VITTER: Endangered Species Act's hidden costs - Washington Times
Sen. David Vitter
February 8, 2013
At least you have to give President Obama high marks for creativity in his latest attempt to curtail freedom and individual rights. Specifically, I'm talking about Mr. Obama's assault on private property rights through the abuse of the Endangered Species Act.
I strongly support protecting endangered species. No one I know wants to see a species go anywhere near extinction. The far-left environmentalists in the Obama administration, however, have gone way beyond this by settling litigation with their allies in environmental groups behind closed doors. Through these secret settlements, they are advancing a much more radical, aggressive agenda than anything that is actually mandated by law.
This is a tactic called “sue-and-settle,” and it has become a central tool used to advance the radical environmental agenda. This is how it works: Far-left environmental groups sue the federal government — in this case, under the Endangered Species Act — claiming that the government is not satisfying its regulatory obligations. Then the groups and their friends in the administration draft a settlement agreement completely behind closed doors. No other stakeholder or representative of the public is provided the opportunity to shed light on how they might be impacted. The parties then get the judge to bless their agreement. That’s usually easy, since he doesn’t get to hear any opposing arguments and is often eager to get rid of what would otherwise be a complicated, time-consuming case.
In 2011, the Obama U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did exactly this in concert with far-left environmental groups. That settlement teed up more than 250 species and their potential critical habitat for review and eventual onerous regulation. This future regulation could prohibit many beneficial uses of tens of millions of acres of private property. All this was set in motion while no affected landowner or other stakeholder was given any opportunity for input.
It’s like settling a commercial lawsuit for millions of dollars — only the party affected by the judgment is excluded from the entire process. He can’t present any evidence, make any argument to the judge or react to the proposed settlement in any way. The only ones involved are the person receiving the check, his family and friends.
The results of this grossly unfair system are what you might expect. Settlements go way beyond what is actually required by law. In the case of abuse of the Endangered Species Act, vast amounts of federal, state and private land are being partly or wholly taken out of commerce. This means well-paying jobs and other positive economic activity are lost.
As President Abraham Lincoln recognized, the right to own private property is both a personal constitutional right and a vitally important public good. “Property is the fruit of labor … property is desirable … a positive good in the world.”
CONTINUED: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/8/endangered-species-acts-hidden-costs/#ixzz2KJibH12e
Showing posts with label environmental. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmental. Show all posts
Friday, February 8, 2013
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Did Buffett Help Obama Kill Keystone Pipeline to Reap Financial Gain?
The Blaze.com
As the nation’s gas prices skyrocket, critics argue that President Obama’s recent rejection of the $7 billion, “shovel-ready” Keystone XL oil pipeline, followed by his continued vow to “double down” on green energy, is a clear sign the administration plans to do little of substance in terms of American oil exploration. The move has also stirred controversy about the president’s real intentions concerning job creation and reducing pain at the pump for everyday Americans.
TransCanada and the Keystone XL oil pipeline
TransCanada filed an application to build the nearly 1,700-mile underground pipeline in 2008 and passed two rigorous State Department reviews. In February 2010, South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) granted a permit based on a thorough work up of the project.
“There has been a great deal of work and due diligence leading up to this decision,” said South Dakota Public Utilities Commissioner Dustin Johnson in an interview with DownStreamToday. “The record compiled in this case is pretty impressive. In the end, I feel the conditions we have placed upon this project ensure that it will be constructed in a manner that is sensitive to South Dakota and her people.”
Another Public Utilities official said he believed “the process by which this application was considered was open, thorough and fair” and Keystone openly pledged to station full-time personnel in South Dakota to respond to any emergency situations that may have arisen, according to the report.
That was apparently not enough for the White House, however, which sent TransCanada and others back to the drawing board in January 2012, citing environmental concerns.
To bypass obstacles created by special interest groups and the Environmental Protection Agency, a March 2012 amendment was introduced in the Senate that would have eliminated the need for a federal permit, while addressing environmentalists’ worries by placing more autonomy in Nebraska’s hands. After a vote, however, the measure was squashed 56 to 42.
