanto, who had
refused to prosecute the extensive vote fraud evidence brought to
him by the Colliers. The evidence included videotape of the League
of Women voters tampering with ballots in a close door vote
counting session. The women were illegally punching holes in
already cast ballots. When confronted by Jim and Ken, just minutes
before the two were bodily thrown from the building (which they
had snuck into), the women claimed they were only trying to remove
. . . the hanging chad.
Votescam states, Because the League of Women Voters has about
it a perfume of volunteerism and do-goodism, the fact that it is
actually a political club with a political agenda and a hungry
treasury is shrouded by the false myth that it is a reliable
Election Day watchdog.
Its no surprise to me that the League of Women Voters has
recently come out strongly in favor of the diabolical ballot-less
Touch Screen machines.
And even less shocking was the role Antonin Scalia played so
willingly in the selection of George W. Bush to office.
The Rise of Resistance/ Knowledge is Power
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from
the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is
wrong. --- Thomas Jefferson
Thanks to the 2000 fiasco, election reform is now growing as a
public battle cry . . . but who is leading the army?
This is a question that every American has the responsibility to
ask.
Various individuals and groups are seeking to guide the reform
process, including politicians, government officials, voting
machine companies, computer experts, activists, and members of the
elections establishment. It is very safe to assume they do not all
mean well. Many have agendas of their own, some obvious, others
hidden.
Many are corrupt, others are ignorant.
And some, who have the very best interests of America at heart,
are in the difficult position of having to make serious and
potentially damaging compromises in their quest for safe
elections, in order to push the issue in Washington.
Before I explore this issue in more depth, Id like to offer a
brief list of important lessons learned from twenty-five years of
fighting vote fraud in the trenches.
1) If there is any conceivable way to tamper with or rig an
election someone will attempt it. This includes average citizens
as well as officials charged with protecting the process.
2) Every voting system is open to tampering, but paper ballots
counted in public are the easiest system to protect and monitor.
(Its estimated that only 2% of Americans still vote on a hand-
counted paper ballot).
3) Secret vote counting is illegal. Remember : counting them
faster is not a justification for counting them secretly.
4) When machines began to take over our vote counting systems,
election rigging became an exciting new national industry.
5) Lever machines were the first to appear, and they were riggable
in a number of ways. One could rig the lever machine itself, or,
much more easily, the electronic scanning machines that counted
the ballots. (See the Votescam video for footage of ballot rigging
under the supervision of both parties and the Dade County Election
Supervisor).
6) Computerized voting machines are the easiest to rig. Their
software is not open to public scrutiny, or the scrutiny of
Election Supervisors (rendering their title meaningless). There
are nearly infinite ways to program the machines to count votes
fraudulently. Since they are accessible by modem, they can be
controlled from a remote, centralized location.
7) Voting machine companies operate with no federal oversight,
certification process, standards or restrictions. Controlling
members of some of the most powerful voting machine corporations
are convicted criminals, some are politicians with obvious
conflicts of interests, others are not even American citizens.
Just two companies -- Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and
Diebold Voting Systems now control about 80% of the vote count
in the U.S.
without the complicity of (among others) corrupt Election
Supervisors, Secretaries of State, Judges, voting machine
corporations, and top officials of the major media outlets.
9) Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been complicit
in vote rigging for decades, to their mutual benefit. Vote rigging
is NOT a partisan issue (though recent evidence suggests
Republicans might be gaining the upper hand in the race to control
our elections).
10) The corporate major media networks play a vital role in
perpetrating and covering up vote fraud. Media methods of vote
rigging are explored in the Votescam book, including the role of
Voter News Service (VNS). (VNS was a consortium of all the major
media outlets. It recently closed up shop and scurried off into
the shadows, but for decades, under two different corporate names,
it controlled the compilation and dissemination of national vote
totals, with the power to alter the reported results. The networks
have actually not competed for vote totals, as they claim to have
done, since 1965. They got all their numbers from VNS , which
operated behind an iron curtain of secrecy. Any questions
regarding their operation were met with the ubiquitous response:
This is not a proper area of inquiry. Most people erroneously
thought they were simply a polling organization, though no
evidence of their supposedly massive polling operation could be
found by investigators). See my interview with Bill Headline,
former head of VNS, at http://www.votescam.com/articles.html
11) Election Day media polls are untrustworthy at best, and very
likely fabricated to influence voter decisions and to support
phony vote results.
Now that Ive provided the minimal context for understanding the
current threats we face, we can begin to talk about strategies to
win back the control of our government.
Not all strategies currently on the table are acceptable. Do not
take anyones word on the reform that is needed. Do not cede your
power to government officials and so-called experts any longer.
Educate yourself. Its up to us, the American people, to decide
what strategies to support, and our goal must not fall short of
what will truly restore democracy to this sinking nation.
The Nuts and Bolts of Computerized Voting
The gravest error of judgment these days comes from those vote
reformers who honestly believe that the answer to the butterfly
ballot and hanging chad problems in the 2000 election is to
embrace the ballot-less computerized voting machine.
Lets make this clear. These machines are nothing but Trojan
horses built by and for election thieves. With the ballot-less
computer, there is no way to recount, no way to prove any
discrepancy, inaccuracy or fraud. Just the fact that companies
like ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia would even make a ballot-less
machine should be cause for a Congressional investigation. (There
are also many other reasons to investigate them. For a detailed
examination of these sinister corporations, check out http://
www.blackboxvoting.com.)
That said, the next error of judgment comes from those who
believe that all we need to make computerized voting machines safe
is a paper receipt.
Many intelligent, well-intentioned and hard working vote
reformers are supporting HR 2239, proposed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-
NJ), requiring all computerized voting machines to produce a
receipt for each individual voter. While I support the effort that
has gone into creating this bill, and I recognize the monumental
struggle it will face in Congress, I am unable to support it at
this time, for many reasons. The first of which is that, while
calling much needed attention to the dangers of ballot-less
machines, this legislation does not require actually hand-counting
the receipts altogether in each election.
Why is this a serious problem?
First of all, individual receipts are meaningless. Theyre worth
nothing if not counted altogether. A persons vote might be
verified by the slip of paper, but that person has no idea whether
the computer accurately tallied her vote along with all the other
votes. The final count still takes place inside the infamous
computerized black box, beyond the reach of public scrutiny. An
individual receipt in no way guarantees the safety of the final
vote count. It is at best a meaningless gesture that I am deeply
afraid will provide an extremely false sense of security for
voters.
As for recounting disputed elections, the obvious question is,
which ones? Every election is in dispute when counted by a
secretly programmed, modem-equipped computer!
Most of the supporters of this bill agree that the receipts
should be counted across the board in each election, which would
be the equivalent of a good old-fashioned paper ballot count. But
so far there is little incentive to demand that the provision be
added because it wont get any support in Congress. What does this
mean? Are we interested in actually making our elections safe,
accurate and verifiable, or are we willing to play political ball
to the point where we lose sight of our goal completely?
I am told that perhaps, over time, the legislation will be
strengthened. But history has repeatedly shown that as a bill
makes its way through Washington channels, its effectiveness is
more often than not watered down. Whatever teeth it might have to
begin with get filed into nubs that have no strength to tear into
corruption.
HR 2239 proposes surprise random recounts, where a small
percentage of jurisdictions are chosen for verification in each
election. Unfortunately, this is completely inadequate. Individual
machines can be manipulated, and election thieves can buy off the
people in charge of the random recount. Anyone who thinks that is
far fetched or impossible is very new to this issue.
And what if discrepancies are found? Then everyone will call
foul rightly so -- a glut of confused and disputed recounts will
ensue, and the entire elections machine will become hopelessly
tangled in its own mechanized parts. Meanwhile every election
criminal in the country will descend like vultures on the chaos.
Folks, lets look at this honestly. We are already deep into a
horrible and expensive mess that could all be avoided by skipping
the computerized middleman and simply counting paper ballots.
Paper Ballots A Radical Idea
The last, and to my mind, most grave error of judgment comes
from those who think that returning to a hand-counted paper ballot
system is somehow impossible, that we cant go back to a simple
process that works once weve stupidly and recklessly abandoned
it.
I dont know about you, but that strikes me as an extremely
dangerous perspective.
An MIT/Cal Tech study done in 2001 shows that manually counted
paper ballots are the most accurate system out of the 5 systems
used in the last 4 presidential elections. They are totally
verifiable, and first-world nations across the globe still use
them, including Canada which counted their last presidential
elec" 2 2003-10-28 736 America is destroying itself, Guardian special report \N "Road to ruin
The Guardian
by Matthew Engel
America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the
population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times
the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and
road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration
do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major
investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked
Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the
planet
Matthew Engel
Friday October 24, 2003
The Guardian
On the map of the United States, just below halfway down the east coast, you
can see a series of islets, in the shape of a hooked nose. These are the
Outer Banks, barrier islands - sun-kissed in summer, storm-tossed in winter
- that stretch for 100 miles and more, protecting the main coastline of the
state of North Carolina. They are built, quite literally, on shifting sands.
Twenty years ago, these were, by all accounts, magical places, hard to reach
and discovered only by the adventurous and discerning. They are still fairly
magical, at least the seemingly endless stretch of unspoiled beach is. It is
the lure of that which causes the traffic jams on the only two bridges every
Saturday throughout the summer. The narrow strip of land behind the beach,
however, has been built up with enormous holiday homes, costing up to $2m
(£1.2m) each. And prices rose by 15-20% (25% for those on the ocean front)
in 2002 alone, according to one agent.
This is what local agents call "a very nice market", and last month their
area had a week of free worldwide publicity. Hurricane Isabel swept in,
washing out much of the islands' only road and picking up motels from their
foundations and tossing them, according to one report, "like cigarette
butts". One island was turned into several islets, with a whole town,
Hatteras Village, being cut off from the rest of the US - for ever, if
nature has its way.
