It is indeed another Monday, and I have clicked already, and here is another MUST READ article. It is comprehensive.
Environmental Stances Are Balancing Act For McCain
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 12, 2008; A01
In December 2005, Republicans were poised to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, an achievement they had sought for decades. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) had attached the provision to a must-pass defense spending bill and threatened to keep lawmakers in Washington until Christmas if they tried to strip it. Desperate to remove the provision, leaders from national environmental groups turned to a handful of key GOP senators for help.
With only days left before the critical vote, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund President Rodger Schlickheisen obtained a private audience with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain had been on both sides of the Arctic drilling issue over the course of his career, and the two leaders of the fight against opening the refuge were eager to know whether he would come down in their column.
His answer disappointed them. In the brief meeting, the senator said he was unwilling to risk blocking a bill involving the military at a time of war -- even though it was clear the broader funding bill would pass quickly and by a wide margin if opponents managed to strip the ANWR provision from it. "We told him, 'This may be the key vote, this may be the time we win this,' " Schlickheisen recalled in an interview. "He said, 'Not on this bill.' That was it."
Ultimately environmental activists were able to defeat the measure with the aid of two Republican senators -- Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) and Mike DeWine (Ohio). But they have not forgotten McCain's decision, and many say it exemplifies his approach to environmental issues.
"There's no question that among a lot of bad Republican votes in the Senate, he's one of the better ones," Schlickheisen said. "He is perhaps the most unpredictable, erratic, of those votes."
McCain has made the environment one of the key elements of his presidential bid. He speaks passionately about the issue of climate change on the campaign trail, and he plans to outline his vision for combating global warming in a major speech today in Portland, Ore.
"I'm proud of my record on the environment," he said at a news conference Friday at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. "As president, I will dedicate myself to addressing the issue of climate change globally."
But an examination of McCain's voting record shows an inconsistent approach to the environment: He champions some "green" causes while casting sometimes contradictory votes on others.
The senator from Arizona has been resolute in his quest to impose a federal limit on greenhouse gas emissions, even when it means challenging his own party. But he has also cast votes against tightening fuel-efficiency standards and resisted requiring public utilities to offer a specific amount of electricity from renewable sources. He has worked to protect public lands in his home state, winning a 2001 award from the National Parks Conservation Association for helping give the National Park Service some say over air tours around the Grand Canyon, work that prompts former interior secretary and Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt to call him "a great friend of the canyon." But he has also pushed to set aside Endangered Species Act protections when they conflict with other priorities, such as the construction of a University of Arizona observatory on Mount Graham.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior policy adviser, said the senator does not always please "environmental groups who are single-issue, litmus test" organizations. Instead, he said, McCain seeks to weigh the costs and benefits of each environmental issue.
"Look, he always balances what are the environmental implications of these enterprises and what are the economic benefits that could come from them," Holtz-Eakin said. "That is, in general, an approach which may be harder to read than a flat ideological X or Y, but it's how he reads these things, it's how he evaluates these kinds of decisions."
As a result, McCain scores significantly lower than his Democratic rivals for the presidency, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), in interest groups' studies of his environmental voting record. McCain's lifetime League of Conservation Voters score is 24 percent, compared with 86 for Obama and 86 for Clinton; Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund's conservation report card gave him 38 percent in the 108th Congress and 40 in the 109th. (McCain has missed every major environmental vote this Congress, giving him a zero rating.)
When Karpinski tells audiences about McCain's environmental scorecard rating, he said, "jaws drop. . . . I tell them, 'He's not as green as you think he is.' "
Obama has already sought to exploit this on the campaign trail: While campaigning in Bend, Ore., on Saturday he said McCain "opposed real solutions to our dependence on oil time and time again." In response, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds noted that Obama had supported the 2005 energy bill, which provided tax breaks for oil companies, while McCain did not.
