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Mitigation, then Warrior Safety

In Whales In a Time of War, we reported that Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a 2-1 ruling allowing the Navy to continue sonar training in whale breeding grounds: "the safety of the whales must be weighed, and so must the safety of our warriors. And of our country."

The judge looked to the president for direction on the fate of the whales and framed his decision as one of national security, saying: "we customarily give considerable deference to the executive branch's judgment regarding foreign policy and national defense."

Mid-frequency sonar testing causes whale strandings and deaths that have been documented in North Carolina (2005); Haro Strait off the coast of Washington State (2003); the Canary Islands (2004, 2002, 1989, 1986, 1985); Madeira (2000); the U.S. Virgin Islands (1999, 1998); Greece (1996), and the Bahamas (2000). At one time the Navy took precautions to prevent unnecessary damage to the whales without neglecting the excellent testing and training of sonar that the US national defense demands, however the Navy's previous caution has lapsed according to environmental agencies.

The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and several other groups sued the Navy back in 2005, requesting the mitigatory action to spare marine mammals that get disoriented, stranded, or killed following sonar exposure. The August 2007 decision was just one in a long back and forth negotiation between the courts, environmental groups, and the Navy. Here's some (not all) of the outcomes:

• August, 2007: U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper orders a temporary injunction that bans all training exercises off Southern California waters saying that there was "'near certainty"' that "8,000 whales or dolphins potentially experiencing temporary hearing loss and an estimated 466 cases of permanent injury to whales."
• August 31, 2007, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invokes national security and says the Navy can go ahead with testing.
• November 13, 2007: A different 9th Circuit Court Appeals panel says that the Navy can continue exercises scheduled until November 22, but then must resume mitigation efforts like staying a certain distance from shore and posting scouts on deck during exercises to try to prevent harm to marine life.

Emergencies, then Preventing Suicide Pacts

By January, 2008, Judge Cooper had thoroughly reviewed the Navy's records and science documents, found that the Navy's mitigation efforts were "grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure". The Navy's sonar testing would leave 30 species of marine mammals at risk including 5 species of endangered whales. The Navy's research indicated that the testing could harm over thousands of animals, however they didn't do conduct an environmental impact statement indicated by existing law.

• January, 2008. The judge issues a more detailed order that allows the Navy to continue the sonar testing while taking precautions to protect endangered marine animals.
• January 14, 2008: The district court denies a Navy stay application.
• January 15, 2008: George Bush grants the Navy two waivers to conduct it's sonar testing under Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in an effort to sidestep the court's findings, claiming national security.
• January 17, 2008: Judge Cooper issues a partial stay of her orders that keeps some of the previous mitigation measures intact, but allows the Navy to use sonar when marine animals even if animals were detected within 2,000 meters of the sonar source.
• February 29, 2008: Court follows up on the order allowing the Navy to continue testing but with mitigation measures to protect whales.
• April, 2008: Navy petitions the Supreme court to review the lower court's decision citing emergency national security.

Despite accommodation by the lower court for the Navy's readiness mandate, the Navy disagrees that its previous mitigation efforts need to be continued. Environmental regulations should not be a "suicide pact", said the Bush administration. In a decision last month, the Supreme Court decided to hear Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council in the next session.

Court Declares Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) Not Patchwork Enough

Back in December, 2007, the EPA denied California the waiver the state requested under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The state wanted to set its own tougher emissions standards, which at least 18 other states would have adopted. However the auto and energy industries lobbied successfully against the waiver to an administration as dedicated as they were to denying global warming. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson defended the denial, saying the waiver would have created a "patchwork quilt" of regulation.

At the time, Bush had just signed the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mileage standards passed by Congress under the National Highway Transportation Safety Act, and he defended the EPA's denial, saying: "Director Johnson made a decision based upon the fact that we passed a piece of legislation that enables us to have a national strategy, which is the -- increasing CAFE standards..."

Last week, the administration might have had another opportunity to point to the success of its own brand of environment legislation, while once again shooting down the Clean Air Act. The EPA announced its decision to ignore the Supreme Court order in Massachusetts v. EPA to regulate greenhouse gases and instead decided to issue an Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking (ANPR)¹. But unlike the CAFE standards which Congress passed and Bush signed into law, the Bush administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) aimed at regulating sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from stationary polluters was challenged by the state of North Carolina and rejected by a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

CAIR was a cap and trade system for large stationary polluters in the framework of Bush's "Clear Skies". It required 28 eastern states to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO_x) emissions (not carbon) that contribute to air pollution. The D.C. court disputed the EPA's regional plan: "The EPA's approach, region-wide caps with no state-specific quantitative contribution determinations or emissions requirements, is fundamentally flawed....the trading program is unlawful, because it does not connect states' emissions reductions to any measure of their own significant contributions."

Environmental groups thought it ironic that the conservative court overturned what some considered the best-of conservative Bush legislation on greenhouse gases.Although attempts to project the exact effects of CAIR fell short of providing a thorough understanding of outcomes and overall there was very little reaction from either science and environmental groups, almost everyone, including utility companies, agreed that effort was worthy. The projected benefits to health and air quality under CAIR would have improved acid rain and air quality on the eastern seaboard. According to the EPA CAIR would reduce SO₂ emissions by over 70% and NO_x emissions by over 60% from 2003 levels.

While people were taken aback that the court struck down CAIR in its entirety, no one was surprised that the EPA's Stephen Johnson announced the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) instead of working to create new Clean Air Act regulation. He had responded to Representative Waxman (D-CA) several months ago with his intention, as we wrote in "The EPA: Mulish Days, Staring out to Pasture".

At that time, many saw the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), especially the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) headed by Susan Dudley, as in the "catbird seat" over federal regulation as Public Citizen put it, and therefore overlord of the EPA's actions. People weren't sure that "Director Johnson" really had too much choice in the issue. Susan Dudley had a long history in conservative think tanks of advocating the types of cost benefit analyses that the Bush administration sought to impose, as we described in "EPA, OMB and OIRA: The Biggest Kid on the Block is Back". The OIRA footprint was evident under the Bush administration, especially in the EPA's lack of action on the environment.

When the EPA released its several hundred page document last week, it of course included a statement from the OIRA head Susan Dudley, who rejected the EPA's staff's recommendations, writing: "the [EPA] draft cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration", but then magnanimously added that given the Supreme Court ruling the EPA could go ahead and seek public comment.

Considering the previous repudiation of the OMB/OIRA from critics who called the agency on its interference with the EPA's mandate to protect clean air,², it's not surprising that the OMB recruited additional support from the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, and Energy. They too denounced the EPA draft in 75 pages of testimony, saying:

1. The Clean Air Act (CAA) is "fundamentally ill-suited to the effective regulation of GHG emissions" because the US cannot control emissions from other countries, so state or regional reductions could be "replaced with emissions increases elsewhere"
2. CAA would hurt international competitiveness
3. The EPA draft "suggests that regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act would be workable. We disagree. The draft offers a number of legal constructs to support its position but there is no certainty of how those theories will work out in actuality, or whether they would be unheld by the courts."

The Secretaries cited the "burdens, difficulties, and costs, and likely limited benefits" of CAA. Of course this is familiar Bush rhetoric, delivered with orchestral cohesion. However if the Clean Air Act is ill-suited for the task, shouldn't the reasons be grounded in fact rather than fear laden claptrap?

The Wall Street Journal described Johnson as being stuck in between his staff and the White House, and as if to illustrate the dysfunction, Johnson disagreed with the conclusions of his staff, calling CAA "ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases."

The Administration's Gut

The document was a product of "career EPA's" critics said, with the hint of a sneer they might use for "teacher's unions". Piling on the hyperbole, William Kovacs, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington told the Wall Street Journal "This is a classic example of EPA staff saying we can manage the economy of the United States better than the president." (WSJ July 11, 2008) (To which some economists gasped -- Aha, the president's running the economy?)

The Bush administration has led a sustained attack on the Clean Air Act and the EPA. Last fall Bush publicly conflated the Clean Air Act emissions standards with CAFE standards, acting as though they were the same thing. But they're not. The NHTSA in the Department of Transportation (DOT) sets gas mileage standards through (CAFE). The energy bill that Congress passed and Bush signed (H.R. 6) last December improves long term mileage standards (barely).

The EPA regulates carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, through the Clean Air Act. Several industries argue that the EPA should not regulate emissions because of "regulatory overlap" between the NHTSA and EPA, but the Supreme Court rejected that argument in Massachusetts v. EPA. Said the court, the EPA "has been charged with protecting the publics 'health' and 'welfare'", whereas "DOT sets mileage standards".

The legislative goal of CAA was to protect considerations about healthy air and water from being corrupted by private interests and business. Its this goal that industries resent. As we described in previous posts, the petroleum and auto industries petitioned the EPA and the Bush administration to deny the California waiver. Industries argued that the EPA should adopt the notion of "maximum feasibility", and "set standards that take account of the limits on the investment capabilities and product cycles of the industry, just as NHTSA does...", as Chrysler put it in a memo last year.

