Doug Brinkley, Rep. Don Young squabble over Arctic refuge

Famed biographer Doug Brinkley has written exhaustively on the history of Alaskan wilderness, but Alaskan Rep. Don Young was having none of it recently when it came to the issue of drilling for oil at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The two men clashed bitterly last Friday as Brinkley, a professor at Rice University and the author most recently of “The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1979-1960,” testified at a House Natural Resources Committee meeting regarding the effects of drilling in the refuge. Young interrupted Brinkley’s testimony, calling him “Dr. Rice” and saying his testimony was “garbage.”

“Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university,” Brinkley shot back. “I know you went to Yuba College and you couldn't graduate.”

Young, getting visibly upset, retorted: “I'll call you anything I want to call you when you sit in that chair. You just be quiet.”

"You don't own me," Brinkley said. "I pay your salary.”

Young sat through the testimony of several environmentalists at the panel, and when he got his chance to speak he noted in another YouTube clip featured on his congressional website that the Alaskan acreage they were talking about “is not the pristine area with wolves laying next to caribou, it’ll be a cold day in Saudi Arabia when that happens,” and added: “We’ve heard from environmentalists, and I understand their beliefs, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

After the exchange, he said he was “pissed” about Brinkley’s comments.

Brinkley got the last word when he expressed his surprise to “hear a congressman today say there’s nothing in his district. It’s boring. It’s flat. It’s not exciting. I don’t know a representative who doesn’t love their district. Every state in America’s landscape is beautiful if you love it. But some people love money more than their homeland or where they live, and I’m afraid that that’s why this fight has to keep coming up 50 years later, we’re still trying to tell people the Arctic refuge is real. It belongs to the American people.”

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Photo: Musk ox move across an area of coastal plain inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that could be considered for oil exploration in Alaska. Credit: Associated Press/Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Peter Brown back onboard with Sea Shepherd

This post has been corrected. See note at bottom for details.

Peter Brown, the activist and filmmaker who recently released a warts-and-all portrait of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in his documentary film, "Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist," is rejoining the crew for its annual Antarctic anti-whaling campaign after a two-year hiatus.

"I'm really looking forward to it. Paul's been really great this year, helping with ['Confessions']," Brown said, referring to Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson. "And we've been getting a lot closer. I'm looking forward to sailing with him."

The return is something of a surprise after Brown's acrimonious departure during Sea Shepherd's 2008-2009 winter campaign to stop Japanese whalers in the Antarctic. Those campaigns are the subject of the hit Animal Planet TV show, "Whale Wars," and in Seasons 1 and 2, Brown was made out to be something of a villain -– clashing with crew and camera people, and the subject of much side-interview sniping on the show. He left after a rope on a zodiac boat nearly cut his thumb off.

During two years off, Brown put together "Confessions," compiled from nearly 30 years of footage with the organization. It threatened to raise some hackles with the Sea Shepherd organization as it revealed how campaigns are improvised on the fly, including one incident in which Brown openly admitted he started a riot that resulted in Sea Shepherd officer Lisa DiStefano being dunked after indigenous Makah tribespeople pelted the two of them with rocks. Watson, however, has supported the film, saying his only beef is its name -– he doesn't like the comparison to terrorists -- and showed up for a premiere in Bermuda.

"I don't do this stuff for TV," Brown said. "I'm trying to stop whaling. Paul asked me to come back and I accepted."

Brown is set to rejoin the Sea Shepherd crew Dec. 6 in the harbor city of Fremantle, near Perth in Western Australia, to prepare for this winter’s anti-whaling campaign. He will be first mate on the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin -– named after the Australian star of the nature program "Crocodile Hunter."

Brown is a veteran Sea Shepherd campaigner, having joined the group in 1981. He is also a veteran of TV, having produced and directed the proto-reality show "Real People" beginning in the 1970s. He was also an original producer for "Entertainment Tonight." 

A fifth season of "Whale Wars" has yet to be announced or confirmed, but Brown says it doesn't matter to him if the show's crew comes along.

"I think it's the end of the line for the Japanese whalers this year," he said during a talk outside a Santa Monica coffeehouse. "They really should have given it up last year. They went home early, they didn't get their quota."

"But instead of realizing that maybe whaling should be done forever, they go back and they have an earthquake, they have a tsunami, they have a nuclear accident. And yet, they're going to subsidize a whaling fleet to tune of $200 million to go down there again, plus $27 million more in extra security. And why? They don't want to surrender to Sea Shepherd. It's not that they need whales to feed people."