The Republican's backers, and some environmentalists, say McCain deserves credit for taking the political risk of talking about these issues both on the Senate floor and in a GOP primary where he stood out as the only candidate committed to a specific target for reducing greenhouse gases. McCain supports cutting greenhouse gases 60 percent by the middle of this century compared with 1990 levels; Obama and Clinton back an 80 percent cut over the same period.
"There's no question he was both moved and troubled by the visible impact of climate change," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who has traveled with McCain to investigate the effects of global warming. "This is inside him now. . . . He stood up against the president of his own party, and the majority of members of his own party. I think that makes him an environmental leader."
On the campaign trail, McCain is more than eager to go toe-to-toe with skeptics of global warming who attend his town hall forums. When a man in Michigan asked him last week why the United States was not drilling in the Arctic refuge and off California's coasts, McCain replied that, as a federalist, he thinks states have the right to make those decisions.
"I can't say we should drill in the most pristine parts of America," he told the questioner, adding that he believes in finding new sources of oil, "But I also believe sooner or later we have got to become energy-independent, we've got to reduce greenhouse gases. That means nuclear, wind, solar, tide, et cetera."
Holtz-Eakin said McCain is flexible in his federalist approach when it comes to the question of drilling because, while many Alaskans support opening the Arctic refuge to oil and gas exploration, the senator has concluded that it's not worth exposing 250 species of wildlife there to damage.
For the most part, McCain follows a fairly instinctive approach to deciding environmental questions. In recent interviews he has said he thinks the government should list polar bears as endangered because shrinking sea ice threatens their survival, that sharks deserve protection because they're a crucial part of the marine food web, and that the nation needs to act on climate change because it risks an environmental catastrophe if it doesn't.
The senator does not boast an extensive staff of experts on these issues, however, and doesn't delve into the scientific and policy details the way former vice president Al Gore or some of his Senate colleagues do. In one conversation on his "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus, he voiced his frustration with activists who oppose nuclear power plants.
"We start building nuclear power plants, we'll have cheaper energy. Duh," he said.
Tim Profeta, who directs Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and served as Lieberman's counsel on the environment from 2001 to 2005, said McCain feels strongly about addressing climate change but often resists wading into the legislative weeds.
"He's really focused on the impacts and the problems climate change will beget, and the need for action," Profeta said, "but he has, I believe, worked with what Lieberman and his staff saw as the appropriate policy approach."
As a result, many advocates said they remain uncertain as to how McCain would tackle environmental issues if elected president this fall. They are still waiting to see whether he will vote in favor of Lieberman's latest climate bill, which is headed to the Senate next month.
"Global warming is the most pressing environmental issue facing the country, and Senator McCain carved a path of leadership on the issue in the past," said Jeremy Symons, who directs the National Wildlife Federation's campaign on global warming. "A lot of people are looking to see how he's going to handle it in his campaign, and as president."
Keeping clicking, Stradee.
Thanks for the info, sumac.
aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,891,136.6 square feet!
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I just LOVE the tiny tree frogs, or any tiny frogs.
I do love those frogs, big and little, squeaky and honky.
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,891,394.1 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 208,745.0 square feet.
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~~~
danon - can I bother you with a conversion sometime? ta!
Hi ya all ~
Know why frogs croak??? Cause they don't know the words. {groan}
Wondering if the candidates know or care that amphibians are near extinction.
Kempthorn's innapropriate
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Thanks for all your efforts, Wildclickers!
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
ehBeth, Yes, any time you can talk to me on any media. You have my new email add....... It is sooooo much faster.....
For the rest of the Wildclickers - my new email address is =
[email protected]
I'm keeping the old Earthlink.net add also, so, will check each one each day.
Happy clicking all.
Great, ehBeth.
Spring peeper sounds like a bird!
Luv the language 'ribbits', ehBeth.
G'd day wildclickers!
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aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,891,768.7 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 208,908.9 square feet.
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Your 300 friends have supported: (208,908.9)
American Prairie habitat supported: 66,319.8 square feet.
You have supported: (16,411.1)
Your 300 friends have supported: (49,908.7)
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,616,540.1 square feet.
