The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: environmentalists
Government Keeps Rural West Going

Government Keeps Rural West Going

The 187,000 acres on which sits the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge never belonged to the state of Oregon, much less the band of cowboy exhibitionists who’d taken it over. This and other federal lands were acquired through conquest over, purchases from or treaties with Mexico, Russia, Spain, England, France and Native Americans.

The federal government lets loggers, ranchers and other businesses make a subsidized living off public land, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. The fees ranchers pay for grazing on federal land are considerably below those charged by private landowners. The government loses money on nearly all timber sales on public land.

Now that we’ve gotten this off our chests, let’s sympathize with the hardworking people of the rural West, losing a beautiful way of life to harsh economic realities. The growing poverty in the sparsely populated high desert of south central Oregon is shared by communities far from the region’s booming cities.

The good folks of Harney County certainly did not deserve this invasion by outsiders. They are entitled to resent the closing of the refuge along with threats against neighbors working there. The disruption spread through the community.

It’s true that the federal government owns massive amounts of Western land. It’s true that tighter environmental restrictions have curtailed some economic activity on this property. And we must recognize that many local complaints about federal management of the land have merit.

But a federal retreat from the rural West would spell economic disaster. Thinking people throughout the West understand this. In Harney County, government paychecks account for 60 percent of earned income.

Consider this headline in The Missoulian newspaper: “Rural western Montana counties struggling mightily with loss of federal funds.” This happened during the 2014 budget wars, when Congress failed to renew the Secure Rural Schools Act and Community Self-Determination Act. Gone was $300 million in subsidies for roads, schools, government jobs and other programs.

Rural Westerners might ask themselves why so many of them buy into the “government is evil” philosophy. The conservatives they send to Washington have made common cause with Easterners eager to save their taxpayers some dollars.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases.” One was “if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

You don’t have to be a small-government conservative to question the trainload of subsidies that keep many rural economies moving. If a shoe factory in Massachusetts can’t make a profit, it closes. Why are the rules so different for Western agricultural businesses?

It’s easy to blame environmentalists and ignore the biggest killer of logging jobs: automation and a large forested landmass called Canada.

Rural areas benefit from the federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes program — whereby Washington sends money to counties with large tracts of federal land that local governments can’t tax. (The fairest of subsidies, the funding was cut under sequestration.) Some suggest changing the program to direct more money toward the poorer communities.

A wildlife refuge is itself an economic asset. The federal government pays salaries and other costs of maintaining an amenity that also brings in tourists.

Do the state and local taxpayers care to bear these costs? Or would the plan be to let industry pay for the right to savage the land, except for the nicest vistas, which would be sold to billionaire “ranchers”?

An estimated 47 million bird watchers in America spend $40 billion a year on their passion. Having a federal wildlife refuge in your community seems not a bad deal at all.

As Reagan said, “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.

Photo: Occupier Duane Ehmer rides his horse Hellboy at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, January 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

Lobbyists Work To Kill California Bill That Would Outlaw Flimsy Plastic Grocery Bags

Lobbyists Work To Kill California Bill That Would Outlaw Flimsy Plastic Grocery Bags

By Jessica Calefati, San Jose Mercury News

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lobbyists have launched a frenzied eleventh-hour effort to kill a bill that would make California the first state to outlaw flimsy plastic grocery bags, delaying a key vote and setting up one of the fiercest legislative battles of the year.

Last week, the bill seemed in the bag after it cleared a tough committee vote. But in recent days, industry lobbyists who have squashed more than a dozen other proposed bag bans over the last few years have renewed their effort by targeting moderate Democrats.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to educate legislators on the facts,” said Mark Daniels, a senior vice president at Hilex Poly, an East Coast company that is the largest producer of single-use plastic grocery bags in North America.

Opponents led by the company have spent more than half a million dollars in lobbying fees and campaign donations, painting the proposal as a job killer.

But environmentalists are also expressing confidence as they dig in for an epic battle similar to their ultimately successful fight to pass California’s “bottle bill” in the 1980s. The stakes are even higher this year because the clout of environmental groups is on the line after a series of embarrassing legislative defeats last year.

