June 2008

The Newsletter of the Conservation Committees
of the Angeles Chapter, Sierra Club. Email items or articles to Editor: Robin Ives, Publisher/Webmaster: Lori Ives
The Conservation Committees provide forums for Club members to discuss impending conservation issues and to coordinate efforts of conservation subcommittees with groups and sections. They meet monthly every third Tuesday (Orange County) and third Wednesday (Angeles Chapter). Contact the Conservation Committee Chairs by the end of the previous month for a place on the agenda. Deadline for newsletter submissions is 16 days before the Chapter meeting.

A New Era in Humboldt County
Mendocino Redwood Company to Assume Control of Pacific Lumber
by Paul Mason
June 6, 2008

Humboldt County, CA – Ending a 23-year drama, Texas bankruptcy Judge Richard S. Schmidt will announce that he favors a sustainable and economically viable plan for north coast forests formerly held by now-bankrupt Pacific Lumber Company.

Judge Schmidt’s ruling for bankrupt Pacific Lumber Company and its 220,000 acres of Humboldt County forests, expected to be filed later today, represents real progress for the region, environmental groups say.

After the ruling is filed, within a few weeks the Mendocino Redwood Company will take over Pacific Lumber operations, including logging on lands now held by the Scotia Pacific Company and the Pacific Lumber mill in Scotia. The Environmental Protection Information Center and the Sierra Club have battled Pacific Lumber’s destructive logging practices since Texas-based Maxxam Corp took over the timber company 23 years ago.

“At long last, Maxxam is gone,” said Sam Johnston, Private Lands Campaigner for EPIC. “This marks a new era for both the people and forests of Humboldt County.”

“This is a positive development for the forested watersheds and people of Humboldt County,” said Paul Mason with the Sierra Club. “We look forward to working with a company that has a much stronger track record of responsible management than its predecessor.”

To protect the ongoing health of the local community, the local economy, and the working forests of this region, Sierra Club and EPIC hope to see: (1) no more cutting of old growth, (2) recovery of species habitat, (3) use of selection harvest methods, (4) permanent maintenance of timberland, and (5) permanent protection for key resource areas, such as the Marbled Murrelet Conservation Areas.

Sierra Club and EPIC are optimistic that Mendocino Redwood Company can meet these challenges and recover this important area, according to Johnston.

“MRC inherits a landscape that has suffered grievously from more than two decades of serious abuse,” said EPIC’s Johnston. “We appreciate MRC’s background in restoration-focused forestry, and want to work with MRC to build a truly sustainable timber company for the long term. MRC needs to make dramatic changes from Pacific Lumber’s practices to fulfill the commitments they have made.”

One of the first tasks MRC will face will be to deal with destructive PL logging plans already in the pipeline, such as the disastrous “Railcar” logging plan to clear-cut redwoods next to Humboldt Redwoods State Park. MRC also needs to perform extensive restoration work on damaged watersheds such as Elk River, Freshwater and Bear Creek.

The decision, expected to be finalized later today, resolves vast uncertainties that had loomed heavily over the bankruptcy proceedings as creditors staked their positions about who should take over Pacific Lumber and its subsidiary, Scotia Pacific. Pacific Lumber’s abandoned plan would have subdivided and sold some 21,000 acres of prime timberlands for development. The plan by the largest secured creditors of the company, the “Noteholders,” would have entailed a risky auction that could have divided forestland and mill, or forced an inflated price resulting in unsustainable harvest levels.

The MRC Plan comes closest to implementing the standards EPIC advocates for timber management in the Redwood Region. These standards flow from three core principles for timberland management: recovery of high-quality timberland and wildlife habitat for salmon & steelhead and other aquatic, terrestrial, and avian wildlife; recovery of an economy based on these resources and full integration of the region's human communities in these efforts.

EPIC and Sierra Club look forward to working with MRC, and are pleased that Judge Schmidt and the bankruptcy court recognized that the MRC plan affords a solid opportunity to realize long-term, sustainable forestry.

Election Day Full of Wins for Sierra Club California
by Bill Magavern, Director, Sierra Club California
June 6, 2008

Low voter turnout did not stand in the way of victory for Sierra Club’s causes and candidates in California’s June 3 primary election.

For the second time in three years, environmental groups joined with our allies to defeat a radical property-owners’ measure that would have harmed our air, water and wildlands, sending Proposition 98 down to defeat. At the same time, voters approved Proposition 99, a sensible measure to protect homes from abuses of government’s eminent domain power.

In legislative primaries up and down the state, candidates with compelling environmental records and platforms triumphed. Sierra Club endorsed nine candidates for state Senate, and all nine won. We endorsed in 31 state Assembly races, and our candidate prevailed in 30 of those.