If allowed, Keystone would have brought a reported 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. outposts and refineries on the Gulf Coast and created thousands of jobs.
In the wake of Obama’s political maneuvering, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper deemed the U.S. an unreliable energy partner and is thus expanding his country’s crude export. The move will result in Canada eliminating the discount it once afforded the U.S. on its oil products.
The administration’s alleged reason for rejecting the application for the pipeline submitted by Calgary-based TransCanada was said to be based on a “recommendation” by the State Department, which concluded there was not enough time to assess alternate pipeline routes. Yet, as we have pointed out, the pipeline was under review for no less than three years and was approved earlier. In addition, if environmental concerns were truly the catalyst for rejecting the pipeline, why then would the president seem comfortable with operating pollutant-emitting freight trains along a Northern railroad line through the United States?
Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Railroad
What would prompt the president to turn the lights out on what critics argue would have been an environmentally-sound, job-boosting, oil-producing project that would benefit the nation and preserve the financially beneficial Canadian-U.S. oil relationship? What does President Obama have to gain by rejecting Keystone XL and who else stands to benefit from his decision?
It was previously reported on The Blaze that Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC railroad — a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska based Berkshire Hathaway — would be among those poised to reap sizable gains by the administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp’s oil pipeline permit. According to Bloomberg, Berkshire Hathaway completed its roughly $26.4 billion purchase of Burlington Northern, issuing new stock and paying out $15.87 billion in cash.
“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern told Bloomberg. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”
CONTINUED: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/did-buffett-kill-the-keystone-pipeline-to-reap-financial-gain/
As the nation’s gas prices skyrocket, critics argue that President Obama’s recent rejection of the $7 billion, “shovel-ready” Keystone XL oil pipeline, followed by his continued vow to “double down” on green energy, is a clear sign the administration plans to do little of substance in terms of American oil exploration. The move has also stirred controversy about the president’s real intentions concerning job creation and reducing pain at the pump for everyday Americans.
TransCanada and the Keystone XL oil pipeline
TransCanada filed an application to build the nearly 1,700-mile underground pipeline in 2008 and passed two rigorous State Department reviews. In February 2010, South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) granted a permit based on a thorough work up of the project.
“There has been a great deal of work and due diligence leading up to this decision,” said South Dakota Public Utilities Commissioner Dustin Johnson in an interview with DownStreamToday. “The record compiled in this case is pretty impressive. In the end, I feel the conditions we have placed upon this project ensure that it will be constructed in a manner that is sensitive to South Dakota and her people.”
Another Public Utilities official said he believed “the process by which this application was considered was open, thorough and fair” and Keystone openly pledged to station full-time personnel in South Dakota to respond to any emergency situations that may have arisen, according to the report.
That was apparently not enough for the White House, however, which sent TransCanada and others back to the drawing board in January 2012, citing environmental concerns.
To bypass obstacles created by special interest groups and the Environmental Protection Agency, a March 2012 amendment was introduced in the Senate that would have eliminated the need for a federal permit, while addressing environmentalists’ worries by placing more autonomy in Nebraska’s hands. After a vote, however, the measure was squashed 56 to 42.
If allowed, Keystone would have brought a reported 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. outposts and refineries on the Gulf Coast and created thousands of jobs.
In the wake of Obama’s political maneuvering, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper deemed the U.S. an unreliable energy partner and is thus expanding his country’s crude export. The move will result in Canada eliminating the discount it once afforded the U.S. on its oil products.
The administration’s alleged reason for rejecting the application for the pipeline submitted by Calgary-based TransCanada was said to be based on a “recommendation” by the State Department, which concluded there was not enough time to assess alternate pipeline routes. Yet, as we have pointed out, the pipeline was under review for no less than three years and was approved earlier. In addition, if environmental concerns were truly the catalyst for rejecting the pipeline, why then would the president seem comfortable with operating pollutant-emitting freight trains along a Northern railroad line through the United States?
Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Railroad
What would prompt the president to turn the lights out on what critics argue would have been an environmentally-sound, job-boosting, oil-producing project that would benefit the nation and preserve the financially beneficial Canadian-U.S. oil relationship? What does President Obama have to gain by rejecting Keystone XL and who else stands to benefit from his decision?
It was previously reported on The Blaze that Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC railroad — a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska based Berkshire Hathaway — would be among those poised to reap sizable gains by the administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp’s oil pipeline permit. According to Bloomberg, Berkshire Hathaway completed its roughly $26.4 billion purchase of Burlington Northern, issuing new stock and paying out $15.87 billion in cash.
“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern told Bloomberg. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”
CONTINUED: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/did-buffett-kill-the-keystone-pipeline-to-reap-financial-gain/
Sunday, March 4, 2012
UN to propose planetary regulations of water, food
Written By Kelley Vlahos
Published March 01, 2012--FoxNews.com
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/01/un-to-propose-planetary-regulations-water-food/?test=latestnews#ixzz1o4JkSlRi
An environmental report issued by an agency of the United Nations last month has some critics sounding the alarm, saying it is a clarion call for "global governance" over how the Earth is managed.
The report, “21 Issues for the 21st Century,” from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Foresight Process, is the culmination of a two-year deliberative process involving 22 core scientists. It is expected to receive considerable attention in the run-up to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which will be held in Rio, Brazil, in June.
The scientists who wrote the report say it focuses on identifying emerging issues in the global environment, and that it is not about mandating solutions.
But its critics see an agenda lurking in its 60 pages, which call for a complete overhaul of how the world's food and water are created and distributed -- something the report says is “urgently needed” for the human race to keep feeding and hydrating itself safely.
“This is more utopianism, pie-in-the-sky pleading for ‘global governance,’ including what they acknowledge as ‘novel governance arrangements,’ including, ‘alliances between environmentalist and other civil society groups,’” charged Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, and a senior fellow for energy and environment at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in Washington, D.C.
We are not talking about a world government.
- Professor Oren Young
The Foresight Report suggests actions to save humanity from starvation, the overheating planet and the collapse of the world’s oceans -- options that include new “constitutional frameworks,” “international protocols” and a “shared vision” for land and water management that essentially rewire existing treaties and governments.
But the group insists it’s not a call for global governance.
“We are not talking about a world government,” said Dr. Oren Young, professor of institutional and international governance and environmental institutions at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and one of the scientists who issued the report.
He said the panel’s conversations included questions like, “How do we resolve these problems without creating this monster entity?”
Young said the panel wasn’t tasked with finding all the answers.
“We realize that government can be part of the problem,” he told FoxNews.com. “But we can’t close our eyes and say, ‘oh well, everything will work out,’ without us even looking at it.”
Even environmentalists don’t believe that planet-wide accords are particularly popular.
“I don’t think there is a global appetite right now for new institutions … or a world environmental organization like we have, say, with the World Trade Organization,” said Janet Redman, co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
“There are a lot of places -- especially the oceans and food security -- where everyone is saying that doing this piecemeal is not going to address the bigger sense of these environmental issues.”
But on the whole, she said, global government probably won’t work.
“I think everyone agrees this is not the right time,” Redman told FoxNews.com.
The State Dept. has already weighed in on many of the issues presented by the Foresight Panel in its own statement, titled “Sustainable Development for the Next Twenty Years United States Views on RIO+20.”
Submitted to the U.N by the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OIES) in November, this policy vision makes it clear the State Dept. will back global government solutions -- whether they be in addressing the overfishing of the oceans, making national laws and regulations more transparent, addressing land and ocean-based pollution, or water management.
The U.S. also is wholly supportive of strengthening the UNEP as “a body through which governments can cooperate to recommend environmental policies, promote best practices, and build national capacity for governance, monitoring and assessment,” according to the vision statement.
Yet UNEP is unsuited for that, by the agency’s own admission.
An internal U.N study obtained by Fox News last June found that the $450 million organization is an administrative mess, not knowing how its money is spent or how many public and private partners it might be working with at any given time.
