Environmental Protection Agency

Al Gore Backtracks on Corn Ethanol

by Brian McGraw on November 22, 2010 · 3 comments

in Energy, Ethanol

Whoops. Turns out Gore thinks he made a mistake; it wasn’t such a good policy in the first place. Who would have known that politicians, even ones as concerned with “saving” the world as Mr. Gore is, do not excel at picking technology winners and are subject to capture by special interests?

Via Reuters.

Though Mr. Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in support of the RFS, he can’t wave the same magic wand and undo the damage:

With a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Al Gore, the Senate upheld today an Environmental Protection Agency rule requiring that ethanol and other renewable fuels get a share of the gasoline additives market.

And here we are, 16 years later, with a still-increasing corn ethanol mandate and tax credit.

Gore makes a number of candid remarks about his intentions and the effect that lobbies have on “green” energy subsidies:

It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.

One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.

One wonders if President Obama, given his tacit support, will make similar remarks in a few years.

Washington’s New War on the West

by Ben Lieberman on October 4, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

The economic track record of the current administration and Congress is not a good one. Unemployment remains stubbornly high at nearly 10 percent, and many believe federal missteps prolonged the recession and are weakening the recovery. While things like ill-advised spending, Obamacare, and looming tax hikes are doing damage nationwide, a number of other federal measures have particularly burdened the American West, the region suffering with the highest unemployment rate in the country. The Senate and House Western Caucuses’ recent study, “The War on Western Jobs,” documents the host of environmental policies that have targeted the sectors crucial to the economies of Western states — especially energy production but also mining, logging, farming, and ranching.

It is important to note that the federal government controls the economic fate of western states to a greater extent than any other part of the country. The lands comprising 12 western states (Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska) are nearly half owned by the federal government. More so than other regions, job losses in the West can be traced to federal policies.

The Obama administration’s attack on Western energy jobs began within weeks of taking power when the Department of the Interior revoked 77 oil and gas leases in Utah and halted new oil shale projects in Colorado. By the end of 2009, the administration had issued fewer onshore energy leases than in any year under Bush or Clinton, and the pace thus far in 2010 is no better. Throughout the West, vast energy-containing federal lands are currently off-limits, and the administration and Congress have sought to restrict access to millions of additional acres. Even where energy leasing is not explicitly prohibited, Obama’s regulators have imposed red tape and bureaucratic delays that have substantially limited it.

Beyond oil and gas, the administration has all but declared war on coal mining, which is particularly vital to Wyoming and Montana. The Environmental Protection Agency’s global warming regulations as well as many other anti-coal measures (including Boiler MACT, combustion byproducts, new National Ambient Air Quality Standards, others) bode ill for the future of western coal.

The threat of new energy taxes has only added to the chilling effect on Western investment in energy projects.

In addition to the impact on energy production, the federal government’s excessive ownership of land — as well as intrusive measures like the Endangered Species Act that target private property — is posing growing problems for other industries. Despite the West’s mineral wealth, mining jobs continue to decline. The same is true of logging. Farmers and ranchers also face a host of costly hurdles.

Instead of providing regulatory relief that could turn the region’s economy around, Congress has proposed new constraints like the sweeping Clean Water Restoration Act. This bill would essentially federalize land-use decisions on any property containing wetlands, and compounds the threat by defining wetlands so expansively so as to include almost everywhere. And the Obama Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service have issued new agency guidance for federal lands, which under the name of addressing global warming would further restrict access.

Granted, Washington’s control over western lands and the misuse of that control to curtail economic activity is not a new phenomenon, but the current administration and Congress have taken it to a new level.

The West’s economic pain has not been justified by environmental gain. Quite the contrary, Uncle Sam turns out to be a lousy landlord. For example, the forest fires that have become common in Western lands in recent years have mostly originated on federal lands, and not on privately-held forests which tend to be better managed against such risks. A less-intrusive federal approach could deliver both economic and environmental benefits.

The next Congress should have a long list of reforms on its agenda. The Western Caucuses’ report spells out what needs to be addressed to get the American West back on the path to prosperity.

Hype is More Dangerous than Chemicals in the Water

by Angela Logomasini on December 17, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Precaution & Risk

Officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are working hard to hype drinking water risks as they ask Congress to expand their authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). They have the assistance of sensationalist journalism at The New York Times, whose main source of information appears to be left-leaning activists at the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

In a story on this topic today, The New York Times claims that data collected by EWG from EPA databases between 2004 to present shows that there is a growing body of evidence that individuals are increasingly exposed to dangerous chemicals in our water supply. Their arguments are wrong for myriad reasons.

First, the idea of a national drinking water crisis is off the mark. Most of the U.S. water supply is quite safe—among the safest in the world. And consumers have a variety of options that include bottle water—whose record is even better than tap—when problems in their public water systems do emerge.

More importantly, exposure to chemicals does not translate into significant risks. Humans are exposed to hundreds of thousands of trace chemicals every day—man-made and natural—without ill effect. Risks result not from low exposures but from relatively high ones to certain chemicals over decades.

