Green Hell Blog

By Steve Milloy
July 3, 2010, Washington Times

Ronald Reagan’s 10 most dangerous words were, “Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The Gulf oil spill is only the latest validation of that sentiment when it comes to environmental protection.

Just last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the government computer models built to plan for Gulf oil spills and relied on by drillers, including BP, erroneously assumed that much of the oil would evaporate rapidly or be dispersed by waves and weather. While evaporation, physical breakup and degradation will be how most of the oil disperses eventually, these overly optimistic models perhaps explain why the feds were unprepared to implement the Clinton-era policy of having adequate oil-containment booms and skimmers easily available to protect the coast.

But faulty modeling was only the first government screw-up. The Jones Act has prevented foreign companies from bringing in skimmers to help clean up the oil and the Coast Guard has kept 80 percent of the U.S. skimmer fleet out of the Gulf in the unlikely event of a simultaneous spill elsewhere.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) blocked skimmer systems offered by the Dutch because water discharged back into the Gulf after processing wouldn’t be sufficiently oil-free. It doesn’t matter that the water put back into the ocean would have been much cleaner than what was taken out of the ocean. EPA regulations nonsensically only allow pure water to be discharged back into the ocean, even in the process of cleaning up an oil spill.

Early on, the EPA tried to block BP from using the only effective oil dispersant available because of purported toxicity concerns, ignoring the reality that nothing survives in an oil slick in the first place. The Hoover Institution’s Henry Miller recently observed that EPA’s long-standing anti-biotechnology leanings have delayed the development and commercialization of genetically modified microorganisms that could feed on spilled oil.

Then there’s the Army Corps of Engineers’ delay of the construction of oil-blocking sand berms pending completion of an entirely bureaucratic environmental impact statement.

If there’s any time in history when the feds have well earned the epithet “gooberment,” that time is now. That said, federal ineptitude is nothing new when it comes to environmental protection.

The EPA’s dogged determination to force unrealistic cleanup levels on toxic waste sites under the infamous Superfund program delayed the removal of pollution for 15 years. The agency’s junk-science-based stubbornness ensured that far more money was spent on litigation and lobbyists than cleanup. But the EPA has wasted more than just time and money with Superfund – it has ruined lives and polluted the environment.

In 1982, the EPA infamously purchased and evacuated the town of Times Beach, Miss., amid the era’s unwarranted hysteria over dioxin. More than 2,000 people were involuntarily displaced from their homes, and the community was permanently bulldozed at a total cost of about $150 million.

The EPA is overseeing the “cleanup” of PCBs in Hudson River sediments – contaminants that had been safely entombed there for more than 30 years. As predicted by many, the cleanup stirred up PCBs last summer, causing water contamination at unsafe levels.

As a result of the EPA’s campaign to scare the public about the safety of chlorinated drinking water, Peruvian officials once discontinued the use of chlorine, exacerbating a deadly 1991 cholera epidemic. Closer to home, the same scare campaign led to increased levels of lead in Washington, D.C., drinking water when local officials substituted a more corrosive ammonia-based disinfectant for chlorine. Then there’s EPA’s infamous 1972 ban of the pesticide DDT, a decision that has had effects of genocidal proportions on sub-Saharan Africa.

Perhaps the next Congress will consider reforming an agency from which the environment and human health may actually need protection.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery, 2009).

Carbon Control News reports:

A key Sierra Club attorney says the group’s support for final passage of a climate bill is conditioned on the preservation of EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act [CAA] to require reductions in greenhouse gases (GHGs) from existing facilities, an assertion that appears to be a reversal from the group’s prior support for a House-passed cap-and-trade bill that would strip the agency of most of its air act authorities in dealing with GHG emissions.

One reason many industries have been willing to go along with cap-and-trade is to escape tortuous and unpredictable EPA regulation of CO2 under the CAA. In addition to the many onerous provisions of the CAA, the law has aggressive “citizen suit” provisions that enable the greens to enforce the law by legal action.

So the greens are either:

• Using the threat of EPA regulation as a way to coerce any industry hold-outs into signing a climate deal now; or they are
• Maneuvering to pull the rug out from industry at the last moment and have EPA regulation somehow inserted into any final bill.

Any CEO who signs on to a climate bill in order to create so-called “regulatory certainty” is too stupid to live has reached his level of incompetence. 🙂

… as the the UK moves from Magna Carta (circa. 1215) to Magna Carba. Here’s the sad report in today’s Times:

The boys in green are coming as the Environment Agency sets up a squad to police companies generating excessive CO2 emissions.

The agency is creating a unit of about 50 auditors and inspectors, complete with warrant cards and the power to search company premises to enforce the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which comes into effect next year.

Decked out in green jackets, the enforcers will be able to demand access to company property, view power meters, call up electricity and gas bills and examine carbon-trading records for an estimated 6,000 British businesses. Ed Mitchell, head of business performance and regulation at the Environment Agency, said the squad would help to bring emissions under control. “Climate change and CO2 are the world’s biggest issues right now. The Carbon Reduction Commitment is one of the ways in which Britain is responding.”

The EPA announced today that,

With Earth Day only a few days away, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is kicking off the 2009 “Change the World, Start with Energy Star” campaign to educate kids and their families about how to save money and fight climate change through energy efficiency.

“People of every age have a part to play in confronting climate change,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Using Energy Star to cut electricity usage and costs, and educating young people and their families to make a difference — big or small — is how we make real progress.”

But even Consumer Reports says Energy Star is a dubious program. In September 2008, the consumer watchdog spotlighted flaws in the program including that product qualifying standards are lax ─ for example, until recently, 92 percent of dishwashers qualified. If all virtually all dishwashers are “efficient,” is anyone really saving any money on energy use?

Consumer Reports also reported that the product testing programs are out-of-date and companies are responsible for testing their own products ─ without any independent verification. When testing an LG-brand French-door refrigerator that was labeled as using an Energy Star compliant 547 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, Consumer Reports found that the actual energy use was twice what was advertised. Apparently the government testing procedures call for refrigerators to be tested with their icemakers turn off. That, of course, is probably not how most people use their refrigerator.

Energy efficiency advocates routinely overpromise and under-deliver, according a report from the Congressional Research Service. While numerous private and government sources have claimed that 25- to 30-percent gains in efficiency are possible over a 5- to 15-year time horizon, according to the CRS, “the diffuse nature of efficiency opportunity and the economic complexity of decision making” has historically made moving beyond the 5 percent to 7 percent electricity savings range “a persistent challenge to conservation proponents.” Although more aggressive policies could be attempted, the CRS says, there is “little track record upon which to base projections of future effectiveness.”

Government brainwashing kids with dubious politically-based ideas isn’t education; it’s a form of child abuse.