Supporters say a statewide bag ban is needed to wipe out a particularly noxious form of litter that kills marine life in the Pacific Ocean and costs Californians $25 million a year to collect and bury.

“Single-use plastic bags blow out of garbage trucks and landfills all the time. They become litter even after they’ve been properly disposed of,” said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, which championed the beverage container deposit law three decades ago.

The latest lobbying push helped stall an Assembly floor vote on the bill that had been scheduled for Wednesday. Three of the Assembly members being courted by the industry to vote no on the bill — Democrats Henry Perea, Susan Talamantes Eggman, and Adam Gray — received campaign contributions from Hilex Poly in 2013.

None returned phone calls on Wednesday.

If Senate Bill 270 clears the Assembly, the state Senate must also pass the measure before Aug. 31, the end of the legislative session.

Hilex Poly is headquartered in Hartsville, S.C., and none of its 24 factories is located in the Golden State. But, Daniels said, a significant amount of the company’s plastic grocery bags are sold in California.

The company is also a founding member of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that has been running television and radio advertisements against the proposed legislation since April, when the bill was first heard by the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.

According to reports filed with the Secretary of State’s Office, the alliance has spent roughly $440,000 on lobbyists to kill plastic bag bans proposed in Sacramento this year and last year by Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla, whom the alliance has personally attacked in its ads.

In January, Padilla announced a breakthrough compromise with some of the legislation’s other opponents. He agreed to make $2 million from the state’s bottle-and-can recycling fund available to California businesses that want to retool their operations and instead manufacture reusable plastic bags that meet the bill’s rigorous standards. That was enough to persuade one major Southern California plastic bag manufacturer to change its mind about the legislation, which is co-sponsored by Democratic state Sens. Kevin de Leon and Ricardo Lara.

In the months before and after Hilex Poly successfully stopped lawmakers’ attempt last year to impose a statewide bag ban, the company made almost $30,000 in campaign contributions to many of the state senators who voted against the bill.

The company’s largest political contribution last year went to Democratic state Sen. Leland Yee, who was indicted this year on corruption and racketeering charges. His campaign for secretary of state received a check from Hilex Poly for $6,800 three months after Yee cast a vote against last year’s bag ban proposal.

Two weeks ago, Hilex Poly added another weapon to its arsenal. The plastic bag manufacturer hired Strategic Solutions Advisors, a firm founded by Frank Molina, who served as a senior adviser to Assembly and Senate leaders before becoming a lobbyist.

If passed and signed into law, the proposal would ban grocery stores and pharmacies from offering customers single-use plastic bags beginning July 1, 2015. And a year later, the rule would apply to convenience stores and liquor stores, too. It would impose a minimum 10-cent fee on any paper or reusable plastic bags sold to customers who forgot to bring their own bags when they shop and sets strict standards for what types of bags count as reusable.

AFP Photo/Frederic J. Brown

Interested in U.S. politics? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Racing Through Nature

Racing Through Nature

The story of a young man’s speed hiking the 2,663-mile Pacific Crest Trail has raised some environmentalist eyebrows, albeit only slightly. He was racing from California’s border with Mexico to Washington state’s with Canada.

The cause was a good one — to raise money for the families of cancer patients. And it wasn’t like he was making noise and pollution.

So where is the problem or, to downplay it a bit, the mild concern?

John de Graaf, a quality-of-life activist who noted the Seattle Times story on his Facebook page, explained it to me with careful words: “The idea of hiking fast certainly doesn’t bother me. It’s the location that is worrisome.”

And the timing seems right for such a conversation. Sept. 3 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Since its signing by President Lyndon Johnson, the law has set aside 110 million acres for the highest level of federal protection. Motorized equipment and mechanical transport are banned, though visitors may fish, camp and hunt where permitted.

Nowhere in the list of do-nots is speed hiking. Still.

Competitive sports do seem odd in areas designated to allow humans the most direct experience with primeval nature. “We need to have some sacred places in society where people can retreat from all of that,” is how de Graaf puts it.

Let’s face it. The speed hiker’s feat could have been performed on the side of a highway.

