goodbye

i am closing my account. my attention is foucsed on my studies. Adeiu

the end...for now

gentle reader I finish my last summer school class ever ( i sincerely hope) this Friday. this trip has been excruciating and phenomenal, often at the same time. unfortunately the selfsame trip has left me with exactly zero motivation to write, read, or in general comment upon anything related to law school or my masters work. i shall try my best to begin a regular blogging habit again (if i ever truly had one) with the start of the new academic year in late august. hasta luego

Post 2: Green Public Awareness = Gov't Response

The disillusioning effect of the Vietnam war enhanced the popularity of Silent Spring. When people heard of the defoilation tactics used in the jungles of Indochina, they became more receptive to the "environmental" ideas advanced by Carson and her countless imitators. The period 1962 to 1970 witnessed a definitive change in public awareness and participation regarding civic issues. The popular paradigm of the time was something along the lines of overpopulation and industrialization leaving mankind trapped in a deteriorating environment. The damage was not just esthetically displeasing but threatening to the very survival of man. Environmentalism gained strength as a movement dedicated to ending--and if possible--reversing this decline in the human environment. Everywhere television programs, symposia, and "teach-ins" raised the burning question: "Can Man Survive?"

It was at just this time that Congress sent to the President a revolutionary bill known as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis)--looking back at the "Environmental Decade" in 1980--called NEPA "the most important piece of environmental legislation in our history." It is easy to see why.

A tone of idealism permeates this statute. NEPA's purposes are:

"To declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment."

"To promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man."

"To enrich our understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation."

To further these ends, NEPA called for the formation of a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to give the President expert advice on environmental matters. The CEQ was also charged with reviewing Environmental Impact Statements, which were now required of all federal agencies planning projects with major environmental ramifications. Although hard to imagine today, public opinion was virtually unanimous on the need for the national environmental policy NEPA would generate. President Nixon chose to sign NEPA on New Year's Day, 1970--thus making the signing his "first official act of the decade."

Enactment of this law set the stage for a year of intense activity on the environmental front. The authors of the first CEQ Annual Report on Environmental Quality had the same sense of an unprecedented watershed. In August 1970, they wrote: "Historians may one day call 1970 the year of the environment--a turning point, a year when the quality of life [became] more than a phrase..." It was in this atmosphere of intense concern for environmental issues that President Nixon delivered his 1970 State of the Union Address. Speaking to both houses of Congress on January 22, the President proposed making "the 1970s a historic period when, by conscious choice, [we] transform our land into what we want it to become." He continued this activist theme on February 10, when he announced a 37-point environmental action program. The program gave special emphasis to strengthening federal programs for dealing with water and air pollution.

Two months later, on April 22, the first Earth Day celebration brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform. The success of Earth Day gave greater priority than ever to environmental issues. In particular, it strengthened the impact of the report that Roy L. Ash of the President's Commission on Executive Reorganization had submitted on April 15. That report argued strongly than an independent agency was needed to coordinate all of the Administration's new environmental initiatives.

President Nixon called for "a strong, independent agency." The mission of this "Environmental Protection Agency" would be to:

Establish and enforce environmental protection standards.

Conduct environmental research.

Provide assistance to others combatting environmental pollution.

Assist the CEQ in developing and recommending to the President new policies for environmental protection.

The components of the new agency were pieced together from various programs at other departments. Suffice to say powers were transferred from existing federal agencies, with the nascent EPA coming to focus on air, water, pesticide and radiation control. And thus ends my background reiterations. Prepare for thoughtful blogging (hopefully) later this week.

Post 1: Silent Spring and US Greening

To provide proper background on the majority of my blogging (and to force me to write and remember this information) I will be summarizing the environmental era of US politics 1969-1972, emphasizing the creation of the EPA and environmental-focused legislation.

The official birthday of EPA is December 2, 1970. That year saw the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, first in serial form in the New Yorker and then as a Houghton Mifflin best seller. This exhaustively researched, carefully reasoned, and beautifully written attack on the indiscriminate use of pesticides was not exactly light reading. Yet it attracted immediate attention and wound up causing a revolution in public opinion.