Residents, journalists reported, were in shock. Many scientists were not.
Speaking well before Isabel, Dr Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology
at Duke University in North Carolina, described the Outer Banks property
boom to me as "a form of societal madness". "I wouldn't buy a house on the
front row of the Outer Banks. Or the second," agreed Dr Stephen Leatherman,
who is such a connoisseur of American coastlines that he is known as Dr
Beach.
For the market is not the only thing that has been rising round here. Like
other experts, Pilkey expects the Atlantic to inundate the existing beaches
"within two to four generations". Normally, that would be no problem for the
sands, which would simply regroup and re-form further back. Unfortunately,
that is no longer possible: the $2m houses are in the way. According to
Pilkey, the government will either have to build millions of dollars worth
of seawall, which will destroy the beach anyway, or demolish the houses.
"Coastal scientists from abroad come here and just shake their heads in
disbelief," he says.
The madness of the Outer Banks seems like a symptom of, and a metaphor for,
something far broader: the US is in denial about what is, beyond any
question, potentially its most dangerous enemy. While millions of words have
been written every day for the past two years about the threat from vengeful
Islamic terrorists, the threat from a vengeful Nature has been almost wholly
ignored. Yet the likelihood of multiple attacks in the future is far more
certain.
Earlier this year, just before he was fired as environment minister, Michael
Meacher gave a speech in Newcastle, saying: "There is a lot wrong with our
world. But it is not as bad as people think. It is actually worse." He
listed five threats to the survival of the planet: lack of fresh water,
destruction of forest and crop land, global warming, overuse of natural
resources and the continuing rise in the population. What Meacher could not
say, or he would have been booted out more quickly, was that the US is a
world leader in hastening each of these five crises, bringing its gargantuan
appetite to the business of ravaging the planet. American politicians do not
talk this way. Even Al Gore, supposedly the most committed environmentalist
in world politics, kept quiet about the subject when chasing the presidency
in 2000.
Those of us without a degree in climatology can have no sensible opinion on
the truth about climate change, except to sense that the weather does seem
to have become a little weird lately. Yet in America the subject has become
politicised, with rightwing commentators decrying global warming as "bogus
science". They gloated when it snowed unusually hard in Washington last
winter (failing to notice the absence of snow in Alaska). When the dissident
"good news" scientist Bjorn Lomborg spoke to a conservative Washington
thinktank he was applauded not merely rapturously, but fawningly.
While newspapers report that Kilimanjaro's icecap is melting and Greenland's
glaciers are crumbling, the US government has been telling its scientific
advisers to do more research before it can consider any action to restrict
greenhouse gases; the scientists reported back that they had done all the
research. The attitude of the White House to global warming was summed up by
the online journalist Mickey Kaus as: "It's not true! It's not true! And we
can't do anything about it!" What terrifies all American politicians, deep
down, is that it is true and that they could do something about it, but at
horrendous cost to American industry and lifestyle.
In the meantime, all American consumers have been asked to do is to buy Ben
& Jerry's One Sweet Whirled ice cream, ensuring that a portion of Unilever's
profits go towards "global warming initiatives". Wow!
Potential Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination have been
testing environmental issues a little in the past few weeks. Some activists
are hopeful that the newly elected Governor Schwarzenegger of California is
genuinely interested. But, in truth, despite the Soviet-style politicisation
of science, serious national debate on the issue ceased years ago.
Of course, nimbyism is alive and well. And, sure, there are localised
battles between greens and their corporate enemies: towns in Alabama try to
resist corporate poisoning; contests go on to preserve the habitats of
everything from the grizzly bear to rare types of fly; Californians hug
trees to stop new housing estates. Sometimes the greenies win, though they
have been losing with increasing frequency, especially if Washington happens
to be involved. These fights, even in agglomeration, are not the real issue.
Day after day across America the green agenda is being lost - and then,
usually, being buried under concrete.
"We're waging a war on the environment, a very successful one," says Paul
Ehrlich, professor of population studies at Stanford University. "This
nation is devouring itself," according to Phil Clapp of the National
Environmental Trust. These are voices that have almost ceased to be heard in
the US. Yet with each passing day, the gap between the US and the rest of
the planet widens. To take the figure most often trotted out: Americans
contribute a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. To meet the
seemingly modest Kyoto objective of reducing emissions to 7% below their
1990 levels by 2012, they would actually (due to growth) have to cut back by
a third. For the Bush White House, this is not even on the horizon, never
mind the agenda.
Why has the leader of the free world opted out? The first reason lies deep
in the national psyche. The old world developed on the basis of a coalition
- uneasy but understood - between humanity and its surroundings. The
settlement of the US was based on conquest, not just of the indigenous
peoples, but also of the terrain. It appears to be, thus far, one of the
great success stories of modern history.
"Remember, this country is built very heavily on the frontier ethic," says
Clapp. "How America moved west was to exhaust the land and move on. The
original settlers, such as the Jefferson family, moved westward because
families like theirs planted tobacco in tidewater Virginia and exhausted the
soil. My own ancestors did the same in Indiana."
Americans made crops grow in places that are entirely arid. They built dams
- about 250,000 of them. They built great cities, with skyscrapers and
symphony orchestras, in places that appeared barely habitable. They shifted
rivers, even reversed their flow. "It's the American belief that with enough
hard work and perseverance anything - be it a force of nature, a country or
a disease - can be vanquished," says Clapp. "It's a country founded on the
idea of no limits. The essence of environmentalism is that there are indeed
limits. It's one of the reasons environmentalism is a stronger ethic in
Europe than in the US."
There is a second reason: the staggering population growth of the US. It is
approaching 300 million, having gone up from 200 million in 1970, which was
around the time President Nixon set up a commission to consider the issue,
the last time any US administration has dared think about it. A million new
legal migrants are coming in every year (never mind illegals), and the US
Census Bureau projections for 2050, merely half a lifetime away, is 420
million. This is a rate of increase far beyond anything else in the
developed world, and not far behind Brazil, India, or indeed Mexico.
This issue is political dynamite, although not for quite the same reasons as
in Britain. Almost every political group is split on the issue, including
the far right (torn between overt xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan and the
free marketeers), the labour movement and the environmentalists. The belief
that the US is the best country in the world is a cornerstone of national
self-belief, and many Americans still, wholeheartedly, want others to share
it. They also want cheap labour to cut the sugar cane, pluck the chickens,
pick the oranges, mow the lawns and make the beds.
But the dynamite is most potent among the Hispanic community, the group who
will probably decide the destiny of future presidential elections and who do
not wish to be told their relatives will not be allowed in or, if illegal,
seriously harassed. "Neither party wants to say we should change immigration
policy," says John Haaga of the independent Population Reference Bureau.
"The phrase being used is 'Hispandering'". Yet extra Americans are not just
a problem for the US: they are, in the eyes of many environmentalists, a
problem for the world because migrants, in a short span of time, take on
American consumption patterns. "Not only don't we have a population policy,"
says Ehrlich, "we don't have a consumption policy either. We are the most
overpopulated country in the world. It's not the number of people. It's
their consumption." Ehrlich may be wrong. It is, though. somewhat surprising
that the federal government's four million employees do not appear to
include anyone charged with even thinking about this issue.
This brings us to the third factor: the Bush administration, the first
government in modern history which has systematically disavowed the systems
of checks and controls that have governed environmental policy since it
burst into western political consciousness a generation ago. It would be
ludicrous to suggest that Bush is responsible for what is happening to the
American environment. The crisis is far more deep-seated than that, and the
federal government is too far removed from the minutiae of daily life.
But the Bushies have perfected a technique of announcing regular edicts
(often late on a Friday afternoon) rolling back environmental control,
usually while pretending to do the opposite. Morale among civil servants at
the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington was already close to
rock-bottom even before its moderate leader, Christine Todd Whitman, finally
threw in her hand in May. Gossip round town was that she had endured two
years of private humiliation at the hands of the White House. Few
environmentalists have great hopes for her announced successor, the governor
of Utah, Mike Leavitt.
What is really alarming is the intellectual atmosphere in Washington. You
can attend seminars debunking scientific eco-orthodoxy almost every week.
Early in the year, there was much favourable publicity for a new work Global
Warming and Other Eco-myths, produced by the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, an organisation reputedly funded by multinational corporations.
Outside Washington, it can be far nastier. "I've never threatened anyone in
my life," a conservation activist in Montana complained to the Guardian. "I
do know, though, that I have gotten very ugly threats left on my telephone
answering machine over the past year, and twice had to scour my sidewalk in
front of the building to erase the dead body chalk outlines."
Out in the west, words such as enviro-whackos are popularised by rightwing
radio hosts such as the ex-Watergate conspirator Gordon Liddy, who passes on
to his millions of listeners the message that global warming is a lie. "I
commute in a three-quarter-tonne capacity Chevrolet Silverado HD," he
swanked in his latest book. "Four-wheel drive, off-road equipped, extended
curb pickup truck, powered by a 300hp, overhead valve, turbo supercharged
diesel engine with 520lb-feet of torque... It has lights all over it so
everyone can see me coming and get out of the way. If someone in a little
government-mandated car hits me, it is all over - for him." Fuel economy in
American vehicles hit a 22-year low in 2002.
In this country, green-minded people can't even trust the good guys. The
Nature Conservancy, the US's largest environmental group with a million
members - with a role not unlike Britain's National Trust - was the subject
of an exhaustive exposι in the Washington Post in May, accusing it of
sanctioning deals to build "opulent houses on fragile grasslands" and
drilling for gas under the last breeding ground of the Attwater's Prairie
Chicken, whose numbers have dwindled to just dozens.
