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A recent editorial in The New York Times paid just and overdue tribute to those, in particular the federal courts, who have stymied the efforts of the Bush administration to gut America’s environmental laws and weaken the regulatory authority of federal agencies charged with enforcing them. 

States led by California and New York deserve enormous credit for their willingness to fill the void left by a feckless and disinterested federal government and to push the latter to fulfil its environmental responsibilities.  And the federal courts have, for the most part, foiled the Bush administration’s efforts to reverse years of progress in making our air and water cleaner and to protect what remains of our wilderness.

Much credit, however, belongs to a plethora of environmental organizations, such as Earthjustice, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense League and others too numerous to mention.  They have fearlessly challenged the administration at every turn as it sought to open heretofore undeveloped federal lands to oil and gas drilling, withdraw protections from endangered species, help the heaviest industrial polluters avoid the requirements of the Clean Air Act and ignore their responsibility to combat global warming by, for example, regulating carbon dioxide emissions.

In surveying the damage inflicted on our nation domestically and internationally in the Bush era, it is easy to overlook the titanic and largely successful struggle that has been waged in the courts to save our natural treasures.  Almost without exception these fights have been waged in the first instance by lawyers from the various environmental organizations. They have fought to keep the Clinton era rule that protected 58 million acres of roadless national forest land from development, and resist a Bush administration version that would give states more say over the fate of these forests – fig leaf that barely conceals their intention to open some of them to logging and other industries.  They challenged the Bush administration in its attempt to open up the Front Range of the Rocky Mountain West to unprecedented oil and gas drilling; they have fought to compel the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Agency and other agencies to enforce the law whether it’s to clean our air and water, or to protect our Pacific Northwest salmon and Rocky Mountain gray wolves.

I must confess I have never understood why these organizations are depicted, as they often are in the media, as just another “special interest”.  How can protecting our planet so that we hand it off to future generations in better, or at least no worse, shape than we found it be a “special interest”?  Isn’t it in all of our interests?  Even of so-called conservatives who these days seem to ignore the “conserve” part of their ideology?  

Without the devotion of these organizations to the idea that no responsibility is more critical than the stewardship of our natural world, and that our children and grandchildren deserve an opportunity to see what we have seen, to know that there exist, in the words of the Wilderness Act, areas:

“…where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

I shudder to think where we would be today, with the polluters and developers largely controlling the federal environmental agenda.

Sure the environmental organizations and lobbyists can be a pain in the butt as sympathetic Democrats in particular will ruefully acknowledge.  During the Clinton administration, they had a reputation for a “what have you done for me lately” quality to their remonstrations. 

Nevertheless we owe Earthjustice and the rest of them a debt beyond measure.  The struggle is not over to be sure; but their rearguard action to thwart the pernicious efforts of the Bush administration to unravel our environmental laws, and maintain the status quo until a more environmentally friendly president takes office, has already succeeded in a way few could have expected in 2001. 

God bless them and all who have supported them, and may their efforts continue to bear fruit.

In Bush America, you are greeted with articles like this in the morning paper that make you angry the rest of the day.

In 2004, a Seattle company that builds ship propellers puffed 250 pounds of potentially toxic chromium into the air, according to state reports.

But soon, such information won’t be available. Following a change earlier this week in federal pollution regulations, a number of Washington companies won’t have to report the level of toxic chemicals they discharge into the ground, water or air. The Environmental Protection Agency eased requirements, effective January 2007, that factories report the amount of toxic chemicals they release. The EPA says the changes should encourage companies to cut releases of toxic chemicals because it would spare them paperwork if they do.

What?  Companies will voluntarily stop poisoning the environment if they are relieved of telling anyone about how much poison they’re dumping?  Does anyone out there believe this bullshit?

If this type of voluntary compliance will works so well, why don’t we apply the same logic to other forms of government regulation of potentially dangerous activity that doesn’t comply with laws?

Hmmm…. Let’s move down from the corporate level and apply it to a law we can all relate too.  Let’s start with speeding.  Say you get pulled over for going 90 m.ph. in a 70 m.p.h. zone and instead of issuing you a citation, the trooper says, “You know… you were speeding, but I’m not going to give you ticket ‘cause that’s just too much paperwork for me.  To do that I’d have to type your driver’s license number into my computer, check out your registration, and spend a few minutes figuring out the fine, write it up, hand you the ticket and keep a copy for myself and the state. So, instead of all that, the state has adopted this new approach of “self policing.”  That’s right, we know there are a lot of people like you driving way too fast and endangering other people’s lives, but we really don’t want to inform the public about how many speeders there are and we don’t want to be bothered with all the paperwork that goes along with the reporting.  So why don’t you just drive down to the courthouse and voluntarily pay the clerk whatever fine you think is appropriate.” 

Wouldn’t that work great?  I’m sure that if such a policy were adopted, everyone would comply with the speed limits.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.  Feel free to add your own outrageous examples with a comment.

This is a HUGE victory for Progressives.

A federal appeals court today overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to exempt power plants, refineries and other pollution sources from Clean Air Act rules that require them to install costly new pollution controls whenever they make changes that increase their emissions.

Ruling in favor of a coalition of states and environmental advocacy groups, the court declared that the plain language of the act required a much stricter approach, as the Clinton administration had devised, and that only “a Humpty Dumpty” interpretation, as the court called the E.P.A.’s position, could construe the law otherwise.

“We decline such a world view,” said the unanimous decision of a three-judge panel that included Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a conservative appointed last summer by President Bush.

Plaintiffs in the case – more than a dozen states, including New York and California, and a large group of environmental organizations – hailed the decision as one of the most important in years for environmental protection. The law governs more than 800 power plants around the country as well as 17,000 factories, refineries and chemical plants.
…

“This is an enormous victory over the concerted efforts by the Bush administration to dismantle the Clean Air Act,” Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York, whose office argued the case for the states, said in an interview. “It shows that the administration’s effort to misinterpret and undermine the statute is illegal.”

Eliot Spitzer is the man! Why isn’t he running for president? Oh… he’s got that governor thing he wants in New York.