One-Two Punch

There are legitimate criticisms of Clean Air Act, however the auto industry simply wants to continue its 30 year run of little to no regulation, despite the evidence that this damages health, the environment and the auto industry. The Bush administration now seems more brazen about criticizing the EPA document directly. Bush chose the familiar war theme when he called the EPA outline a "'command-and-control' regime that would regulate virtually every aspect of American life from cars to factories, hotels and lawnmowers". "Command and control" is a conservative slur you run across scanning the conservative op-eds, as in "command and control communism", "command and control socialism", and "enemy of the free-market".

The push by the OIRA, the administration, industry, and much of congress for measures that considers projected costs to industry when determining whether or not to regulate of course has valid points, but is subject to abuse. If the cost to industry is used to determine whether industry should clean up the mess it makes of air and water, then why shouldn't industry make a really BIG mess and what incentive is there to accurately estimate either costs or benefits?

An example of how costs and benefits can be manipulated is n the latest report from the EPA on CAA. The Los Angeles Times reported that the benefits section of the current draft was "sharply revised" from a May draft that calculated savings to consumers of up to $2 trillion dollars.

"$2 trillion in savings to consumers at the gas pump and elsewhere could be achieved if greenhouse gas regulations were implemented.. [In the current draft], that number was slashed to $830 billion, and the price of gas was calculated at $2 a gallon for the next 30 years.

According to the LA Times EPA press secretary Jonathan Schradar said "he did not know why the numbers had been changed". Or perhaps he knew why but didn't know how or who or when? An inherent danger of such analyses?

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¹ (ANPR) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act.

² Congressman Waxman's Committee of Oversight and Government Reform has a long running investigation of the OMB and EPA's actions on the environment/. He held the two agencies in contempt of court for refusing to release documents related to decisions about the ozone and the California waiver, to which President Bush claimed executive privilege.

The MPG Illusion -- Needing Math?

Now that gas is almost $5.00 per gallon many people seem to be more than a little worried, if not about global warming than simply about the price of gas. Of course some lobbyists and commentators continue their efforts to preserve status quo, whole hog energy use that exacerbates global warming. These efforts ultimately undermine independence from foreign oil and adaptation of measures that would stem to pace of global warming. In "Communicating Climate Change", last year I wrote:

"If we've moved beyond the climate change "debate", however, as I argue we have, we've only entered another stage. I'm not sure what to call it, but it if we appropriated something like the familiar five stages of dealing with catastrophe- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, then maybe people have moved on to some sort of denial/bargaining phase. People get ideas about how we can buy our way out, with some carbon credits, some alternative energy, or some prizes. Again, this is procrastination. If buying our way out doesn't work, at least we've bought some time."

Science published an article the other day in their Policy Forum section from a couple of Duke business professors. "The MPG Illusion" (June 20th) argued that people misunderstand the miles per gallon (mpg) standard. The authors ask the question, if you had a choice of upgrading one of two cars with a car with a better MPG rating which would you replace? Unlike Europe, where the mileage standard is expressed in liters per 100 kilometer, in the US, miles per gallon (mpg) refers to the distance a gallon of gas will achieve in a vehicle: 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles equals 10mpg. Not very many people understand that, according to their poll.

Increases in mileage are calculated so that 30% better gas mileage means 23% less gas used. 30% greater "mpg" means greater distance per gallon of gas, instead of traveling 100 miles you would now be able to travel 130 miles, so 100%/1.3 = 76.9, 23% less fuel. Most people assume the relationship between miles driven and gas consumed is linear, but its actually curvilinear. From there, the authors argue that small upgrades, say from a "10 mpg" rated car to a "20 mpg" car, may save the consumer more on gas than upgrading from 25mpg to 50mpg.

Their goal was to see whether people ranked choices in mathematically correct ways and so they structured their question carefully. But if their point is to illustrate that the standard is deceiving, as they say in the video, why do they need to publish an article in Science, and perambulate through all the math and graphs?

Promoting a clearer standard isn't their only goal. They open their Science piece criticizing a NYT columnist who questioned the sense of giving an IRS hybrid car tax break to people who buy "a hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14 miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power source."

But doesn't the NYT author have a point? Why would the government offer a credit? The authors acknowledge this: "The basic argument is correct: The environment would benefit most if all consumers purchased highly efficient cars that get 40 MPG, not 14, and incentives should be tied to achieving such efficiency." This hat tip to clear thinking is only 27 words of their Science article, versus 1708 words explaining calculations that in effect justify why upgrading from a 1978 Cadillac or your grandpa's farm tractor to an SUV is a choice that consumers should feel good about. While the question is carefully constructed around consumer choices about two cars driven equally and yields a conclusion showing that consumers don't understand mpg math, why this question?

In effect, the authors' piece would be brilliant in a Dodge Durango or Ford ad to boost those double digit sales drops. But back to the New York Times article. Why wouldn't a person upgrade from a 10mpg car to a 50mpg car? A 10 mpg car would use 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles, and a 50mpg would use 200 gallons per 10,000 miles. 800 fewer gallons of gas. That much less pollution. $5,000 of gas, versus $1,000. Why can't we shoot for that?

Consumers are making exactly these choices. Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year. In our last post we quoted from the NYT article, America, Asleep at the Spigot", in which Senator Dingell (R-MI), told the NYT" "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe". It seems that "He" is changing "His" mind about "Big" and "Safe", when faced with $150 per fill-up. "He" is choosing a Prius instead of a pick-up.

Global Warming: Too Much Evidence

There's a direct correlation between energy cost and use, just as there's a direct correlation between increased cigarette taxes, and decreased smoking. Lobbyists routinely argue the opposite in order to justify low taxes and minimal regulation. But the fact that car owners are switching to more efficient cars is a market coup for global warming as well as free-market advocates. This should please all of us who support liberal economic policies, as well as "let the market" commentators. But paradoxically, some of columnists are still stuck with in their delusional refrains from 2005.

A Wall Street Journal blogger now claims there's too much evidence on global warming, so much that it's not believable (WSJ July 1, 2008, "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis"). "What isn't evidence of global warming?" he asks. My favorite! For years it was, "there is not enough evidence". And now, simply invert the sentence to arrive at your next phase of denial. Last year when you pulled his string he said "Not Enough Evidence!!!" and alarms rang -- Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! This year they retooled, so yank the cord to hear, "Too Much Evidence!!! Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! American Girl could immortalize his likeness as the Denier Doll from the historical series "When Carbon was King" or "When the Air was Breathable". Of course next he instructs: "[s]o let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole". He will no doubt shuffle around in these arguments until the water's licking up around his ankles.

He insists that global warming is either a socialist, religious, or psychological affront to our way of life by those who believe that prosperity is corrupt. Last year we wrote in "Climate Change: Fueling the "Debate", "if you're crazy-dizzy snapping your head around to follow first the one side, than the other, simply follow the money for the truth." Perhaps our columnist hasn't invested in any emerging energy markets.

Sanity and Samsø

As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd and the bloviators, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions. Consumers are making changes around global warming not only by buying Priuses, but by using alternative energy sources or cutting back their energy use.

In the New Yorker this month, Elizabeth Kobert wrote a great article called "The Island in The Wind". The first part of the article was about the residents of Samsø an island in Denmark that progressed from consuming enough oil and electricity to provide energy for 4,300 people, to generating enough renewable energy through wind turbines and other sources to produce energy for the whole island and sell some back to the grid. The island accomplished this with a combination of initiative, work, leadership and community investment, but with no initial motivating monetary reward.

While generating their own energy however, the islanders didn't reduce their consumption. For that part of the story Kolbert goes to Switzerland, where the 2,000-Watt Society aims to motivate people to reduce energy consumption to 2,000 Watts per person with only 500 Watts consumed from non-renewable sources. Scandinavians consume 6,000 Watts per year per person, and US citizens consume ~15,000 Watts per year per person, so the 2,000 Watt goal gives some populations room to grow while others should strive to cut back on energy use.

When we wrote "Sea Change or Littoral Disaster" in 2006 it seemed like we'd never turn a corner. We wrote "We need no more evidence. We have decades of studies indicating that our lives will change, but its easier to wait for another headline and hope a miracle intervenes, if nothing else than in the guise of government action." Times are decidedly more optimistic. Of course there the same gradient of action, inaction, denial, and procrastination, but when I reflect on the general attitudes of the past couple of years I'm amazed at all the change happening in 2008.

Nature Loves Our Cars, Really

In April of 2007, Acronym Required wrote satirically in "Cars: Buying Cognitive Dissonance" about US drivers in denial. While headlines blared warnings on climate change and the reality of driving was smog filled lanes of traffic jams, automobile ads featured cars climbing to the tops of unpolluted mountains, amidst pristine forests and zooming past glaciers. We commented on the delusional love affair with cars, and the spectacle of all those slick, shiny, plasticy, carbon emitting SUVs posed ironically in not yet ruined landscapes:

Today, more so than last decade or the decade before that, we have fires in California, hot and erratic weather predictions, floods in the midwest, suffocating summer heat, and brutal winters. As they did twenty years ago, scientists make hand-wringing pleas to an only slightly less impassive Congress. Regardless of reality, given Americans gluttonous devotion to Automobile, you'd still expect to see people throttling their SUV's with calvalier glee. Except now gas is $5.00 per gallon ( its $4.75, but it will be there as soon as I publish this) and consumers are trading their SUVs in for Priuses. Times are changing.

