Blaming enviros for New Orleans is a clever government strategy

Do Senate Republicans really think they can shift the blame for the flooding and deaths in New Orleans to environmentalists? Maybe that's not the question we need to ask ourselves.

This smear effort could become a significant distraction for eco-advocates -- at a time when a focus on implementing good wetlands policies in the Gulf is crucial, and as Republicans try to weaken environmental protections and implement bad energy policies as part of rebuilding efforts.

Groups ranging from Louisiana's Save Our Wetlands to American Rivers to the Sierra Club have issued angry rebuttals to the charges that environmental lawsuits helped destroy New Orleans. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have also issued statements castigating the effort.

On habitat protection, zoning restrictions, and angry citizens

Amazing ... these stairs are testament to how far some people will go to lay claim to beachfront property. According to this study, half of Oregon's fish are facing extinction from human impact. I strongly suspect that a similar situation exists in every state. Dams, logging, sport fishing, and development are combining to finish the job started by the Fish and Wildlife Service when they began planting non-native fish for people to catch. Large buffers against logging and development along lakes and streams would do wonders.

Hurricane You Hear Me Now?

Warming oceans linked to increase in powerful hurricanes and storms Severe hurricanes and cyclones have become more common worldwide as...

Pollsters aren’t asking the right questions about energy issues

There's more to this article than the headline, but the headline alone says quite a bit: "Poll: 8 in 10 want drivers to drop SUVs." That's another tentative -- though possibly shallow -- sign that high gas prices are turning Americans against their gas guzzlers. Of course, since SUVs, trucks, and minivans have commanded roughly half of the new-vehicle market in recent years, one wonders if this means that 3 in 10 people want other drivers to drop their low-mileage vehicles.

Other poll responses are equally telling. Seven out of 10 respondents want the government to fight rising gasoline bills by establishing price controls. Of course, holding down prices makes us consume more gas than we otherwise would. Plus, in a world of limited petroleum supplies, price controls could lead to all sorts of other problems -- shortages, rationing, etc. (As The Washington Post's Robert Samuelson reminds us, Cheap Gas Is a Bad Habit.)

Seven out of 10 also support new government spending on transit. But almost six in 10 now think it's more important to explore for new sources of energy than to protect the environment; and five in 10 favor opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, up from just 42 percent earlier in the year.

The Weather Channel’s climate ace chats about Katrina and sexing up global warming

As Hurricane Katrina raged toward the Gulf Coast in late August, more than 4.5 million American homes tuned in to...

Giving Us the Business

World’s biggest firms give lip service to cutting CO2 but lag on results More than 70 percent of the world’s...

Logging keeps Asian elephants in business … for now

At a fork in the road, our guide points to the right. “That’s the main road there,” he says. “We’ll...

Soil Ain’t Green

British soil is losing carbon — and may be contributing to global warming Dirt may be one of the world’s...

Ceres on Katrina, insurance, and weather-related risk

Ceres, the "national network of investment funds, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working to advance environmental stewardship on the part of businesses," has just released a report on the enormous challenge to the insurance industry represented by escalating weather-related losses. You can read the executive summary here and the full report here (PDF).

An excerpt:

Yet, despite these rising insurance risks, climate change has received little attention to date from U.S. insurers, regulators and governments. Among the problem areas highlighted in the report:

• Only a small fraction of U.S. insurance companies have seriously examined the business implications of climate change and fewer still work closely with climate scientists or present their analyses publicly.
• Insurers and regulators currently do not have a comprehensive capacity to assess the cumulative weather-related risks from both catastrophic events and the growing number of small-scale events.
• The U.S. government's full financial exposure from insurance programs (flood, multi-crop insurance etc), disaster relief and other forms of weather-related assistance has never been assessed.

The report recommends the following actions, among others:

Insurers need to: collect more complete data on weather-related losses; incorporate climate modeling into their risk analyses; analyze the implications of climate change on their business and investments and share the results with shareholders; and encourage policy action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Regulators need to: include climate risks in company solvency and consumer-impact analysis; review the "standards of insurability" to identify new challenges, including climate-related hazards in the US and abroad; encourage insurers to collect more comprehensive data on losses; elevate standards for catastrophe modeling; and assess exposure of insurer investments and adequacy of capital and surplus to extreme weather events.

Government needs to: foster and participate in public-private partnership for insurance risk spreading; comprehensively assess the government's overall financial exposure to weather disasters; reduce vulnerability to disaster losses through improved early warning systems, land use planning and other measures; and take policy action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.