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my favourite bird song
ECOLOGY: Deterministic Competition
Andrew M. Sugden
The neutral theory of ecological community composition, which holds that species are interchangeable, has in recent years become a benchmark against which to test ecological data for signs of more niche-based mechanisms of species coexistence. Using data on tree species abundance in a Mexican tropical deciduous forest, Kelly et al. show that closely related pairs of species are more similar in abundance to each other than would be expected by chance, and also more similar in abundance than more distantly related species. This analysis suggests that closely related species interact with each other in different ways than do more distantly related or unrelated pairs--and hence argues against an important tenet of neutral theory. -- AMS
Ecology 89, 962 (2008).
CLIMATE SCIENCE: Wetter or Drier?
H. Jesse Smith
One expected result of global climate warming is an overall increase in precipitation. Not every place will receive more rain--some will receive less, even though the average should increase. Certain changes are already apparent in various regions, such as a greater frequency of extreme rainfall events and a higher number of rainy days. Another potential change that could have important effects is an increase in prolonged dry spells. Groisman and Knight have compiled rainfall data covering the last 40 years from more than 4000 carefully selected stations across the conterminous United States, in order to determine if this pattern already has begun there. They find that it has. More precisely, they show that the mean duration of prolonged dry spells in the warm season has increased significantly, and that the return period of 1-month-long dry episodes over the eastern United States has decreased from 15 years to between 6 and 7 years. This pattern could be hazardous for terrestrial ecosystems and agriculture. -- HJS
J. Climate 21, 1850 (2008).
Using your link, Stradee, because my reminder isn't working today. Thank you for continually linking us to click! Have done my 10 clicks for the day and signed one petition!
:wink:
Clean-Air Rules Protecting Parks Set to Be Eased
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2008; A01
The Bush administration is on the verge of implementing new air quality rules that will make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas, according to rank-and-file agency scientists and park managers who oppose the plan.
The new regulations, which are likely to be finalized this summer, rewrite a provision of the Clean Air Act that applies to "Class 1 areas," federal lands that currently have the highest level of protection under the law. Opponents predict the changes will worsen visibility at many of the nation's most prized tourist destinations, including Virginia's Shenandoah, Colorado's Mesa Verde and North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt national parks.
Nearly a year ago, with little fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed changing the way the government measures air pollution near Class 1 areas on the grounds that the nation needed a more uniform way of regulating emissions near protected areas. The agency closed the comment period in April and has indicated it is not making significant changes to the draft rule, despite objections by EPA staff members.
Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who now heads the environmental strategies group at the law firm Bracewelll & Giuliani, helped initiate the rule change while heading the EPA's air and radiation office. He said agency officials became concerned that the EPA's scientific staff was taking "the most conservative approach" in predicting how much pollution new power plants would produce.
"The question from a policy perspective was: Do you need to have models based on the absolute worst-case conditions that were unlikely to ever occur in the real world?" Holmstead said in an interview Thursday. "This has to do with what [modeling] assumptions you're required to do. This is really a legal issue and a policy issue."
The initiative is the latest in a series of administration efforts going back to 2003 to weaken air quality protections at national parks, including failed moves to prohibit federal land managers from commenting on permits for new pollution sources more than 31 miles away from their areas and to protect air resources only for parks that are big and diverse enough to "represent complete ecosystems."
For 30 years, regulators have measured pollution levels in the parks, over both three-hour and 24-hour increments, to capture the spikes in emissions that occur during periods of peak energy demand. The new rule would average the levels over a year so that spikes in pollution levels would not violate the law.
A slew of National Park Service and EPA officials have challenged the rule change, arguing that it will worsen visibility in already-impaired areas, according to internal documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
In one set of comments, the EPA's regional computer modeling staff wrote that the proposal "would allow for significant degradation" of the parks' air quality. An e-mail from National Park Service staff called aspects of the plan "bad public policy" that would "make it much easier to build power plants" near Class 1 areas, which include some Fish and Wildlife Service-protected land.