On April 22, 1970 more than 20 million people attended the first-ever Earth
Day. In New York, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic and 100,000 people
attended an ecology fair in Central Park. The Republican governor of New
York wore a Save the Earth button, and Senator John Tower, another
Republican, told an audience of Texan oilmen: "Recent efforts on the part of
the private sector show promise for pollution abatement and control. Such
efforts are in our own best interests..."
So what happened next? The problem for the green movement was not what went
wrong, but what went right. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, said: "In
the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people
are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked on
now." The famine never came. And after the oil crisis came and went, and
Americans began to tire of the gloom-filled, eco-oriented presidency of
Jimmy Carter, they turned instead to Ronald Reagan, who proposed simple
solutions of tax cuts and deregulation and, lo, the world got more cheerful.
With doomsday postponed indefinitely, the politics of the Reagan years have
lingered.
Some activists remain bitter about the Clinton White House, which was only
patchily interested in green issues. "It left a bad taste in the mouth of
the environmental community," says Tim Wirth, a former senator and one-time
Clinton official. "They trimmed their sails over and over again. The old
House speaker, Tip O'Neill, had a very important political aphorism: 'Yer
dance with the person who brung yer.' They never did." This bitterness was
one of the factors that led to the hefty third-party vote for Ralph Nader in
2000, which proved disastrous for Al Gore, the inhibited environmentalist.
In the three years since then, Bush has danced like a dervish with the folks
who brung him. Yet, even now, no one dare say out loud that they are against
environmentalism: the political wisdom is that the subject can be a voting
issue among the suburban moms, ferrying the kids around to baseball practice
in their own Chevrolet Silverados. Instead, the big corporations and their
political allies have - brilliantly - manipulated the forces that the
eco-warriors themselves unleashed and turned them back on their creators.
"In the 80s they took all the techniques of citizen advocacy groups and
professionalised them," explains Phil Clapp. "That's when you saw the
proliferation of lobbyists in Washington. The environmental community never
retooled to meet the challenge. They had developed the techniques, but were
still doing them in a PTA bake-sale kind of way."
Thus every new measure passed to favour business interests and ease up on
pollution regulations is presented in an eco-friendly, sugar-coated,
summer's morning kind of way, such as Clear Skies, the weakening of the
Clean Air Act. The House of Representatives has just passed the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act, presented by the president as an anti-forest fire
measure. Opponents say it is simply a gift to the timber industry that will
make it extremely difficult to stop the felling of old-growth trees. Another
technique is to announce, with great fanfare, initiatives that everyone can
applaud, such as a recent one for hydrogen-based cars. We can expect more of
these as November 2004 draws closer. When they are scaled back, or delayed,
or dropped, there is less publicity. It is a habit that runs in the family.
Governor Jeb Bush's grand scheme to save the Florida Everglades was much
applauded; the delay from 2006 to 2016 was little noticed.
Even now the White House does not win all its battles. In the Senate, where
a small group of greenish New England Republicans has a potential blocking
veto, there are moves to compromise on the forests bill. The New England
Republicans were largely responsible for Bush's inability to push through
his plan to allow oil drilling in the Alaskan wildlife reserve.
Occasionally, there is good news: some of the small dams that have impeded
the life-cycle of Pacific salmon and steelhead trout are being demolished;
there are reports of a new alliance between the old enemies, ranchers and
greenies, in New Mexico; renewable energy is under discussion. But some of
their policies are already having their effect. Carol Browner, Clinton's
head of the EPA, claims the Bush administration has set back the campaign to
cut industrial pollution in ways that will last for decades.
"This administration has sent a signal to the polluting community, 'You can
get away with bad habits'," says Browner. "State governments in the
north-east were much tougher, so the north-eastern power stations upgraded
their emissions standards in the 90s whereas the mid-west guys, who are
their competitors, didn't. Now they're not enforcing the law."
"So what they're saying to the companies is: 'Don't go early, don't comply
with the law first. The rules might change.' Even a company that wants to do
the right thing has to look at its bottom line. If they get into a situation
like this, they think: 'We spent $1bn to meet the requirements and our
competitors didn't. Yeah, great. We're not going to do that again.'"
Under Bush, the lack of interest at every level has at last come into
balance. The US is equally unconcerned globally, federally, statewide and
locally. The environmentalists' macro-gloom has been off-beam before, of
course. Perhaps global warming is a myth; perhaps the CEI is right and there
will be a blue revolution in water use to complement the green revolution.
There is probably just as much as chance that the next big surprise will be
a thrilling one - the arrival of nuclear cold fusion to solve the energy
dilemma, say - as a disaster. Maybe biotechnology, pesticides, natural gas
and American ingenuity and optimism will indeed see everything right. It
does seem like a curiously reckless gamble for the US to be taking, though,
staking the future of the planet on the spin of nature's roulette wheel.
But it is only a bigger version of the bet being taken by the home-buyers of
North Carolina. In a country supposedly distrustful of government, the Outer
Bankers have remarkable faith in their leaders' ability to see them seem
right. Post-Isabel, a group of residents there wrote a letter demanding
government action so they can protect their livelihoods and families
"without the fear of every hurricane or nor'easter cutting us off from the
rest of the world". Quite. Who would imagine that in the 21st century the
most powerful empire the world has ever known could still be threatened by
enemies as pathetically old-fashioned as wind and tide?
Orrin Pilkey thinks it quite possible that sea levels might rise to the
point where the Outer Banks will be a minor detail. "We're not going to be
worried about North Carolina. We're going to be worrying about Manhattan."
Still, macro-catastrophe may never happen. The micro-catastrophe, however,
already has: the US is an aesthetic disaster area.
If you fly from Washington to Boston, there are now almost no open spaces
below. This is increasingly true in a big U covering both coasts and the
sunbelt. In the south-west, the main growth area, bungalows spread for miles
over what a decade ago was virgin desert. The population of Arizona
increased 40% in the 1990s, that of next-door Nevada 66%. That's, as Natalie
Merchant sang, "...the sprawl that keeps crawling its way, 'bout a thousand
miles a day", which is not much of an exaggeration.
Every day 5,000 new houses go up in America. Many of these fit the American
appetite for size, however small the plot: "McMansions", as they are known.
The very word suburb is now old-hat. The reality of life for many people now
is the "exurb", which can be dozens of miles from the city on which it
depends. In places such as California, exurban life is the only affordable
option for most young couples and recent migrants.
These communities are rarely gated but often walled, creating a vague
illusion of security and ensuring that the residents have to drive to a
shop, even if there happens to be one 50 yards away. Naturally, they have to
drive everywhere else. In August it was announced that the number of cars in
the US (1.9 per household) now actually exceeded the number of drivers
(1.75).
In many places - especially those growing the fastest - developers have to
deal only with the little councils in the towns they are taking over. There
are often minimal requirements to provide any kind of infrastructure, such
as sewage or schools, to service these new communities. The rules for
building houses in the computer game Sim City are stricter than those that
apply in most areas of the Sun Belt. Too late, some parts of the country
have concluded that this is untenable. The buzz-phrase is "smart growth",
which means no more than the kind of forethought before building that has
been routine in Europe for half a century. Even the Environmental Protection
Agency is not above being helpful: its policies for making use of brownfield
sites have seen people moving, improbably, back into the centre of cities
such as Pittsburgh.
But where it matters, no one is talking strategy. "In the really
fast-growing states, the pace of development is such that they can build
huge numbers of houses without anyone considering what it means for the
infrastructure," says Marya Morris of the American Planning Association. In
California, more than perhaps any other state, there is a debate. But while
people talk, developers act: a city catering for up to 70,000 people will
soon arise at the foot of the Tehachapi Mountains. According to the Los
Angeles Times, it would effectively close the gap between Los Angeles and
Bakersfield, theoretically 111 miles away. "Southern California is coming
over the hill," said one resident.
Americans still have a presumption of infinite space. But I have made a
curious and mildly embarrassing discovery. In states such as Maryland and
Ohio, the pattern of settlement in supposedly rural areas is such that it
can actually be quite difficult to find a discreet spot away from housing to
stop the car and have a pee. Amid the wide-open spaces of Texas, it can be
worse: the gap between Dallas and Waco is a 100-mile strip mall. The
concepts of townscape and landscape seem non-existent: there is land that
has been developed and land that hasn't - yet.
And yet. Time and again, around the US, one is struck by the stunning beauty
of the landscape, not in the obvious places, but in corners that few
Americans will have heard of: amazing rivers such as the Pearl in Louisiana,
or the Choptank in Maryland or the Lost River in West Virginia; the
Chocolate Mountains and the San Diego back country in California; the bits
that are left of the Outer Banks...
And equally one is struck by the sheer horrendousness of what man has done
in the century or so since he seriously got to work over here. In the
context of ages, the white man is merely a hotel guest in this continent: he
has smashed the furniture and smeared excrement on the walls. He appears to
be looking forward to his next night's stay with relish.
Of course, there are still huge tracts of untouched and largely unpopulated
land: in the Great Plains, where people are leaving, in the mountains,
deserts and Arctic tundra. But last spring, in another of Washington's
Friday night announcements, the Department of the Interior announced - no,
whispered - that it was removing more than 200m acres that it owned from
"further wilderness study", enabling those areas to be opened for mining,
drilling, logging or road-building. That's an area three times the size of
Britain. The New York Times did write a trenchant editorial; otherwise the
response was minimal.
Not long ago I went for a walk in the Vallecito Mountains in California.
After a while, I got myself into a position where the contours of the land
blotted out everything and, after the noise of a plane had died away, there
was no sight or sound at all that was not produced by nature. This lasted
about a minute. Then, from somewhere, a motorcycle roared into earshot.
