Climate Politics
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Congress has a chance to protect sharks from finning
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the U.S. Court of Appeals' decision to throw out penalties against a fishing vessel carrying 64,695 pounds of shark fins in U.S. waters. Shipping a cargo full of shark fins without sharks is illegal in the United States, but the King Diamond II sailed through a loophole that allowed it to carry fins it had gathered from other ships.
Something good has come out of this: The decision has galvanized pressure to end the brutal practice of shark finning, which kills tens of millions of sharks annually, including many species already threatened by extinction.
Late on Wednesday, Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) introduced the Shark Conservation Act of 2008, which will not only require all sharks to be landed with their fins, but also require any other sharks imported into the United States to have the same protections. It's an intermediate step in ensuring protection for sharks worldwide, but it's a vital step all the same.
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Enviros not fond of new forest management rules
The U.S. Forest Service has released new regulations for forest management that are remarkably similar to regulations that a federal judge struck down last year. Under the new rules, species’ sustainability will not be evaluated individually; instead, the focus will be on overall habitat. A coalition of green groups have sued, saying the rules loosen […]
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Gandhi, King, and climate change
The need to reduce our impacts is actually a tremendous opportunity to build a green economy, green jobs, and green infrastructure. But first it will require us -- the developed world, emerging economies, oil and coal interests -- to change the way we think. Gandhi and King understood this. In fact, they eerily anticipated our predicament and speak to us across the decades about it. They both quite clearly foresaw a time when technological development divorced from development of consciousness would threaten the survival of the planet.
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Salmon fishing season canceled in California, heavily restricted elsewhere
Photo: Josh Larios For the first time ever, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council has voted to cancel the salmon fishing season off the coast of California and much of Oregon due to exceedingly low populations of chinook salmon in the Sacramento River area. The restrictions apply to commercial as well as recreational fishers; only a […]
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New York governor puts the kibosh on proposed LNG terminal
Newbie New York Governor David Paterson has put the kibosh on a proposal for a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound. Paterson and other outspoken opponents say the Broadwater project would damage the sound and be a floating terrorist target. Oil companies TransCanada and Shell, which are pushing the project, point to LNG […]
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A toxic tour, coming to a city near you
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act -- better known as the Superfund -- was born in 1980, largely in response to the Love Canal disaster. At the time, experts thought the allocated $1.6 billion would more than cover the costs of cleaning up the sites. But today, the fund is exhausted (it officially went broke in 2003), and as of September 2007, there are 1,315 final and proposed sites with thousands more awaiting approval. So it is taxpayers, instead of the polluting companies, that are footing the bill. Still, few people -- except, perhaps, those who live near a Superfund site -- know about this toxic legacy.
Artist Brooke Singer has decided to make it relevant again. Last year, she and her team began visiting one toxic site per day, starting at a chemical plant in New Jersey, then jumping over to some zinc piles in Pennsylvania, then some landfills in Connecticut. They have cataloged all the toxics data, plus photos and histories, all on a cool visualization application called Superfund365. Visitors to the website are encouraged to contribute their own stories and images as well.
The tour will wrap up next year at the Pearl Harbor Naval Complex in Hawaii. Hopefully by that time, thanks to Singer and co., Americans will be more aware of the problem ... and of the people who live with it daily.
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Renewables score big victory in the Senate
With today's green energy boom (and over 100,000 existing jobs in the wind and solar industries alone) hanging in the balance, the Senate voted this morning by an overwhelming 88 to 8 margin to attach short-term extensions of key clean energy tax incentives set to expire at the end of this year -- the Production Tax Credit that mostly goes to wind power, the Investment Tax Credit for solar, and other incentives for energy efficient appliances and the like -- to the housing bill that the Senate then went on to pass by an also overwhelming 84 to 12. (None of the presidential contenders were around for today's votes, for those keeping track of such things.)
(The overwhelming popularity of wind power was also clearly on display this morning. An effort by wind-hatin' Sen. Lamar Alexander [R-Tenn.] to double the extension to two years by cutting the subsidy to wind in half was trounced on a 15-79 vote -- fewer votes than similar efforts by Alexander have received in the past.)
Today's victory -- the first time this Congress that the Senate has approved even short-term extensions of these clean energy incentives -- is sweet, to be sure, as it underscores the strong, bipartisan support for these measures and the urgent need to extend them. However, unless the House and the Senate can bridge some key differences, this particular strategy may not ultimately result in victory on this make-or-break issue.
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House gives thumbs-up to conservation program
Some 27 million acres of federal land in the U.S. West and Alaska would be formally recognized as conservation-worthy under legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives. The National Landscape Conservation System has been in place since 2000 to “conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes,” and the House legislation would make the […]