These victories mean the 2009-10 session of the State Legislature will feature numerous environmental champions. California’s legislative districts are almost all safe for one party or the other, so the primary elections have already determined the next holders of most of these seats.

Former Assemblymember Fran Pavley, author of the two most important global warming laws ever passed in the United States, will return to the Capitol as a senator from the coastal Los Angeles area. Three San Francisco Bay Area Assemblymembers with excellent records—Mark Leno, Mark DeSaulnier and Loni Hancock—will also move to the Senate.

The Assembly freshman class also stars a galaxy of green champions. Winning their primaries with Sierra Club’s endorsement were Waste Board member and former senator Wes Chesbro, Air Resources Board member and San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill (if his current lead holds up), Berkeley environmentalist Nancy Skinner, San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, Silicon Valley educator Paul Fong, Monterey lawyer Bill Monning, former Congressional staffer Bob Blumenfield in the San Fernando Valley, labor leader John Perez in East Los Angeles, and Long Beach City Councilmember Bonnie Lowenthal.

In bipartisan legislation recently introduced in both bodies of the U.S. Congress, more than 400,000 acres of wilderness in Inyo and Mono counties and 45 miles of the Owens River headwaters and Death Valley's Amargosa River could have their wild heritage preserved. In addition, there could also be another 40,000-plus acres of wilderness and several more miles of 'wild and scenic river' protected in the northern San Gabriel Mountains in the Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valleys of southern California. The BLM administers several areas mentioned in the bills.

When Congressman Buck McKeon visited the Eastern Sierra two weeks ago, the word on the street was that his wilderness legislation was dead in the water, and years of haggling and compromise between environmentalists and the motorized community seemed a monumental waste of time. But ... the Eastern Sierra and Northern San Gabriel Rural Heritage Act (HR 6156), a wilderness bill ... would establish over 470,000 acres of wilderness throughout the Eastern Sierra and the White Mountains, as well as wilderness in Los Angeles County ... [Senator] Barbara Boxer simultaneously introduced a Senate version of the same bill (S 3069), which McKeon also believes has a good chance of passing and will put the legislation on the fast track to the President.

A "wild and scenic river" designation would fulfill a dream for many years of some residents of southeastern Inyo County like Brian Brown, owner of the China Ranch Date Farm, and a founding member of the Amargosa Conservancy. It would protect flows on 23 miles of the river from Shoshone to Dumont Dunes.

Sierra Club California’s number one priority in reducing toxic chemicals in products, AB 1879, has passed the Assembly. The authors, Mike Feuer and Jared Huffman, were joined in speaking for the bill by Assemblymembers Sam Blakeslee, Hector de la Torre, Jose Solorio, and Ira Ruskin, who all praised the bill’s comprehensive approach. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) christened himself the "godfather of green," despite having one of the worst environmental records in the Senate. Unfortunately, his hypocrisy—and that of other Senators like Wayne Allard (CO) and James Inhofe (OK)—runs deeper than merely misleading appellations.

First, the vast majority of Republicans joined Senate Democrats in voting 74-14 to begin debating the first serious measure to fight global warming to come to the Senate floor—the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. But then even though they'd just approved the motion to start debating the bill, the Republican leadership insisted on wasting another THIRTY full hours of the Senate's time discussing said motion before debate on the actual bill and amendments could begin.

(Meanwhile, the hyperconservative Family Research Council attacked the Senate for wasting any time at all on the "inconclusive" threat of global warming when what's "really heating up" is all those gays marrying.)

The shenanigans didn't end there. In the crudest of procedural tricks, on Wednesday the Republican leadership refused to dispense with the reading of the bill (as is Senate custom). In what was the equivalent of Chinese water torture for even seasoned C-SPAN aficionados like yours truly, they forced Senate clerks to spend more than nine full hours reading every single word of the 491-page bill. Out loud.

While we knew Senators beholden to Big Oil, Big Coal, and other special interests would stop at nothing to derail meaningful action on global warming, the full depth of their cynicism was revealed when Majority Leader Reid released a leaked GOP strategy memo his staff had intercepted. Among other tidbits, it said that their main focus would be "much more on making political points than in amending the bill…or affecting policy."

Unfortunately, the forces of darkness and everyone's favorite Senate stall tactic—the filibuster—colluded to kill the bill this morning on 48-36 vote (though several absent Senators would've voted yes and raised the total to a not-too-shabby 54). With public pressure and a new president, we're positive the sequel to this week's debate will be much better.

California stands at an environmental and economic crossroads. Behind us lie the carbon-belching energy guzzlers of the 20th century. Ahead, a cleaner, greener economy. Choices made in Sacramento in 2008 will determine how quickly we get there, as powerful polluters seek to bog our state down in fossil-fuel dependency.