Leaders "Furious with Detroit"

While consumers respond to the change, there are questions about why recognition of the impending climate change and an effort to curb carbon emissions took so long. Last Sunday, the New York Times offered up quotes from senators who say we should have acted earlier in paper's interesting article America, Asleep at the Spigot". Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who had in recent years rather unsuccessfully encouraged Congress to increase CAFE standards said: "It was a bipartisan failure to act." A long term failure to act. Former Sierra Club lobbyist Dan Becker recalled being shocked to see "Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms, diametrically opposed on most issues, walk amiably together onto the Senate floor to cast their votes, on a CAFE standards bill in 1990. 'This wasn't East-West, right-left, or North-South,' he says. 'But had we passed that bill, we'd be using three million barrels less oil a day now.'"

For every member of Congress who tried to pass legislation on emissions in the 1990's, or who like Domenici started in 2005 to put effort into gathering support for CAFE standards, many others have not even now come to their senses. Congress is less remorseful about missed opportunities to avert the current energy situation as righteously indignant, "furious with Detroit for fighting so hard".

This is exactly what I would hope for from the leaders I elect. When the repercussions of their failures to act on behalf of their constituents come to light, the least they can do is cast around quickly for someone else to blame. However it's not Detroit's fault for aggressively seeking profit, that's their job That's the obligation of the automakers to their shareholders. It's is the legislature's job to balance the competing ambitions of their constituents, corporations and individuals.

Blaming Detroit, Blaming Consumers

If blaming the corporations gets too close for comfort, as a senator or congressman of course you can always blame the consumer. After the credit crisis, pundits and financial leaders blamed consumers for the country's economic woes. They scolded consumers for spending too much on their credit cards and called for better consumer training, but said nothing about the Fed's out of control spending, nothing about regulation cuts, nothing about Bush's plea to keep shopping right after 9/11. Similarly, Senator Representative John D. Dingell, who has long defended the auto industry for his state and who now burnishes his environmental credentials by taking on bisphenol-A, blames the American consumer: "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe", he told NYT. Which, coincidentally, is also what the lobbyists insist.

This is one great thing about representative government. Representatives can ultimately blame the people or, more accurately, people's wanton wims. But given the number of Priuses and Minis that now inhabit our streets, you would never believe "he likes it big". Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year.

As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions from dedicated representatives. Bill Moyers talked to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) last week about her efforts on the cap and trade initiative.

Boxer took over as Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at mid-term election, led the charge on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had chaired the committee, and on his watch he never had any intention of leading the country away from oil consumption. Inhofe famously said: "Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is." He brought his preposterous attitudes to the committee and tried to prevent Al Gore from testifying. Boxer needed to basically wrest control of the gavel from him: "you're not making the rules" she told him. As she explained to Moyers "times have changed...the environment is back front and center"

Boxer's efforts were not enough this time, because Republicans mounted a filibuster and defeated the Climate Initiative Act. Again, a bi-partisan failure to act. The effort was viewed in optimistic terms by Boxer and others despite the bill's ultimate defeat. She called it a milestone towards charging for carbon emissions and weaning off foreign oil. "Change is coming. We're going to fix this problem because we have to."

Last year we wrote in "Green Spirit", about the wave of environmental sentiment sweeping the US. The New Yorker had captured the mood in a cartoon depicting one plant executive asking another whether they could dye the smoke from the stacks green.

The most unlikely corporations were hopping all over themselves to play green. BP had just launched two sites, The Green Curve, and A Little Better Gas Station, complete with games like "Gas Mania" and kid friendly distractions. The BP sites are no longer standalone so not quite so much fun, but have been incorporated into bp.com in all their original kelly green and neon yellow glory.

These sites come and go, and of course now other companies have launched a new crop of green spirit. First up is Chevron's www.willyoujoinus.com. "Will you join us" is a collaboration between The Economist, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and the oil company. The site tells us that "the demand for energy becomes greater, and every day it becomes harder to find". Driving home the point, a global oil consumption ticker spins through millions of barrels consumed during your site visit. The homepage asks viewers to "join the discussion". I suppose it would be impertinent to ask them to put a profits ticker underneath the consumption ticker -- "finding energy" is research and capital intensive.

The current discussion topic is "Global Food Prices & Energy Supplies, Finding a Balance". Fortunately, it's not all gloom and doom, you can "Play Energyville" too.

Erstwhile Panda Diplomacy?

In an article on China's panda diplomacy last week, the Financial Times included a photo of Japan's famed Ling Ling surrounded by flowers and bamboo shoots. Japan's beloved panda, a 16 year resident of Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, had died of kidney and heart failure and the debate in Japan surrounded how Ling Ling would be replaced. Various Japanese officials expressed reservations about Chinese President Yu's offer to replace the panda with two new ones, especially when the $1 million rental fee was revealed. ("Panda diplomacy loses charm amid Sino-Japanese mistrust", May 12th, Financial Times).

Critics advised the Japanese government not to trust the panda overtures in light of China's environmental problems, food-safety, natural resource claims, and anti-Japanese sentiment. Panda proponents on the other hand, like the head of the Ueno Zoo, pointed out the benefits and reasonableness of Yu's offer - as he put it to the Financial Times - "'It is not like renting videos"'.

Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are an endangered species in the Ursidae family. So called panda diplomacy has been around since Chinese emperors were giving pandas to governments but China revived the practice by presenting President Nixon with two pandas. When China started charging rent for pandas a successful suit from the World Wildlife Fund demanded that US government payments be channeled to increasing panda populations in the wild.

The pandas' appeal to zoo visitors is unambiguous, profitable, and beneficial to the panda. But although the Chinese has long been supplying pandas to Japan, the current Japan/China dilemma lead some international press to wonder whether Ling Ling's death marked the end of a more optimistic era between the two countries.

Thumbs Up...Panda's Alive and Well

When the earthquake struck Sichuan province people were relieved to hear the news that the giant pandas were safe at China's Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. At another panda reserve even closer to the earthquake epicenter, the Wolong Nature Reserve, the plight of the pandas and nearby villagers was unknown for days. Those in the global panda community who had visited the center and spent time with the Wolong pandas and their caretakers became increasingly worried.

Finally bad and good news came. Some of the villages around the reserve did not fare well, homes were destroyed and people perished when the 7.9 temblor struck the mountainous region.

The pandas at the Wolong reserve were OK, despite the massive earthquake and ongoing "aftershocks" that surpassed the average Chicago "earthquake". A Chinese news article (china.org) reported that a group of American and British tourists stranded at the Wolong panda reserve when the earthquake hit were also safe after being helped by a resourceful local army, kind villagers, humor, television and traditional Tibetan dancing (the latter, actually seems like a standard for Chinese Panda tours advertised on the web).

Panda diplomacy seems alive and well.

On to Polar Bear Diplomacy?

The endangered pandas seem to have it lucky compared to polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Also in the Ursidae family, polar bears were recently designated by the US Fish and Wildlife service as "threatened". The agency lists a species as threatened if they're likely to become "endangered" and the melting Arctic makes this so. The new label was welcomed by some and criticized by others who thought the polar bear should be listed as "endangered". The LA Times reported this week that small towns like Churchill, Manitoba will see an influx of tourists because of the government's new polar bear status. Although Canada hasn't turned official attention to the polar bears, the U.S. designation will increase awareness.

Tiny Species Diplomacy?

Most threatened or endangered species (Urrr..so ignored) emerge not fuzzy, cute, or mammal -- to their peril. Many are not even large enough to see and these more discreet species will just disappear.

A report released by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL)called the Living Planet Index, produced by the ZSL, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Global Footprint Network, tracked 4,000 populations of 1,500 species over 35 years. The census found that by 2005 the populations had decreased by a third, a decline "unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs".

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China's Transparency

China's 7.8 earthquake continues to bring bad news with heart-breaking collapses of schools and too many people trapped under fallen cement. However by all counts, China has improved its handling of the earthquake compared to previous disasters. Communication is critical in a disaster but difficult. During Hurricane Katrina, even in the middle of the worst of the storm, a few intrepid residents and journalists hunkered down in New Orleans and provided on-line updates. The US government responded, but governments' ineffective communications held up disaster efforts. Even with the most modern technology, medical and logistics support, in accessible terrain and with an outpouring of support, Katrina proved challenging. In countries with less infrastructure and less effective government the communication situation is measurably or immeasurably worse. In lieu of information, rumors run rampant.

The dearth of information is a breeding ground for rumors. Not too ago death tolls were considered a state secret in China. China has been notoriously non-transparent dealing with critical problems like infectious diseases, such as SARS, Avian Flu, Streptoccocus Suis, and even the "blue-ear disease" that killed millions of pigs and contributed to the pig shortage considered to be one part of the world-wide heparin contamination fall-out.

While China was at first guarded in dealing with this earthquake, it has since invited foreign aid from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, some of whom have sent specially trained groups to China. China's new acceptance of outside help defies a tradition of doing it all themselves. Their initial nationalist reaction seemed to be on display in the beginning, when China announced: "Faced with the disaster, we have become still more united, still more cohesive, still more composed and still more sure of ourselves, and such spirit and strength constitute the invincible, priceless assets of the Chinese nation" Then they seemed to move from their defensive starting position.