A bird-watcher, Carson derived her zeal from her fear that fewer species of birds would be singing each spring unless pesticide poisoning was halted. The readers of her book, however, were less alarmed by the prospect of a "Silent Spring" than they were about people dying from any number of hidden poisons lurking in what had previously seemed a benign environment. It wasn't hard to bug out after reading in Carson's book that "the common salad bowl may easily present a combination of organic phosphate insecticides" that could "interact" with lethal consequences. Silent Spring played in the history of environmentalism roughly the same role that Uncle Tom's Cabin played in the abolitionist movement.

In fact, EPA today may be the extended shadow of Rachel Carson. Skeptics then and now have accused Carson of shallow science, but her literary genius carried all before it. Followers flocked to Carson's cause--rendered all the more sacred by her premature death in 1964. Suddenly, everywhere people looked, they saw evidence of nature's spoilation. Concern over air and water pollution spread in widening eddies from the often-forgotten core of the movement: a detailed and intensive study about commercial pesticides.

Polar Bears, the ESA, and Climate Change

Polar Bears were recently added to the Endangered Species Act's (ESA hereafter) "Proposal" listing. Under the ESA species which run the risk of extinction are graded depending upon 5 qualifications: (1) Habitat loss; (2) Overutilization; (3) Disease or predation; (4) Inadequacy of Regualtory planning; (5) [the ambiguous] Other Factors. Post consideration of these elements the applicable federal agency - Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for terrestial species and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for marine species - grades the species as "Candidate," "Proposed," "Threatened," or "Endangered." Polar bears listing as "proposed" therefore, reflects a large development as it is a significant step 'up' from candidate status.

What really has environmental advocates, natural resources developers, and US industry up in arms are the rammifications an official listing of "threatened" would create. Once a species is listed as "threatened" automatic protections under the ESA come into force. The ESA seeks to promote means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened species depend may be conserved. Essentially a conservatory purpose where 'conservation' means 'recovery' for a threatenes or endangered species. The significance of this goal is that the ESA focuses on protection of habitat as a primary means for species conservation, and in this process we unearth the true bone of contention among interested parties: federal management of territory exclusively for the purposes of species protection. If it has not become apparent yet, take a wild guess as to the territory the federal government would attempt to control to protect polar bears. That's right, territory in Alaska near oil and natural resources development projects as well as territory north of the Arctic Circle on ice-packs. Lands that are rapidly warming and fudamentally altering in composition or even disappearing as the regional climate changes.

And so the question presents itself; if the ESA is to protect habitat as the primary means for species protection, does that protection include a duty to recognize climate change and the likely connection to the vanishing ice packs of the Arctic regions? Does the ESA compel recognition of this issue (Climate Change) on a national level, and if so will it become the Court's duty to enforce habitat protection vis-a-vi regulation of industries and practices scientifically known to contribute towards the creation of greenhouse gases and ultimately climate change? Is the ESA a sophisticated tool through which environmentalists needlessly bludgeon the federal government into action, or is it a practicable tool with legitimate scope and authority?

What a can of worms. Not only are the issues muddled, but there is not a single focused solution either. For starters our government does not recognize climate change as providing a binding mandate for sustainable practices in US economies. Add to this a deeply divided, and therefore powerless, Congress who cannot set a budget or manage a war, much less agree on environmental issues. If the polar bears were to be listed as "threatened" and come under the protections of §§7 and 9 of the ESA (regulatory schemes for take of wildlife and habitat mgmt) it is my somewhat realisitic/cynical view that our judiciary would stall, dawdle, and ultimately find statutory or Constitutional grounds (think Supremacy Clause and Separation of Powers) to duck the issue. My bet would be on the Court to assert that a decision to regulate economies of industry would be the purview of Congress, not the Court. In this way the Court would likely avoid the chaucy opportunity to hold domestic industry liable for climate change as well as assert the traditional critical view of climate change politics, namely that of inter-related, interdependent, and secondary effects. E.g. how can one hold just US industry and economies to a 'green' standard when climate change is a global phenom contributed to by all...