Two years ago the legislature and governor made California the first state in the nation to put an enforceable limit on emissions of the pollutants that are warming our planet. The California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32 of 2006, Núñez/Pavley) requires the Air Resources Board (ARB) to formulate a master plan this year that will roll back those emissions to 1990 levels by 2020; the plan should also put our state on track to meet the scientifically established goal of an 80% reduction by 2050, the goal established by Governor Schwarzenegger's executive order. Meeting this challenge is essential to protecting human health, along with our magnificent forests, coast and wildlands, from the effects of global warming pollution.

ARB is off to a good start in its implementation of AB 32. While the agency did experience some rough spots last year, Chair Mary Nichols (who was appointed in the wake of that turmoil) and her team have successfully put the process back on track. They moved quickly to triple the number of early action measures scheduled for adoption by the end of next year, and they met statutory deadlines for adoption of mandatory emissions reporting and assessment of the emissions inventory.

But now, seeking to escape accountability for the pollution they cause, some powerful special interests are lining up to try to derail the progress of California's path-breaking effort to curb climate change. For example, the powerful California Manufacturers and Technology Association fiercely opposed AB 32 as it moved through the legislature. After the bill became law, CMTA started posturing as a cooperative party, claiming that it was interested in a successful implementation of AB 32. But earlier this month CMTA revealed its true goal, joining some obstructionist and reactionary Senate Republicans in calling for a one-year delay in AB 32's critically needed emission reduction rules.

These Senate Republicans held last year's budget hostage in a futile attempt to weaken California's Environmental Quality Act. Now, they're again showing why they're a minority party —they're so desperate to please their corporate contributors that they're trying to roll back vital protections that most Californians strongly support. They are out of touch with the governor and with the voters of all parties, who understand that cleaning up our air and atmosphere helps California's economy. In fact, AB 32 already is driving technological innovation that will fuel California's economy, and is attracting clean tech companies to our state.

Delaying AB 32's emission reductions would not only worsen global warming, it would also hamper development of the Golden State's emerging green economy.

Green jobs have suddenly become a hot topic in the State Capitol, with several legislators introducing bills that seek to stimulate the clean-tech sector and train workers for tasks like installing solar panels and upgrading the efficiency of heating-and-cooling systems. Sierra Club California supports the twin goals of accelerating the shift to a green economy and training Californians for jobs that sustain both our families and our ecology. In the words of Van Jones, founder of Green for All, "The new green economy needs to be the vehicle that reaches out and includes the people and the communities we have thrown away."

Leading the way toward that new green economy will be a major challenge for California's cash-strapped government. While ARB clearly takes the lead in California's greenhouse-gas reduction efforts, many other agencies need to play major roles in reducing emissions from transportation, land use, water projects, electricity, solid waste, forestry, agriculture, government facilities and other sources. California's government should have a united and coordinated approach to curbing global warming. For example, when the California Transportation Commission allocates funds for transportation projects, and when Department of Water Resources plans water projects, they should assure that those projects reduce, rather than worsen, global warming pollution.

The majority of the required cuts in pollution should come from performance standards that directly reduce emissions by forcing automakers to make cars that pollute less and use less gasoline, requiring oil companies to make cleaner gasoline, and making electric utilities acquire one-third of their power from clean energy sources. These measures will make California's air healthier to breathe at the same time as they help curb global warming. ARB's plan also should provide incentives for smart growth, so people can spend more time with their families and less in their vehicles.

Furthermore, polluters should have to pay for the privilege of emitting waste gases into our atmosphere. Revenue raised from the major polluters should be used to promote clean energy and public transit, reduce energy costs of low-income consumers, protect natural resources, and support skills training for green jobs.

The task is large and the stakes are high, but finding the right solutions to global warming can improve our quality of life.

AB 2989, our sponsored bill on outdoor education, passed the California Assembly with a 49 - 29 vote. All Democrats and 2 Republicans voted in support of the bill.

The bill now moves onto the Senate for a hearing in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee. This committee is chaired by Senator Darryl Steinberg (Sacramento), who will soon replace Senator Don Perata (Oakland) as President of the Senate.

Our previous bills have died in the Senate twice before, so we will have our work cut out for us in getting it to the Governor's desk

Planning and Conservation League’s Statement
on Governor's Declaration of a State Drought

"Governor Schwarzenegger's drought proclamation offers up a challenge—and an opportunity—for all Californians to conserve water and to work together to find new solutions to solve our water problems.

