For nearly four decades, since environmental legislation was first enacted, ecp-groups have found the Supreme Court to be more or less favorable to the cases they have brought before it.
Not so with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. at the helm.
Adam Liptak writes at The New York Times
Environment Groups Find Less Support From Justices
The Supreme Court heard five environmental law cases in the term that ended Monday, and environmental groups lost every time. It was, said Richard J. Lazarus, a director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, "the worst term ever" for environmental interests.
The court allowed Navy exercises using sonar that threatened whales off California. It limited the liability of companies partly responsible for toxic spills. It made it harder to challenge Forest Service regulations and easier to dump mining waste into an Alaskan lake. And it allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost-benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.
Business groups expressed measured satisfaction with the decisions.
"The court does seem to be bringing more common sense back to environmental law," Robin S. Conrad, a lawyer with the United States Chamber of Commerce, said at a recent news briefing. |
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The rescue begins below and continues in the jump. (The next Green Diary Rescue appears Sunday at 9:30 p.m.)
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The Cunctator informed us that DK GreenRoots: ExxonMobil Is Still Funding Global Warming Denial Groups!: "From 1998 to 2005, ExxonMobil directed almost $16 million to a group of 43 lobby groups in an effort to confuse Americans about global warming. After being criticized by the Royal Society in 2006, Exxon promised to end funding to groups questioning climate change. In May 2008, Exxon again issued a public mea culpa and pledged to cut funding to groups that ‘divert attention’ from the need to develop and invest in clean energy. Yet, in 2008, while cutting contributions to the most extreme groups, Exxon still funded the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, all groups which publicly question or deny global warming."
DK GreenRoots
sarahnity, whose Saturday Frugal Fridays series is always green, went a little further in Saving Some Green by Going Green: "Too often, we think that it costs money to be environmentally friendly. While that can be true, the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of things you can do every day that take little effort and often no upfront costs. There are lots of ways you can change your home or your lifestyle to reduce the amount of energy and other natural resources you consume, but in this diary I want to focus on some of the easiest (and cheapest) changes you can make that will still make a significant difference. The most important thing to keep in mind if you are looking for places to save resources is to first look to where your biggest usage is and try to trim that. If you can save just 2% of the power on something you use 40% of the time, that is going to be a much bigger savings than if you save 50% of the power on something you use 5% of the time. Your goal should be to stop the hemorrhaging before you start worrying about the skinned elbows."
DK GreenRoots
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The Overnight News Digest is posted. Included is the story
Education secretary challenges NEA on teacher pay
Username4242 wrote that warming effects are popping out in odd places, to wit: Evidence of climate change induced evolution in action!: "[The photo shows] a Soay Sheep. Its breed has been the object of countless ecological studies over the last several decades--but one recent analysis of data in particular shows something of great relevance: due to the increase in temperatures since 1985 (the year the study began), the average size within the sheep population has shrunk 5%."
"Clean Energy and Security Act brings auditors into your home" read the email sent to 2skinnyJ: "So, I'm at work and I get an email with the subject: "Energy and Security Act brings auditors into your home." ... H.R. 2454 is a 1400-page promise to audit every aspect of your home and life under the guise of creating jobs, clean energy and a sustainable world. Oh, hell no, now the 'auditors' are not only in my home, they're going to be doing their auditing on every aspect of my life! Not only that, all this creating jobs and clean energy and sustainability hoopla is only a guise for them to do their devious auditing. I must admit, I'm getting pretty scared."
Fourth of July offers the perfect time to Honor Our Hemp-Raising Patriot Heroes wrote harveywasserman: "This miracle weed returns on its own year after year, requiring no pesticides, herbicides or special fertilizers. It is hardy, fast-growing and supremely productive. A single hemp plant can provide the basis for very high-quality rope, sails for ships, cloth for clothing, paper for documents, seeds for food and oil, the cellulosic base for ethanol, and much more. It is the feed of choice for untold numbers of birds and land animals. It can be the basis for innumerable stressed eco-systems where it survives and thrives with virtually no human input. As a staple spread across the Great Plains and through the rest of America’s battered farmland, it could help restore our shattered crop base and our devastated rural economy."
terryhallinan pondered his childhood days in Transportation Green: "Lizzie was a hay burner like no other hay burner ever. She wasn't the fastest horse, she wasn't the biggest horse, she wasn't the smartest horse but she was my horse. Being only pretend Irish like all Americans, I didn't love horses like girls and Irish and Gypsies love horses but I did love Lizzie. Lizzie was much finer than my brother's horse and my sisters' horses because they were not my horses. Horses are all kinds of colors but sadly not one ever was green, even in Ireland. There are green cars but not one is electric though some think they are. This is a diary about green transportation and what is not green."
