A wind turbine blade is unveiled during the opening of the Vestas blade factory in Windsor, Colo., Wednesday, March 5, 2008. The authors of the "Transition to Green" report argue that clean energy and new jobs can go hand in hand. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)
Environmentalists send their wish list to Obama
Twenty-eight green groups compile 359 pages of suggestions, hoping for a green revival post-Bush.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ December 10, 2008 edition
Reporter Mark Clayton discusses the wish list of one New York City environmental watchdog group for the incoming Obama administration.
Reporter Mark Clayton
The toxic lead-tainted earth that crunches under Rebecca Jim’s feet when the environmental activist visits Tar Creek in northeast Oklahoma reminds her that in the United States today, the “polluter doesn’t pay.”
Lead and zinc mining over a century turned Tar Creek orange, poisoned residents, and made it the nation’s first Superfund toxic cleanup site in 1983. But a quarter century later, the federal cleanup fund is broke and the 40-square-mile area dubbed the “worst toxic waste site in the nation” by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is still a mess.
High on the Christmas wish list for Ms. Jim and other environmentalists is fixing Tar Creek by restoring the Superfund with fees on polluting companies. Such funding would also help clean up some 1,200 other languishing sites nationwide – and that’s just the beginning.
An enormous environmental tally awaits the incoming Obama administration. After an eight-year pitched battle with the Bush administration, environmentalists see a golden opportunity
to begin making progress on issues ranging from climate change and water pollution to mountaintop-removal coal mining and energy efficiency in autos and buildings.
The massive environmental mountain awaiting Mr. Obama’s administration is chronicled in a 359-page wish list of hundreds of problems the environmental community is eager to start addressing once President Bush leaves town.
High on the list is retightening regulations made lax in myriad ways or even gutted during the Bush years to favor industry, these greens say.
“We’re emerging from the dark ages of pollution to a president that understands climate change and how to use green jobs as a way to build the economy of the future,” says Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth. “It’s a message for the 21st century. In that context, the environmental community has put forward an exciting agenda.”
Remarkable for its specificity and breadth, the “Transition to Green” report by 28 environmental groups offers the Obama team a road map for policy changes across 95 core issues and 29 federal agencies – from the EPA and the Interior Department to the Department of Homeland Security.
Proposals fit four broad categories:
Energy and jobs. Economic vitality, clean energy, and climate solutions go hand in hand, the report says. Investing in clean energy, if done right, will generate millions of jobs.
Environmental justice. Instead of locating waste dumps and dirty power plants in low-income communities, a shift should bring hybrid cars and solar panel construction jobs to such neighborhoods.
Science-based decisionmaking. Instead of political ideology, federal agencies should set their agenda using scientific consensus.
Integrity and transparency. Instead of “midnight” rulemaking and catering to industry’s desires on environment, agencies should return to a fair and open approach to regulation, the report says.
“This administration has been much, much worse for the environment than even the Reagan administration,” says Don Barry, a former assistant secretary for the US Fish and Wildlife Service who co-edited the “transition” report. “This is why the urgency felt this time is probably much greater than ever before.”
Environmental justice will get a lot more attention under President Obama, environmentalists hope. One key recommended policy change would repair an overlooked public-reporting requirement that until recently provided citizen activists with one of their most powerful weapons against industrial pollution: the Toxics Release Inventory or TRI.
In 2004, a Louisville, Ky., neighborhood group called the Rubbertown Emergency Action Committee compared EPA air-monitoring data and TRI data to try to identify polluters. The result was a citywide strategic air-pollution reduction program to reduce 18 toxic chemicals.
Such efforts would be difficult or impossible today, given the EPA’s 2006 reduction in TRI reporting requirements. Luke Cole, director of the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, whose group has also used TRI data to fight pollution affecting low-income Californians, says restoring that statute is vital.
“TRI is critical in terms of accountability and a community’s right to know,” he says. “The only way to know what is going into the air in your neighborhood is if the plant nearby is required to tell you.” The TRI change, he says, has “given polluters a free pass to pollute in secret.”
Similarly, since the Superfund cleanup fund ran dry at the start of the Bush years, the government has had to pay for cleanups with taxpayer money – or else bargain with companies to pay for part of it. But that has meant painfully slow progress at the many sites that are so often near low-income, multiracial communities.
The new “Transition to Green” report urges that funding be restored – a welcome change, says Lois Marie Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice in Falls Church, Va.