"Unfortunately the Governor's executive order relies heavily on outdated strategies that have created the very problems we now seek to solve. We encourage the Governor to embrace measures that will allow California to grow without increasing demand on already over-allocated water sources. We need strong policies that can decrease water demand, provide climate-resilient water supplies, and truly provide relief for the communities, fisherman, businesses and ecosystems that are suffering from lack of reliable water.

"More and more residents and businesses are facing severe water rationing in California, while water demands and communities continue to grow. While the Governor's proclamation references the need to provide water for our growth, his executive order relies heavily on the same sources of water that are now in decline."

"Measures such as Assembly Member Krekorian's Water Efficiency Security Act, co-sponsored by the Planning and Conservation League, would help prevent rationing by ensuring growing California communities have the water they need without further increasing water demand on over-burdened water resources. However, despite a groundswell of support from local water agencies, to city councils, community groups and conservation organizations, this pivotal measure failed to gain traction in the State Assembly.

"Ensuring that new growth in California will not lead to increased rationing and exacerbate the pending water crisis is a critical step to solving California's water crisis. The Planning and Conservation League has a 43-year history of working toward ensuring there is enough water for all Californians, and we pledge to work with Governor Schwarzenegger to ensure that California's water supply meets the needs for all communities, businesses and the environment—for today and the future."

The 9th circuit court has just ruled in favor of Sierra Club and several other conservation organizations' challenge to the 2004 revised "Sierra Nevada Framework" plan. Kudoes to Pat Gallagher and our legal team for great work, along with attorneys & representatives of the other groups.

This a huge victory against the Bush administration's pro-logging plan for the Sierra Nevada. The Ninth Circuit took our side in a fight to stop intensive logging under this plan. The court focused squarely on the USDA's penchant to cut and sell big trees to finance fuels and fire work, and the flaw in their decision that no other source of revenue for fuels work need be explored. The court stated:

"Sell trees to loggers. Use the money to clear areas of what is potential fuel for fire. The solution has a secondary benefit: what the loggers cut can, at least in part, be timber that was potential for fire. In one sale, a fire hazard can be removed and the USFS paid so that it can remove the fuel of future fires.

"Two for one always has an attractive ring. But are there no alternative ways of getting money to do the clearing that is imperative? Obviously, there may be. First of all, there is the USFS’s own budget. Does that budget contain any funds that could be devoted to fuel removal? Is every one of its activities so necessary and so tightly allocated that no money could be shifted? We do not know the answer because this alternative has not been explored.

"Suppose that the USFS and its parent, the Department of Agriculture, cannot spare a dime. What then? Appropriate appropriations come from Congress.

The work of fire prevention is work of the first importance. If the USFS does not have enough, why should not Congress be asked to give it more?

Surely the avoidance of catastrophic fire in the national forests must rate a high priority among the needs of the nation.

"The Attorney General of California raised several alternative methods to fund USFS’s fire reduction objectives, including requesting a special appropriation from Congress, re-prioritizing other funding, and altering its fuel treatment program. USFS failed to consider these alternatives in its implementation of the 2004 SEIS. So long as all these alternatives remain unexamined or unreexamined, so long does the SEIS fail to conform to the law. The district court abused its discretion in concluding that USFS complied with NEPA’s requirement To “rigorously explore and objectively evaluate all reasonable alternatives.”

"Postponement of the Forest Service plans may increase the danger posed by fires; but the Forest Service and Congress do not appear helpless to find the funds to decrease the dangers. The question we address here is whether USFS’s choice of funding for fire reduction—rather than fire reduction itself—outweighs California’s preservation interests. We conclude that it does not, given that “special solicitude” should be afforded California’s stake in its natural resources and that the Forest Service did not consider alternatives to its choice of funding. Massachusetts v. Environmental. Protection Agency ...."

The biggest single step we can take to cut global warming pollution is to improve the fuel economy of our cars—and to do it on a much faster timeline than the Bush Administration wants.

We need the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to tell Detroit to Speed Up the timetable for making gas-saving cars.

Late last week, under a court order, the Bush administration finally issued a climate change report summarizing the latest global warming science and laying out the administration's priorities for climate research. New information in the report included analysis of global warming's impact on low-income, elderly and already weak communities—projecting an increase in illness and death caused by more severe and intense heat waves and the spread of disease, like Lyme and West Nile.

At the suggestion of a number of Sierra Club volunteer leaders, and in agreement with the Club's overall value of using resources efficiently and avoiding waste, bottled water should no longer to be offered at any Sierra Club event or be sold from any Sierra Club office vending machine.

Portland, OR—You could design a takeoff on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego while trying to sort out where Senator McCain really stands on energy and global warming issues as he moves towards his general-election showdown with Obama/Clinton.