Sure, there are still places in this vast country where it is possible to
escape, but they get harder and harder to find except for the fit, the
adventurous and those unencumbered by children or jobs. Most Americans don't
live that way. And nowhere now is entirely safe from being ravaged,
sometimes in ways that prejudice the future of the whole planet. Al-Qaida
and the Iraqi bombers have no need to bother. America is destroying itself.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
Diamond, Louisiana
Matthew Engel
Friday October 24, 2003
The Guardian
By the banks of the Mississippi, Margie Eugene-Richard showed me where she
grew up. That was where she caught crayfish as a kid. There was the place
her grandfather grew sugar cane and watermelon. And that was the tangerine
tree she planted. The sugar cane and watermelon have long gone. In their
place now they are growing ethylene and propylene.
This was the poor, historically black community of Diamond, Louisiana, now
disappearing - at its own request. Eugene-Richard lived for 50 years with
the most overbearing, most unfeeling neighbour you can imagine, she says:
the Shell Chemicals plant. Until 2001, her home was 17ft from the perimeter
fence. It was a dangerous neighbour too. One explosion, in 1973, killed two
people; another was experienced "like an earthquake" in New Orleans, 20
miles away. And always there was the smell: "Like bleach mixed with garlic
and gas," she says.
The more insidious consequences of living next to a chemicals plant remain
unclear, but Eugene-Richard has no doubt. "My sister died of sarcoidosis at
43. Then I thought about it. And you know what? Half her class had gone."
This stretch of the Mississippi - between New Orleans and the Louisiana
state capital, Baton Rouge - is known to campaigners as "cancer alley". A
huge proportion of the US's most unwelcome neighbours, especially chemical
factories and oil refineries, are concentrated here. The river ensures an
easy supply of water and transport; the oil and gas fields of the Gulf of
Mexico are close by; the residents affected are black or poor or often both;
and Louisiana politicians have long had a reputation as the most biddable in
the nation.
Eugene-Richard was unusually determined, and eventually forced Shell to give
up its policy of buying up nearby property at prices that reflected the fact
that no one wanted to live there. Instead, in 2001, an 11-year campaign
ended in an agreement to buy them out fairly.
The link between these plants and cancer is unproven - the most recent
research attributed high local disease rates to smoking. Protesters reject
these findings. Anne Rolfes runs the Bucket Brigade, which provides
residents with kits to take samples if they suspect discharges. "Next to the
refineries we find a great many sulphurs, a lot of them known to cause
respiratory diseases. We find benzene, a known carcinogen. Up and down the
streets, you find very rare cancers. Anecdotally, it's very shocking."
But fighters are rare. Ken Ford is now 66, and has lived at Chalmette, in
the shadow of the Exxon-Mobil refinery, for 40 years. He has been too ill to
work for the past 30. "I really believe that living here has made me sick.
But just try to prove it. Several people living on my block have come down
with rare cancers in the past two years. People will not complain. I try to
get them interested, and they say: 'Man, you don't want to mess with that.'"
Ford claims the Bucket Brigade's equipment showed that the refinery exceeded
permitted emissions levels 32 times between May and July this year. The
company says there were no such incidents.
A mile from Ford's home is the site of one of the US's most famous victories
over the British, the Battle of New Orleans (1815). The British came over
from where the refinery is now, and most of their dead are buried
underneath. Guides, dressed as militiamen, fire muskets and cannon towards
the refinery for the tourists, who come by paddle steamer from the city. But
it's not a whiff of grapeshot they get back. It's a whiff that smells like
rotten eggs, or hydrogen sulphide. "It does rather detract from the
historical perspective," says a guide, sadly.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
" 2 2003-10-24 737 USFS & Arson Task Force's Two Magic Bolts Theory \N "
From: Pahtoo@aol.com
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:32:02 EDT
The USFS and the Arson Task Force (led presumably by Arlen Spector) investigating the Photo-op Fire would have us believe that a bolt of lightning hit a tree and debarked it. Then, the bolt jumped through the air to another nearby tree. Tree #two happened to have center rot, which then ignited, though bone-dry tree one did not. The fire then smoldered for two weeks undetected, even by the Secret Service who flew over the area with infrared detectors (looking for al Qaida hiding in the Wilderness).
But, wait. It's the Two Magic Bolts Theory as the same improbable (some would say impossible) event is said to have happened in two separate places over 14 miles apart.
Bring on the Inspector General and some independent investigators. Where's there's smoke, there's fire.
Michael Donnelly - 503.581.2616
" 2 2003-10-21 738 Making Sense Out of Zerocut, Thomas Power \N "October 21, 2003
Making Sense Out of "Zero (Commercial) Cut" on Public Forestlands
By Thomas Michael Power
Thomas Michael Power is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Montana.
He is the author of "Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place."
In the debate over how to manage our public forests, many timber industry officials, political leaders, and newspaper and other media commentators have asserted that irrational environmental obstructionists have been mindlessly shutting down the Forest Service's commercial timber program.
These environmental critics often point to the "zero cut" objective espoused by many of environmental organizations to document that obstructionist objective. These folks, we are told, want to keep any trees from being cut down on public lands. Even on lands that already have extensive lumber road networks in place, where timber has been harvested for decades, and where new commercially designed plantations of young trees are already maturing, these environmentalists want to stop timber harvests. What sense does that make?
I will leave those environmental organizations to speak for themselves. But there is a logic to a narrower version of the zero cut position, namely that commercially-motivated timber harvests should not be taking place on federal lands.
The social logic behind that position is implicit in the widespread recognition, acknowledged in our law and regulations, that our public forestlands produce a wide variety of valuable goods and services, only some of which are commercial in nature. In the past this was described in terms of "multiple-use," but today most recognize that that emphasis on "use" is too narrow. We now talk about forest health and the environmental services that natural forestlands provide to on-site visitors as well as surrounding communities.
The list of the environmental services provided by natural forestlands is lengthy, including wildlife habitat, watershed services, biodiversity, soil stability, climate stabilization, fisheries, recreation opportunities, scenic beauty, and open space. Most of these are non-commercial in character. Of course those forestlands can also provide commercial opportunities to timber, livestock, mineral, and recreation businesses. The source of the conflict over forest management policy has been the appropriate balance between the pursuit of commercial objectives and the pursuit of the non-commercial environmental services objectives.
Between 1950 and 1990, our forest managers acted on the presumption that they could pursue the commercial and non-commercial objectives simultaneously. They told us that huge sprawling clearcuts not only were the most profitable way to harvest trees but that those clearcuts were also good for the forest since they mimicked natural fires. We were told that the clearcuts would also boost water production, allow superior tree stocks to be grown, create more habitat for wildlife, and, through the road system, open more and more of the National Forests to recreation. The commercially motivated clearcut, they asserted, was really a multiple-use tool.
Since almost all of the commercial and non-commercial objectives were said to coincide, no choices had to be made between them; no tradeoffs were necessary; there were free lunches to be had by all. Unfortunately, this simply was not the case. A naοve or cynical "conspiracy of optimism" simply obscured the fact that the commercial objectives were being allowed to trump the non-commercial, to the serious detriment of the forests.
This same naοve position is being asserted today as we discuss forest health and hazardous forest fuels reduction programs. Timber interests tell us that commercial timber sales are also forest fire reduction and forest health programs. This is emphatically not the case. The prescription for a profitable timber sale involves taking the older, larger, and less flammable trees and leaving the branches, tops, and needles as well as the smaller, more flammable trees and brush. The prescription for a more stable, less fire-prone forest is to leave the older, commercially valuable trees, and remove the smaller trees and brush, much of which has no commercial value.
Pursuing one of these objectives necessarily requires that the pursuit of the other objective be at least partially abandoned. Tradeoffs have to be made. There are unavoidable costs associated with those choices. Pretending otherwise is dishonest and dangerous.
A century of growing population, the commercial or residential development of almost all private land, and the harsh treatment of industrial timberlands have also caused a shift in the role people think public lands should play. Those lands are increasingly seen as preserves where commercial and development pressures can be held at bay so that some part of our natural landscapes can be permanently managed for non-commercial purposes. This is not to say that timber would not or should not be harvested, only that the motivation behind the harvest should not be commercial in character. Only harvests justified by other noncommercial objectives such as community safety, true forest restoration, or wildlife, would take place.
There is nothing obstructionist about such a position. It is a forward-looking vision that seeks to preserve for future generations some of that natural forest values that we have all enjoyed in our lifetimes.
" 2 2003-10-21 739 Salvage-logging plan aired: Big operation targets Oregon forest, SeaTimes \N "[NOTE; this story is incomplete at best. This article raises questions about its "objectivity" and journalistic integrity it is so slanted to the industry/administration's views about "salvage" logging. It failed to mention the oft-proven and damning record of dishonesty and lies by the FS and the timber industry. It uses the word "harvest" repeatedly where it is completely inappropriate. What gives with the Times? Where are the aerial images that show the forest having been hardly burned at all and that the Biscuit Fire was a but a "gentle giant?" That would support FS comments that the FS couldn't have deliberately managed a Proscribed Burn" this beneficial? Where is the mention of the Partridge, Power or EcoNorthwest studies that have exposed and demonstrated the lack of economic and ecological honesty in the blatantly pro-industry biased John Sessions report and the FS/industry proposals for the Biscuit Fire? This "salvage" logging proposal is garbage and is far more honestly described as just another dishonest and destructive industry taking from our publicly owned national forest, rivers and streams. Is the Times becoming just another Bush mouthpiece? TGHermach]
Tuesday, October 21, 2003, 01:16 A.M. Pacific
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001770986_biscuit21m.html
Salvage-logging plan aired: Big operation targets Oregon timber
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
The U.S. Forest Service next month will propose one of the largest salvage-logging operations of the past quarter-century to harvest timber scorched in a 2002 fire in Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest.
The "preferred alternative" calls for logging in 29,000 acres of the nearly 500,000 acres that were at least partially burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire, according to Judy McHugh, a Forest Service official in southern Oregon. The logging is expected to produce about 518 million board feet of timber, which is more than the entire 2002 Forest Service harvest in all of Western Washington and western Oregon.