When the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked the EPA whether the rule would facilitate construction of more power plants near protected areas, Robert J. Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, replied in an April 24 letter that this was not the intention of the rule but that he could not rule it out.
"We developed this proposal based on the need to clarify how increment consumption must be addressed, and not whether or not it would be easier to build power plants," Meyers wrote. "In the absence of any data or evidence provided by the National Park Service, we are unable to conclusively confirm or deny their suggestion."
Yesterday, the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, issued a report estimating that the rule would ease the way for the construction of 28 new coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks. In each of the next 50 years, the report concludes, the new plants would emit a total of 122 million tons of carbon dioxide, 79,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 52,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 4,000 pounds of toxic mercury into the air over and around the Great Smoky Mountains, Zion and eight other national parks.
"It's like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven all year, I've averaged 55 miles per hour,' " said Mark Wenzler, director of the National Parks Conservation Association's clean-air programs. "It allows you to vastly underestimate the impact of these emissions."
Don Shepherd, an environmental engineer at the Park Service's air resources division in Denver, said of the new rule, "I don't know of anyone at our level, who deals with this day to day, that likes it or thinks it's going to make sense.
"We really want to have clean air at national parks all the time, and not just at average times," Shepherd said in a telephone interview. "All of our national parks have impaired visibility. . . . It would really be a setback in trying to make progress."
While the government has made progress in reducing haze-producing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution in recent decades, many of the nation's best-known parks still have poor visibility and air quality.
In October, the Park Service published a 10-year analysis of air quality trends that found that sulfate concentrations in precipitation have declined on the East Coast because of the federal acid rain program, but that Western parks have not experienced similar reductions. The concentrations of ozone smog over an eight-hour period are worsening across almost all of the interior West, including "some of the most remote places in the nation," said Vicki Patton, deputy general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Jim Renfro, an air resources specialist at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, said the park is suffering from a host of pollution problems, including smog and sulfur and nitrogen deposition. Visibility on summer days is 15 miles, rather than the nearly 80 it used to be, and the park now does not meet federal smog standards.
"There are some days when it's unhealthy to breathe at the park, so that's a major concern. People come here to get away, and they can't believe that sometimes they're better off where they came from," Renfro said. "We've got a long way to go."
Power plant emissions are also affecting vegetation and wildlife, making streams in Shenandoah more acidic and stripping nutrients out of the soil that sustains spruce firs at the Great Smoky Mountains' higher elevations. The Great Smokies have the highest levels of acid deposition of any monitored area in North America.
Georgia Murray, a staff scientist at the Appalachian Mountain Club, an outdoor recreation and advocacy group, said emissions will have to drop significantly for ecosystems on the East Coast to improve. "It's the type of pollution that takes years to recover from," she said.
Holmstead, however, said the administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule, implemented in 2005, will ultimately reduce pollution nationwide.
"What you want to do is reduce the total amount that comes out of these power plants," Holmstead said. "There's no Class 1 area in the country that is only affected by a nearby power plant."
Great clik'g Wildclickers
teeny, way to go. We are getting a few trees saved from the woodcutters. I'm glad to see the Brazilian government is finally stopping most of the illegal cutting in the Rain Forests in their country.
Clicked yesterday, but didn't post.
Hi ya Teeny
Glad you're doing ok and clicking each day!
Way ta go, girl!
sue, i speak fluent squirrel. Does that count? {grin}
Good God! 100 degrees plus! Poor kittens!
Drove to Folsom today, then ran errands - brought the truck to the garage for an air conditioner recharge and am converting the unit to a more atmospheric friendly system. Just a few more items and the Chevy's restored
and improved! Stradee's a happy driver
Helen, if your're reading the thread - received your message and you are very welcome. I knew you'd like seeing wonderful wolf photos.
Godspeed
Dan, ehBeth and all the WildClickers ~ you all rock!
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