Brown said his next film project will be a "Roger & Me"-type documentary project in which he visits whaling nations and confronts them directly on their home turf. But, in the meantime, he's bringing that high-energy confrontation back to the boat.

"Paul knew the trouble 'Whale Wars' caused me, so it'll be much better this time. I won't be dancing around, worried about hurting people's feelings. It's on!" he laughed. "Hang on for the ride, you're on the Peter Brown show!"

[For the Record, 2 p.m. Nov. 23, 2011: An earlier version of this post stated incorrectly that Brown would be captain on the Steve Irwin. He will be first mate.]

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Photo: Peter Brown is set to captain the vessel Steve Irwin when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society returns to Antarctic waters in December to fight the Japanese whaling fleet. Credit: Kelsey Stevens

Karen Dawn's Thanksgiving turkey rescue

This post has been corrected. See note at bottom for details.

Animal activist and author Karen Dawn makes a point of having turkey for dinner every Thanksgiving, but the birds are at the table, not on it. For the fourth year in a row, Dawn, the author of the book "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals," has rescued two turkeys from an L.A. slaughterhouse and is hosting them at her home in Pacific Palisades.

“They’re named Russell and Perry,” says Dawn, speaking from her home. “I had originally named them Russell and Katy, after Russell Brand and Katy Perry, who saw the movie ‘Forks Over Knives’ and Russell tweeted and said he was going vegan.”

After Dawn had bathed and blow-dried the birds at her home, as is her annual ritual, she noticed “Katy” had quite the snood -– the comb that hangs over the animal’s beak -– and that she was actually a he. So, she changed the name to Perry.

Dawn hosts two new birds each year, in what she calls her Palisades Pardoning, to raise awareness of the number of turkeys slaughtered each year for the annual holiday, and the conditions in which they are raised. Sherrie Rosenblatt, spokesperson for the National Turkey Federation, an industry group, says that an estimated 46 million turkeys will be consumed during Thanksgiving feasting in the U.S. this year.

According to information available on Dawn’s website, thankingthemonkey.com, the birds are often kept in overcrowded pens with their toes clipped back to remove their claws and beaks seared off.

Responding to such claims, Rosenblatt noted, “A turkey farmer’s No. 1 priority is ensuring the health and well-being of their flock. That’s how we can provide safe, nutritious and affordable food for consumers. Not only on Thanksgiving day but every day.”

Dawn’s other couples were originally named Bruce and Emily (after actors Bruce Greenwood and Emily Deschanel) -- later changed to Brucilla and Emily after a similar mix-up -- Monty and Marsha, and Ellen and Portia after vegans Ellen DeGeneres and Portia Di Rossi.

“People are very good at compartmentalizing: animals that you eat versus the animals that you pet,” says Dawn. “So I do something that makes it harder for people to compartmentalize. A lot of the neighbors will not eat turkey at Thanksgiving after meeting these guys.”

Curious neighbors come over to Dawn’s house to cuddle with the birds, which quickly habituate to human company and enjoy the attention.

“Friday, the little boys next door asked: ‘When are the turkeys coming?’ And I said ‘tomorrow’ and they literally jumped up and down with delight,” adds Dawn.

The birds will stay with Dawn through the Christmas holiday, then in January they’ll move to their new home at Farm Sanctuary’s Animal Acres in Acton, where Sunday visitors can see Russell and Perry and many other animals.

[For the Record, 6 p.m. Nov. 21, 2011: An earlier version of this post used a photo and a video that were from 2010. Both have been changed.]

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Photo: Karen Dawn blow-dries the feathers of one of her birds at her Pacific Palisades home. Credit: Hugh Slavitt

Greenhouse gases, water vapor and you

Several readers pointed out an omission in last week’s post about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s release of its Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which showed that man-made gases that contribute to global warming continued a steady rise. The post -– and the AGGI –- mentioned carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases, but failed to mention the biggest contributor to global warming: plain old water vapor.

“I want to comment that the way-dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is not mentioned, namely water vapor,” writes Ken Saunders of Pacific Palisades. “Water vapor accounts for about 97 percent of the total (natural plus man-emitted) greenhouse warming of the planet. See, e.g., John Houghton's ‘The Physics of Atmospheres, 3rd edition,’ Cambridge University Press, 2002.”

This is true, water vapor is the major player in the greenhouse effect and is often omitted from reports and reporting about global warming -– mostly because it is more of a symptom than a cause in global climate change, and cannot be easily mitigated.

