LA Weekly

On Thursday I was accused of being a libertarian because I wrote too sympathetically about dog breeders; today I find myself agreeing with a "scholar" from the oil-industry funded Cato Institute, the libertarian think-tank that has since time immemorial denied the existence of climate change. O what's become of me!:

"The legacy of Live Earth will be one of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and decreasing wealth," says Cato's Patrick Michaels, "wealth that could be saved and used to invest in the technologies of the future, rather than being frittered away in a futile attempt to change the earth's temperature today."

I guess official denial of the warming planet no longer squares with current events -- droughts, weather patterns, melting ice caps and such -- so the Cato folks have decided to apply their petroleum and pollution industry-donated dollars to less hoary arguments, such as suggesting that Live Earth [link: cool Australian blog] really has no point.

Well, it's an easy target, and yeah, they're kind of right. I mean, even the unassailable Bob Geldorf is a little nonplussed about the the seven-continent concerts Al Gore has organized for 7-7-7:

"I hope they're a success," De Volkskrant newspaper quoted Geldof as saying in an interview.

"But why is (Gore) actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody's known about that problem for years. We are all (expletive) conscious of global warming," he said.

Still and all, there are some good things happening this weekend. For instance, you can participate in Environment California's "Phone Jam" by calling your congressperson and demanding the U.S. adhere to a 20 percent renewable energy standard by 2020, which would "reduce global warming by 40 percent." (How do they arrive at these statistics?). Click here to let them know you're calling.

You can also bike or take public transporation, please, to local events in your neighborhood, where people will be gathering around television sets and the like to watch the shows on MSNBC, or just having parties.

Up in the Hollywood Hills, there's a party at the top of Glen Green St. called "Little Hot!", featuring a lineup of bands and films from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., all to benefit the local civic-environmental group TreePeople. Organizer Angela Gygi was rushing off to set up the porta-potties when I spoke to her this morning, so you know it's gonna be a good one. You can see the lineup here.

In Lincoln Heights, the Green Acres Medicinal Urban Farm will host the opening celebration of a "new aesthetic medicinal urban farm named after the famous Eddy Albert's GREEN ACRES TV show." So, they can't spell the guy's name, but they do have land donated by Eddie's friends, Ralph and Shirley Fierro, and it does seem like it could be interesting. You know, different.

In Santa Monica, "a community of environmental activists, social rights defenders, yoga practitioners, spiritual aware individuals and artists" will host a Live Earth concert viewing at Bonsorte Studios beginning at 7 p.m. Bring food; it's potluck. Details, details.

And here's the Wikipedia page for the lone band, Nunatak, playing Antarctica.

Plus, there's Seam's "Earth day" party, a bash at J's house and thousands of MoveOn House Parties associated with Live Earth, where people will no doubt be talking about unplugging their cell phone chargers while not in use and switching to fluorescent lightbulbs. That's all good, but it doesn't obviate the desperate need for an immediate, global, political solution to the carbon problem, including but not limited to mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions.

Which brings us back to Bob: ""I would only organize [Live Earth] if I could go on stage and announce concrete environmental measures from the American presidential candidates, Congress or major corporations," he said.

In other words, said MoveOn's Eli Pariser, “For us, it’s not just about new light bulbs, it’s about new leadership.”

(For the record, I am a vegetarian, not a libertarian, except on the matters of reproductive choice and marijuana, which I sadly can't tolerate but believe should be legal, if only for simplicity's sake. But I believe the guys and gals who sign my paycheck these days have a libertarian bent, so maybe they're taking over my brain.)

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Anchorage Daily News reported yesterday that Sen. Lisa Murkowski "blasts the Pew Oceans Commission report as if it were an environmentalist plot to lock up Alaska fisheries" as a way of getting at her opponent, fromer Gov. Tony Knowles. She's labeled him an "environmentalist sympathizer." (Never mind that the Pew Commission in question included New York Gov. George Pataki, a bona fide Republican.) "In this case," says the story, "the much-maligned environmentalists are in the company of mainstream, credible analysts."

In another article today, Murkowski makes the stakes in this election refreshingly clear:

"Folks, with a Republican-led majority, we get it on the agenda, we pick up these seats, we have George Bush in the White House, and we get ANWR next year."

That's the goal? To "get" ANWR? And I'm wondering: Does this stuff work? How did environmentalists get "much-maligned?" No wonder Kerry is courting coal country and the environment has been almost entirely missing from the campaign rhetoric.

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George W. Bush claimed in tonight's debate that the air has gotten cleaner since he's been in office.