A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal asked me if we had decided to endorse a candidate in the Presidential election, and I said, "No, because all three candidates still have the opportunity to show real environmental leadership." Note the word "opportunity." If you read this morning's Journal, you would think that Senator McCain had risen to the challenge and was trying to demonstrate the true environmental leadership he has often talked about, but rarely shown. (Lifetime League of Conservation Voters rating: 24 percent.)

The Journal story is headlined "McCain Woos Democrats on Environment," and prominently features my offer to McCain to step up to the plate by saying that the Club "might not endorse" and could easily leave readers thinking that McCain was almost indistinguishable from Clinton and Obama. The article has McCain quoting Bruce Babbitt as a big fan of his environmental record. The paper also notes that I summed up McCain's record as being better than that of the average Republican senator's but dramatically worse than those of such Republican governors as Crist of Florida and Schwarzenegger of California.

But it's a bit hard to reconcile the profile McCain hopes to project with McCain's statement last week that the federal government ought to bribe states like California and Florida to open up their coastal waters to the oil industry by offering them richer royalty payments.

And if you look at McCain's own advertisements, his strategy looks a lot like something Dick Morris might have designed to triangulate Bill Clinton back in 1992. This ad, "A Better Way," for example, might serve as a textbook for triangulators. The voice-over says (about the climate crisis) that "One extreme says high taxes and crippling regulations are the answer. Another denies the problem even exists. There's a better way...."

Presumably McCain will claim in the fall that it's Obama and Clinton who favor those "high taxes." Right off the bat, Clinton and Obama pointed out the irony that McCain delivered his speech today at a wind-turbine manufacturer that has been telling Congress that it would be laying off workers because of the failure to renew the renewable-energy tax credits—a failure that resulted in part from McCain's absence from the Senate on two critical votes to renew them, each of which failed by one vote.

What's really going on here is that McCain is once again trying to talk the talk without walking the walk. If you look at the three key ingredients in solving global warming, he's absolutely terrible on two (encouraging renewable energy and cleaning up the coal and oil industries) and stuck in the past on the third—by setting outdated limits on how much carbon dioxide we will emit. The science on climate change has evolved alarmingly in the past five years. McCain's ad concedes this, saying, "climate change wreaks havoc with deadly weather." But McCain's proposed global warming bill remains where it was in 2003. Back then, introducing it did represent real early leadership—but that early leadership appears to have stalled out badly as the senator gets closer to the White House.

Today's media blitz does show that McCain wants voters to think he's still leading. Unfortunately, reading the fine print strongly suggests that he's blinking.

San Francisco, CA—Senator John McCain, in announcing his global warming plan in Portland, Oregon last week, once again defended his support for more subsidies for nuclear power, saying that the pending Warner-Lieberman bill doesn't subsidize nuclear "far enough, in my estimation." He made these remarks just after he said, opposing subsidies for solar power, "I'm a little wary—I have to give you straight talk—about government subsidies..."

So how does McCain justify his double standard for nuclear power? He likes to claim that it is a proven clean technology, and cites as evidence France, where he claims nuclear power generates 80 percent of the electricity. (This fondness for things French is yet another aspect of McCain that may seem to depart from Republican orthodoxy.) But a recent analysis by Lawrence Solomon shows that citing the French experience is yet another example of McCain having failed to keep up with events.

Solomon explains the sordid story of France's nuclear romance. It's technical, but if you want to know why nuclear power is—even for its wildest fans—a limited part of our energy future, worth reading. But the bottom line is that nuclear power effectively bankrupted Electricite de France, the French power company. As a result, 61 percent of the population of France favors a complete phase-out of nuclear power—a larger anti-nuclear constituency than in the U.S., where experience with nuclear and its economic problems is much more limited.

These facts aren't state secrets but easily obtained by anyone whose interest in nuclear power is as long-standing as McCain's. But while McCain has been ardently shilling for nuclear subsidies for a long time, he seems to have stopped learning much new about its economic realities a long time ago—actually back in the 1970s, when the industry still claimed its power would be "too cheap to meter" instead of proving to be, as Amory Lovins likes to say, "too expensive to matter."

Apostle Islands, WI—Here in one of the most recently glaciated, and therefore youngest, ecosystems in the U.S., it's all too easy to grasp the complexity of the 21st century's ecological challenges.

In Duluth, the papers headline what seems like good news—major revenue growth for the Port of Duluth—importing wind turbines from overseas. This supplements Duluth's other major cash generator, exporting iron ore to China and other places where those wind-turbines are made. This two-way trade is good for the Port of Duluth but bad for the U.S. economy and the environment. If we had maintained the same kind of interest in wind power that other countries did, those same turbines would be manufactured much closer to home—in Chicago and Cleveland.