NCrissieB focused on Mass Transit in her Morning FeatureOur Lives and Footprints (Plus Kossascopes): "Like most progressives I know, I favor mass transit. A state of the art mass transit system brings people together in ways that, to me at least, are far better than the hyper-individualized car culture common in many parts of the U.S. Instead of ‘racing to the next red light,’ we're ‘all on the same train.’ Plus it's greener right? Well, it can be, but new research shows that mass transit is not automatically greener. Like most things in life, the truth is a bit more complicated."
DK GreenRoots
Friday Night at the Movies was written by Land of Enchantment and focused Eco-Movies, which was not a big surprise: "Lately, climate change has been in the headlines, what with the House ACES bill and all. Congratulations on the Oscar, Al Gore. So we’ll start with that Oscar winner: + An Inconvenient Truth. It’s a little too didactic for my taste, but chock full of info that’s increased global awareness of global warming. So three cheers! + Amongst dramatic films, The Day After Tomorrow is worth seeing just for the Americans fleeing south across the Rio Grande in droves - due to the sudden freeze brought on by atmospheric and oceanic cycles altered by changes in the planet’s heat budget. + And, more recently, Wall-E about the inevitable disastrous consequences of mindless over-consumption captured the attention of kids from 2 to 92. Environmental themes definitely need not be marginal. And better not be!!!"
DK GreenRoots
A Siegel explored The power of "And" ...: "We have, writ large across our resource challenges, to be looking for ways to 'use less' to meet our requirements and, when we 'use', use sustainable/renewable resources. 'Use less' can occur in ways that are, in essence, invisible to us through ‘efficiency.’ And, they can be conscious choices (driven by ethics, by laws, by fiscal issues) to downshift one's demands via ‘conservation.’ Either / both of these can be quite powerful. Very simply, there is greater power in pursuing conservation + efficiency rather than simply one or the other. Efficiency is a powerful tool, which can be set via standards & regulations, providing ‘same’ services at lower energy demand & lower total cost. Conservation is the choice to act differently, in ways to reduce power demand."
rbutters went green in Mojo Friday: "Much has been written over the years regarding the incompatibility of man and nature. We've been conditioned through our global fascination with endless consumerism to see this as a fundamental, primal contest. Alternative world views are seen, for the most part, as quaint. Man and environment simply do not mix in this day and age, unless it is in a controlled, sterile setting. This is what we are told, at least this is what is loudly and pointedly insinuated. My experience was different, and it was a string of observations made possible only by the monumentally unique circumstances of life on a remote semi-tropical island."
DK GreenRoots
rperks reiterated what Contributing Editor Devilstower had written in a letter to the President: President Obama: Go See the Mountains, Then Save Them: "Recently, senior administration officials weighed into the fray over mountaintop removal with a policy announcement that fell short of the only sensible solution -- an immediate end to the world's most destructive mining. More of a promise than a policy, federal officials from several regulatory agencies announced ‘unprecedented steps’ aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal in the six Appalachian states of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Perhaps this tepid course of action actually will make it harder for mining companies to evade ‘streamlined’ environmental review when seeking permits to blow up mountains. For the most part, however, the new policy fits the administration's preferred approach to this controversial mining: mixing strong words with weak action. Hardly unprecedented, these modest bureaucratic measures are quite frankly inadequate. Citizens living in the coalfields of Appalachia deserve justice, not vague assurances about tighter permit reviews that ultimately will allow this abhorrent mining practice to proceed largely unchecked."