The Biscuit fire of 2002 was the largest in Oregon of the past century, and it drew President Bush to southern Oregon in August of that year as he touted a new "Healthy Forests" plan aimed at speeding up thinning of forests at risk of burning.
The plan is expected to be made final by next spring, with initial logging expected to start next summer and continuing for a year or more. The new logging plan represents a more than five-fold increase from an earlier Forest Service proposal for cutting in the Biscuit-fire zone. It comes as the Bush administration has launched a broader effort to boost the timber cut on federal lands across the West.
The harvest would unfold in a rugged area that is one of the most biologically diverse forests in the Northwest. It would including logging burned-over old-growth trees, and more than 12,000 acres of the cut-zone would be in roadless areas. In any one area, up to 80 percent of the trees would be removed.
And the prospect of such large-scale logging appears certain to be challenged by conservationists.
"I think we are seeing the administration set a precedent that once an area is struck by fire, no-hold barred logging can take place," said Rolf Skar of the Siskiyou Project, a conservation group based in Cave Junction, Ore.
Conservation groups have long sought increased protection for the Siskiyou forest, which describes as a biological crossroads, where the Coast Range, Cascade Mountains and Klamath-Siskiyou mountains come together.
Forest Service officials say they will work to minimize the environmental effects of the logging. They would require the use of helicopters to reach much of the timber, with the preferred alternative building only about 2.3 miles of new roads. Those roads would be temporary
Timber officials say the harvest still represents only a small fraction of the timber scorched by the fire and that many of the dead logs may have diminished in value by the time the cutting begins. But they welcome the prospect of a surge in federal timber sales.
"We are likely to see mills from Oregon, Northern California and maybe even southern Washington bidding on the timber if it was offered at an economical price," said Chris West of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council.
Forest Service officials say the new preferred alternative for Biscuit-fire logging reflects new information gathered in recent months, including a study by John Sessions, an Oregon State University professor who called for salvage of more than 2 billion board feet. The best way to quicken the forest's recovery and reduce risk of recurring, large-scale fires is reforestation, vegetation control and removal of many dead and dying trees, Sessions concluded.
"He did provide us with significant new information," McHugh said.
The largest Pacific Northwest salvage effort of the past quarter-century occurred after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, when loggers over a period of years cut more than 1 billion board feet of timber affected by the 1980 blast.
" 2 2003-10-21 740 Klamath Tribe Seeks Justice in Lands \N "October 20, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1020/p01s02-ussc.html
Cowboys, Indians, and land: an old saga's new twist
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
ASHLAND, ORE. - Environmentalists often cite native Americans as a model for
protecting nature. The groups are working together to restore Maine's
Penobscot River and oppose natural-gas exploration on Navajo lands.
But just as the 1854 speech attributed to Chief Seattle of the Suquamish tribe
("We are a part of the earth and it is part of us") is now considered a myth,
the collaboration of environmentalists and Indians has been tenuous at best.
And today it's being tested, as some tribes assert their rights to exploit -
as well as preserve - natural resources.
This is evident in the Klamath Basin of California and Oregon, where
conservation groups oppose a plan returning extensive areas of national forest
to tribes. They worry that native Americans will abuse the land. Critics say
this has been the case in southeast Alaska, where Indian corporations have
made vast clear-cuts on land they control.
Symbolically, it's a case of cowboys and Indians representing centuries-old,
conflicting cultures: They have joined forces against a more modern version of
land conservation that puts endangered species way ahead of resource development.
After years of conflict, the Klamath Tribes have met with area ranchers to
allot water for wildlife refuges, crops, and cattle, while recognizing tribal
water rights that go back to an 1864 treaty. Since the negotiations involve
federal lands, administration officials have joined in. The heart of the plan
is a transfer of 690,000 acres - most of the Winema and Fremont national
forests - to tribal control.
The stakes are huge: more than 1,000 square miles of national forest valued at
$1.4 billion. Perhaps more important, returning control to tribal authorities
would set a precedent for tribes claiming unfair treatment under historic
treaties with Washington.
Before white settlers arrived, the tribes (the Klamath, the Modoc, and the
Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians, collectively known as the Klamath Tribes)
claimed some 22 million acres. Under pressure from homesteaders and the US
Cavalry, the tribes in 1864 gave up all but about 2 million acres in return
for the right to hunt, fish, and gather "in perpetuity."
Through force and federal legislation, this reservation was reduced to just
under 900,000 acres. Still, the tribes were one of the most economically and
socially successful native American groups in the United States.
That changed in 1954 when Congress passed a law "terminating" the tribe, on
the philosophy that Indians would do better if they became part of the
dominant culture and economy. Most tribal members took the one-time buyout.
But with no chance to buy back the land and little experience in a cash
economy, few invested or started businesses.
The land became national forest open to commercial logging; within two
decades, the tribes had high rates of infant mortality, unemployment, and
alcoholism.
Declaring the termination "morally and legally unacceptable," President
Richard Nixon in 1970 asked Congress to reverse it. The tribes were officially
recognized in 1986. Since then, the Klamaths, who number about 3,000, have
reasserted hunting, fishing, and water rights. Still, they had lost
traditional lands.
Jay Ward, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council
(ONRC), acknowledges that Indians "have suffered greatly at the hands of the
federal government." But, he says, Americans "[should not] be asked to give up
public lands, natural resources, and the ... national forest legacy."
Conservation groups, including the ONRC, offer an alternative: federal
compensation for lands and services lost to termination, in the form of cash
or local private lands. National forests would be left under federal control.
"While the Tribes claim they wish to manage the lands for multiple natural
benefits, they also seek to sustain their tribal community almost entirely by
proceeds from commercial logging," the ONRC and 17 other groups wrote to Sen.
Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon last week. "Unfortunately, history demonstrates these
two goals are incompatible."
"We support economic self-sufficiency for native peoples," the groups say.
"But we strongly oppose using publicly owned forests as a blank check ... to
right past wrongs."
Environmentalists worry that the Klamath Tribes - sovereign nations under US
law - would not be governed by the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species
Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, or the National Forest Management
Act. The laws protect hundreds of millions of acres of public land.
The tribes flatly reject the environmentalists' plan, insisting they can take
better care of the land than Uncle Sam has in a 50-year regime that has
emphasized industrial logging. "It is difficult for us to imagine ... that
lands now private, in place of the reservation lands that were designated as
National Forest lands in 1961, could be a plausible solution," says tribal
chairman Allen Foreman. "President Bush and Interior Secretary Gale Norton are
clearly correct in saying that the Klamath Basin needs a water settlement,"
says Mr. Foreman. "Even in a fairly decent water year, there simply isn't enough."
In one sense, the cowboys and Indians here, as elsewhere in the West, are
growing more alike. Many native Americans are farmers, ranchers, loggers, and
miners. And many ranchers who descended (literally or emotionally) from early
pioneers and homesteaders increasingly see themselves as an endangered species.
The main difference is that the Klamath tribes trace their ancestry back
14,000 years. They may have been temporarily "terminated" by Uncle Sam, but
they still feel very connected to a land they believe to be theirs.
"Without the restored Homelands," says the tribes' plan for restoration, "the
Klamath Peoples' spirituality, culture, economy, and community will continue
to suffer the overwhelming effects of the federal termination."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and
related links
" 2 2003-10-20 741 Our Wild Lands Can Give No More, Bass, LAT \N "http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-bass19oct19,1,7512853.story?coll=la-news-comment
ENVIRONMENT
Our Wild Lands Can Give No More
By Rick Bass
Rick Bass is the author of "The Hermit's Story," a collection of short stories.
October 19, 2003
LIBBY, Mont. I consider myself a moderate environmentalist. I believe that
the remaining roadless lands in our national forests deserve permanent
protection. I also believe that there are selective opportunities for logging
and thinning in forests bordering cities and towns. Yet, my moderation is
beginning to crack.
It has been 27 years since wilderness in Montana has received any new
protections, even as the need for governmental protection has increased
dramatically. In California and a few other states, ecologies have been
preserved. But the national trend is increasingly disturbing: Our
environmental treasures are being stripped away. Montana is the canary in the
coal mine, alerting us to the bigger problem of an administration and Congress
trying to undo our national-resource laws, piece by piece, on the sly.
The timber industry in Montana, in particular, has gained one concession after
another. Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, has almost single-handedly gone
to bat for the industry. He strongly supports a higher softwood tariff on
Canadian timber. He sponsored stewardship forestry projects to promote
sustainable, community-based use of the state's timberland. He recommended
that environmental review of some small-scale logging projects be streamlined
to improve efficiency. And he called for increased funding to thin forests
abutting urban communities.
Though I'm grateful for Baucus' concern for Montana's timber-dependent rural
communities, such as the one in which I live, it often feels like "give,"
"give," "give," instead of "give in exchange for something else." For example,
in northwest Montana's Yaak Valley, where not a single acre of 1 million is
protected as wilderness, there are only a few roadless areas remaining, and
they are the most inaccessible and most distant from human habitation and
possess little timber value.
And now, just when you might think that moderate environmentalists have
nothing more to give, along comes one of the most shocking anti-environmental
legislative provisions ever, and possibly a dangerous national precedent. Its
author is Montana's junior Republican senator, Conrad Burns, who has a
penchant for claiming credit for, when not quashing, Baucus' collaborative
work. Burns' target is the Kootenai National Forest. His rider, attached to
the Interior appropriations bill, would allow logging of a least 2,000 acres
of old-growth forest and logging and road building in one of the most
threatened grizzly bear habitats in the nation, the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem. In
addition, it would exempt certain future salvage-logging projects in Flathead
National Forest from having to comply with the Clean Water Act. Flathead is
adjacent to Glacier National Park, one of the crown jewels of the continent.