Thanks to the continuing effectiveness of the Clean Air Act since the very last day of 1970, that's a little bit true. But it’s almost like saying that since Bush has been in office, porcupine caribou haven't done too badly in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

While overall emissions have continued to decline – though not by much – since 2001, certain significant pollutants have remained level or gone up. The sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain rose nearly four percent – 600,000 tons – primarily due to lax enforcement of rules regulating emissions from coal-fueled power plants.

(That’s from the EPA’s Web site.)

If Bush is re-elected the Clean Air Act will likely be history.

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“He is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump to make a speech about conservation.”

--Adlai Stevenson on Richard M. Nixon

“[Al Gore} . . . reminds me of Richard Nixon . . . the kind of politician who would cut down a tree, then stand on a stump and talk about conservation."

-- Bill Bradley in the 2000 New Hampshire Democratic presidential candidate debate, January 26, 2000

"George Bush is the kind of politician who would cut down a tree and then climb on its stump to give a speech about conservation.''

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that Sen. John Kerry has begun to play the environment card.

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It's not particularly shocking to learn that federal prosecutors under President Bush brought fewer defendants to court for violating pollution laws than they did under Clinton, but there is a frightening precedent embedded in the numbers. On September 23, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse published a report comparing the Bush administration's record of enforcing environmental laws with Clinton's two terms. The study shows that prosecutors during Clinton's last term charged 319 defendants for violating 33 USC 1319, a statute stipulating enforcement of certain water quality regulations (like the one that says how much sewage can get dumped into your local river) -- a 54 percent increase over Clinton's first term. Under Bush, the number declined to 231. Filings for hazardous waste management dropped by 39 percent; filings for air pollution -- which had increased 139 percent in the second Clinton term -- dropped by 41 percent under Bush. "The findings appear to contrast with the claims of leading Bush Administration figures," according to the study's authors:

On June 14, for example, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt took part in an interactive forum called "Ask the White House." In response to one question, Mr. Leavitt said the administration's primary objective was to persuade all Americans to comply with the rules established by Congress. "However," he continued, "if people evade the law, we will bring the full force and strength of the agency to bear in assurance that federal standards are met. We have a strong and active criminal enforcement program that works to complement our civil enforcement."

Here's what scares me: When Clinton had four more years in office, his mostly environment-friendly administration prosecuted dirty air and water offenders in far greater numbers than it did when Clinton had to worry about being relected. What will Cheney-Bush do if they win (and presume to have the same mandate)?

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"I cannot recall during the time I headed EPA under both Nixon and Ford ever being told to make a regulartory decision or to alter a scientific finding. Such a course would have been unthinkable."

That's Russell E. Train, Undersecretary of the Interior under Nixon, EPA Agency Administrator from 1973 to 1977 and the first chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality in 1970.

(I found this essay in the Patagonia catalog.)

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It baffles me that the Dems aren't invoking the environment as a campaign issue when they've got so much on the Cheney-Bush administration that would alarm anyone paying attention. Even Frank Luntz knows it's a hot issue waiting to be exploited. But . . . nothing. At least not tonight.

For starters, Sen. Edwards might have brought up mercury in the debate, which the Clinton administration regulated as a hazardous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, requiring power plants to drop their mercury emissions by 90 percent. Now, however, under Cheney-Bush, coal-fueled power plants -- which account for 40 percent of airborne mercury pollution -- don't have to worry about regulation at all, thanks to an EPA guy named Jeffrey Holmstead.

Even Sen. Edwards himself has called for Holmstead's resignation. This is from his press release:

"Senator Edwards clashed with Holmstead last year over Holmstead's refusal to provide scientific evidence that proposed rollbacks to the Clean Air Act would not harm human health. Holmstead, who has taken a higher profile role since EPA Administrator Christie Whitman stepped down last month, had championed the rollbacks which would make it easier for old factories and power plants to increase their pollution levels."

Airborne mercury drops into our oceans, rivers and lakes, rendering fish unsafe for consumption by women of childbearing age; some people blame mercury pollution for the rise in autism. As Bobby Kennedy points out in his book,
Crimes Against Nature, one out of six women of childbearing age in the U.S. has dangerous levels of mercury in her blood, meaning that any children she might have are at high risk for cognitive impairment.

The Star-Tribune, Newspaper of the Twin Cities, ran an excellent editorial a few days ago summing up the Bush administration's rollbacks; there's so much going on that it's hard to keep track of it all.

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This has little to do with the topic of this blog, but: What happened with factcheck.com? I went there the minute the VP mentioned it, saying it would help him on the Halliburton thing, but it was a list of advertising links. What Cheney meant was factcheck.org, the site owned and operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Now, just tonight, factcheck.com has been redirected to georgesoros.com, where you get a scathing attack on the president and his policies.

A whois search turns up factcheck.com's owners as a domain-name sales company. Did Soros buy it up that fast? Fascinating.

And speaking of fact checks, who sez they never met?

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