Tag: environment

Stimulus should build for the future

As Barack Obama said during his speech yesterday, government spending has to work or the money shouldn’t be spent. And while we need a massive economic stimulus both to prevent economic freefall and to begin the hardwork of rebuilding our economy, we shouldn’t assume that all spending is good spending.

That’s why some in the environmental community are ready to do battle over plans currently being crafted.

According to The Washington Independent,

a growing chorus of environmental groups says it falls short of those goals, providing too much funding for new roads and too little for public transportation and other green initiatives.

Under the current proposal, new construction could consume three times as much funding as public transportation. The environmental groups hope more public transit money will be added when lawmakers make changes to the proposal in committee, an amendment process which began Wednesday afternoon.

“At a time of erratic energy prices, Congress should use this opportunity to move
America away from highways and toward railways and mass transit,” said Karen Wayland, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “The transportation component of the stimulus package underfunds mass transit in deference to highways and bridges.”

They say there is

plenty of room to improve the Democrats’ blueprint. At the forefront of their criticism, the proposal includes $30 billion for highway construction but dedicates only $10 billion to public transit and rail — a discrepancy prioritizing new roads at the expense of public transportation.

Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, says the spending on new roads will only act to increase pollution and fuel consumption — two problems the Democrats’ proposal was designed to alleviate.

“It is particularly disappointing to see that, unlike highway funds, public transportation and passenger rail funds have been cut below the levels suggested by the House Transportation Committee, limiting job creation in these areas,” Blackwelder said in a statement. “Public transportation investments create 19 percent more jobs per dollar spent than investments in new highways.”

Daniel Becker, head of the Safe Climate Campaign, said the proposal is a significant step in the direction of cutting pollution and increasing energy efficiency, but there are notable holes that could use plugging. “There’s a lot of new asphalt-laying [in the bill],” Becker said, “and that will undercut a lot of the green efforts.”

Marchant Wentworth, legislative representative for clean energy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, agreed that the $10 billion for public transit is insufficient to accomplish the Democrats’ goals. “You could triple that and still have needs out there for relieving congestion,” he said.

I’m not saying that a good chunk of the road money is not needed — some of it definitely is. But road money would be best spent on repairs and upgrades to existing infrastructure, rather than carving out new thoroughfares that will just lead to sprawl and more congestion down the road. If some of the money were shifted from asphalt to mass transit, that would go a long way toward greening the stimulus.

And if the tax cuts were to be scrapped, that money could then go toward other green projects — or “to provide further relief to Americans in distress — enhanced unemployment benefits, expanded Medicaid and more.”

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Should I send a thank you card?

Whatever one thinks of Lisa Jackson’s appointment as Barack Obama’s top Environmental Protection Agency officer, there is no doubt she will be an improvement over the current lame-duck chief.

Stephen L. Johnson, the current EPA administrator, is not exactly a friend of the environment — and he seeks to prove it on a regular basis.

Consider his ruling last week that prevents “Officials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants” from “consider(ing) their greenhouse gas output.”

Johnson, who touted his own accomplishments as the agency’s administrator after Jackon’s appointment was announced, says that “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants,” saying that “each year, about 275 new sources of pollution, from power plants to apartment buildings, must obtain permits saying that they will not significantly decrease air quality.” Current regulations create confusion, he says, and

“the best path forward is to establish a clear interpretation” of what can be considered a pollutant to be regulated.

“The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls” in these cases, he said.

The memorandum overturned a ruling made last month by the Environmental Appeals Board that backed environmentalists who said that, “because carbon dioxide must already be monitored under federal laws, that monitoring is tantamount to regulation” and “its impact must be considered before new plants are approved.”

Environmentalists were outraged at Johnson’s decision.

John Walke, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement, “It’s a marvel to behold an E.P.A. action that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time.”

The Environmental Defense Fund is extimating that “as much as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants could win swifter approval as a result of the ruling.”

Consider the ruling a parting gift from Stephen L. Johnson and president George W. Bush to the utility industry that ll of us will pay for with dirtier air and potentially higher healthcare costs.

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Jackson must answer questions raised by environmentalists


PEER — the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility — is taking aim at former state Environmental Commissioner Lisa Jackson (pictured at Monday’s press conference in Washington), Barack Obama’s nominee for administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

PEER and several other environmentalists, according to Pro Publica, are critical of Jackson, who lives in East Windsor, for being “too close to industry, with(holding) information from the public and fall(ing) well short of the pledge she made when taking office in February 2006 to fix the state’s beleaguered toxic waste program.”

(T)wo years into Jackson’s tenure, the new system for cleaning up New Jersey’s 16,000 abandoned toxic waste sites still hasn’t been deployed.

“She identified this as her highest priority, but she never followed through,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER. “This failure to perform risk-based ranking for determining cleanup priorities has contributed to the belated discovery of contaminated schools and day care centers.”

It’s not at all clear, however, that Jackson is responsible — a June report on the Superfund program found that the the state and the EPA have been slow to develop cleanup plans for the state’s sites. But much of the information in the report details information that occurred before Jackson came into office.

Many prominent New Jersey environmental advocates say that Jackson inherited most of the department’s problems from previous commissioners, and from staff cuts made by former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, who went on to become EPA administrator herself under President Bush.

“The department in charge of hazardous waste used to have 270 people, now they are down to 150,” says Tittel.

What does all of this mean for the EPA should Jackson take over? It’s difficult to say. But there appears to be enough criticism from environmentalists to create reasonable doubt — the kind of doubt that the Senate has a responsibility to probe — and Jackson has a responsibility to dispel — before the East Windsor resident should be allowed to take the lead of the EPA.

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Central Jersey goes to Washington


It’s official. Lisa Jackson, former New Jersey environmental commissioner, has been named by Barack Obama as the next administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. (See photos of press conference at Obama’s site; photo above is from the EPA via NJ.com.)

Obama said of his pick for the EPA:

Lisa has spent a lifetime in public service at the local, state and federal level. As Commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, she has helped make her state a leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing new sources of energy, and she has the talent and experience to continue this effort at the EPA. Lisa also shares my commitment to restoring the EPA’s robust role in protecting our air, water and abundant natural resources so that our environment is cleaner and our communities are safer.

Jackson, who lives in East Windsor, has a good reputation among New Jersey environmentalists — aside from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who sent an “open letter” to the president-elect that “harshly criticized Jackson’s tenure at the DEP,” saying that

Her actions as commissioner, Rauch wrote, “have been nothing short of appalling,” and “raise troubling questions about her fitness to run an agency of much greater size, complexity and significance.”

PEER, however, is a distinct minority, with the larger green groups offering praise of the nominee.


What’s most interesting is the response from the current EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, to spruce up his awful record (see the four-part series in The Philadelphia Inquirer that starts here) with the glow coming from the incoming administration. Johnson said Jackson “is poised to build on the many environmental successes accomplished since 2001” — a comment that shows that Johnson was as deluded about the damage his agency has managed to do as President George W. Bush has been about his place in history.

“While environmental responsibility is everyone’s responsibility, I am particularly proud of the role EPA has played in bringing about record results on behalf of the American people and our environment. Our air is cleaner, our water is purer, and our land is better protected than just a generation ago.”

True, but this is despite eight years during which we have taken massive steps backward and due mostly to the efforts of the Clinton administration and state governments who have been forced to deal with the delitirious impacts of environmental degradation.

So, we ask that readers send their congratulations to Lisa Jackson and consider sending Stephen Johnson a referral to a good therapist.

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