Why this turn of events? In a lawsuit filed late last year, environmentalists
claimed that the Forest Service had not, as required by law, presented its
old-growth data on Kootenai to the public. Nor was the service dutifully
monitoring the health of the forest's old-growth-dependent species. It was an
open-and-shut case.
I was a member of an environmental group that urged the Forest Service to
settle out of court, since obtaining an injunction against timber-related
activities in the affected areas would disrupt local rural communities.
Montana's Forest Service personnel were receptive to our offer, but U.S.
attorneys weren't. Sure enough, the Forest Service lost in court and now
Burns has brought forth his rider that would nullify the court's decision to
stop five logging projects covering nearly 9,000 acres.
One of the bitterest ironies is that our group kept on trying to broker a
peace agreement with the Forest Service after it lost in court. We acted as a
liaison between the service and the plaintiffs in performing an exhaustive
evaluation to determine which timber sales might be able to still go forward.
We also helped persuade the plaintiffs to drop another lawsuit, one in which
old-growth concerns had been met. These two actions would have secured nearly
30 million board feet of small-diameter timber for local Montana mills. The
system was working fine, until Burns crushed the law.
What more can an environmentalist give? Always more, it seems, until there is
no wilderness left. The Senate is considering a compromise, co-sponsored by
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), of the Bush administration's so-called
"Healthy Forests Initiative." The initiative aims to reduce the threat of
devastating wildfires by thinning read: logging forests. But Feinstein's
bill, among other things, would make it easier to log in some roadless and
old-growth areas and weaken judicial review of Forest Service decisions. The
legislation is unneeded because the tools and authority necessary to protect
communities from fire already exist. All we need is funding.
Californians should care about what may happen in the Kootenai and Flathead
national forests, as Montanans should care about the Sierra forests, and as we
should all care about our legacy in Alaska's Tongass and Utah's red-rock
desert. Environmentalists and roadless lands and old forests have nothing
more to give other than the protections afforded by the law. If we budge on
that, the public will soon have no legal standing in the corporate takeover of
public lands.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
" 2 2003-10-19 742 The Emperor Bush Has No Clothes, Sen Robert Byrd \N "The Emperor Has No Clothes
by US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Remarks
October 17, 2003
In 1837, Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen, wrote a wonderful fairy tale
which he titled The Emperor's New Clothes. It may be the very first example
of the power of political correctness. It is the story of the Ruler of a
distant land who was so enamored of his appearance and his clothing that he
had a different suit for every hour of the day.
One day two rogues arrived in town, claiming to be gifted weavers. They
convinced the Emperor that they could weave the most wonderful cloth, which
had a magical property. The clothes were only visible to those who were
completely pure in heart and spirit.
The Emperor was impressed and ordered the weavers to begin work immediately.
The rogues, who had a deep understanding of human nature, began to feign work
on empty looms.
Minister after minister went to view the new clothes and all came back
exhorting the beauty of the cloth on the looms even though none of them could
see a thing.
Finally a grand procession was planned for the Emperor to display his new
finery. The Emperor went to view his clothes and was shocked to see
absolutely nothing, but he pretended to admire the fabulous cloth, inspect the
clothes with awe, and, after disrobing, go through the motions of carefully
putting on a suit of the new garments.
Under a royal canopy the Emperor appeared to the admiring throng of his people
- - all of whom cheered and clapped because they all knew the rogue weavers'
tale and did not want to be seen as less than pure of heart.
But, the bubble burst when an innocent child loudly exclaimed, for the whole
kingdom to hear, that the Emperor had nothing on at all. He had no clothes.
That tale seems to me very like the way this nation was led to war.
We were told that we were threatened by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
but they have not been seen.
We were told that the throngs of Iraqi's would welcome our troops with
flowers, but no throngs or flowers appeared.
We were led to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attack on the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but no evidence has ever been produced.
We were told in 16 words that Saddam Hussein tried to buy "yellow cake" from
Africa for production of nuclear weapons, but the story has turned into empty
air.
We were frightened with visions of mushroom clouds, but they turned out to be
only vapors of the mind.
We were told that major combat was over but 101 [as of October 17] Americans
have died in combat since that proclamation from the deck of an aircraft
carrier by our very own Emperor in his new clothes.
Our emperor says that we are not occupiers, yet we show no inclination to
relinquish the country of Iraq to its people.
Those who have dared to expose the nakedness of the Administration's policies
in Iraq have been subjected to scorn. Those who have noticed the elephant in
the room -- that is, the fact that this war was based on falsehoods have had
our patriotism questioned. Those who have spoken aloud the thought shared by
hundreds of thousands of military families across this country, that our
troops should return quickly and safely from the dangers half a world away,
have been accused of cowardice. We have then seen the untruths, the
dissembling, the fabrication, the misleading inferences surrounding this rush
to war in Iraq wrapped quickly in the flag.
The right to ask questions, debate, and dissent is under attack. The drums of
war are beaten ever louder in an attempt to drown out those who speak of our
predicament in stark terms.
Even in the Senate, our history and tradition of being the world's greatest
deliberative body is being snubbed. This huge spending bill has been rushed
through this chamber in just one month. There were just three open hearings
by the Senate Appropriations Committee on $87 billion, without a single
outside witness called to challenge the Administration's line.
Ambassador Bremer went so far as to refuse to return to the Appropriations
Committee to answer additional questions because, and I quote: "I don't have
time. I'm completely booked, and I have to get back to Baghdad to my duties."
Despite this callous stiff-arm of the Senate and its duties to ask questions
in order to represent the American people, few dared to voice their opposition
to rushing this bill through these halls of Congress. Perhaps they were
intimidated by the false claims that our troops are in immediate need of more
funds.
But the time has come for the sheep-like political correctness which has cowed
members of this Senate to come to an end.
The Emperor has no clothes. This entire adventure in Iraq has been based on
propaganda and manipulation. Eighty-seven billion dollars is too much to pay
for the continuation of a war based on falsehoods.
Taking the nation to war based on misleading rhetoric and hyped intelligence
is a travesty and a tragedy. It is the most cynical of all cynical acts. It
is dangerous to manipulate the truth. It is dangerous because once having
lied, it is difficult to ever be believed again. Having misled the American
people and stampeded them to war, this Administration must now attempt to
sustain a policy predicated on falsehoods. The President asks for billions
from those same citizens who know that they were misled about the need to go
to war. We misinformed and insulted our friends and allies and now this
Administration is having more than a little trouble getting help from the
international community. It is perilous to mislead.
The single-minded obsession of this Administration to now make sense of the
chaos in Iraq, and the continuing propaganda which emanates from the White
House painting Iraq as the geographical center of terrorism is distracting our
attention from Afghanistan and the 60 other countries in the world where
terrorists hide. It is sapping resources which could be used to make us safer
from terrorists on our own shores. The body armor for our own citizens still
has many, many chinks. Have we forgotten that the most horrific terror
attacks in history occurred right here at home!! Yet, this Administration
turns back money for homeland security, while the President pours billions
into security for Iraq. I am powerless to understand or explain such a policy.
I have tried mightily to improve this bill. I twice tried to separate the
reconstruction money in this bill, so that those dollars could be considered
separately from the military spending. I offered an amendment to force the
Administration to craft a plan to get other nations to assist the troops and
formulate a plan to get the U.N. in, and the U.S. out, of Iraq. Twice I tried
to rid the bill of expansive, flexible authorities that turn this $87 billion
into a blank check. The American people should understand that we provide
more foreign aid for Iraq in this bill, $20.3 billion, than we provide for the
rest of the entire world! I attempted to remove from this bill billions in
wasteful programs and divert those funds to better use. But, at every turn,
my efforts were thwarted by the vapid argument that we must all support the
requests of the Commander in Chief.
I cannot stand by and continue to watch our grandchildren become increasingly
burdened by the billions that fly out of the Treasury for a war and a policy
based largely on propaganda and prevarication. We are borrowing $87 billion
to finance this adventure in Iraq. The President is asking this Senate to pay
for this war with increased debt, a debt that will have to be paid by our
children and by those same troops that are currently fighting this war. I
cannot support outlandish tax cuts that plunge our country into potentially
disastrous debt while our troops are fighting and dying in a war that the
White House chose to begin.
I cannot support the continuation of a policy that unwisely ties down 150,000
American troops for the foreseeable future, with no end in sight.
I cannot support a President who refuses to authorize the reasonable change in
course that would bring traditional allies to our side in Iraq.
I cannot support the politics of zeal and "might makes right" that created the
new American arrogance and unilateralism which passes for foreign policy in
this Administration.
I cannot support this foolish manifestation of the dangerous and destabilizing
doctrine of preemption that changes the image of America into that of a
reckless bully.
The emperor has no clothes. And our former allies around the world were the
first to loudly observe it.
I shall vote against this bill because I cannot support a policy based on
prevarication. I cannot support doling out 87 billion of our hard-earned tax
dollars when I have so many doubts about the wisdom of its use.
I began my remarks with a fairy tale. I shall close my remarks with a horror
story, in the form of a quote from the book Nuremberg Diaries, written by G.M.
Gilbert, in which the author interviews Hermann Goering.
"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his
attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders
who bring them war and destruction.
". . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the
policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it
is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist
dictatorship.
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some
say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United
States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any
country."