De Graaf heads a Seattle-based group called Take Back Your Time. It studies the link between overconsumption and Americans’ lack of free time — and seeks to change our harried way of life.

To de Graaf, speed-up, overwork, obsessive competition, inadequate vacation time and letting markets dictate our values all belong in one package. They have led to weaker social connections, impaired health and growing unhappiness amid the material plenty.

Wilderness, if one experiences it directly and on its own rhythm, serves as an antidote to stresses of the daily hustle. The wilderness is a mystical place — “almost a revelation,” de Graaf says. It’s the wildlife, the flowers, the quiet. “You miss those things when you’re going by 50 miles a day.”

And with trail racing gaining attention, others will follow. Witness the brisk sales in specialized trail-running shoes and “fastpacking” gear to make the stops as brief as possible.

One must admire the strength, endurance and dedication of these racers. Superb fitness is a requirement for covering a trail encompassing both Mojave Desert oven and the Forester Pass, 13,153 feet up. South of Yosemite National Park are stretches of 200 miles or more without a single road crossing. One can also appreciate that speed hikers are environmentalists, in their own way.

That said, I’ve walked trails where we had to step aside to let racers whiz by. No big deal, though there’s something highly impersonal about these encounters. Slower hominids tend to acknowledge each other’s existence and delight in the natural splendor.

But again, nothing environmentally horrible going on here. So no one is calling for speed limits on hiking wilderness trails. Rather, it’s to reflect on why we passed a law a half-century ago to set them aside.

And that again leads to the question: What goes missing when the objective of hiking a wilderness trail is not to mate with nature but to get through it in the shortest time possible?

Wild country reminds humans of the “bigger-than-we-are.” It puts petty worries about wrinkles and mortgage payments in perspective. And it helps us push the “pause” button on the busyness that devours so many of our allotted hours on earth. That’s the point.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: EncMstr via Wikimedia Commons

Want more environmental news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Minorities Aren’t Well Represented In Environmental Groups, Study Says

Minorities Aren’t Well Represented In Environmental Groups, Study Says

By Marianne LeVine, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Minorities and people of color have not managed to break the “green ceiling” inside environmental organizations, and remain underrepresented on their staffs, according to a report released Monday.

The report found that while people of color make up about 38 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 12 percent to 15.5 percent of the staffs of environmentally focused foundations, nonprofits and government agencies.

None of the largest environmental organizations has a person of color as president, vice president or assistant/associate director, according to the study, which was conducted by University of Michigan professor Dorceta Taylor and commissioned by Green 2.0, a working group focused on addressing diversity challenges in the environmental movement.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Taylor said. “Even more troubling, although most of the survey respondents expressed an interest in bridging this diversity gap, they admit their organizations are unlikely to take the necessary steps to do so.”

Environmental organizations surveyed attributed the lack of staff diversity to a shortage of open positions and qualified applicants.

The study found minority and low-income communities are more likely to support increased funding for environmental initiatives.

“When you survey African-American and Hispanic communities, they are more likely to say, ‘Spend money on environmental issues,'” Taylor said. “From a political perspective, it makes sense for environmental groups to engage low-income communities because a lot of political support sits in those communities.”

Minorities also remain disproportionately affected by health issues related to environmental pollution. According to the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, African-Americans were 20 percent more likely to have asthma than non-Hispanic whites in 2011. Hispanics were 30 percent more likely to visit the hospital for asthma, compared with non-Hispanic whites.

“It’s an aggressive public health issue,” said Mark Magana, founder and principal of the Hispanic Strategy Group, a consulting firm. “I think the green groups need to utilize our community to get the word out.”

In response to the study, environmental group leaders acknowledged their organizations need to do more to increase diversity.

“We believe this report is critically needed and very timely,” said Trip Van Noppen in a statement. Van Noppen is president of Earthjustice, a public interest legal organization focused on environmental issues.

“Our movement, and indeed our own organization, have a serious problem in that we don’t yet reflect the rich diversity of our nation, or even the diversity of groups we represent in our work to protect the environment for all people,” he said.

Photo via WikiCommons

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!