Uncategorized

Norton and the 1002 — I mean the Arctic Refuge

In her New York Times op-ed ballyhooing the Bushies' plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Gale Norton uses an interesting new tactic.  

I'm not talking about arguing that the drilling footprint would be small. (Though she's quite crafty about making that claim, noting that "the world of Arctic energy exploration in the 21st century ... is as different from what oil exploration used to be as the compact supercomputers of today are different from the huge vacuum tube computers of the 1950s. Through the use of advanced technology, we have learned not only to get access to oil and gas reserves in Arctic environments but also to protect their ecosystems and wildlife.")

Rather, I mean her repeated reference to the "1002 area," which she describes as "a sliver" of the refuge. Some enviros get pissed when the refuge is referred to as ANWR, believing that the acronym depersonalizes it and strips it of evocative power. (If you can't manage to get out all four words, they say, shorten it to Arctic Refuge.) The administration, in referring to the tract where drilling would take place as the "1002 area," sucks even more life from it. Really, how riled up are the masses going to get about protecting a four-digit sliver?  

Norton manages to squeeze five mentions of "1002" into a brief 650-word op-ed. This is just the beginning of a new admin framing strategy. Expect lots more 1002 in the future.

(Media Matters for America, in a post from earlier this month, refutes some of the refuge-related arguments put forth by Norton, other admin officials, and their cronies at Fox News.)

Get your assessment

Get a sneak peek at the massive Millennium Ecosystem Assessment before its official launch on March 30 in nine cities around the world. Billed as the most comprehensive assessment ever of the world's ecosystems and the impacts of those ecosystems on human health, the four-year study was written by 1,300 experts from 95 countries with another 900 serving as editors and reviewers. The hope is that like the consensus-driven Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the pains taken at inclusive and comprehensive scientific assessment will bring more political as well as scientific heft to the conclusions.  With the report embargoed until its release March 30, it is hard to say more. But there is something for everyone in this effort.

An open letter to Nicholas Kristof

Nic,

Look, I think it's a great thing that the environmental movement is taking a hard look at itself, and I'm as critical of some of its tactics and rhetoric as anybody. But your latest op-ed is a lazy, risible piece of shit.

Be Cool — eventually

I saw Be Cool last night. It's the sequel to Get Shorty, and as you would expect, it's not nearly as good. But there are enough spirited, funny moments -- mainly involving bit characters played by The Rock and Andre 3000 -- to make it worth the price of admission. Barely.

One of the running jokes in Get Shorty was that Chili Palmer (apparently the only character John Travolta plays well) got stuck with a minivan. After he becomes a successful movie producer, and thus an arbiter of cool, everyone in Hollywood starts driving minivans.

The jokes is basically repeated in Be Cool, except this time he gets stuck with a Honda Insight (guess Honda outbid Toyota for product placement).

It's obvious why the minivan is funny -- it's associated with soccer moms and suburban squares. But it's worth pondering why the hybrid is funny.

And still *more* on ANWR

Last week we talked some about the Senate Republicans' sneaky move of placing the issue of drilling in the Arctic Refuge in a budget resolution, which unlike normal legislation cannot be stopped by a filibuster. If you're interested in the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of how that parliamentary trickery works, check out this post from Mark Schmitt. He aptly summarizes:

Now, where in that process is there an opportunity for real debate and bipartisan participation? Nowhere. A decision is made the night before the Budget Committee markup about what number to write into one of those open slots. From there, a series of "we have no choices" choices are generated, that might lead to further tax cuts or to opening ANWR. Only a significant number of Republicans declaring that they will vote against the whole thing can derail this process.

It's possible to understand this process as a way of reducing deficits, which was the procedure's original intent. As it did in the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton eras, it forces Congress to make choices in the aggregate that it does not want to make in the particular. But used as a procedure to cut taxes and increase deficits, and to push through other unrelated policies such as ANWR, it is simply an outrageous assault on democracy.

Still more on ANWR

It's pretty clear at this point that Bush is, while not technically lying about what we can expect from drilling in ANWR, making many highly misleading statements. (Hm, that tactic sounds vaguely familiar...) If you'd like some details, head over to Green Car Congress and get some of those "facts" and "figures" of which Mike Millikin is so fond.

Why Kerry lost

Oh, hey, turns out there's no need to worry about ANWR. Our cause has been taken up by a man with a proven record of outmaneuvering Bush. We're in the clear!

Ah, I kid. I'm actually quite fond of John Kerry, stilted speech and utter lack of charisma and all.

Since speculating about a) why Kerry lost and b) why the environment didn't play a bigger role in the election never goes out of style, I found this interesting:

Seated in his modest Senate office, Kerry reflected on why matters like the environment -- an issue he believes remains potent with the electorate -- had not won him election in November.

"There was one dominant complication in the year 2004," Kerry said. "It's called the war. The war on terror. It's the only thing Bush people really talked about, advertised on, scared people about."

...

Some environmentalists have faulted Kerry -- as they did Vice President Al Gore before him -- for not making matters such as Alaska drilling, regulating air and water pollution, forest management and endangered species protection a higher priority during the campaign. In rebuttal, Kerry cited a half a dozen events he held during the campaign, including Earth Day in Houston, and events focused on Great Lakes protection in Michigan and coastal erosion in Louisiana.

Had it not been for the threat of terror, he said, "I think the environment would have emerged as a greater issue, as would health care and education. A lot of issues were drowned out. And purposely so by the administration, because their strategy was obviously to use the war as the fulcrum that it was. It was ... effective."

It's fashionable in eco-circles to call bullshit on this, but I actually think it's accurate. It was a narrow loss and there are plenty of things that could have tipped the balance, but I'm inclined to doubt that raising the volume on environmental issues is one of them. If I had to rank them, I'd say 1) a better national security message, 2) smarter campaign tactics (especially on the Swift Boat stuff), and 3) a more mediagenic personality.

De-Fence, De-Fence

U.S. border fencing project may harm sensitive ecological area A half-mile-wide canyon and estuary situated on the U.S.-Mexico border just 12 miles from San Diego, Calif., is the locus of a conflict between environmentalists and the feds. The ecologically sensitive marshland is part of a 3.5-mile gap in secondary fencing at the border, making it […]

Handle With CAIR

EPA issues air pollution rules for Eastern states With the Clear Skies bill dead in committee, the Bush administration is going ahead with its plan to implement provisions of the bill as regulation. Yesterday saw the first step, as the U.S. EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which will substantially curtail emissions of […]

Arctic Refuge update

Yesterday we wrote about attempts by Senate Republicans to backdoor their way into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by slipping a provision into a budget bill. Today brings news that Senate Dems have failed in their attempt to slip it back out.