" 2 2003-10-19 743 Can a beat-Bush effort yield a strong progressive coalition? \N "[NOTE: Not if the environmental interests are represented by the Sierra
Club & LCV who will invariably pick an uninspiring, garbage "Democrat" who
they think (with their losers' perspective) is winnable. All the
environmental establishment refuses to support perhaps the only real
Democrat in the race, Dennis Kucinich. Nope. No fighting the good fight
over real issues, moral values, integrity and principles there. They have
so far not even raised the issues of a probable stolen election with
no-public-oversight electronic voting. Anyone predict another historic
low-voter turnout with a lot of improbable or strange election results? TGH]
http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/hertsgaard101503.asp
Unified Field Theory
Can a beat-Bush effort yield a progressive coalition with staying power?
by Mark Hertsgaard (2,053 words)
15 Oct 2003
Who says George W. Bush never did anything for the great outdoors? His
running for reelection could be the best thing to happen to the U.S.
environmental movement in years. The threat of four more years of Bush has
provoked a significant rethinking of the movement's tactics, according to
interviews with movement leaders, their financial supporters, and political
advisers. Not only has it energized activists like never before, it has
also produced unprecedented expressions of unity within the movement and
beyond -- specifically with labor unions, feminist organizations, and civil
rights groups. While the short-term goal is a new president in 2004, some
environmental leaders hope the Beat Bush campaign will help these groups
build working relationships that could give rise to a broad-based
progressive movement in the United States.
"George W. Bush said when he was running for president that he would be the
great unifier, not the divider, and damned if he hasn't been the greatest
unifier of the environmental movement since I've been in it," says John
Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA. "And that's true
within the entire progressive movement and beyond. From tongue-studded
anarchists to business-oriented think tanks, we've all come to realize that
Bush represents the greatest threat to all that we hold dear."
One manifestation of this new unity is America Votes, an alliance of 20
citizens groups that was organized earlier this year by leaders from
environmental, labor, and women's organizations. Members include the
AFL-CIO and other unions, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and MoveOn.org. The
environmental movement is represented in the coalition by the Sierra Club
and League of Conservation Voters.
America Votes will exercise electoral clout through a so-called 527 group
named America Coming Together. (Organizations registered under section 527
of the federal tax code are permitted to engage in voter education and
turnout work but not outright advocacy for candidates.) ACT has raised $35
million to spend on the 2004 campaign, $10 million of which was donated by
George Soros, the currency trader and philanthropist. The group hopes
eventually to raise $75 million.
"It's actually easier for us to work together on elections than on policy
work," Deb Callahan, the executive director of LCV, says of her allies
within ACT. "On a policy issue like logging or mining, we might be on the
opposite side of the fence from, say, a labor union. But an election puts
those kinds of differences in the background, because it presents a simple
choice: Do you elect this candidate or not? And we all agree that four more
years of Bush would be a disaster."
"The environmental movement traditionally hasn't focused many resources on
electoral work," observes one prominent funder of environmental
organizations who declined to be named. "The Sierra Club and LCV spent $16
million during the two-year cycle leading up to the 2000 election. But
that's dwarfed by the annual budgets of groups who do public education and
policy work, such as the National Wildlife Federation [$100 million per
year] and Natural Resources Defense Council [$50 million per year]. America
Coming Together gives environmentalists the prospect of real electoral
impact and, for the first time, real coordination with other progressive
groups."
Exactly what this new progressive unity will mean on the ground remains to
be seen. The ACT groups are only beginning to find their way, cautions the
funder quoted above: "To borrow a scientific analogy, this collaboration
began in a gaseous state and has now progressed to a liquefied state, but
it is still far from a solid state." But the groups' leaders talk about
coordinating messages and communication schedules -- for example, to make
sure that a given household doesn't get deluged with five pieces of
anti-Bush mail on a single day and then receive nothing during the next two
weeks -- and dividing up outreach responsibility for certain battleground
states to assure the most efficient use of all groups' electoral resources.
And those resources, they promise, will be unprecedented. "The scale of the
commitment is phenomenal," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra
Club. "Over the next 13 months, we are committed to doubling the number of
volunteer activists we have in the field and the number of households we
contact, and my sense is that the other organizations in America Votes are
doing the same."
Their Roots Are Showing
Not only are enviros and other progressives spending more on the 2004
election, they are also spending differently. Thirty-second television ads,
whose astronomical costs devoured budgets in the past, are being abandoned
as ineffectual because voters are no longer moved by them. Instead, says
Pope, electoral strategists of all ideological persuasions recognize that
"what works is talking to people one on one, and especially having them
hear your message from their friends and neighbors."
"Unions showed in 2000 that grassroots organizing led to a higher turnout
of their members, which made the difference in a number of key races,"
Callahan says. "The Republicans applied that lesson successfully in 2002,
and I expect the White House will do the same in 2004. Our movement's focus
traditionally has been grassroots organizing, and we've got to get back to
that. Two-thirds of my 2004 budget is for grassroots organizing. In 2002,
it was only 20 percent."
Grassroots organizing is critical; if environmental groups simply get their
own members to vote, it could make all the difference in 2004. Some 11
million Americans belong to environmental organizations. Yet surveys reveal
that in recent elections, those members have voted in no greater proportion
than other Americans. In the 17 states expected to be the decisive
battlegrounds in 2004, the Sierra Club alone boasts more members than the
margins of victory in the 2000 election. "Had every Sierra Club member
voted in 2000, not only would Al Gore be president but Tom Daschle would be
Senate majority leader and Dick Gephardt would be speaker of the House,"
says Pope.
What environmentalists haven't done is endorse a particular candidate for
president. Partly that's for legal reasons: Only so-called (c)(4) groups
(registered under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code), like LCV and Sierra
Club, are allowed to advocate voting for or against candidates, using funds
garnered from non-tax-deductible donations. But America Votes, as a 527, is
precluded from such advocacy. So are the 501(c)(3) groups that comprise the
majority of the U.S. environmental movement. (c)(3)s are restricted to
public education and policy work, giving them access to tax-deductible
donations (which is why their annual budgets are typically much larger than
those of (c)(4) groups).
"We can't take part in the 2004 electoral work, but our public education
efforts will inform that work," says Rodger Schlickeisen, the chair of Save
Our Environment, a coalition of 20 (c)(3) and (c)(4) groups that have
pooled resources and coordinated strategies to resist Bush administration
policies. SOE members include Defenders of Wildlife (where Schlickeisen is
president), Friends of the Earth, Environmental Defense, the Wilderness
Society, Greenpeace, NRDC, LCV, and Sierra Club.
A second reason no candidate endorsement is imminent is that
environmentalists want to unite behind whoever emerges from the Democratic
primaries to challenge Bush. "Any of these Democrats is better than Bush on
the environment, so we're not going to endorse any one of them yet," says
Callahan, whose organization awarded Bush the first-ever "F" on its annual
"report card" on environmental voting records. "Instead, we're building
on-the-ground infrastructure that will kick into gear for the nominee once
the general election begins."
But in their zeal to get rid of Bush, will environmentalists let Democrats
off easy?
"It's important not only to make Bush's and the Republicans' stand on
environmental issues clear, but also to hold Democratic candidates to a
much higher standard than Bill Clinton and Al Gore were," says Philip
Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, another (c)(3) group
precluded from electoral activities. "For a long time, Democrats have
talked a good game on the environment and then failed once in office to put
their political capital on the line for it. ... A campaign that simply
reiterates horror stories about Bush's policies won't accomplish its goals.
Americans want to see a vision of what needs doing over the next four years
to extend 30 years of environmental progress. That's the bar
environmentalists should hold all the candidates to."
White Flags, Green Futures
All this, insiders admit, is a marked shift from the infighting that has
often afflicted the environmental movement in recent years.
"The various groups used to scuffle over who would be the one quoted in
media reports about whatever the environmental rollback of the week was,"
says Passacantando of Greenpeace. "How dumb is that -- fighting to get
credit for a battle we're losing!" The new unity, Passacantando argues,
stems not only from the Bush threat but from the decline in donations
groups have suffered in the face of a recession and a weak stock market.
"Having less money has forced each group to focus on what it does best. So
now you see the grassroots groups doing grassroots organizing, the
lobbyists doing lobbying, and so forth. We're stronger for it."
Environmentalists also take heart from the knowledge that, as leading
Republican strategist Frank Luntz wrote in a memo that was leaked to the
New York Times earlier this year, "the environment is probably the single
issue on which Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular
-- are most vulnerable." With Bush's poll numbers dropping thanks to a
faltering economy and growing unease about Iraq, environmentalists are
convinced that he can be defeated in 2004 and that their issue can help
make it happen.
"There is no question that the president and all of the Democratic
candidates have spotlighted the environmental issue as key to reaching
certain constituencies," says Clapp. "The environment is an issue that
matters in the swing states that each side wants: Oregon, Washington,
Florida, the industrial Midwest. The president left his ranch in Crawford
three times this summer to do events to promote his Clear Skies rollback of
the Clean Air Act. And for Democrats, the environment is one of the three
or four issues each candidate lists as a key difference between him or her
and the president."
Questions remain, however, about what kind of practical results all this
high-minded talk will produce in 2004. After all, the environmental
movement is relatively inexperienced in electoral work, and it is gearing
up operations very fast. Can the Sierra Club, in a mere 13 months, really
double the number of activists it has on the ground (to 20,000) and the
number of households these activists will reach (to 800,000)? Can Save Our
Environment groups that remain largely focused on inside-the-Beltway
concerns shift to talking in plain-spoken terms to the millions of ordinary
Americans whose votes will decide the outcome on Election Day? And after
years of internal bickering and distance from other progressive groups and
issues, can environmentalists really walk the walk of unity and cooperation?
"It's nice people are working more together now, but the old ego and turf
battles haven't gone away," says one movement insider. "All the old
incentives against collaboration remain in place; groups still have to get
media coverage and other forms of credit for their accomplishments in order
to maintain funders' support and survive."
On the other hand, the environmental movement's motivation is growing
stronger by the day, fueled by the Bush administration's continued assault
on ecosystems and the laws meant to protect them. And looking toward the
long term, some environmental leaders say the Bush threat may finally force
environmentalists and other progressive organizations to learn how to work
together and thus begin building the kind of broad-based movement that
could yield real change in America.