Tom Boden, director of the U.S. Energy Department’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, acknowledges in an email: “Folks are right when they state water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas and not routinely measured directly in the atmosphere. Atmospheric water vapor is difficult to measure, highly reactive, and variable in amount due to meteorological conditions (i.e., atmospheric water vapor is continuously being generated from evaporation and continuously removed by condensation).”

“Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas and natural levels of [carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide] are also crucial to creating a habitable planet,” writes John Reilly, professor at MIT and co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Center for Environmental Policy Research, in an email.

That idea leads many to believe that global warming is natural and cannot be affected much by human activity. Reader Roy W. Rising of Valley Village writes: “Today's report focuses on a bundle of gases that comprise a very small part of total of ‘greenhouse’ gases. It totally disregards the long-known fact that about 95% of all ‘greenhouse’ gases is WATER VAPOR! Spending billions of dollars to alter a few components of the 5% won't affect the natural course of climate change.” 

Reilly warns, however, that scientists don’t blame water vapor or clouds for global warming.

“Concerns about global warming are about how human beings are altering the radiative balance,” says Reilly. “While some of the things we do change water vapor directly, they are insignificant. Increasing ghg's [greenhouse gases] through warming will increase water vapor and that is a big positive feedback [meaning: the more greenhouse gases, the more water vapor, the higher the temperature]. But the root cause are ghg's. So in talking about what is changing the climate, changes in water vapor are not a root cause.”

Water vapor is, however, included in modeling used to study global warming. Boden adds: “We do measure water vapor fluxes routinely at the Earth's surface in terrestrial systems. All climate models account for water vapor in the processes of evaporation, condensation and transpiration. Since water vapor is naturally occurring and mostly driven by natural processes it would be difficult to mitigate (e.g., cap on a lake) and thus does not enter into reduction discussions.”

So, when NOAA’s Jim Butler confirmed in our previous post that carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and two CFCs cause 95% of global warming, he meant that these five gases are at the root of a complex reaction that also involves water vapor and any number of other factors. The fact that you and I are responsible for generating a bunch of those man-made gases makes them the five to watch.

Thanks for placing your comments on the blog.

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Photo: Britney Waugh stands in Fogscreen, an exhibit at WIRED NextFest 2007 in which pictures are projected onto a vapor "screen" that is dry to the touch. Credit: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times.

Obama pipeline decision courts youth vote

When President Obama announced Thursday that he was delaying a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline for at least a year, it was partly the result of significant youth lobbying, says Courtney Hight, 32, co-director of the Energy Action Coalition.

The action also may have re-energized a 30s-and-under youth vote that was drifting away from his campaign.

“We are the generation that elected Barack Obama,” said Hight, formerly a staffer with the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Most of the organizers on the [Obama] campaign were under 30, and believed in this vision that President Obama put out. We were a little frustrated by not seeing the leadership on climate change that we wanted. So the XL Pipeline issue was an opportunity.

“He had been risking young people’s votes, and he showed us that he cares about our vote,” she added. “A lot of us are reinvigorated by the fact that he delayed this pipeline, which essentially kills it.”

A protest action on Sunday, Nov. 6, may have been the game-changer on the Keystone Pipeline decision. That day, about 12,000 people formed concentric rings around the White House to express their outrage over the environmental effectsof the project. Those people, says Hight, were organized by youth organizers from the EAC, the climate change group 350.org and Tar Sands Action, which focuses resistance to the development of the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada, where oil for the pipeline originates. Rather than be described as a protest, the action was seen as giving support to Obama, to show him physically by surrounding his house that he had the political backing to say no to this project. Heavy lifting was also done by mainstream groups the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Chesapeake Climate Action Network, but the youthswere kept out front.

The EAC is a national coalition of about 50 youth environmental organizations, including the Sierra Student Coalition (the youth arm of the Sierra Club) and many other statewide student groups.

Over the summer, the EAC and many of these groups considered the pipeline a done deal -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said as much -- but students realized that this was one decision the president could make without congressional approval because it was being handled at the State Department. Groups like the Indigenous Environmental Network in South Dakota had been fighting an existing version of the pipeline (it extends into the Dakotas already) for more than four years.

So, in August, students gathered at the White House to express their disapproval, and 1,253 of them were arrested. Hight’s friends inside the White House acknowledged to her that the issue hadn’t really been on the president’s radar until that point. So she and others dug in.