“Superfund is a disaster,” says the veteran activist, who earned her pollution-fighting spurs battling the infamous Love Canal toxic site in her Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood. “We’re hoping at this point that the Obama administration and Congress will make it a priority. Right now, it’s totally broke.”
Instead of a steady supply of fees from toxic-material manufacturers, the fund gets just enough from the federal budget each year to go to sites that meet the criteria and do what Ms. Gibbs calls “band-aid measures.”
EPA officials say Superfund has not been crippled. Significant cleanup is occurring and the agency remains “committed to the principle of ‘polluter pays’ and holding private parties responsible for cleanup costs,” says Latisha Petteway, an EPA spokeswoman, via e-mail.
EPA collected $1.9 billion from companies to pay for cleanups this past fiscal year, and the program is “making significant progress in all aspects of site cleanup, exceeding its goals,” Ms. Petteway writes.
Regarding TRI reporting requirements, she writes, “No facilities were relieved of reporting responsibilities under the rule and no chemicals were removed from the list for which reporting is required.”
Pulling back on the full-blown exploration for oil and gas on public lands with wilderness characteristics is another critical goal of environmentalists. Many of these lands are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is charged with balancing uses among outdoor activities and development.
In Utah, for example, some 276,000 acres of public lands will be leased at a Dec. 19 auction for oil and gas exploration. Among them are tens of thousands of acres of some of the nation’s wildest lands, including parcels near the rugged Desolation Canyon and White River areas. In Colorado, already-leased land atop the Roan Plateau, a biologically significant area largely unaffected by nearby development, could see new oil and gas development any day.
“All the lands on the Roan have been leased, but not yet drilled,” says Steve Smith, assistant regional director for the Wilderness Society, who recalls some truly silent nights camping atop the plateau.
“But so long as there’s no physical damage, there’s still an opportunity to keep this wild land wild. But as soon as the drilling rigs get in, there’s no return.”
But the Roan is hardly pristine; it has miles of roads, says a BLM spokesman in Colorado. Meanwhile, in Utah, where the National Park Service initially protested it had not been given time to comment on leasing key parcels, the BLM denies that leases are now being accelerated to get the land leased before Obama takes office.
“We have a mandate to offer leases on a quarterly basis in response to industry demand,” says Terry Catlin, energy team leader in BLM’s Utah region office.
In the end, 24 of the 93 “parcels of concern” (84,000 of the 139,000 acres) cited by the Park Service were removed from the lease auction, according to a report by “Land Letter,” an environment newsletter.
To green advocates, the bottom line is that an across-the-board reevaluation and shift in federal activities and priorities is desperately needed to save the environment. Obama may be listening.
“We’ve already had feedback from the Obama transition team saying the report we did was extremely helpful to them,” Mr. Barry says.
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Comments
2. John Williams | 12.11.08
Perhaps mr. Clayton would be good enough to explain why the Superfund is broke? The truth is 80+% of all the funds collected and spent by the Federal government for Superfund WENT TO LAWYERS. In fact, a majority of the mony went to lawyers and environmental groups launching suits over the cleanups. The activits wanted perfection, perfect restoration of the land to before the evil white men from Europe came over the ocean to devistate everything. Reality is a little, no a lot different. EPA and the Federal governement discovered there just was not enough resources to do the ideal. States, led by Pennsylvania with its Brownfield Act, stepped in and created new standards that basically said clean it to specific requirements and then only use the land in a way that was safe. As a result, many tens of thousands of contaimnated industrial sites have been re-used safely instead of plowing under corn fields. The truth is there will be no net increase in jobs pushing Green. Nor do the Green ideas even work. Germany uses more windmills than any country and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased. There is no free lunch. Liberals and Greens keep the highest milage cars out of the US (such as the 69 mpg ford Fiesta) with rules and taxes on diesel fuel. The problem with many of the greens is they have never had to make it work at a price. They think they can just build it and everyone will swoone in amazement. And I have a question for all your nature lovers: what happens to CO2 in the real world? The truth is most ic CONSUMED by plants as part of photosynthesis. That is right, no plant life without CO2. If CO2 is cut back too far, it will directly impact crop yields and billions could starve. By the way, what is the Earth’s “normal” temperature? have any clue? Didn’t think so.