China spent considerable effort informing citizens about the progress of the recovery. But when the disaster struck, rumors about the cause of the disaster clogged the internet and they continue today, rumors that the Chinese government failed to warn about the earthquake, that a chemical plant blew up, a damn broke, that tap water was turned off by the government -- a rumor a minute. Yesterday, China punished 17 "rumormongers" with anything from reprimands to jail terms. The country urges people to stop spreading rumors, saying that "[r]umours will stop at those who are brave and upstanding". China tells people to listen to the government: "We have the most accurate and authoritative information. Believe only what we say." So much government information has previously been faulty though these new message seem a touch unrealistic.

Many observers think the upcoming Olympics provides incentive for an effective leadership front. China is aiming to improve its record for dealing with disasters, and so tries to be transparent, or look transparent, even as disturbing news continues -- 2 dams are in danger of bursting and 391 dams are in "dangerous condition".

The Washington Post writes today that China's control of communications tightened on Thursday, with the government all be blocks access to the worst hit regions. Especially unwanted were foreign reporters.

In Poor Taste

Unlike China, Myanamar is trying not to be transparent, so although rumors abound, the country is so closed that we never even hear most of them. All access is now blocked to the Irrawaddy delta and military checkpoints are increasingly difficult to circumvent. The International Herald Tribune reports that the World Food Program delivered thousands of high-energy biscuits to the south, but that many had "been stolen, or replaced with cheap crackers". The story is somewhat confirmed, but there are conflicting reports. Myanmar does have a 400,000 strong army to feed and no one wants a hungry army, especially if your feeling like an endangered junta.

The biscuit rumor had it that Myanmar was passing out "low-quality" biscuits and stashing the World Food Program's donated High Energy Bisquits (HEB). This is unfortunate, especially since HEB's don't have a culinary standard you'd want to descend too far from. The biscuits are packaged in "strong cardboard cartons in which packages of 100 individual packages "100 of these are to be stuffed in one carton box". Here's the ingredients of one HEB:

Composition: Energy: 450 kcal, Moisture: 4.5% minimum, Protein: 10-15 g, Fat: 15 g Sugar: 10-15 g maximum. "10 to 20 g each, shelf life of 18 to 24 months, manufactured in conformity with US or EU food legislation....fit for human consumption."

These are valuable for their emergency purpose, containing calcium and magnesium, as well as vitamins. But why would Myanmar switch out these biscuits when they have their own (celebrated) biscuit factories? When the Myanmar Biscuit Factory of the Circus Foodstuff Cooperative Ltd had it's grand opening, according to a government website news item, the Auditor-General, deputy ministers, departmental heads, officials of the Ministry of Cooperatives and Secretary-3 of the State Peace and Development Council Lt-Gen Win Myint attended. Wouldn't their own biscuits store nicely? In the context of western governments' relative transparency, technology, convoys of aid, and trucks that run all by themselves without being pushed by a team of monks, we can only imagine how dire Burma has become. How can a country that's trying to deploy aid to a couple of million people with six helicopters be so defiant?

According to reports the death toll may be greater than 200,000 at this point, and the international community has become increasingly apoplectic. A group of Nobel Laureates recently requested that western governments provide humanitarian aid. France has warned that Burma is committing a Burma then called France's big ship carrying aid sitting of its coast a warship, in what the Bangkok Post called a "clear sign of paranoia". A UN emissary, John Holmes will travel again to Burma with a third letter from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Myanmar senior general, who refuses to talk to Ban. Thailand has sent a small team of doctors to Burma and an international team of disaster assessors is also on its way. As the crisis becomes worse, not a few people hope for assertive action on behalf of the Burmese citizens. Lack of transparency leads to rumors, paranoia, secrecy, lack of accountability, lack of humanity.

The Myanmar Effect

"'A Catastrophe Within A Catastrophe'". That's how French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner described the "junta's uncooperativeness", after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Burmese city of Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta last week. The political struggles between the obstinate Myanmar military junta and international aid groups and governments trying to help Burma dominate the news. The German paper Spiegel shows a map of areas submerged in the storm earlier this week. The Guardian spoke to Mark Canning, ambassador to Britain, who warned that "authoritative estimates of the numbers of dead and missing ranged between 63,000 and 100,000, and up to 1.9 million were now vulnerable to water-borne disease, hunger and lack of drinkable water. 'So you can do the maths and you will see how quickly this thing can get larger'".

The International Red Cross and other agencies report that there aid is getting through to people who need it --a statement that will encourage donors -- but if that is remotely true, the aid is stretched very thin. The junta has confiscated food and equipment from the UN World Food Programme, refused to grant visas to aid workers, and said that it will only accept cash and material aid, not labor. The Guardian quoted the US ambassador to Thailand, Eric John, who noted in a somewhat awkward analogy that food without distribution capabilities would be like "dropping a lot of orchestral instruments on the ground and expecting a symphony to come out of it."

Let Them Eat Rotting Rice

In Burma, equipment and tools are forever scarce, as are all other resources. The military junta takes food from villagers even on "good" days, that is, when the government is merely tyrannical, incompetent and brutal but not faced with the aftermath of a massive cyclone that has ripped through a mangrove-stripped delta of rice paddies, leaving in its path face-down floating bodies and individuals desperately searching the rubble for their kin. Given the everyday actions of the junta, it should be no surprise that the government confiscates international food sent for Nargis victims -- that's just what they do. Nor should it surprise us that the government isn't ashamed to dole out supplies with the names of generals written on boxes -- before news cameras -- in some twisted "propaganda exercise", as the International Herald Tribune called it.

The military junta's political shenanigans are to be expected.The rulers are by all accounts paranoid as well as brutal, tenaciously controlling the population via the only methods they know, violence and manipulation. The Free Burma Rangers ¹, a group profiled here by The Economist, lists the junta's habitual human violations, offenses that often target minority groups like the Karen. The group accuses the military of everything from stealing supplies to burning villagers out of their villages, to forcing unpaid villagers to clear land, build roads, and walk in front of bulldozers clearing land-mined areas.

Always wrangling to increase its power, the Myanmar military relentlessly pursues its goals, even as citizens are left struggling in the wake of the cyclone without water, food or medicine. The government insisted on holding a referendum to increase its power yesterday, and the military spent considerable effort coercing, forcing and bribing people to vote "yes". With mind blowing cynicism, the leaders had their pictures snapped with their fancy-dressed wives, casting their votes for what all outsiders call a "sham" election, while hundreds of thousands of "people with almost no clothes battl[e] it out to survive" -- as one Indian pilot reported on the situation after he flew an aid sortie and traveled through the Irrawaddy Delta.

China, Thailand and India have the most potential for nudging the junta towards accepting responsibility but it's unclear how much sway these governments hold. China has the closest economic ties to Burma apparently, but what incentive it has to mediate? It's own abuse of Tibetans and minorities and its interest in Burma's resources, not to mention its habit of not "interfering", leaves us skeptical. India reports sporadically about its stance on the situation, while Burma's neighbor Thailand, for its part, will send a diplomatic team to Myanmar. Thailand was obviously disturbed to see media films showing Thailand's aid boxes plastered over with labels indicating they were gifts from the junta's generals.

What the junta is actually giving in aid, the Associated Press reports is "minuscule rations of rice and oil", in some places one cup of rice per day per family. AP says many people are simply "clustered on roadsides hoping for handouts," and that desperate pleas -- "[t]he words "'Help us!'" [written] in chalk on the side of one home", are evidence of the level of despair.

Aid First?

Disasters such as Cyclone Nargis exaggerate and bring into stark relief dysfunctional politics. They also present a quandary for international communities. A few years ago, Acronym Required wrote about the Global Fund withdrawing its AIDS program in Burma due to difficulties working with the junta. At the time we commented on the conflicted ideas about providing aid to the repressed citizens of brutal regimes. The AIDS crisis in Burma is serious and any country's bad governance will make a public health or natural disaster recovery infinitely more dire. As we've often documented, politics can worsen the death toll of AIDS or avian flu pandemic, an earthquake, cyclone or tsunami.

The world has experienced enough natural disasters in the past couple of years to know the difficulty of getting help to stricken populations. In the U.S., the government was challenged to evacuate survivors swiftly enough and to deliver aid and essentials in a timely way after Hurricane Katrina. Rescue and supply delivery is increasingly daunting in remote locations of the world, like SE Asia where the tsunami victims were hard to reach, and during the Kashmir earthquake. And in these situations the affected countries welcomed aid. ²

The international community is forever torn because there is no good answer. Try to support the citizens in spite of the government? Or condemn and punish the government, which further increases the suffering of the people? The current situation in Burma intensifies the unforgiving choices of this dilemma.

Given the Myanmar junta's treatment of the country's people, its hard not to advocate political change. But that's problematic, since governments around the world acknowledge that the Burmese in the stricken areas are in dire need of the most basic necessities now, not "democracy".