"It's self-interest that's bringing us together," says Callahan of LCV. "If
we don't cooperate, we'll certainly fail to put a progressive in the White
House in 2004. But if we succeed, we can build relations and trust that
will continue beyond the election and result in something much larger than
ourselves. Look at how the right wing took power in this country -- by
following a long-term vision of building a movement of like-minded
organizations. It's been my dream for a long time, and we're now finally
doing the same."
- - - - - - - - -
Grist Magazine: Environmental news and humor
(c) 2003, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved.
" 2 2003-10-17 744 Experts say hatcheries hurt wild fish \N "http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/106630594364810.xml
Experts say hatcheries hurt wild fish
10/16/03
JOE ROJAS-BURKE
Fish hatcheries, which mass produce about 200 million salmon and steelhead
each year for release into the Columbia River Basin, are ignoring problems
that could undermine the survival of wild fish, according to a sweeping
report to Congress by independent experts.
Four key areas stand out:
In river zones with threatened or endangered salmon, many hatcheries remain
devoted primarily to producing a catch for commercial fisheries -- contrary
to federal guidelines calling for conservation as a priority.
Massive numbers of young hatchery fish are crowding into the relatively
small Columbia River estuary without consideration of the impact on wild
populations.
Hatchery fish are straying onto spawning grounds and mating with wild fish,
potentially undermining the genetic diversity that allows salmon
populations to adapt and survive in a changing environment.
Hatcheries are falling short of one clear goal: compensating for the
environmental challenges to migratory fish caused by the Pacific
Northwest's power-generating dams. Recently improved salmon runs remain far
below historic levels.
The report, one of the first-ever attempts to take stock of the entire
Columbia Basin and performed at the request of Congress, was released as a
draft this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, an agency
representing the governors of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. While
the council has no regulatory power, its recommendations help shape the
massive federal effort to aid depleted salmon stocks.
Its final recommendations, due in a matter of weeks, could bring big
changes in hatchery operations, for instance, by steering hatchery funding
made by Congress and the Bonneville Power Administration.
The findings were drawn by a review team led by Lars Mobrand, an
independent fisheries scientist; and Bruce Suzumoto, project manager with
the power council. Suzumoto said he hopes the report will help lawmakers
and other regional leaders think about setting new goals and deciding how
best to use hatcheries.
"Many of these programs were created 25 or 50 years ago under a different
set of goals," Suzumoto said. "Whether those goals are the still the
correct ones is open to question."
The researchers considered 227 hatchery programs throughout the U.S.
portion of the Columbia Basin, gathering a previously unavailable overview
of programs run by state fish and wildlife agencies, federal agencies and
Native American tribes with treaty rights to salmon.
Among the more than 200 million salmon and steelhead produced annually, the
report said a majority, 65 percent, get released in the lower portions of
the Columbia, from just above Bonneville Dam, to the estuary, downriver
just inland from the ocean.
One group of salmon accounts for more than half of all hatchery salmon
releases: fall chinook, mainly produced for ocean troll fishing. The report
said the uneven distribution is the result of policies set in the 1950s
favoring commercial fisheries in the lower Columbia and the coastal oceans.
Fall chinook are cheaper to produce because they require less rearing time
in the hatchery than spring and summer-run salmon.
The review team said a more balanced distribution of hatchery releases
could have advantages, such as increasing year-round fishing opportunities
and preserving a broader diversity of salmon types in the basin.
The problem of hatchery fish straying and mating with wild fish is rampant
in some areas, but largely unmonitored in much of the basin, the report said.
Reviewers divided hatcheries into two types: "integrated" programs that
attempt to use fish native to the streams where they are released; and
"segregated" programs that use traditional hatchery stocks, primarily for
fisheries, and managed to avoid mating with wild fish.
But the report found that hatchery fish make up more than 30 percent of the
spawners in nearby streams in about a third of the segregated programs.
About a fifth of such programs managed to keep the level of hatchery
straying below 5 percent of the spawning population. But managers of
one-third of the 73 segregated programs did not know the level of straying
and mating with wild spawners.
Many integrated hatcheries also fell short. The report found that 80
percent of the 102 programs considered were not meeting the targets for
including wild fish in each generation of parents and limiting the
contribution of hatchery fish to wild spawning populations.
John Thorpe, who oversees hatcheries for the Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife, said his agency recognizes the problems and is working on
remedies. The department's hatcheries release about 51 million salmon and
steelhead each year in the Columbia and other basins.
Among other changes, Thorpe said the department is attempting to control
straying, and developing more hatchery stocks native to the streams where
they will be released. And he said the department is writing hatchery and
genetic management plans that will set specific goals for each of its
hatchery programs, as required by the National Marine Fisheries Service,
the federal agency responsible for endangered salmon.
Bill Bakke, director of the Native Fish Society, said fish and wildlife
agencies are doing too little to respond to the problems highlighted in the
report.
"It's been a consistent message for years, that hatcheries are contributing
to the decline of wild salmon and steelhead, and there needs to be more
control over how many hatchery salmon are allowed to spawn with wild fish,"
Bakke said. "What I haven't seen is a very rapid change to implement the
consensus of the independent science teams."
Bakke said hatchery funding ought to be made contingent on meeting
performance standards.
Perhaps the most controversial questions the report asks is whether using
hatcheries to sustain commercial salmon fishing is still worthwhile.
"We're not saying what the goals should be, by any means, but it's
something that probably needs to be asked," Suzumoto said.
Copies of the Artificial Production Review and Evaluation report are
available on the Web at www.nwcouncil.org. The Power council will accept
public comment for 45 days and then plans to make final recommendations to
Congress.
Copyright 2003 Oregon Live. All Rights Reserved.
" 2 2003-10-16 745 LANGUAGE: Bush Gang's Malignant Propaganda \N "From: Patrick Reinsborough
October 08, 2003 - 9:47 PM
Propaganda: The Great Language Hijack
In this Post:
#1 "Let Them Eat Words: Linguistic lessons from Republican master strategist Frank Luntz"
from American Prospect Sept 2003
#2 "Lessons in how to lie about Iraq" Brian Eno waxes philosophic on propaganda
Below you will find two articles about the art of lying. It can politely be called rhetoric, posturing or even propaganda but ultimately it is just lying. These articles are important because they capture the way that language is being hijacked, exploited and manipulated to effect the tangible relationships of power in our society. Writing this post from California where a right-wing, steroid-addled, sexis,t action figure celebrity just became governor by co-opt populist resentment against the political establishment, its pretty clear that the ability to hijack language can take you a long way.
The first article is an expose on infamous Republican pollster and strategist Frank Lutz. It ran in the September edition of the liberal democratic magazine American Prospect. We do not necessarily endorse the politics of the author but think its a great (albeit one sided) analysis of the power of rhetoric (memes) to frame the debate and structure the control mythology of modern politics.
Of course we all know that Clinton and the Democrats used the same tactics. However the Bushies and the neo-conservative coup deserve some credit for removing any vestige of subtlety in state propaganda. The Bush team brought us the Healthy Forests Initiative (meaning tax payer-subsidized, liquidation logging on public lands), the Clear Skies Initiative (meaning polluters gut the Clean Air Bill) and of course the biggest whopper of them all: the War on Terror (meaning the government and their corporate buddies do whatever the hell they want for our "security" and we all shut-the-f**k-up-about-it, or else.)
Article #2 is from British artist and ambient music godfather Brian Eno and takes us beyond what we all know - they LIED about Iraq - to discuss some of the deeper implications of propaganda. Well worth the read. Eno references the excellent new book "Weapons of Mass Deception" from PR Watch team John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. If you haven't checked out this handy expose of the propaganda wing of the Iraq invasion, find out more at: http://www.prwatch.org/books/wmd.html
Enjoy, ponder and scheme!
Patrick Reinsborough
the smartMeme project/Wake Up America Campaign
www.smartmeme.com (under construction)
*****
Let Them Eat Words
Linguistic lessons from Republican master strategist Frank Luntz
http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V14/8/tannen-d.html
Deborah Tannen
I'm one of many Democrats who watch in frustration (mixed with a touch of awe) as Republicans win with words, even as the labels they devise for their policies distort or belie the facts. Take the repeal of the estate tax. An "estate" sounds like a large amount of money. Indeed, before President Bush persuaded Congress to legislate a phase out of the estate tax, only the largest 2 percent of estates were subject to this tax. But change the name to "death tax" and many more Americans become sympathetic to repeal. After all, everyone dies. Death is bad enough without being taxed.
How many would get all worked up about an exceedingly rare abortion procedure (that the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimated represents less than one-fifth of 1 percent of all abortions performed in the United States in 2000)? But attach the name "partial-birth abortion" and a second-trimester fetus becomes a half-born baby. Legislation to outlaw the vaguely described medical procedure then becomes another success in chipping away at constitutionally protected abortion rights -- as well as a wedge issue to defeat Democratic candidates. According to an insider in Al Gore's 2000 Tennessee campaign, the vice president's opposition to this legislation was one of the factors that turned many Tennesseans against their home-state candidate.
Who among us wants to call ourselves anti-life? Win the name game and you're more than halfway toward winning the battle. Win enough naming battles and you're on your way to winning the war.
During the 2000 campaign, I was a guest on a radio talk show discussing Republicans' and Democrats' appeals to women voters. A woman called in to say, "I'm for education and I'm for the environment. Bush is for education and Gore is for the environment, so I don't know who to vote for." Beyond the breathtaking oversimplification (reducing a complex set of positions and policies to being "for"), I marveled at the caller's conviction that because George W. Bush had declared himself for education -- who on earth is against it? -- his policies were necessarily more likely than Al Gore's to improve education for all American children.
Recent news reports are filled with stories of a mounting crisis in public education: t