Turkana explained The Beef With Beef: Global Warming and Cancer process of producing grass-fed beef cattle is actually worse than that of producing corn-fed beef cattle. There's no good answer other than reducing consumption of beef. Replacing all beef production with chicken production would reduce the carbon footprint by seventy percent. Reducing the developed world's beef consumption by less than half, to a level the U.S. Department of Agriculture says still is healthy, would reduce the associated emissions by about forty-four percent. Simply put, if you're a meat-eater, and you want to make a personal contribution to the effort to ameliorate climate stress, reducing or eliminating your consumption of beef would be a great step. But there's another reason to reduce your beef intake, and it's also a very personal one. Your health."
DK GreenRoots
According to desmoinesdem the Farm Bureau is confident Waxman-Markey is going nowhere: "The American Farm Bureau Federation lobbied members of the U.S. House to vote for Collin Peterson's lousy amendments to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act but against the bill intended to address climate change. I have my own problems with the ACES bill, especially the deals made to appease the coal industry and Peterson's colleagues on the House Agriculture Committee. That said, the objections big agribusiness and their Congressional allies have raised against the cap-and-trade approach are off-base and short-sighted."
Dump Terry McAuliffe thinks Senator James Inhofe produced the Worst. Rant. Ever. on Global Warming, and proved it with excerpts like: "Let me be very clear: alarmists are attempting to enact an agenda of energy suppression that is inconsistent with American values of freedom, prosperity, and environmental progress. With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."
TXsharon discussed our continuing close encounter with dangerous chemicals that we are supposed to be protected from in Your Money or Your Life: "Ninety-two percent of the 278 known chemicals used to produce natural gas have adverse health effects including endocrine disruption, neurological disorders and cancer. Chemical information is limited because the industry claims formulas are trade secrets. If, like most Americans, you believe your water, air and soil are protected from these chemicals by federal environmental statutes, you are dead wrong. Loopholes in our federal environmental laws allow the oil and gas industry to endanger public health and safety and risk vital natural resources."
DK GreenRoots
Eternal Hope looked at Melding Creationism and Climate Denialism: Dr. Roy Spencer: "Dr. Roy Spencer continues on his crusade to meld his version of creationism and climate change denialism. The problem is that the kind of denialism that he preaches is not found in the Bible that he claims to uphold. There is a real clear principle that is just a matter of common sense -- if you love God, then you love his creation. If you hate God, then you hate his creation. You can't have it both ways. That would be like professing one's love for Michelangelo while going around and blowing up all of his works of art."
don mikulecky dug into the question of the ood crisis and agriculture crisis. Is the sky really falling?: In previous attempts to raise this issue here I found that we are a very mixed group. Some say these warnings are too mild and others are quick to dismiss them. If nothing else, this suggests the that the level of understanding of these issues in the general population must be even more divided. If so, we have our work cut out for us."
Land of Enchantment injected a Spirit of Brash Optimism in reporting from the dedication of a modest solar array in Taos, N.M.: "The 500kW array is planned to fill all the electrical needs of the college, without storage batteries. It will feed excess juice into the grid, and draw from the grid at night or on overcast days in an arrangement called ‘net metering.’ The project is the first of several to be installed under the aegis of the local Rural Electric Coop. ... The bad news is that this is the largest solar array in the state, at less than 4 acres total size. There is a larger one underway, 100 acres/30 megawatts, over the front range on the high plains at Cimarron, so this one won't be the biggest one for long. And that's good - we are way behind if 4 acres is the best the state's got!
DK GreenRoots
In a supergreen Overnight News Digest, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse McKibben says Obama needs us to pressure him: "GreenRoots message from Bill McKibben: Obama can't do what needs to be done within the current political forces. Obama needs us to pressure DC to take the action needed for environmental change and reform. The WH message was that WE need to build the movement that gives Obama the room to do what needs to be done.
DK GreenRoots
I wrote a diary, too: Myopia in Paradise.
DK GreenRoots
Schedule for DK GreenRoots All listed times are PDT.
Saturday July 4:
11 am: Diary by Jerome a Paris on wind power
3 pm: Diary by buhdydharma
5 pm: Diary by Land of Enchantment on climate
7 pm: Diary by Stranded Wind
time uncertain: Diary by Turkana
Saturday Series:
Morning Feature by NCrissieB;
Daily Kos University by plf515;
Dawn Chorus Birdblog by lineatus;
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging by Frankenoid;
Saturday Morning Home Repair Blogging by boatgeek;
Top Comments by carolita