Barbara Bush, who back in 2007 advised that the US would impose sanctions on the Myanmar military government if it did not moving toward democracy "within the next couple of days", used the publicity of last weeks' cyclone to reiterate her displeasure with the military junta. The move was widely criticized by 'those in the aid community who know better', since it could only increase the paranoia of the highly paranoid holed-up-in-the-middle-of-the-jungle junta. Yet is restraining from beating people over the head when they say "no" such a challenging notion that it's only available to those in the aid community? You'd think the emerging White House diplomat would carry some insight about this from her second grade teacher experience, or her experience listening to why the US denied aid from Cuba during Hurricane Katrina, or even because her diplomatic threats to Myanmar never motivated the junta to budge before. You'd think she'd deliver a more nuanced diplomatic entreaty. Now apparently, Mrs. Bush seems to have backed off and Secretary Rice is left to insist that Burma Aid Is About Saving Lives, Not About Politics.

Of course, the White House always sends mixed messages. While Mrs. Bush lectured Myanmar from the podium in the past few years and the Bush administration imposed sanctions, for instance by cutting off the bank accounts of the junta, companies like Chevron provide a lifeline to the regime . Chevron runs a gas line through the country that is reportedly aggressively guarded by the junta.

"Tear Down the Bamboo Curtain"

So wrote the Financial Times last fall, and The Australian today. As if the western nations could just summon some erstwhile off-duty troops to parachute into Myanmar, China's neighbor and ally, to take care of this troublesome situation. The press loves to chant a rallying cry for "freedom", and "democracy", and no doubt could not restrain itself from referencing what is now relived in popular dream-talk as Reagan's great coup: the tearing down of the wall. It's the business of news to engage fantasies and so these headlines are relentlessly fantastic.

Reporters ask questions like: "Could there be a silver lining to the cyclone's clouds?" Time magazine wrote hopefully, "for decades, outsiders have searched for a way to pry open Burma's secretive regime". As if this is some natural evolution of government, when actually China, Russia and a host of other countries prove that power may be more instinctively and securely amassed via non-democratic and brutish governance. And so, spooked but with aid pouring in, after 40 years, Myanmar hunkers down to give its citizens and the world, more of the same. Tons of high-energy biscuits energy bars can go a long way in a junta that was days ago 'reduced' to stealing rice from villagers.

The Myanmar junta is of course defiant in the face of the international democracy criers, defending its own deadly actions by saying that the US government's response to Katrina was also slow. Seeing the same shaky (optimistic?) parallel, a dean from the University of Vermont, in an editorial for the Daily Times of Pakistan, offered: "This may also be a time for alerting the world to the grave inequalities in the country, just as Katrina was a wake-up call for the world to see the plight of impoverished African-Americans in Louisiana." Ah, silver linings.

It's hard to imagine that there would be "sides" in the midst of such a disaster, or that politicians would take the opportunity to push political points of view, but of course they do, even in the enlightened western democracies. In the Financial Times yesterday, Christopher Caldwell from the Weekly Standard took the opportunity to reconstruct the events of the Katrina aftermath altogether, with the truth defying statement: "that the US failed in part because it was too constitutional, too deferential to the prerogatives of the state of Louisiana, is not something anyone remembers or cares about any more." ("Disasters and Dictatorships"). "Too constitutional" -- that's Orwellian.

While countries like the US and France now try to muffle their instinctive calls for democracy, other countries will take a different lesson from the cyclone and in the US commentators will frame the disaster for their own ends. If nothing else, attempts to shape and rewrite history are universal.

Hopefully, the Myanmar military junta, weakened to the point that is convinced that it will lose control by letting aid workers in, will come to its senses and realize that in it's own best interests to save some of its people.

In the meantime, to help with aid efforts, various groups are accepting donations for Burma. Google gave a million dollars in matching aid (updated 05-17) and Doctors Without Borders, Unicef , and many others.

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¹This group lists itself as a "multi-ethnic humanitarian service movement".

²With the exception of India which initially rejected international help after the tsunami.

Acronym Required has published several articles on Hurricane Katrina and FEMA and AIDS and Burma.

For many years, the defense ministries in allied states like the US, Canada and the UK have denied that exposure to depleted uranium (DU) could produce negative health effects. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of uranium 238 (U238) enrichment, and contains a higher percentage of U235, a more fissile isotope that makes DU useful in the production of nuclear weapons and energy. This depleted byproduct is 1.7 times the density of lead, and because of its durability, has been used extensively by militaries for things like armor piercing projectiles and anti-tank weapons. During the Iraq and Balkans wars, when vehicles and weapons clashed together, dust from depleted uranium was released. Bullets made with the depleted uranium were scattered in battle, and shrapnel was strewn about and embedded in wounds. Depleted uranium ordnance now lays scattered throughout previous war zones where children play and civilians attempt to carry on their lives.

Civilians and other species are exposed to depleted uranium not only during war, but via dust in the air around weapons factories and in groundwater near firing test ranges like in Solway, Scotland, where scientists find worms that carry uranium isotopes. All of this exposure could prove toxic to animals and humans.

Depleted uranium is not as radioactive as U235 but it is suspected of causing various illnesses, from cancer, immune disorders like Gulf War Syndrome and even birth defects in offspring born of soldiers who inhale or ingest it. Research shows that in lab animals, depleted uranium is an immunotoxin, neurotoxin, and teratogen and carcinogen. Although the deteriorations in the health of some soldiers seems to show the the dangers of DU, there's limited government recognition of these dangers, from military, medical, and science establishments. Even in the face of accumulating evidence and significant public outcry about depleted uranium, militaries give mixed messages about DU safety. The US Department of Defense says:

• "The health effects of uranium have been studied extensively for over 50 years."
• "The Department of Defense has comprehensively studied the environmental fate of depleted uranium both before and after the Gulf War."
• "Fortunately, DU is only mildly radioactive emitting alpha and beta particles, and gamma rays.....The risk of chemical toxicity is also minimal because there is little likelihood that sufficient quantities of DU could be inhaled or ingested to cause a heavy metal concern."
• "Since the Gulf War, the DoD has dramatically stepped up its emphasis on increasing soldier and leader awareness of the hazards associated with the battlefield use of depleted uranium..." through training, handbooks and "support materials".
• "...there is no reason to believe that other exposed Service members have any elevated risk to their health due to their DU exposures."

Similarly, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) for the UK has repeatedly asserted minimal health effects from exposure to depleted uranium, but the MOD also gave warning cards to all UK servicemen deployed to Iraq stating possible health effects of DU. The Ministry of Defense suggests that it's reducing use of DU, noting cryptically of all the accounting of the depleted uranium used by the military: "In 2003, during the recent Iraq conflict, UK tanks expended 1.9 tonnes of DU ammunition and none has been fired since the official ending of the conflict." The MOD urged soldiers to get monitored for depleted uranium, but after testing the urine of returning servicemen the Ministry of Defense told papers in 2006 that "no evidence of DU was found in their urine". Critics question the sensitivity of their tests.

Clearly, the effects of depleted uranium are still disputed and perhaps not a problem, but new research suggests a potential solution. Scientists have discovered a fungus that will break down depleted uranium to a less toxic mineral, research sponsored in part by the Ministry of Defense, produced by scientists at the University of Dundee in Scotland and published in the recent issue of Current Biology. They describe how a plant symbiotic fungus can be grown on the surface of depleted uranium, where it will transform the depleted uranium into uranyl phosphate minerals, a more stable form of the metal that is less likely to be absorbed into plants, animals and water. The mycorrhizal fungi usually lives in the roots of plants, where it transforms carbon into nutrients that plants use. When colonizing uranium, moisture in the air helps the fungi cover the surface of the metal, where the fungi helps accelerate the corrosion process of the uranium into products that can be take up by the fungi or broken down to less toxic uranium holding minerals. The fungi could be used for various bioremediation projects in uranium polluted soils.

ConocoPhillips and BP have submitted a plan to build a gas pipeline through Alaska. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive told the Financial Times Wednesday: "This project is vital for North American energy consumers and for the future of the Alaska oil and gas industry". Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, told FT: "This is a critical project linking vast gas reserves with markets that are going to need that gas".But will the gas line make it to the lower 48 states?

The Financial Times reported that most of the 4bn cubic feet of natural gas per day will go to the Alberta tar sands to fuel the extraction of bitumen from which synthetic oil will be produced. Natural gas is needed for the energy intensive process of getting oil from the gummy viscous asphalt substance contained in the sands.

Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are considered the largest in the world, the Alberta tar sands are the second largest. They cover a large area 50,000 square miles, about the size of Florida -- or Nepal, North Korea, Malawi, Greece or Tibet. Work to extract bitumen is underway by about 40 companies involved in 143 projects, the main sites being at Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River deposits sands are expected to yield over a trillion barrels of oil.

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about the Alberta tar sands endeavor last November in a New Yorker article, "Unconventional Crude: Canada's synthetic -fuels boom", where she described the difficult process of extracting the viscous bitumen. Bitumen close to the surface can be mined then extracted from the sand. First the surface vegetation and soil is removed to access the sands. Then tons of sand are removed via open pit mining and transported to an extraction plant. The the sand is the soaked and agitated with hot water so the bitumen can be siphoned off. Since bitumen is only about 10% of the sand by volume, the multi-step process is necessary.

