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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (108732)	6/27/2007 11:32:30 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 361250

This baby is just plain ugly, folks When you watch a baby being born, after a difficult pregnancy, it is so painful the mother it is always hard to tell the truth and say, "Gosh, that baby is really ugly." But that's how I feel about the energy legislation passed (and not passed) by the Senate. The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my feelings that we're in a green bubble - a festival of hot air by the news media, corporate America and presidential candidates about green this and green that, but, when it comes to actually doing something hard to bring about a green revolution at scale - and if you don't have scale on this you have nothing - we wimp out. Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it. No question, it's great news that the Democrat-led Senate finally stood up to the automakers, and to the Michigan senators, and said, "No more - no more assisted suicide of the U.S. auto industry by the U.S. Congress. We're passing the first bill since 1975 that mandates an increase in fuel economy." If the Senate bill, which now has to go through the House, becomes law, automakers will have to boost the average mileage of new cars and light trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, compared with about 25 mpg today. But before you celebrate, pay attention to some fine print. If the Transportation Department determines that the fuel economy goal for any given year is not "cost-effective" - that is, too expensive for the car companies - it can ease the standard. But even this new mileage standard is not exactly world leading. The European Union is today where we want to be in 2020, around 35 mpg, and it is committed to going well over 40 mpg by 2012. Ditto Japan. There are other things that make the Senate energy effort ugly. Senate Republicans killed a proposed national renewable electricity mandate that would have required utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, biomass and other clean-energy sources by 2020. Twenty-three states already have such mandates. No matter. Making it national was too much for the Republicans. And the Senate, thanks again to the Republicans, squashed a Democratic proposal to boost taxes on oil and gas companies that would raise some $32 billion for alternative fuel projects. Despite all the new research on climate change, the Senate didn't even touch the idea of either a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax to limit carbon dioxide emissions. An effort by Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to legislate a national reporting ("carbon counter") system to simply measure all sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which would enable a cap-and-trade system to work if we ever passed one, also got killed by Republicans. We can't cap and trade something we can't measure. Here is the truth: The core of our energy crisis is in Washington. We have all the technology we need right now to make huge inroads in becoming more energy efficient and energy independent, with drastically lower emissions. We have all the capital we need as well. But because of the unique nature of the energy and climate-change issues - which require incentives and regulations to build alternatives to dirty, but cheap, fossil fuels - you need public policy to connect the energy and capital the right way. That is what has been missing. "We have to work to ensure that the House will at least toughen the provisions that the Senate passed," said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program. The public wants it. But energy policy gets shaped in the halls of Congress - where wily lobbyists, legacy industries and politicians greedy for campaign contributions regularly sell out the country's interests for their own. Only when the public really rises up - as it has finally done against the auto companies - do we even get moderate change. Don't look to the Bush team to lead the revolution. "We are the only major country in the world where no one even knows the name of the environment minister - the head of our Environmental Protection Agency," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. "Whoever it is - and most people don't even know if it is a he or a she - has been in a six-year witness protection program." Folks, we're home alone. So call your House member - especially the Republicans. If you don't, some lobbyist will. Thomas Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times. wilmingtonstar.com

To: sylvester80 who wrote (108732)	6/27/2007 11:43:59 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361250

Here are the results of dicking around with the Klamath. ENVIRONMENT REPORT - October 25, 2002: Chinook Salmon Deaths By Cynthia Kirk This is the VOA Special English ENVIRONMENT REPORT. American officials say at least twenty-thousand chinook salmon and other fish have died recently in the Klamath River in Northern California. Scientists are not sure what caused the die-off. But environmental groups say the Bush administration's plan to redirect the flow of the river to provide water for crops may have caused water levels to drop too low. The Klamath River starts at Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon and flows into Northern California. Then river flows west into the Pacific Ocean. Water management of the Klamath River has been a major dispute between farmers on one side and fishermen, environmental groups and several Native American tribes on the other side. Six months ago, the Bush administration approved a plan to provide large amounts of water to farmers near the Klamath River for irrigation. Farmers depend on water from the upper Klamath Lake to irrigate more than eighty-thousand hectares of land. Administration officials said the plan would satisfy farmers and honor environmental laws. But opponents of the plan said it would severely harm the river and its fish. Several fishing groups and others have taken legal action against the federal government. They said the Bush administration gave too much water to farmers for irrigation at the risk of thousands of salmon. Some of the salmon, such as coho, are protected under the Endangered Species Act. However, chinook salmon do not have federal protection. Chinook were the main victims of the recent fish kill. Scientists disagree about what caused to the fish to die. Tests showed that most of the fish died of lack of oxygen due to infections that damaged their gills. Scientists say the organisms that caused the infection are common in the river. But rarely have the organisms led to so many deaths. Some scientists say warm and dry weather last month and low water flows in the Klamath River could be major reasons for the deaths. They say the river is too low for fish to move upstream to mate. They say the fish are dying of disease because they are crowded into small areas of water. Biologists have called for more water to be released into the river for at least six months. But so far, federal officials have agreed only to two weeks of additional water flows. This VOA Special English ENVIRONMENT REPORT was written by Cynthia Kirk. manythings.org