One reason why the global reach of the wind-turbine trade is bad for the environment is that all that shipping results in 5 billion gallons of untreated ballast water containing invasive species being dumped into Duluth's harbor every year. As a direct result zebra and quagga mussels, and round gobies and Eurasian ruffe, have already invaded Lake Superior's once pristine water. Because the lake's ecosystem is relatively young, it is more easily invaded by these alien species.

I'm here to deliver a commencement speech at Northland College, one of the greenest—in both curriculum and sustainability—colleges in the U.S. But northern Wisconsin is hurting economically because its paper mills are shutting down—not from over harvesting of the forests, but because paper manufacturers must compete with Chinese imports—produced from illegal rainforest logging in Myanmar and Indonesia. So the economy of northern Wisconsin is suffering because we aren't protecting the rainforests of Southeast Asia, while we are missing the opportunity to produce paper from more potentially sustainable forests.

And although the Native American presence is still strong here, there is tremendous anxiety over the wild rice harvest that is one of the tribal economic staples. The last few years have been dry, and the level of Lake Superior has fallen, forcing the rice beds into dormancy—a normal occurrence. Now the lake is rising again. But with so many invasive plant species seeded around the lake, it's feared that they took over critical habitat during the dry period and that the wild rice beds might not be able to come back.

And here, where the temperate forest transitions to the boreal, people have watched global warming for years—as the boreal slowly but steadily retreats northward with the warming globe.

What's striking is that all of these ecological challenges could, at the front end, have been easily managed or avoided. In fact, many could still be tamed—but it will require thinking about their interconnection—not just solving each challenge in the cheapest or simplest fashion. And if the web of life is this complex in a place as young as Lake Superior, how much harder will it be in older and more complex ecosystems such as the southern Appalachians or the rainforests of Indonesia? This is a century when we need to think about connections—something market fundamentalists aren't good at.

But hopefully, it is something that students trained at Northland will be good at. The school, for example, provides 20 of its students each year with the chance to see their entire liberal arts curriculum through the lens of Lake Superior and its watershed. Programs like Superior Connects are what this century calls for.

Washington, DC—"Who's afraid of a library book, a library book, a library book? Who's afraid of a library book, so close to the election?"

I've changed the old jingle a bit, because EPA Administrator Steve Johnson isn't afraid of the big bad wolf (that's Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's phobia.) No, Johnson is scared of libraries. Ever since he shut down the EPA's network of regional libraries without legal authorization, Johnson has been stonewalling Congressional mandates to restore the system.

He's now reopened the library system—but in name only. The Chicago regional library, serving the entire Midwest, will be housed in an area one-tenth its former size—a space as big as the men's restroom—and there will be no effort to house its former Great Lakes reference collection at all. The library in Dallas will have two staff workstations and only one visitor workstation—and apparently no books.

Even this is not enough. To make sure that no one gets unauthorized access to facts or science, all of the EPA's information resources have been put under the control of a Chief Information Czar and Censor, (my title) a political appointee named Molly O'Neill. O'Neill has scrapped all of the EPA's long-standing, professionally developed information-management policies and will manage everything herself.

This behavior seems inexplicable—anybody seriously seeking to make trouble for the EPA's policies can find this information somewhere else if they dig hard enough. All Johnson is accomplishing is making the work of researchers much harder.

But this puzzle begins to make sense if you remember that Johnson is presiding over—if perhaps not actually creating—a virtual reign of terror at his agency. No one at the EPA can talk about anything that matters—unless the White House wants them to. When EPA Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett was deposed by attorneys for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the agency's decision to deny California a waiver to implement its clean-car program, he revealed that Administrator Johnson clearly had been leaning towards granting at least a partial waiver. Only after Johnson was summoned to the White House, did he change his position. But Burnett's lawyer made it clear that the EPA would not permit him to reveal what he knew about whom Johnson had met with at the White House, much less what Johnson was told—even though Burnett was an EPA employee and not an advisor to the President (which might have legitimately enabled him to claim executive privilege). The most common phrase in Burnett's deposition is "Objection. Same grounds" by Burnett's lawyer, referring to the EPA's order that Burnett not reveal anything Johnson told him about his White House meetings.

Burnett has submitted his resignation to EPA—so he will not longer be subject to this reign of terror. He's clearly very upset at both the California clean-car decision and Johnson's failure to act on the basis of the science in setting clean air standards for ozone.

But the rest of the Agency still has 234 more days to survive. Johnson is being terrorized by the White House, and those who are fearful, govern by fear.

San Francisco, CA—No, I'm not referring to how the rest of the world views George Bush's United States. Nor even to how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fans feel about each other. Today's question is why the American right hates polar bears.