Most of the bitumen containing sands are deep beneath the surface 100-250 feet down, in which case the extraction becomes even more complicated. Since the mid-1800's engineers have been trying to find efficient methods for extracting the oil. At one point engineers hatched a plan with government to detonate atom bombs beneath the surface to release the oil. The scheme was part of Project Plowshare, which sought to utilize atomic bombs for peaceful purposes. Scientists proposed "earthmoving" for all kinds of activities, including oil and gas extraction, canal building, etc.. One test came in the form of Project Gasbuggy, which used nuclear energy in the form of an atomic bomb to release natural gas in New Mexico. A Time magazine article from 1967 described the experiment as experienced by invitees of the government and gas company which sponsored project:

"..the earth jolted underfoot and a dull, distant boom was heard, followed by a second, more gentle, rolling shock. Someone shouted: "We did it! We did it!" Hand shakes were exchanged all around. The U.S. had successfully set off the first nuclear explosion sponsored jointly by the Government and industry."

A marker designates the Gasbuggy Project site, where no digging is currently allowed -- Atomictourist.com has more details.The USSR also did work in the peacetime use of atomic bombs for oil and gas excavation and apparently worked to extract bitumen from sands like Alberta's. Project Plowshare eventually got dropped when enthusiasm for nuclear "earthmoving" waned.

The methods used today aren't quite as extreme, for instance the two main in-situ processes employed are Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), and Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). These both heat the sand mixture which makes the bitumen less viscous, more like molasses, which will flow. Kolbert describes SAGD:

"Typically, two horizontal wells are drilled into the sands, one above the other. High-pressure steam is injected into the top well; eventually, the tar sands grow hot enough-- nearly four hundred degrees-- that bitumen begins to flow into the bottom well."

All of the current methods of bitumen extraction are energy intensive. SAGD uses the equivalent of 1 barrel out of 3 extracted from the sand pits. The process is laborious and energy intensive, and currently fueled by natural gas. Kolbert notes that by 2012 the tar sand extractions will require "2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, or enough to heat all the homes in Canada". Therefore the pipeline, as the Financial Times reports .

The extraction process uses significantly more energy than what is consumed in drilling for oil, in fact carbon emissions produced are 50% higher per barrel of oil consumed. People question how such an energy intensive project can go forward when the overall goal is to lower global emissions. As well, other problems, such as environmental destruction from the mining, ground water pollution and air pollution also dog the project. Despite the environmental concern and pockets of resistance however, oil prices are so high that politicians support the investment and its outcomes, both positive (more oil) and controversial.

For the current project, Conoco bid with BP, reports the paper, because BP's reputation is fairly damaged in Alaska after several large spills. Previous to this new bid, Conoco had submitted a bid in response to the state's Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA), however the state approved only one company's bid: TransCanada's. As a next step, BP/Conoco will fund an "open season", seeking companies to commit to transporting the gas, before asking Congress for regulatory approval for the project.

Plastic is Forever

Those plastics people are forever clever. In headlines touting "DVDs and CD-ROMs that Thwart Global Warming", chemists describe "innovative ways of making polycarbonate plastics from CO2", which would yield "less expensive, safer and greener products". No mention of bisphenol A by these green inventors -- polycarbonate is a polyester of bisphenol A and carbonic acid.

Thomas E. Muller's research at CAT Catalytic Center, a collaboration of RWTH Aachen University, Bayer Material Science, and Bayer Technology led to the breakthrough. The Center was set up to leverage the expertise at the university, with that at Bayer, a prominent bisphenol-A manufacturer, in order to develop the new chemical processes and products. Muller presented his research at the American Chemical Society meeting this week and called the new process an "economic driving force". Dr Sakakura of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, also presented research on carbon dioxide fixation to synthesize polycarbonates, and said his process is cheaper then a previous one invented in Japan,and has the added benefit of circumventing the use of phosgene, a toxic gas, in the synthesis.

The two investigators did not divulge their processes because of pending patents. However several different methods for producing polycarbonate from CO2 have been described by others and can be found on freepatentsonline.com and patentstorm.com -- if you're curious about other processes. At MoleculeoftheDay.com, the author describes how to make polycarbonate using phosgene and a commenter offers that triphosgene can be substituted for phosgene.¹

C02 Reduction: Little Building Blocks

One report notes that rock stars will be pleased to be contributing to carbon emissions reductions. Muller said that consumers may be "drinking from a carbon dioxide product and watching movies on waste-CO2 DVDs sooner than they think." "Millions of tons of polycarbonates already are sold each year with the volume rising", Mueller said, and "using CO2 to create polycarbonates might not solve the total carbon dioxide problem, but it could be a significant contribution."

Polycarbonate makes a nice drinking bottle, but so do other materials. DVD's are pretty cheap with today's technology -- 100 blank DVDs for $30 is not too exorbitant. But who needs streaming video and audio if you can continue to purchase (and discard) cheap (bisphenol-A containing) plastic. However the DVD entire production process produces carbon emissions, much of which is not from the actual manufacture of the DVDs. For instance, News Corp published a carbon emissions analysis for the DVD release of the children's product, "Futurama, Bender's Big Score", which totals 447.5 tons of carbon for the DVD release. The site advertises their plan to make this a carbon neutral DVD, but you can get an idea of the carbon emissions breakdown.

Most of the carbon emissions used in producing such products don't come from manufacturing the DVD, and apparently manufacturing DVD's with this new method only sequesters nominal amounts of CO2. CBC News reported that despite Muller's enthusiasm, the scientist also acknowledged "that the sequestration would be "'in the per cent range'"(no number given), and only "a little building block"'.

Cement CO2 Sequestration

In other CO2 sequestration news, Nature reported that a UK researcher stumbled upon a process that occurs when cement breaks down at old building sites then becomes overgrown with weeds and plants. ("Waste concrete could help to lock up carbon":doi:10.1038/news.2008.732). Carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis then the plants release carbon containing root exudates. These exudates mix with calcium minerals from the cement to form calcium carbonate, thereby permanently removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The process could theoretically "lock up 4 million tonnes of carbon a year in the UK", reports Nature. The UK produces 150 tonnes of annual emissions. Another interesting little building block.

One commenter to that article noted that sequestration isn't as good as not emitting CO2 in the first place.

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¹ Polycarbonate synthesis is not our field.

Before scientists went snorkeling in Borneo and plucked a frog, the charming looking Barboroula kalimantanensis, out from under a large rock in a fast moving body of water, the elusive species had been found only twice before. In 1978 Djoko Iskandar described the new species of frog in the journal Copeia (Dec. 28, 564-566), cataloging its webbed toes, rugose skin, flattened head, and the myriad anatomical features that distinguished it as a unique species. The second find was sighting was almost 20 years later, 1995, by the same scientist, Iskandar, who also collaborated on the current research.

As an endangered species, the frog is perhaps lucky that it's so difficult to locate, although it's still subjected to environmental pollutants and habitat encroachment from logging and mining. Not so fortuitous for these primitive frogs, the scientists decided to dissect the specimens for the first time and found that the species has no lungs. David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore, explained that "because these specimens were so rare, they had never been dissected. If you have just one...in your museum, you don't want to rip it open!" (a different approach then some scientists take with their newly found marine species, Acronym Required has found). If unlucky for these frogs, the discovery was lucky for the researchers, as they got their name splashed across headlines around the world. ¹

The biologists hypothesize that the frog adapted to the highly oxygenated fast moving water by losing lung capacity. Since the frog lost its lungs, its body became more flattened and less buoyant, which researchers deduce helps it stay under rocks. As well, with its increased surface area respiratory capacity through its increased skin surface area.

Tetrapods without lungs are rare. There are lung-less salamanders and one species of caecilian, an earthworm-like amphibian, that don't have lungs, and some frogs with very diminished lungs, but this is the first species to have only cartilage in the place of lungs.

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¹ This news was in an advance press release supposedly ahead of a April 8th Current Biology article which we could not locate. Acronym Required usually doesn't publish research without reading the original source, but will update this post if needed. Update 05/06 - The article was published May 06, 2008 in Current Biology: Bickford, D.; Iskandar D.; Barlian, A; "Lungless frog discovered on Borneo": Current Biology, Vol 18, R374-R375, 06 May 2008.

The Dog Ate Our Homework

Last week 18 states sued the EPA after the agency refused to act on last year's Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. The court had ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases presented a danger to public health and welfare, and if so to plan how to regulate them. The states' action was the latest move in the years long tussle between the EPA and states, the EPA and multiple Congressional committees, the EPA and various non-profits speaking on behalf of citizens, even between the EPA and businesses who have an interest in slowing climate change.

On March 27th, EPA administrator Steven L. Johnson sent Congressman Henry Waxman's (D-CA) Oversight Committee a letter outlining his plan to seek public comment on greenhouse gases and potential regulation. It was a short letter but an elaborate Victorian lacework of excuses. The decision, he wrote, involved sifting through "options", "potential effects", "pending petitions","possible regulations", "careful considerations", "comment periods", "relevant data","drafts", "solicit[ations]" and "extensive briefings".