Obviously this topic has not been completely canvased, nor exhaustively analyzed. Suffice to say my motivation is to bring awareness of the potential for future litigation and the increasingly large role climate change politics will play in everyone's future. Think about it: this world may be ours for now, but in what condition will we/should we leave it for future generations?

Wetlands protection not upheld by Supreme Court

The Bush administration made it harder Tuesday for non-permanent streams and nearby wetlands to be protected under the federal Clean Water Act. The new guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers requires that for such waters to be protected there must be a "significant nexus" shown between the intermittent stream or wetland and a traditional waterway. Read more about it here.

Essentially this decision creates more ambigity surrounding exactly what the Clean Water Act protects. Continuing a trend long-held by the Rehnquist Court, the new court failed to impose strict interpretations of what consitutes a watershed, pool, marsh, et al. This is important because the the Clean Water Act, even in its most strongly restrictive interpretation, still fails to address important water sites for wildlife such as vernal pools (water pools seasonally collecting on floor of upland forests) and quasi-fens. The aforementioned sits in conjunction with bogs (still or stagnant water in/surrounding partially submerged land) and marshes (moving water & inundated wetlands) act as important locations for insect and small amphibious animal development. If these areas are not protected and run-off, pollution, etc is allowed to run its course these smaller organisms will loose habitat and eventually lower in birth rates until local extinction. Of course this brings in a whole new dilemma aside from protecting water wuality, that issue being wildlife protection and protection of the food chain. The idea is pretty simple: if micro-organisms cannot grow in vernal pools or marshes due to a lack of water from diverted waterways from construction, or death due to polluted locations, those above on the food chain cannot survive. Therefore the tadpole and salamander die, and without a dearth of these creatures hawk, grouse and other wildlife loose an important food source. You can continue the logical progression on your own.

To sum, the wetlands form the basic 'rung' of the food chain. All life begins and ultimately ends therein. We need to protect these lands in a sustainable manner by properly according protective policies that force developers and other human influences to sit-look-and-listen to alternative strategies for development and removal to similar but less destructive sites.

"We must conceive of stewardship not simply as one individual's practice, but rather as the mutual and intimate relationship extending across generations, between a human community and its place on earth." John Elder - "Inheriting Mount Tom"

Esta Bien

Insomnia is not pleasant. So in this ever-vigilant state I have no excuse but to blog, even if only briefly. This week marks the close of my first summer school week. Currently studying Ecology (but really) and Comparative International Environmental Law. Talk about being swamped with dense reading. The concern and efforts are great, but the reading is truly daunting at times. If feel like I am cheating myself of soon-to-be-accrued loans every time I don't finish a reading prior to class. Additionally, the majority of professors teaching the summer courses are not only the nationally renowed staff of Vermont Law School, they are many environmental specialists from diverse fields and practices. I guess I will be happy I completed all of this stuff after I graduate, pass the bar, and pay off those loans. Or maybe if I simply get a job that pays decently. In any case expect random spurts of environmental law dicta and rants.

Music for the Summer

Following the lead of Ben Young here is a summer music compilation:http://www.sendspace.com/file/9kab5n

Playlist:
(1) "Without Love" - Elvis Perkins
(2) "Aimum" - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
(3) "Uph" - Duke Ellington
(4) "One Evening" - Feist
(5) "Satan Said Dance" - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
(6) "L.A." - Elliot Smith
(7) "Central and Remote" - Grizzly Bear
(8) "Dreams Be Dreams" - Jack Johnson
(9) "Caracas" - Jean-Luc Ponty
(10) "Instant Karma" - John Lennon
(11) "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" - Johnny Cash
(12) "The Bucket" - Kings of Leon
(13) "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp" - Led Zeppelin
(14) "Farmhouse" - Phish


My Masters classes have begun, meaning my return to the blog-o-sphere and internet is imminent. I hope to relate interesting tidbits from my new classes as my studies progress, so stay tuned and keep the faith that one day I will maintain a continuous blogging habit. Hasta luego.