Not all conservatives loathe Ursus maritimus. South Carolina Senator John Courson, whose conservative credentials are established by his role as Strom Thurmond's campaign director, loves to photograph bears. A year ago he told me, "I don't need a scientist to tell me global warming is going to happen. I've been to Churchill Manitoba to photograph polar bears, and I've seen global warming happening."

But this commonsense, seemingly conservative approach doesn't apply to most of the pundits on the right. They almost foam at the mouth at the idea of declaring the polar bear at risk.

Columnist George Will recently launched the latest salvo. He is withering in his contempt for the idea that because the bears might be wiped out in 45 years we should act now. "45 years ago, the now long-forgotten global cooling menace was not yet foreseen." (Of course, 45 years ago AIDS was not foreseen either—does Will reject taking public health steps now to protect our grandchildren?)

And Will is not alone. The Cato Institute trotted out Patrick Michaels to say, "This is a political, not a scientific act." Fox News trumpeted that the polar bear scare was "on thin ice."

What's going on here? Is this simply shilling for the oil industry's desire to be able to drill without limits in polar bear habitat? (That's clearly what motivates Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in her threats to sue over the listing and to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars trying to debunk it.)

That may be part of it. But Will pivots off his attack on the polar bear listing to uncover the real underpinning of the right's resistance to admitting the reality of global warming. "What Friedrich Hayek called the 'fatal conceit'—the idea that government can know the future's possibilities and can and should control the future's unfolding—is the left's agenda." He goes on to say that this concern about the future is bogus—it's simply a ploy to get control of people's lives. "The left exists to enlarge the state's supervision of life, narrowing individual choices...."

That's what we need to understand. The very concept that present generations should try to anticipate the future consequences of our acts, and take responsibility for them, is anathema to the leaders of the current American right.

Which means, of course, that they are not true conservatives at all. Compare Will's screed with this quote from the father of conservatism, Britain's Edmund Burke: "Society is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born." Or listen to Barry Goldwater's original inspiration, Russell Kirk, on the environmental crisis, writing in the 1960s: "The modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining," he wrote, "is evidence of what an age without veneration does to itself and its successors."

You can almost imagine Will's lips curling as he closes with this line: "Onward green soldiers, into preventive war on behalf of some bears …."

Angeles Chapter Conservation Committee
3435 Wilshire Blvd Ste 320, Los Angeles CA 90010-1904
Conference call access: (866) 501-6174, Conference Code: 1000400#
Chair: Judy Anderson <judyanderson@earthlink.net>

7:15 Introductions and Announcements for future events/issues.
Approval of the Agenda

7:25 Michael Tou from Congressman Brad Sherman's office will talk on the subject of the Army Corps of Engineers lowering the protection for the LA River by not identifying some parts as navigable.

7:35 LA/Long Beach port – Anderson (Vietmeier, Hinz, Politeo)

7:40 Reports

Forests - E. Sierra and Angeles NF Wilderness Bill ( Don Bremner)
Transportation - High Speed Rail progress (Darrell Clarke)
Election Activity (feedback and assessment) (Susana Reyes)

7:55 Discussion

Transportation CMTEE – Transportation Sales Tax Measure (Darrell Clarke)

8:10 Action Items:

Soledad Canyon Mine (Cemex) Federal Legislation Recommendation
( Katherine Squires) (awaiting copy of resolution from the Santa Clarita Group)
"Cool Cities Waterfront" resolution (Harbor Vision Task Force (Tom Politeo)
SEE BELOW
Historic Protection for Griffith Park (Delphine Trowbridge and Joe Young)
SEE BELOW

8:40 Closed session

9:00 Adjourn —- next meeting July 16.

The following items ave been deferred until July:

Conservation Management ( progress on review of procedures vis-à-vis negotiating) (Judy Anderson)
Coordinators Activity (recap, and plans) (Jennifer Robinson, Maddalena Serra)
Brief slide inventory on current positive projects and projects of concern affecting San Pedro Bay and freight movement. (Harbor Vision Task Force)
Support for Cities resolutions banning plastic shopping bags (David Czamanske)

Cool Cities Waterfront Resolution

The Sierra Club urges the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners to direct port staff to add a "cool cities" option to the Draft EIR/S for the Los Angeles Waterfront before the DEIR/S is circulated. The option should address challenges with global warming, livable cities, environmental stewardship and completion of the California Coastal Trail in the area west of the Main Channel and south of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, as well as the area under the bridge and Knoll Hill. Completion of the option will require study and integration of off site pedestrian links, transit and parking.
A letter supporting the additional alternative is to be delivered to the five harbor commissioners and Port's executive director and to be CCed to Councilwoman Hahn and Mayor Villraigosa's staff as soon as possible. Further specifications of the "cool cities" waterfront alternative should be developed as promptly by the Harbor Vision Task Force working in conjunction with interested committees dealing with energy, green building, transportation and wetlands habitat. These efforts will require outreach to other allies, both regional and in the San Pedro area.

