@ehBeth,
Beth, how do i find the Leader Board?
@Stradee,
Yeah, me too. I haven't been able to see the Leaderboard for ages.
Stradee, Rain Dance begun.
@danon5,
Thanks Dan!!
Weather reports say rain possibly by the weekend. Good work!
Wasn't there a Leader Board link somewhere???
GREAT NEWS!!!!!!
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003681_pf.html
Nobel Physicist Chosen To Be Energy Secretary
Browner, Two Others to Get Climate Posts
By Steven Mufson and Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 11, 2008; A01
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next energy secretary, and he has picked veteran regulators from diverse backgrounds to fill three other key jobs on his environmental and climate-change team, Democratic sources said yesterday.
Obama plans to name Carol M. Browner, Environmental Protection Agency administrator for eight years under President Bill Clinton, to fill a new White House post overseeing energy, environmental and climate policies, the sources said. Browner, a member of Obama's transition team, is a principal at the Albright Group.
Obama has also settled on Lisa P. Jackson, recently appointed chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) and former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, to head the EPA. Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles for energy and environment, will chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
The appointments suggest that Obama plans to make a strong push for measures to combat global warming and programs to support energy innovation. "I think it's a great team," said Daniel A. Lashof, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "On policy, it's a dramatic contrast based on what I know about the policy direction that all these folks will be bringing to these positions."
YEAH!!!!!
EPA Abruptly Backs Away From Proposals to Alter Air-Pollution Rules
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008; A04
The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday abandoned its push to revise two air-pollution rules in ways that environmentalists had long opposed, abruptly dropping measures that the Bush administration had spent years preparing.
One proposal would have made it easier to build a coal-fired power plant, refinery or factory near a national park. The other would have altered the rules that govern when power plants must install antipollution devices. Environmentalists said it would result in fewer such cleanups.
EPA officials had been trying to finalize both proposals before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. But yesterday, an agency spokesman said they were giving up, surprising critics and supporters of the measures.
To be more specific......
If named to the White House climate post, Ms. Browner, an acolyte of former Vice President Al Gore, will have forceful support in the new Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, who will be the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who is returning as chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Opposing their efforts will be many Republicans and some Democrats, as well as manufacturers, utilities, oil companies and coal producers who will bear the brunt of the costs of any steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the main culprit in global warming.
In the coming months, the administration will also have to devise a strategy for dealing with global talks to address climate change, which are already under way.
In addition, both Ms. Browner and Ms. Jackson, who have strong reputations for regulating industry, will be under pressure to revisit and overturn many of the clean-air rules and other regulations imposed during the Bush administration over the objections of environmentalists.
Mr. Obama has promised to spend liberally to finance infrastructure projects and support so-called green technologies that will create jobs while benefiting the environment. These officials will work with Mr. Obama’s economic advisers to try to find " and finance " projects that accomplish these goals.
It was not immediately clear how responsibilities for managing climate change, technological innovation and huge energy infrastructure spending will be divided among them.
@sumac,
yippppppppppeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!
finally! good science!
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
@Stradee,
President Obama is already so far ahead of the Shrub that it is amazing.
@sumac,
Fascinating appointments. I'm feeling slightly more encouraged than I had been.
The WildClicking Gang has supported 2,922,624.3 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 218,978.6 square feet.
American Prairie habitat supported: 68,542.3 square feet.
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,635,103.4 square feet.
Full moon on December 12th.
@danon5,
Dan, from Defenders today:
"The decision by the outgoing Bush/Cheney Administration effectively limits new protections for polar bears from harmful oil and gas drilling in their Alaska home. It also expressly prohibits using the Endangered Species Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet and driving polar bears to extinction in America. "
Every animal and plant on the ES list, {if the bush/cheney parting shots arn't challenged}, will be subject to the worst gross polluters on the planet. Defenders has filed suit in federal court.
January can't arrive soon enough!
@ehBeth,
First cup of coffee of the day - moonlight on the porch. georgous
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
Seasoned Regulators to Lead Obama Environment Program
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; A09
The Obama administration has ambitions for a radical change in U.S. environmental policy. But President-elect Barack Obama did not pick radicals to lead it.
Instead, the three officials tapped for leadership posts on the environment are not activists but regulators who have spent years in the weeds of such issues as mercury emissions, brownfields and black-bear hunts.
