The Ducks Are Back

Even the Supreme Court has figured out that global warming is a problem. From AP:

The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under the landmark environment law, and the "laundry list" of reasons it has given for declining to do so are insufficient, the court said.

"A reduction in domestic emissions would slow the pace of global emissions increases, no matter what happens elsewhere," Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion. "EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change."

The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first case on the subject, with many Republicans as well as Democrats now pressing for action. However, the administration has argued for a voluntary approach rather than new regulation.

In case you were wondering whether Antonin Scalia is still an administration flack:

Justice Antonin Scalia, in a separate dissent, said the court should not substitute its judgment in place of the EPA's, "no matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake."

Scalia really seems to think there should be only one branch to the government.

I honestly can't see why everyone says he's such a great legal scholar. I've read some of his opinions, and they all seem to start halfway through the conversation. It's what he doesn't examine that's usually key.

Here's the NYT story, with links to the opinions.

And in related news (I love that -- makes me feel like David Brinkley.):

The Supreme Court dealt a setback to the utility industry Monday, supporting a federal clean air initiative aimed at forcing power companies to install pollution control equipment on aging coal-fired power plants.

In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled against Duke Energy Corp. in a lawsuit originally brought by the Clinton administration, part of a massive enforcement effort targeting more than a dozen utilities. . . .

Frank O'Donnell, president of the nonprofit Clean Air Watch, said the Supreme Court ruling will only translate into cleaner air if the Bush administration "actually begins aggressive enforcement of the Clean Air Act. There is great doubt the administration will do that."

The administration has already proposed to relax New Source Review requirements for power plants along the lines sought by Duke.

This is the program that the Bush administration tried to eliminate -- they threw out the majority of the pending cases under this rule -- refused to prosecute.

Add in this post by David Neiwert about the administration's efforts to gut the Endangered Species Act, and you've got quite a nice picture of our preznit and his goons on the environmental front. From a press release by CommonDreams.org, quoted by Neiwert:

The U.S. Interior Department is preparing a wide-ranging set of regulations which substantially weaken the federal Endangered Species Act, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Biological Diversity.

"These draft regulations slash the Endangered Species Act from head to toe," said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "They undermine every aspect of law - recovery, listing, preventing extinction, critical habitat, federal oversight and habitat conservation plans - all of it is gutted."

—The draft regulations would -

—Remove recovery of a species or population as a protection standard;

—Allow projects to proceed that have been determined to threaten species with extinction;

—Permit destruction of all restored habitat within critical habitat areas;

—Prevent critical habitat areas from being used to protect against disturbance, pesticides, exotic species, and disease;

—Severely limit the listing of new endangered species; and

—Empower states to veto endangered species introductions as well as administer virtually all aspects of the Endangered Species Act within their borders.

Great performance by the Bushwhackers, no? This is what happens when you have energy companies writing air pollution regs and ranchers and developers interpreting the Endangered Species Act.

Neiwert summs it up very neatly:

Now, it's unlikely that anyone views the larger election outcome to the Republican record on environmental issues, but the larger picture from the vote -- a rejection of conservative malfeasance on many fronts, including the war, the economy, and the environment, including global warming -- suggests at the very least the public was demanding accountability from an administration that to date has behaved like a power-mad elephant rampaging through the global china shop.

And yet, at every turn, this administration has defied this message and refused to shape its behavior or its policies in a way that acknowledged any kind of accountability whatsoever, whether on the war, the economy, or the many investigations into its malfeasance. These pending regulations reflect just how broadly Bush and his cohorts intend to take this damn-the-voters mentality.

Impeachment is too good for them.


Let me tell you a story, the one that's in the title:

I work across the street from the AMA Building in Chicago, a very nice I. M. Pei building in a sort of refined American Brutalist style (which just means that the granite is all polished) -- very dramatic, with a glass-walled entry level, a tower with a triangular foot print and a large square cut-out, and a large plaza. There is an abstract fountain in the plaza -- actually, it's more of a pool with water welling up in the center -- triangular with a black granite core, surrounded by a low gray granite wall where you can sit, that last year acted as summer residence for a pair of ducks. You have to understand that this is a very busy part of town, just off Michigan Avenue, a block with major traffic arteries on three sides, and the fountain is maybe ten yards from the street, with heavy pedestrian traffic. There are lots of tourists, lots of shoppers, lots of office workers, there's a subway station on the corner, four bus and trolley stops within half a block. The ducks could have cared less. They would sleep, relax, fly off to do whatever it is that ducks do in the course of their daily business, and then come back for the night. People watched them, sometimes fed them, but mostly everybody just left them alone and enjoyed the fact that they were there. They were one of the high points of the day for a lot of people.

Last night, they were back.

I can't get over the feeling that Dick Cheney would probably shoot them in the face.