Pros:
The waterfront development is a significant development, entailing more than 300,000 square feet of construction of retail space, a cruise terminal, possible convention center, and other structures in a tidelands setting where the site property is administered by the City in trust for the people of the State of California.
Current plan options create an auto-centric "shopping mall by the sea" and do not adequately address concerns of global warming and livable communities which have been expressed by environmentalists, local community members and by progressive merchants. If the City is to expect private developers to break new ground in developing infill development that fully supports cool and livable cities, the City must lead the way and can set a good example in this project.

Cons:
There are multiple con positions possible which avoid environmental issues in different ways, for example, we need to develop the waterfront as fully as possible without regard to cool cities issues for the immediate work that would be offered. I cannot think of any con arguments, except the work involved, as to why the Sierra Club should not push for this.

The Griffith Park Planning Task Force of the Angeles Chapter Passed by the Griffith Park Planning Task Force

Background:
      Griffith Park was donated to the City of Los Angeles by Griffith J. Griffith over a hundred years ago. It was intended for the benefit of the people and was to be kept as it was originally, an oasis in the midst of urban sprawl and a refuge fo those don’t have access to nature.
      Over the years, however, Griffith Park has undergone numerous intrusions: Freeways sliced many acres of open land; the Los Angeles River was channelized; numerous structures have been built, including a museum and a senior citizen complex.
      The City of Los Angeles prepared a draft master plan in 2005 which promotes further development of Griffith Park.
       In May, 2008 the Griffith Jenkins Griffith Trust filed an application with the City of Los Angeles to designate Griffith Park as a Historical-Cultural site. It would join New York’s Central Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, San Diego’s Balboa Park, and Washington’s Rock Creek Park (among others) as parks with historical designations.
      How does designation as a historical-cultural monument deter development?
      Designation recognizes the site (including existing structures, landscape, plant life, hiking trails) as important to the history of Los Angeles. It requires the Cultural Heritage Commission of the City of os Angeles to review any proposed exterior and interior alterations in accordance with national standards for rehabilitation. It also activates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) which protects historic landmarks from adverse impacts without environmental review.

Argument in support of the resolution:
The Sierra Club has supported efforts to designate Griffith Park as a wilderness park, free from development. In addition, the Sierra Club has voiced its disapproval of the draft master plan for Griffith Park under review by the City of Los Angeles. Designation of Griffith Park as a cultural-historical site would add a layer of protection against development.
In addition, the Griffith Jenkins Griffith Trust believes that such designation would mitigate against development within the park, as do three neighborhood councils which recently voted to support designation as a cultural historical site.

Argument against the recommendation:
No opposition has been voiced. However, designation as a historical cultural site would make development more difficult within Griffith Park, and those who may want to turn Griffith Park into a revenue enhancer for the City would probably oppose any efforts to deter development.

Orange County Conservation Committee
Inn at the Park, 10 Marquette, Irvine. Take the 405 to Culver, go west towards the beach. Follow Culver past Michelson and University; turn right on Harvard. Take Harvard to Marquette; turn right. It's on the corner of Harvard and Marquette on the right hand side. http://angeles.sierraclub.org/ocosc/ Chair: Patti Barnes <mezzohiker@msn.com>

DRAFT AGENDA — Monday, June 16, 2008, 7 pm (NOTE CHANGE OF DAY THIS MONTH!)

7:00 Introductions and Announcements

7:15 Approval of Minutes-OCCC Meeting May 20, 2008

7:20 Angeles Chapter Staff Report (???) - Jennifer Robinson

7:30 Brief Presentation (F.Y.I.): Sheet Pile Project in San Juan Creek, Pros and Cons - Paul Carlton

7:50 Emergency Resolutions (if any)-Discussion, Voting, etc.

8:15 pm Adjourn

Conservation Committees Calendar
If you have an upcoming meeting or event to be listed below:

Angeles Chapter Conservation
Management Committee Chair/Policy: Judy Anderson Vice Chairs: Marcia Hanscom, Lynne Plambeck Newsletter Editor: Robin Ives At Large: Darrell Clarke, Jay Matchett, Bonnie Sharpe, Virgil Shields, Rosemarie White Not Voting: Conservation Coordinator: Jennifer Robinson Conservation Coordinator: Maddalena Serra Publisher/Webmaster/Circulation: Lori Ives (909) 621-7148	Grants Committee Bonnie Sharpe/Chir Joe Young/Vice Chair Judy Anderson Marcia Hanscom Robin Ives Jay Matchett Virgil Shields Rudy Vietmeier