Students in Missouri raised money and bought tickets to Obama campaign fundraisers, at which they asked pointed questions about the pipeline and the tar sands. Soon, students were dogging the campaign, asking questions at Obama for America offices, campaign events, fundraisers and debates. Then, the big action on Sunday.

“I haven’t seen this level of youth involvement in the movement since the Obama campaign,” said Hight. “We’re not done, but we had a win.”

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Photo: Youth demonstrators are prominent among the 12,000 demonstrators against the Keystone XL Pipeline project who surrounded the White House on Nov.6, 2011. Credit: Shadia Fayne Wood/tarsandsaction.org

NOAA greenhouse gas index climbs

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) number today, which measures the direct climate influence of a select set of greenhouse gases, and the news is not good. The numbers continue to climb, further evidence that the greenhouse effect is on the rise.

This comes on top of a staggering report released by the U.S. Department of Energy last week saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide –- a key, and long-lived, greenhouse gas –- had jumped by the biggest amount on record in the year 2010. The figures showed a 6% increase over the year before. That rise was steeper than worst-case scenarios that had been laid out by climate experts only four years before. That news was met with headlines worldwide calling it a “monster” increase and “the biggest ever seen.”

The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index number, by contrast, looks small, but has big impact. The index is a measure of the combined heating effect of the top greenhouse gases during their life spans as the gasses float around in the atmosphere. The number increased from 1.27 in 2009 to 1.29 in 2010, which is essentially a 2% increase. Since the index started in the Kyoto Protocol year of 1990, which the NOAA team chose as a baseline, the increase has been 29%.

“The way you have to look at these things is over time. So we’re up over 20% over where we were in 1990, in our effort to cut greenhouse gases. So we’re not doing very well,” says Jim Butler, director of the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which produces the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index.

Numbers on the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Butler points out, do not correlate directly to degrees difference in temperature. But when it goes up, warming potential increases.

“The sum of all of those tells you how much we’re increasing the warming potential of the atmosphere,” says Butler. “The analogy I use is the electric blanket. The numbers on the electric blanket don’t correlate to specific temperatures. If you’re really comfortable with it set on 3, and then you gradually turn it up to 6 to get warmer, at first you don’t notice anything. But in a little while you will, and then you’re going to stop turning it up, but you’re going to continue to get hotter.”

NOAA measures the gases in the atmosphere that most directly affect global warming, which it can do, Butler says, “with extreme accuracy.” The top five gases –- carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and two chlorofluorocarbons called CFC11 and CFC12 –- are responsible for more than 95% of the warming effect. About 15 other gases make up the last 5%.

Carbon dioxide is the biggest and baddest, as it is the longest-lived and most abundant. CO2 levels rose to an average of 389 parts per million in 2010, compared with 386 ppm in 2009. Back in the 1880s, before the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was about 280 ppm. Other gases are showing similar increases.

One bit of good news in the report: Concentrations of CFCs 11 and 12 are dropping, albeit very slowly. Remember the ban on ozone-depleting aerosol spray propellants? It evidently works. The 1989 Montreal Protocol banned chlorofluorocarbons and they are gradually being reduced.

Perhaps this is an indication that another global protocol might have similar effects on greenhouse gases. Just an idea.

The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index is just a way to make unsexy science into a concept that people can easily grasp. The heat-trapping potential of a gas is called “radiative forcing” and is measured in watts per square meter. Who the heck knows what that means? Butler hopes the index makes it more clear.

“This looked like a good way of presenting much of what we do within our organization, so people can understand the real effects,” he says.

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Photo: Giant wind turbines at sunset near Albacete, central Spain, part of Spain’s effort to reach Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Paul Hanna / Reuters

Super committee could gut national parks budget

National Park Service funding could potentially be gutted if the so-called congressional super committee doesn’t find those elusive $1.3 trillion in budget cuts this month.

According to a new report released today by the National Parks Conservation Assn., a parks advocacy organization, failure by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (colloquially known as the super committee) could trigger a sequestration process that would mandate cuts in National Park Service funding by as much as 9%.

This would mean a $231 million cut to the national parks budget that is currently at $2.6 billion, said Craig Obey, senior vice president of government affairs at NPCA, in a press conference today. That would come on top of nearly $140 million in cuts made in 2011.

Overall, the National Park Service budgets are down almost $400 million from where they were 10 years ago.

“I’m watching this cut like everyone else and we’re very worried,” said Obey at the conference. “The issue with the national parks –- if you think of the budget like a tire, right now the tire has a slow leak. If we get a 9% cut, it’s a blow-out. Either way, you have a flat tire. We’re looking real soon at some tough results in the national parks.”