The Supreme Court ordered a ruling on the implications of CO2 from mobile sources, but administrator Johnson chose to expand consideration to more stakeholders, agencies and courts, "experts", "schools", "hospitals," "factories", "power plants", "aircraft and ships", more "on-road vehicles", "off-road vehicles", "petroleum refineries", "Portland cement", "authorities", "power plants" and "industrial boilers".

Procrastinators and students in the prime of their dog-ate-my-paper years could study this document for inspiration. Yet the science is conclusive and the EPA knows it. In response to the Supreme Court ruling, the EPA recruited 60-70 employees from various agencies to investigate the question of greenhouse gas implications for public welfare (summary, PDF). The EPA investigators found that global warming did endanger public welfare and in 300 pages detailed the risks. (This was not the first investigation that documented this). Johnson then signed a proposal which would have reduced carbon dioxide from motor vehicles, and brought fleet fuel economy to 35 mpg by 2018. The proposal would have bested by two years the timeline in the energy bill recently signed by President Bush. Congressman Waxman and his committee are now investigating what became of these EPA decisions and plans.

The issue at stake in Massachusetts v. EPA was brought to the EPA in 1999. Now in 2008, nearly ten years after the initial request, Johnson decides that rather than "rushing to judgment", the EPA must continue to look at "complex issue[s]", "interconnections" , "lawsuits", "deadlines", possible "changes" and "ramifications", "permits", "thresholds", "requirements", "relevant information", "complexity", and "implications". The world is anxious for action on global warming. Why now, with this pressing urgency is the EPA is overtaken by omphaloskepsis. Or is it mendacity?

Public Comment

Congress wrote the Clean Air Act in 1970 to safeguard public health and welfare. Air quality regulation deserves public comment. But Johnson is proposing a comment period in the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), despite having already received 50,000 public comments in 5 months, when the EPA previously solicited comment. This new "public comment period", seems like an unnecessary stalling mechanism, which will only solicit "public" comment from organizations who have already weighed in with the EPA.

Before Bush signed the energy bill and the EPA denied the California waiver, the EPA, OMB and the White House met regularly with stakeholders. The Detroit News reported last year that Cheney and/or Bush met with "Detroit's three automakers" multiple times in 2006 and 2007. Public Citizen wrote in a 54 page report last August (PDF) documenting how from 2001 to 2003, senior administration officials met with DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 45 times in order to produce an attributes model for determining fuel economy. Their considerations were incorporated into the CAFE standards.

As well, according to meeting records, the OMB held five "20-in-10" meetings last year and more in 2006, when the (OMB), the EPA and DOE and the DOT/NHTSA gnashed over the President's proposal to raise fuel economy by 20% in 10 years. Commenters at these meetings included Shell, the American Petroleum Institute, Frontier Oil, Occidental Petroleum, BP, ExxonMobil, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, and Porsche.

The LA Times wrote in a March 28th article, that Johnson's suggestion for more comment followed a memo circulated by the Heritage Foundation, an industry lobby group, to "everyone that we could think of" in the White House and Congress. The memo urged decision makers to pressure the EPA for the ANPR because this would make legislators look like they were doing something. The memo remarked that a public comment session:

"would allow all interested parties to send the EPA relevant information and start a record on important topics such as the cost and burden of carbon caps and Clean Air Act expansion without triggering the costly new regulations."

When the EPA found on endangerment (that GHG were a public health hazard) last year it conducted "extensive analysis....about costs and benefits" before producing the plan that Johnson signed off on. Now, the industry and its agent, the EPA, propose to expand the pool of stakeholders in order snag the regulatory process in a morass of bureaucracy. What's curious is how the interested parties quickly drop their ideological attachment to efficiency and small government when advocating for an obstructive processes that suit their own ends.

EPA/OMB/Industry Meet and Bleat

If we dig into what more corporate "public comment" might look like with respect to "costs and benefits", we could get insight from glancing back at a memo presented to the OMB and its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in a meeting November 15th with Chrysler executives.

There are hundreds of other memos to the EPA, of course, but this one, "Regulation of Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act and the Energy Policy Conservation Act", (Whitehouse.gov/omb..) reads like an industry wish list for the EPA's role in regulating greenhouse gases emitted from moving vehicles. After reading this, it doesn't take a vivid imagination to see the industry's prints on the EPA's actions. The "simplest" solution, the authors say, "...is for the EPA to abstain from attempting to set carbon dioxide standards" from vehicles "already subject to the NHTSA regime." [emphasis ours]

Politicians use the word "technology" because of its magical properties. It's modern, smart, and forward leaning. "Technology" solves unsolvable problems and no one argues with it. But often it just means nothing. The Chrysler meeting document defines the EPA's "primary mission" under the Clean Air Act as determining "requisite technology", that will "address the potential problem of climate change" -- as if technology were the solution (and the entire thrust of the Act). The "technology" argument has been quite successful in staving off progress on global warming, as we mentioned in a previous post.

The document advises that if the EPA find endangerment, as they did, and then the agency should coordinate with NHSTA "a series of clearly defined steps, each of which involv[es] public participation", and successive "public comment" periods. This is where we're at today and no one is surprised. But long after this document was made public, the press and politicians expressed shock over EPA actions like the denial of the California waiver. Sometimes the press should pay more attention to the evidence. There was no room for surprise given this history.

With regard to climate change, the two government agencies that regulate motor vehicles are the NHTSA in the Department of Transportation, which sets gas mileage through CAFE standards, and the EPA, charged with regulating motor vehicle emissions.The energy bill that Congress passed and Bush signed (H.R. 6) last December pertains to mileage standards. Carbon dioxide emissions are primarily responsible for global warming. Industry argues that the EPA should not regulate emissions because of "regulatory overlap" between the NHTSA and EPA -- even though Supreme Court has rejected this overlap argument.

The Chrysler meeting document repeatedly cites the NHTSA's Energy Policy & Conservation Act of 1975 ("EPCA" or "the 1975 Act"), and its "balanced goals". The reason for the auto industry's adoration of the 33 year old NHTSA standard over the Clean Air Act and the EPA's updates to it, is because the EPCA considered things like "technological feasibility" and "economic practicability", which allow for more input from the industry.

A favorite concept from the "1975 Act" is "maximum feasibility". The Chrysler document insists that the EPA carbon dioxide standards should be "no more stringent" that the "maximum feasible" standards for fuel economy set under the NHSTA. Although the phrase "maximum feasible" seems straightforward, it's anything but. As if to emphasize this the authors provide the reader a definition. It's not, they say, "the highest level of fuel economy that can be achieved by a single vehicle, or even by a fleet of vehicles, through the application of available technologies". "Maximum feasible" gives the auto industry leeway to consider employment, consumer choice, and the overall health of the industry. In their interpretation, the 1975 Act "ensured wide consumer choice by leaving maximum flexibility to the manufacturer".

The authors emphasize the part of the Clean Air Act 202(a)(2), that says the EPA should give "appropriate consideration to the cost of compliance". Chrysler predicts that costs like "investment in tooling engineering research, and development" are a "primary constraining factors on the industry's ability to achieve higher average fuel economy levels on a fleet-wide basis", and that "NHTSA's own standard setting process under EPCA would...be the upper limit of what EPA could properly determine to be the most stringent standards".

The Chrysler document says Clean Air Act should allow the EPA: "set standards that take account of the limits on the investment capabilities and product cycles of the industry, just as NHTSA does...", and advise the EPA to consider the financial resources of the industry, and weigh the "potential trade-offs between more stringent requirements in the near-term, and investments in longer-term strategies that seek to commercialize vehicles that do not require" carbon fuels. Citing a petroleum industry case, Chrysler recommends that whatever the EPA does, standards shouldn't require costs and if "additional technology" is needed, than the EPA can "properly decide to not adopt standards under the Clean Air Act".

The Chrysler document outlines all the ways the EPA can not regulate greenhouse gases, including "abstain from attempting..." regulation, to which the EPA seems compliant.

Automotive "Modernization" -- Back to the 70's?

Of course back in the 1970's the fuel efficient cars looked like the Plymouth Duster or the Chevy Chevette and the charge of innovating for customer choice was real. Today customer choice is an encrusted artifact of advertising cynically used by auto manufacturers, especially when faced with regulation. Despite seductive rhetoric about "new technology", the auto industry is clinging to the good 'ole days and the loose regulatory framework of a 33 year old standard.

The Chrysler document presented to the EPA in November, 2007 document lays out "what the Congress sought to achieve in the [1970's] EPCA and how those objectives should shape EPA's action under the Clean Air Act." The authors quote Phil Sharp, former D-IN (now the president of Resources for the Future, an energy policy thinktank) who sponsored the 1975 Act. Sharp apparently said during Congressional debate that "serious unemployment in the auto industry" called for considerations to "preserve this important segment of the economy". This authors quote Sharp in urging the EPA to maintain "the health of the industry."

However, Mr. Sharp referred to the health of the auto industry in the 1970's. In the 1980's, when one auto company president suggested controlling the regulators, Reagan replied "Get control of them? We need to get rid of them." For the last 35 years deregulation spared the auto industry manufacturers, who chose to use the government's leniency and improvements in fuel efficiency to innovate gas consuming features rather than mileage standards that surpassed what the "1975 Act" mandated.