They will inherit the usual issues -- dirty air, dirty water, brownfields and red tides -- plus an unprecedented one. Obama has promised to cut back U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases -- a proposal that could set off an enormous political fight.
A review of their records and past statements reveals little about the exact policies they would pursue under Obama. It shows they have won over some environmental activists with an open attitude and disappointed others who felt they were not pushing hard enough.
Their expected efforts to limit greenhouse gases would be more ambitious than changes they have sought in previous positions.
"It's going to be an enormous challenge," said Felicia Marcus, the western director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "To call it 'herding cats' would be to oversimplify it. It's like herding dogs, cats, wolves and sheep."
Democratic sources say Obama plans to name Carol M. Browner, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to a new position overseeing energy, environment and climate change policy from the White House. He will choose Lisa P. Jackson, who headed the New Jersey environment agency, as head of the EPA.
And, sources said, he will name Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor in Los Angeles, to chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The president-elect is expected to announce the appointments next week.
Along with Steven Chu -- a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who sources say will be named secretary of energy -- the three will form the core of Obama's environmental team.
Word of their appointment was greeted enthusiastically yesterday by some environmental groups. The League of Conservation Voters called the group a "green dream team."
Industry groups were more cautious. At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Vice President William Kovacs said the group worried that the new officials would use their power to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and impose painful new costs on energy use.
"I think that they could be aggressive, and we're hoping that they're really going to look at the circumstances" of the economic downturn, Kovacs said. "That is our biggest single concern, because literally all three of them have a regulatory bent."
Victor Flatt, a law professor at the University of Houston who has studied environmental legislation, said he saw a strategy behind the picks. In a legislative fight about the right way to cut emissions, he said, it would be valuable to have officials who've been in similar state-level battles.
"This shows a really good understanding of the negotiations that are going to go on," Flatt said. He said that Sutley and Chu, who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, could bring valuable experience from that state. "California's just ahead of everybody else" on climate issues, he said.
Yesterday, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, who will be the new chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, called Obama's picks "outstanding people."
"It's going to be a dramatic change from what we've seen in the last eight years from the Bush administration, where even some of the agencies that were supposed to be working to protect the environment were doing all they could to undermine it," Waxman said in an interview.
Among the three tapped to be environmental officials, Browner is the best-known. During her eight years at EPA under President Bill Clinton, she led the fight for tougher air pollution standards, which the agency eventually won after a legal fight that led to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Two years ago, Browner was part of a group of former EPA leaders that called on the Bush administration to impose caps on greenhouse gases. Now, she will probably be called on to help Obama do that. The president-elect says he wants to reduce emissions to 1990 levels over 12 years.
Ed Krenik, who worked as the EPA's liaison to Congress for two years under Bush, said he worried that Browner's new role could upset government scientists if it is seen as a deadening layer of bureaucracy.
"If there's a concern out there, it's probably concern amongst EPA staff" that their director would have a less direct line to Obama, Krenik said. Browner declined a request to comment.
Jackson, who led the New Jersey environmental agency from 2006 to 2008, has impressed both activists and business groups with her open leadership style. An official at the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce recalled that Browner agreed to give businesses in Paterson, N.J., a brush-up on environmental laws before sending officials in on an enforcement sweep. The leader of Environment New Jersey remembered calling Jackson on her cellphone to warn that legislation was being introduced to try to weaken environmental laws.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said employees of the agency complained that Jackson was not tough enough in pushing for cleanups of polluted "brownfields," or requiring polluters to limit greenhouse gases.
"We called her a pliant technocrat, who sort of time after time did the wrong thing, but did it charmingly," he said.
But environmentalists credit her with stopping New Jersey's controversial bear hunt and urging Gov. Jon Corzine (D) to adopt an aggressive goal on climate change. The state committed to reducing emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.
"I think she pushed [Corzine] as far as she could," said Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of Environment New Jersey. Still, New Jersey has found it difficult to say how it will reach those goals. A spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said a climate action plan is overdue but expected next week.
Jackson declined to comment yesterday.
Sutley, tapped to lead the council on environmental quality, had worked for California Gov. Gray Davis (D). Marcus, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, supervised Sutley in the 1990s when she was a senior policy advisor at the EPA. Marcus described her as a quick study, easily able to master the technical details of any controversy.
"She's one of those people [to whom] you give the toughest issues," Marcus said. The Obama transition team did not respond to a request to interview Sutley.