Those results, say the report, could include the closure of some parks, campgrounds, visitor centers and other services, the virtual elimination of seasonal rangers, a curtailment of law enforcement staff and resources for endangered species monitoring and other scientific work.

Gathered at the press conference were a group of experts concerned about the economic effects of any drop in visitors to the country’s popular national parks. Obey pointed out that the money going into the parks was a direct economic investment, returning $4 in economic benefit for every $1 spent, for a total direct annual contribution of $13.2 billion to the U.S. economy.

“I’m a Republican, a former two-term county mayor in a county that is the northern gateway to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park,” said Iliff McMahan, former mayor of Cocke County in Tennessee. “The park is a driver for economic activity in our area.”

“I implore that the lawmakers see that as an investment in the economic driver, the engine that drives that part of the U.S., and they do the right thing and keep that economic engine going.”

Obey and others noted that any cuts made now to National Park Service budgets would come mostly from basic operating budgets. More flexible accounts like construction and land acquisition have already been drastically curtailed.

John Garder, budget and appropriations legislative representative for National Parks Conservation Assn., pointed out that, even before the super committee process, the parks were already likely to experience budget challenges for the next decade. The Budget Control Act of 2011, passed in August, set discretionary caps for spending through 2021 that, depending on how they are interpreted, would mean flat budgets for the National Park Service for the next 10 years.

“Because of the real uncontrollable costs with rent increases, utility, cost of living increases for employees, and general increased expenses, the practical effect of a flat budget is a reduction in real terms,” said Garder. “It is less money that they have to work with. So we are already looking at a challenging climate for the NPS for the next decade.”

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Photo: The floor of Yosemite National Park covered in snow. Budget cuts could sharply curtail park services. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times.

Christo river wrap gets BLM approval

Christo, the controversial artist whose works involve wrapping or hanging fabric over buildings, canyons and even entire islands, has won federal approval for a massive new project in Colorado.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Bureau of Land Management announced Monday that it had released a Record of Decision approving Christo’s “Over The River,” a temporary art installation. The giant project has encountered serious and organized local resistance but the artist has mitigated several threats to Colorado wildlife.

Several state and local permits are still required.

“Over The River” comprises eight huge, silvery fabric panels spanning 5.9 miles directly above the Arkansas River where it flows through Bighorn Sheep Canyon and the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area. The panels will be deployed at various spots along a 42-mile stretch of the river, which, according to a Colorado State Parks spokesperson, is the most popular commercially rafted river in the United States.

The temporary work of art will be displayed between Salida and Cañon City in southern Colorado, currently scheduled for two consecutive weeks in August 2014. The project is projected to bring in 300,000 to 400,000 visitors and generate $121 million in revenue, according to the BLM.

“This is the most significant milestone yet in completing 'Over The River,' and we can now get to work applying for the few remaining permits that we still need,” Christo said in a statement on the project's website. "We are much closer to finally realizing this work of art that Jeanne-Claude and I first envisioned many years ago. Although our team is still reviewing the [federal approval], I am confident that we can now move forward so we begin construction in the summer of 2012.”

Christo, 76, who is Bulgarian by birth but lives in Paris, and his wife Jeanne-Claude worked as a team on their monumental works. Jeanne-Claude died of a brain aneurysm in 2009. Their “Valley Curtain” project draped a huge orange curtain across a valley in Rifle, Colo., in 1971.

According to Tina Brown, a spokesperson for the BLM, Christo and Jeanne-Claude first began making verbal inquiries about the project in 1996, and then made a formal proposal in 2006. An all-volunteer Colorado group called Rags Over the Arkansas River, or ROAR, sprung up to raise concerns over the effects on threatened wildlife such as bighorn sheep and bald eagles, increased river and road traffic, a potential drain on local emergency services and other issues. With the release of the Record of Decision (ROD) on Monday, the opposition group pointed out that there was still a long road ahead.

“The ROD does not affect the fact that the State Parks Board's decision is illegal under state law,” noted Cathey Young, the ROAR board secretary. “This release from the BLM does not affect the state lawsuit that ROAR has over the Parks Board Memorandum of Agreement. Christo needs both to do his project.”

She added that “ROAR will make a statement at the appropriate time.”

Indeed, “Over The River” still faces several hurdles. Approvals have already been obtained from the Colorado State Parks Board and the Colorado State Land Board, but permits are still outstanding from Fremont and Chaffee counties, the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Colorado State Patrol. ROAR is suing the State Parks Board over an agreement it made with the artist and his OTR Corp., which was set up to build the massive project.