Questions about the ability of nations to work with global bodies such as the U.N, and whether they should subscribe to transnational guidelines or mandates, will no doubt be a subject of concern in the run-up to the Rio summit.
Just as global governance solutions are raised in the report, so are local solutions that involve local governments, private industry and promoting individual and community shifts in the way people live and tend to the environment in their daily lives and workplaces.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/01/un-to-propose-planetary-regulations-water-food/?test=latestnews#ixzz1o4KF4wD6
Published March 01, 2012--FoxNews.com
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/01/un-to-propose-planetary-regulations-water-food/?test=latestnews#ixzz1o4JkSlRi
An environmental report issued by an agency of the United Nations last month has some critics sounding the alarm, saying it is a clarion call for "global governance" over how the Earth is managed.
The report, “21 Issues for the 21st Century,” from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Foresight Process, is the culmination of a two-year deliberative process involving 22 core scientists. It is expected to receive considerable attention in the run-up to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which will be held in Rio, Brazil, in June.
The scientists who wrote the report say it focuses on identifying emerging issues in the global environment, and that it is not about mandating solutions.
But its critics see an agenda lurking in its 60 pages, which call for a complete overhaul of how the world's food and water are created and distributed -- something the report says is “urgently needed” for the human race to keep feeding and hydrating itself safely.
“This is more utopianism, pie-in-the-sky pleading for ‘global governance,’ including what they acknowledge as ‘novel governance arrangements,’ including, ‘alliances between environmentalist and other civil society groups,’” charged Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, and a senior fellow for energy and environment at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in Washington, D.C.
We are not talking about a world government.
- Professor Oren Young
The Foresight Report suggests actions to save humanity from starvation, the overheating planet and the collapse of the world’s oceans -- options that include new “constitutional frameworks,” “international protocols” and a “shared vision” for land and water management that essentially rewire existing treaties and governments.
But the group insists it’s not a call for global governance.
“We are not talking about a world government,” said Dr. Oren Young, professor of institutional and international governance and environmental institutions at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and one of the scientists who issued the report.
He said the panel’s conversations included questions like, “How do we resolve these problems without creating this monster entity?”
Young said the panel wasn’t tasked with finding all the answers.
“We realize that government can be part of the problem,” he told FoxNews.com. “But we can’t close our eyes and say, ‘oh well, everything will work out,’ without us even looking at it.”
Even environmentalists don’t believe that planet-wide accords are particularly popular.
“I don’t think there is a global appetite right now for new institutions … or a world environmental organization like we have, say, with the World Trade Organization,” said Janet Redman, co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
“There are a lot of places -- especially the oceans and food security -- where everyone is saying that doing this piecemeal is not going to address the bigger sense of these environmental issues.”
But on the whole, she said, global government probably won’t work.
“I think everyone agrees this is not the right time,” Redman told FoxNews.com.
The State Dept. has already weighed in on many of the issues presented by the Foresight Panel in its own statement, titled “Sustainable Development for the Next Twenty Years United States Views on RIO+20.”
Submitted to the U.N by the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OIES) in November, this policy vision makes it clear the State Dept. will back global government solutions -- whether they be in addressing the overfishing of the oceans, making national laws and regulations more transparent, addressing land and ocean-based pollution, or water management.
The U.S. also is wholly supportive of strengthening the UNEP as “a body through which governments can cooperate to recommend environmental policies, promote best practices, and build national capacity for governance, monitoring and assessment,” according to the vision statement.
Yet UNEP is unsuited for that, by the agency’s own admission.
An internal U.N study obtained by Fox News last June found that the $450 million organization is an administrative mess, not knowing how its money is spent or how many public and private partners it might be working with at any given time.
Questions about the ability of nations to work with global bodies such as the U.N, and whether they should subscribe to transnational guidelines or mandates, will no doubt be a subject of concern in the run-up to the Rio summit.
Just as global governance solutions are raised in the report, so are local solutions that involve local governments, private industry and promoting individual and community shifts in the way people live and tend to the environment in their daily lives and workplaces.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/01/un-to-propose-planetary-regulations-water-food/?test=latestnews#ixzz1o4KF4wD6
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