BUT
Administration Loosens Species Protections
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; A10
The Interior Department yesterday finalized rules changing the way it administers the Endangered Species Act, enabling other government agencies to decide on their own whether a project would harm an imperiled species without an independent scientific review.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne called the move "a clarification" he considered essential in order to narrow the law's reach.
"The rule strengthens the regulations so the government can focus on protecting endangered species as it strives to rebuild the American economy," Kempthorne said, adding that agencies can bypass a review by either the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration only "in specific and limited instances where an action is not anticipated to harass, harm or kill a protected species."
Dale Hall, who directs the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the change did not mean that agencies could build dams, roads or other projects without taking into account the consequences.
"The agency still has the full responsibility to make that decision and to defend that decision," Hall said, noting that the loss of an imperiled species, known as "take," carries legal penalties. "They're still liable for take, if take occurs."
Hall said he was initially concerned about "the compressed time frame" in which the agency pushed through the rule change, which was unveiled in August, but he added that he didn't "see any harm" in Kempthorne's final decision.
Interior went ahead with the rule change one day after the Environmental Protection Agency dropped two other controversial rules changes, saying they had come along too late in President Bush's term. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the reason was that the administration had "publicly and clearly stated our intention" to enact the endangered species measure well before a self-imposed deadline on eleventh-hour rule changes.
The agency received nearly 235,000 comments on the endangered species proposal, at least 208,000 of which were form letters decrying the rule.
Congressional Democrats and environmentalists sharply criticized the administration for the Interior Department action.
"As the Bush administration fades off into the sunset, it continues to take brazen pot shots at everything in sight, including America's landmark conservation law, the Endangered Species Act," said House Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), who said he would introduce legislation seeking to overturn the rule next year.
Separately yesterday, Interior issued a finding limiting the protections that could be invoked to protect polar bears, which were listed as a threatened species this year, on the grounds that the bears are already protected under the Marine Mammals Protection Act. The finding means that the bears' protected status could not be used to block activities such as oil and gas development outside their Alaska habitat.
"We do not believe the science is there to make the causal link between activities in the lower 48 to the take of a polar bear," Kempthorne said.
"To finally admit that the science compels the listing of the polar bear as threatened due to global warming, but then deny it the protections the Endangered Species Act should provide, is nothing other than irresponsible and shameful," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, adding that her group would sue to overturn the rule.
@sumac,
I'm quite surprised that anyone during the Shrub's administration would use the word, 'clarification'.
Thu "Dub" is trying to make his legacy.
Reminds me of the saying of Napoleon, "History is a set of lies that have been mutually agreed upon."
We probably won't live long enough to see it - but, I betcha Papa Bush has a plan to make the family name great in history.
Deck the halls to be busy, busy, busy.
Hello rainforest gang. Stopping by to say hello, and I hope all is well.
Yes, Danon, 'obfuscation' is more like it.
The article below confirms something that we know.
PSYCHOLOGY: A Walk in the Woods
Gilbert Chin
Spending time in the outdoors is commonly regarded as a wholesome approach to coping with the cacophony of contemporary developed societies. But does immersion in a natural environment lead to more than simply a sense of feeling refreshed--that is, might the metaphorical recharging of one's batteries be real? Berman et al. find that the less obtrusive sensory stimuli provided by a walk through an arboretum enabled people to perform better on a standard working memory task (backward digit span), in comparison to the stimuli of a stroll through a downtown landscape. Subsequent testing revealed a specific effect of scenic as opposed to urban settings on the executive portions (versus the alerting or orienting components) of an attentional network task, suggesting that a brief hiatus from focused application of attention allows for the replenishment and renewal of cognitive control centers. -- GJC
Psychol. Sci. 19, 1207 (2008).
@sumac,
or
a change of scenery occasionally is good for the soul.
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
@sumac,
Sumac, I really like your word for the Shrub = 'obfuscation'
It literally translates to - 'in the way' and 'dark brown, more on'
Sounds exactly like the last eight years in politics = the Shrub got his nose up his daddys ass.
"""Oh, hello guys watching this because of name dropping. Have a cup of coffee on me - it's all paid for with our tax dollars - ie, out of my pocket and YOURS. So, enjoy."""
@danon5,
Dan, he'll be outta the wh soon.
Prob is, he'll be living in Texas!
sorry