3. to John Williams | 12.11.08
Blaming liberals for not bringing in more green cars? Yes yes. Don’t blame the big car companies.. they have nothing to do with it. Was it the liberals and greens that wanted more SUVs? I don’t think so…
You have a very distorted view of reality through a hatred for liberals lense. In fact it looks like you got most of your talking points from Bill O’Reilly himself!
Plants production will diminish if we lower CO2 levels? Are you crazy? Were there less plants back in 1950 when we had less CO2?
Superfund money did go to LAWYERS, but not for lawsuits by outraged environmentalists… but MOST of the fees went to lawsuits filed by whinning corporations. I can’t pay for that land I polluted.. waaa waaa! I’m going to sue you (boo hoo). I wanted to extract natural resources for cheap and not pay to keep the land clean.
Damn socialists… always looking out for real people instead of fictional corporations.
4. To John Williams | 12.11.08
Nice try John… They’re not listening though because being “green” is like praying for the environmentalist religion. You can list all the benefits from an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere - faster growing crops is a big one, and it’s “in one ear and out the other.” Doesn’t matter to them… I actually got in a heated discussion with a “green” who announced in a rather angry tone that “Facts don’t matter.” ummm… follow the science… no, no… let’s all follow the “green earth dogma” (actually brown earth is more appropriate since the Earth is actually greener today due to increased CO2 levels according to NASA satellite data) and worship Gaia at the alter of the giant windmill with High Priest Obama presiding… and I fully expect this comment to be censored…
5. exxon4prez | 12.12.08
WOW.. Facts don’t matter???? ya that sounds like the whole lot of liberals? Hello? You base your knowledge on speaking to one person that states that info? I beleive if any group speaks that it would be from a religious point of view, (including your worship point)oh and there are religions out there that believe in being green.. and they are NOT liberal. So it sounds like you are mixing up your stereotypes there.
You must work for a corporation that shudders at a lot of these think outside the corporate world views..
Let’s talk about sustainable capitalism while we are at it. That’s got green written all over it!
6. Moira C. Egan | 12.12.08
It is head-spinning to read in the environmentalists’ wish list, “Science based decision making. Instead of political ideology, federal agencies should set their agenda using scientific consensus.”
Consensus has to do with opinion. Those who use the term ’scientific consensus’ may be confusing it with ’scientific proof’. If that is the case among the writers of this list, they are on the right track. Important decisions about the environment ought to based on scientific proof - not on ideology and not on popular theories.
But have the list-makers really got it right? The spokesperson for Friends of the Earth asserts, “We’re emerging from the dark ages of pollution to a president that understands climate change….” I doubt that fact. Climate scientists don’t understand climate change, so how could the President - or the President-elect? True, Obama’s friend (and non-scientist) Gore has told him his version of global warming and what he thinks are the causes and the results of it, but that is not the same thing as understanding climate change.
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate and Public Works Committee submitted a report in which more than 650 international scientists express their dissent over man-made global warming claims. By now, if he has read the report, Obama will know that global warming is not a scientifically settled fact. He will also know that to legislate any ‘climate controls’ based on what is known would be to legislate on the basis of political ideology - something his green fans evidently oppose. (See the Senate Committee Report at http://www.epw.senate.gov/minority )
7. T. James | 12.12.08
To S. Jansen
The U.S. economy has been built on inexpensive energy for almost 100 years. To maintain cheap energy AND low CO2 emissions, nuclear power generation is the only way to continue this economy. The alternative to meeting the increasing US energy demands (electric cars included) is building more coal power plants.
Coal power plants annually produce 14,000 tons of CO2 and release more radioactive material into the atmosphere than one of the present 435 nuclear power plants operating worldwide ( private and military reactors).
At present the majority of private nuclear power plants are divided as follows:
130 in U.S.
55 in Japan
59 in France
Both the French and Japanese recycle the spent fuel rods to recover 93% of the usable material and the remaining 7% are impurities, which are stored for 50 years until non-radioactive. The US facilities are storing spent fuel rods at each location in a deep pool of water.
Unfortunately solar and wind can generate a maximum of 20% of the demands.
If President elect Obama can solve the energy crisis he will be elected to a 2nd term, otherwise the economy will remain stagnant and the masses will forget George Bush economics and will vote for a Republican with a McCain type message of nuclear power generation platform.