Colorado State Parks could not comment on the ongoing lawsuit.

The project’s hefty environmental impact study showed that threats to native wildlife were many and complex. The huge steel cables required to hang the fabric would stretch from bank to bank, for instance, requiring heavy construction to install. Several mitigation measures were required to protect bighorn sheep, which live and breed in the canyon (hence the name), including construction restrictions from April 15 to June 30 every year. Also, OTR agreed to build habitat improvements and water developments to allow the sheep access to water and new habitat, and to create a fund that would continue to look after the sheep for years after the project is dismantled.

Migratory birds and eagles also required modifications to the project. The large cables will be festooned with “avian diverters,” which are colorful sleeves meant to give the birds visual evidence of the cable, for as long as they hang over the valley.

“We’ve heard a lot about traffic and about the bighorn sheep,” said Brown, speaking about the issues encountered by the project. “Those were the two major ones. But working with those cooperating agencies, I think we came up with some good mitigation measures to alleviate those problems.”

OTR is required to work with the state to keeps lanes open on U.S. Highway 50, which runs up the valley, and to develop a boat scheduling system to efficiently handle the expected glut of rafters and kayakers who will want to see the project from the river.

“If you want to get the entire scope of the project, on the river would be the best place to see it,” added Brown. “People driving along the road will be able to experience it, but the rafters and the kayakers will be able to see it in a unique way, and to see the sky up through the fabric.”

The ROAR website lists a host of other issues with the project, including the increase in litter and human waste in the canyon, permanent defacement of the riverbanks and damage from the cable installations, the hindrance of eagles hunting under the fabric, the complete disruption of angling in these prime fishing waters, and negative effects on regular commercial and recreational highway users in the area.

Mitigation measures and the environmental impact report on this project are available online.

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Photo: A rendering of “Over the River” as drawn by Christo in 2010. Credit: Christo

Obama proposes CO2 regulations

The Obama Administration announced Tuesday its intention to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants for the first time. The new rule, nimbly titled “Greenhouse Gas New Source Performance Standard for Electric Utility Steam Generating Units,” would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to create emissions standards for new power plants.

It is another end-run around a Congress that has balked at passing cap-and-trade legislation or other remedies to curb greenhouse gases.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA had the right and responsibility to determine whether greenhouse gases endangered public health, making them subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The agency released its "endangerment" finding, a prelude to such regulation, just before the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change.

Since then, however, the White House and the EPA have delayed proposing new regulations, under intense pressure from Republican lawmakers, who have tagged the agency as a source of "job-killing regulation."

The White House has said that if Congress failed to act on carbon emissions, it would eventually step in.

The move could appeal to the president’s base at a time when he is taking many other unilateral steps to move his agenda, and as his reelection bid kicks into high gear.

David Doniger, policy director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement, “Setting carbon pollution standards for new power plants is an important first step. President Obama campaigned on moving America to a clean energy future. Cutting dangerous carbon pollution from the nation’s dirty power plants is an essential part of fulfilling that pledge.”

It is likely that the appearance of the rule in the White House agenda will only intensify the political slugfest over the regulation of greenhouse gases. When the EPA first announced that curtailing these gases would fall under its purview, the business community erupted in a fury that continues today.

"We don’t believe that unelected bureaucrats should be doing what Congress was elected to do," said Nicolas Loris, policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, which has battled the EPA regulation of carbon from the outset. “The economic costs of regulation by the EPA or by a cap-and-trade system far outweighs any environmental benefit we would get from these measures."

Asked how the Heritage Foundation would like to see this problem addressed, he added: "First we need to step back and look at what the real problem is: CO2 isn’t black smoke that is emitted from factories; it’s a colorless, odorless gas. Does it contribute to global warming and climate change? Sure. But it’s the role of Congress to figure out the best way to address those effects in a way that protects our economy."

Charlotte Baker, press secretary for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, stated, “The committee plans to review the rules recently submitted to OMB and remains focused on finding ways to promote common-sense regulations that will protect our environment without destroying jobs or driving up electricity prices for families and job creators."

The committee is chaired by Congressman Fred Upton, who spearheaded a House effort to block the EPA from regulating CO2 and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

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Photo: The Encina Power Power Station in Carlsbad, Calif. Proposed EPA rules would regulate CO2 emissions from new power plants. Credit: Sandy Huffaker/Bloomberg News.