Today in 2008 the auto industry is wallowing in losses. When sales sink up to 18%. unemployment follows. Would today's crisis been averted if a less permissive policy had been employed?¹

"Mid-century" is all the rage in fashion and home decorating. But while we tolerate scaly old orange plastic chairs and brown shag rugs as retro fashion statements, we're not so keen on mid-century policy for 21st century problems.We need an evolved policy to preserve the auto industry. In 1975, the Chevy Chevette got 40mpg highway, 28mpg city. Surely we can do better with mileage and emissions?

Otherwise, if the health of the American auto industry is truly still a goal, maybe the government's kindest move would be to shoot it, or drown it in the bathtub, or whatever libertarian types do these days with ponderous, surly sectors they want to put out of their misery.

Johnson Magic

In a post last week we questioned the New York Times assumption that Congress would never alter the Clean Air Act to include costs benefit analysis.² But perhaps they don't have to, if the Heritage Foundation is successful at urging members of legislator to bog down EPA action on global warming. (Were they?)

Asking industry whether a particular environmental regulation to reduce pollution or remove a toxin is too costly is a well rehearsed event which elicits a predictable response -- YES, yes; way, way too costly! Although costs and benefits must be considered, there are many criticisms of cost benefit analysis for public health and welfare. As with previous Clean Air Act provisions, analysts point out that costs are often overestimated.

The document prepared for the Chrysler/OMB meeting underlines one of the points of our previous post: that costs and benefit analysis done by industry will prioritize industry profits often forsaking clean air, water, health and welfare.³

To run out the clock, the EPA broadened the emissions issue addressed by the Supreme Court to all greenhouse gas emitters. Stephen jump-how-high Johnson who works for the Environmental Protection agency perhaps confuses his employer's acronym for the NBA. Broadening the Supreme Court's mandate will allow corporations and their lobby groups, maybe even some newly minted ones with deceptive names like 'Citizens for Fresh Air', to make wide swinging estimates of costs, or attempt to freak the public out about lost jobs, economic gloom and doom and the exorbitant cost of regulation.

Choices, Sea to Shining Sea

The US has national songs about the country's natural resources. But sometimes it seems like these resources are not really the citizens', rather they belong to industry. Industry uses and in some cases pollutes air and water, then when pollution burdens public health, as with smog in California, industry reacts as if fouling the public's air and water were its right -- how dare citizens overstep their rights by demanding industry control its pollution? Trotting out the "costs" of regulation, industry rebuffs citizens as if they were encroaching, stealing its property. Once citizens and politicians subscribe to this paradigm, business drags jobs onto the set, lays them out on its bargaining table, and presents a coercive choice. Regulation or jobs? Clean air or jobs? Water or jobs? Glaciers or jobs? Species or jobs? Your health or jobs? Your kids health or jobs? Is the public conned when they instinctively recoil and snatch at the jobs as if this were really the choice?

Global warming is not a simple problem, but the Supreme Court has many times laid the groundwork for how the EPA needs to act. The Environmental Protection Agency flouts the court, congress, states and citizens.

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¹Deregulation that impacted environmental resources didn't start in the 1980's, but Reagan amassed huge gains in this direction, including cost benefit considerations. Many politicians are attentive to these analyses and some ascribe to more radical sentiments. Senator Tom Delay and Senator James Inhofe would dismantle agencies like NOAA, NEH, DOE, OSHA and the EPA, which they liken to the "Gestapo". (See for instance Delay, T., "No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight" (p13)). Inhofe puts out regular press releases as ranking minority member of the Committee for the Environment and Public Works (EPW) led by Barbara Boxer stating that any global warming measure will cost jobs and wreak economic havoc.

²We previously wrote about Johnson's request to Congress that the Clean Air Act be "refurbished" to include "benefits, costs, risk tradeoffs, and feasibility in making decisions about how to clean the air".

³A 2007 draft report for Congress on costs and benefits of government legislation used Heritage Foundation information and the example of failed communist states to show how regulation can wreak havoc on an economy. Of course the Soviet Union was famous for disasters like Chernobyl and for leaving a devastating, costly pollution legacy, so the example is flawed on many levels. Not to mention how ludicrous it is to write a 2007 report to Congress which stoops to waste even one sentence linking clean air and water security with communism.

A couple of weeks ago, the journal Nature wrote that Stephen Johnson should step down from his post at the EPA (Nature 452, 2; 6 March 2008). Commenting on the unlikelihood of that, Nature suggested that since the White House "doesn't want the [EPA] to do anything" for the environment, "we can only offer [EPA] employees a fantasy...shut it down until next January. Take some fully paid sabbatical time to relax, and prepare for a return to the old-fashioned protecting of the environment that so many of you joined the agency for."

It seems the EPA thought that a grand idea. Stephen Johnson heads to Australia on a two week trip with about eleven staff. Of course Johnson's travel plans infuriate Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, who wrote a letter to Stephen Johnson, demanding to know where the travel budget was coming from:

"I am deeply concerned that you will be spending a large amount of scarce agency funds and staff resources on such an expensive trip while the President has proposed a series of devastating cuts in EPA's budget for environmental programs....hundreds of millions of dollars from EPA's budget for such important activities as reducing pollution of streams and lakes by sewage treatment plants, cleaning up hazardous waste sites, conducting global warming research and programs, ensuring environmental justice, and carrying out many other crucial programs."

The letter advised: "If your goal is to learn about actions to address global warming, I suggest that you visit California, which has moved ahead aggressively with greenhouse gas controls". She noted that Johnson's trip coincided with a number of hearings the EPW scheduled for him during the month of April. Let's see -- on one hand, Byron Bay and scuba-diving in the Great Barrier Reef; on the other, being interrogated by Senator Barbara Boxer. Why would Johnson choose Australia?

Flipping a Nation

The press, scientists, and commentators were instinctively indignant yet unsurprised by the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new ozone rules, which of course came out below science and public health recommendations. The agency changed the ozone levels from 84 parts per billion (ppb) to 75 ppb, although scientists said that 60-70 ppb would decrease deaths and smog levels dangerous to children, the elderly, and those with asthma and respiratory disease.

Of course industry and the Bush administration weighed in on the matter killing a secondary standard that EPA staff had recommended, which would have allowed agency discretion in setting standards in certain conditions like weather, to protect vegetation and wildlife from ozone exposure during growing seasons. Despite the agency's flaccid ruling a press conference gave EPA brass an opportunity to beat their brave, intrepid, heroic chests as Administrator Stephen Johnson marketed the inadequate standard as "the most health-protective eight-hour ozone decision in the nation's history".

A New York Times editorial focused on another thing Johnson said during the conference:

"The big surprise was Mr. Johnson's proposal to rewrite the Clean Air Act to allow regulators to take costs into account when setting air quality standards. Since this would permanently devalue the role of science while strengthening the hand of industry, the proposal has no chance of success in a Democratic Congress."

What? The Bush administration whittles away government regulation? It marches "forward" privatizing various common assets like air, natural resources, forests and health that it inherited at little cost? Shocking. So all the spin we hear about the redistribution of this resource bonanza as the principled, constitutionally sound, economically ideal (market driven) thing to do is -- well, spin? Surprise.

We can count the ways that our government ignores science in its decisions -- astute observers attend to this problem. The EPA itself attempts to gut the Clean Air Act at every opportunity, for instance after Hurricane Katrina (pdf). But to the editor's point, is Johnson's cost/benefit proposal outlandish? Not a chance of passing?

The EPA Saves Living Things: Species and Documents

In his March 12th comments Johnson called the Clean Air Act a "living document" that needed to be "refurbished", "overhaul[ed] and enhance[ed]", "modernize[d] and upgrade[d]". Johnson announced his four "principles" for a Clean Air Act, including, to"allow decision-makers to consider benefits, costs, risk tradeoffs, and feasibility in making decisions about how to clean the air." The Clean Air Act was not "a relic to be displayed in the Smithsonian", he said.

The Times editor pointed out that Johnson's proposal would "cut to the very heart of the Clean Air Act", which was written to protect science from special interests by mandating rulemaking based solely on health, not economic costs. As most people can attest, when the first hint of pollution regulation arises, any energy company worth its salt begins wailing about "technology not being available", about the exorbitant cost of the proposal, and about all the risks of complying on account of scientific uncertainty. Companies did just this when they held the nation in a decades long trance while they chanted about global warming uncertainty. Recognizing this, and knowing how Johnson's incredulous suggestion would put estimates about cost and feasibility squarely in industry's park to the detriment of clean anything, we should become alarmed, perhaps leap to action, maybe phone our legislator.

However the NYT editor's tone soothed, calling Johnson's pronouncement a "revelatory moment", one that signaled the administration's "cry of frustration at being largely unsuccessful in undoing three decades of environmental law".

Like the wolf frustrated in mid-hunt? One last guttural, spine chilling howl before giving up its prey -- and the fawn darts into a thicket of brambles just in the nick of time, a small defiant flick of its white tail? Can we argue optimistically, as the editor did, that the Bush administration attempts have been "largely unsuccessful"?