Consider bromate. It is the subject of a controversial program in Los Angeles that involved pouring $2 million worth of black rubber balls into the city drinking water reservoir. The effort is supposed to “save residents” from the formation of “cancer-causing” bromate. One way this chemical forms involves sunlight—which the rubber balls block.

Bromate currently appears in L.A.’s drinking water at trace levels below extremely stringent EPA standards. The best research shows that it would take long-term exposures that are hundreds of times higher than EPA standards for anyone to experience an elevated cancer risk.

Yet the risk of bromate is most likely much lower than EPA estimates. The chemical—like so many other EPA regulated chemicals—is classified as a possible carcinogen because it produces tumors in rodents exposed to massive doses. But so does broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, oxygen and thousands of other things! It’s the dose that makes the poison; there’s no reason to fear these trace exposures.

In fact, the best cancer research available—as cited by the World Health Organization in its health reports—indicates that the overwhelming majority of cancers are caused by personal lifestyle choices like poor diets and smoking. At most, all environmental pollution causes 2 percent of cancers in Western nations and only a small fraction of that—probably approaching zero—could be associated with drinking water. And not surprisingly, people are living longer than ever before and waterborne-related deaths are extremely low in Western nations.

Drinking water systems do face some challenges. But ratcheting up regulations on trace chemicals—currently regulated or not—is highly unlikely to improve things. The feds are likely to set one-size-doesn’t-fit-all targets that are needlessly stringent and expensive and that divert resources away from the most significant problems. This is already a big problem.

In particular, some small towns can’t even afford to provide piped water because federal regulations make it too expensive. And some of the small towns that do have public water systems must divert millions of dollars to pay for excessive, nonsensical regulations, forcing them to ignore other needs like purchasing new fire trucks.

Big cities face issues as well, particularly associated with infrastructure. They can’t afford expensive water line upgrades because they have to devote millions trying to meet overly stringent EPA standards on trace chemicals. And outdated infrastructure can produce water quality problems associated with biological pathogens like Cryptosporidium and E-coli.

In fact, The New York Times story notes that EPA studies report many public health issues related to drinking water. Yet this research doesn’t address chemicals very much—it addresses problems associated with biological pathogens entering cracked and dirty, old city pipes. Fortunately, most illnesses involve temporary gastrointestinal upsets, which resolve on it their own.

There may also be areas where chemical contaminants exceed trace levels that need to be addressed—maybe even for chemicals not covered under the SDWA. In that case, communities need the flexibility and resources to address those, not more government red tape.

Solutions lie not in expanding EPA regulations; they lie in establishing more reasonable standards and giving cities and towns more flexibility in how they apply them. If cities are ever going to be able to address infrastructure or other contamination problems, they need the freedom to allocate resources where they will do the most good.

And if one city thinks that means pouring rubber balls into their reservoir, they should be free to try it no matter how absurd—as long as they can answer to their constituents. But don’t ask EPA to step in because every affordable option may soon disappear along with the rubber balls.

Image credit: Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times

LibertyWeek 62: Soak the Rich, Reap the Wind

by Richard Morrison on September 28, 2009

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Your host Richard Morrison welcomes returning guest co-host Jeremy Lott of the Capital Research Center and technical producer Ryan Young as special guest commentator for Episode 62 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with the semi-proposed allegedly not-a-bailout of the newspaper industry, Steven Chu’s condescending views on energy policy and Google’s copyright troubles in France. We then look at the what soaking the rich has done to New York’s finances, Obama’s presence at the UN and a good old fashioned Washington, D.C. corruption scandal.

An Independent Analysis

by Iain Murray on September 18, 2009

in Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Regulation, Sanctimony

The Greens keep trying to change the subject when it comes to what the released Treasury documents about cap-and-trade actually show.  They’ve got a bunch of talking points and, by Jove, they’re sticking to them.  One of them is this one, from the Environmental Defense Fund’s spokesman:

In terms of the Waxman-Markey bill, “Every one of the independent analyses out there show small costs,” Kreindler added.

Really?  Every one?

What about this one? (“The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035″)

Or this one? (“High energy prices, fewer jobs, and loss of industrial output are estimated to reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by between $419 billion and $571 billion by 2030″)

Ah, but they aren’t independent, are they?  After all, they weren’t, err, produced by, erm, arms of the Federal Government like the Congressional Budget Office, Energy Information Administration or Environmental Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, even using the figures of those “independent” government estimates, the Waxman-Markey Bill is still a terrible deal for Americans.

LibertyWeek 50: Detroit Bribe City

by Richard Morrison on July 6, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

We celebrate our golden anniversary with Episode 50 of the LibertyWeek podcast, brought to you by host Richard Morrison and special guest co-hosts Jeremy Lott and Michelle Minton. We start with plans for new enviro-cops in the UK, the latest bribery scandal out of Detroit, and the sweet taste of free beer in North Carolina. We then move on to analysis of the political turmoil in Honduras and Michelle’s recap of the Washington D.C. TEA Party on Independence Day.