8. Arvind | 12.13.08
My List:
1. Plant 100 billion trees in 10 years in US and other countries sponsored by US. Fact is only the US has the money, and there simply is no other cheaper way to reduce CO2 and provide habitat and food and store rain water in the ground, and prevent floods, and…
This could be done with as little as 10-15 billion dollars.
2. Reduce fertilizer and pesticide use agriculture, and go for organic. We have the land, and surplus food production capacity. Why not give everybody organic food? Why should just the rich have it?
3. Ban harmful chemicals from consumer products such as pthalates in baby products. Reduce harmful chemicals in industrial processes and require treatment of effluents to remove the chemicals.
4. Recycle - charge manufacturers for what it would cost to reclaim packaging etc, and use that money to recover most of the trash.
5. Give sea life a break and regulate wild fishing strictly. Encourage inland freshwater pond fish farms to supply cheap fish for food industry.
6. Come up with and utilize simple cheap alternative energy solutions to get at the low hanging fruit (40-50% of the problem). Would include house insulation subsidies, free compact flourescent bulbs to take home at every gas station, higher efficiency requirements for cars and appliances, and free energy consulting for factories and manufacturing. Would also include cheap solar water heating which takes up so much of our home energy bills.
7. Free and ubiquitous birth control (condoms) available everywhere on earth to all people rich and poor. A revision from the catholic church making birth control use the ethical thing to do.
9. francis | 12.18.08
the blm is not doing there job right theyre tring to action wilderness forest to companies that are causing global warming the blm should use that land to plant trees and restore our national forest and make a big public park full of tall shade trees we all should plant a tree if you like fresh air and green parks so plant alot of trees grow trees from seed or buy trees and youll help reduce global warming
10. TWright | 01.09.09
Our economy is so screwed that now a days people are only thinking about one thing and thats getting their money. Their so wrapped up in that money that they are not paying attention to these toxic chemicals that are right in their back yards. And I’ts ashamed to say this but people are dumb these days. I feel as if nobody even cares about whats going to happen to them. But as they say let people act they way they want because one day something is gonne catch them by surprise.
11. to John williams from TWright | 01.09.09
I agree with your statement 100%.Perhaps mr. Clayton would be good enough to explain why the Superfund is broke or mabye not who can tell.
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1. S Jansen | 12.10.08
Our country is in deep economical trouble and it just amazes me how little credit has been given to the high cost of fuel this past year. That one single factor alone has been solely responsible for putting more businesses out of business and more homeowners out of their home than any other factor. The historically high cost of gas affects every single aspect of our economy and society. Most family’s went broke filling up at the pump alone. Then added to the burden was the higher cost of every consumer product because the increased production and shipping cost due to the higher fuel was passed on to the consumer. Let me ask you this, have you seen the price of groceries come down since the price of gas came back down. NOOO! Freddie and Fannie are taking most of the blame for homes being lost. Of all the homes I have seen lost in my area of the country S FL and I have seen many and many more in the process, not one was due to an adjustable rate mortgage. It was due to lack of work. When we pay more for gas and products we naturally cut back spending, that is a domino effect, less consumer spending = more jobs lost. We seriously need to get on about the business of becoming energy independent. Jeff Wilson just released a book called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW. He outlines all our uses of oil, things I never even considered. Our depletion, which is even scarier, this is a finite source of energy. It will run totally out and not in the too distant future. We have so much available to us, wind and solar which are free, we just need to harness them. And plug in car technology. It would cost the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon to charge an electric car with the average home electric rates. That is insanely cheap. That electricity to charge the car could be generated from wind or solar. If all gasoline cars, trucks, and suv’s instead had plug-in electric drivetrains, the amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota. A company called Better Place in Palo Alto CA is in the beginning stages of setting up the infrastructures needed to support electric car use in the bay area in CA and now in Hawaii. WE need to take some of these billions and get ourselves out from under our dependence on foreign countries supplying our main source of energy. I encourage you to read this book. I also have quickly become a “Better Place” junkie and applauded their work as they move our country forward and away from our dependence on foreign oil. Check out their web site as well. Check out their web site and click on their get involved button on the top right side of the main page. You can sign a petition there. WE have to move this country forward. Use some of that stimulus money to bail us out of our dependence on foreign oil. Create badly needed new green collar jobs and at the same time provide clean , cheap energy. There is no one single factor that effects our economy more than the cost of our main source of energy. This past year is a testimony to that!