Articles by David Roberts

Federal court reinstates streamlined permitting process for mountaintop mining

Grim news: Mountaintop mining is once again set to go full steam ahead.

In July of last year, a federal judge revoked 11 mountaintop mining permits issued under the Nationwide Permit 21 process by the Army Corps of Engineers. NP21 is a streamlined permitting process meant to govern activities that have minimal environmental impact. Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, being sentient and in possession of his faculties, ruled that mountaintop mining does not fall under that description and that permitting it under NP21 violates the Clean Water Act.

Environmentalists hailed Goodwin's ruling as a landmark victory.

Today, a federal appeals court overturned it.

The three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit -- widely regarded as the most conservative of the 13 U.S. appellate courts -- unanimously ruled that the Corps had in fact acted in accordance with the Clean Water Act. Here's the ruling as HTML and here it is as a PDF.

Helluva way to head into Thanksgiving.

Green Gauge Report: Bad news

Here we are on the day before a long holiday weekend. A perfect day to bury bad news. So here goes.

The Green Gauge Report is a poll on environmental attitudes, based on 2,000 face-to-face interviews, conducted with a broad cross-section of demographics representative of the U.S. Census, undertaken by an arm of market-research outfit GfK NOP. They do it every year -- though for some reason they skipped 2004.

Joel Makower discusses this year's GGR in a post that tries -- one might say 'strains mightily' -- to put an optimistic spin on the results. But from what I've seen (and I've exchanged a few emails with Bob Pares, the guy who ran it), the results are almost uniformly discouraging. Consider this, from Joel's post:

Here's a breakdown of the study's five market segmentations for 2005 and 1995 (the numbers don't add up to 100 due to rounding):

• True-Blue Greens -- the most environmentally active segment of society: 11% of the U.S. population in 1995, 11% in 2005.
• Greenback Greens -- those most willing to pay the highest premium for green products: 7% in 1995, 8% in 2005.
• Sprouts -- fence-sitters who have embraced environmentalism more slowly: 31% in 1995, 33% in 2005.
• Grousers -- uninvolved or disinterested in environmental issues, who feel the issues are too big for them to solve: 14% in 1999, 14% in 2005.
• Apathetics -- the least engaged group who believe that environmental indifference is mainstream (referred to as "Basic Browns" in earlier Roper polls): 35% in 1995, 33% in 2005.

So: basically no change in the last decade in the number of folks genuinely concerned and engaged with environmental problems.

Syriana and Gaghan: Two steps forward, one back

There's a short piece in the current Rolling Stone called "Hollywood vs. Big Oil" -- the piece isn't online, though a very positive review is -- about the movie Syriana. It's got some interesting background details, including a few about the financing from eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll's Participant Productions.

I'm seeing it on Friday, and I fully expect it to kick ass.

And I respect Stephen Gaghan for making it. It's a real public service. But dude ...

Despite immersing himself in the evils of the oil industry, Gaghan is not a purist. In fact, he has a confession to make. "I have to get a second car," he says quietly. "You know something? I don't like hybrids."

Look, I get that for some reason every mainstream media story about environmental issues has to include some kind of poke at the eco-messengers and how hypocritical they are for not living in huts in the woods. This is what the green movement gets for making personal environmental virtue such an obsessive focus.

But why does Gaghan have to play the game? And why a potshot at hybrids, which unlike, say, composting toilets, are perfectly accessible and practical? These little signals matter.

I'll try to get some kind of review of Syriana up over the weekend.

Update [2005-11-22 12:16:37 by David Roberts]: Well, it appears I was misled (by my own wife!). The opening this Friday is limited -- Dallas and New York, as far as I can tell (Seattle gets no love). It doesn't open wide until Dec. 9. So I guess I'll go see it then. Sigh.

Schweitzer and coal-to-fuel conversion

I confess I'm not quite sure what to make of Montana governor Brian Schweitzer's grand scheme to make the U.S. energy independent with coal-to-fuel conversion. The NYT makes only passing reference to the pollution generated -- "what is new is the technology that removes and stores the pollutants during and after the making of synthetic fuel" -- and Schweitzer seems slightly too pat about the consequences of mining the coal:

Mr. Schweitzer said the mining could be done in a way that restored the land afterward. "I call it deep farming," he said. "You take away the top eight inches of soil, remove the seam of coal, and then put the topsoil back in."

Yes, because farming has been so kind to the Western prairie ...

Naturally, my environmental spidey-sense tingles at this sort of stuff. Will the mining really be done carefully? Will restoration really be a priority? Are the pollutants really "removed and stored" safely? I know very little about the process, technically speaking, and would love to be enlightened by an educated reader. But methinks when it comes to energy extraction in the West, an enormous dose of skepticism is warranted.

Still.