Earth Day – more than just the environment

Earth Day represents a moment during the year when people worldwide can contemplate the human impact on our planet and recognize some things that we can do to keep the air and waterways clean, preserve species, and celebrate the joy our planet brings to us.

But it should also be a day when citizens contemplate the sometimes heavy-hand of government on business and commerce as it attempts to regulate our way to a greener lifestyle.

When one looks back at the history of environmental regulation in this country, you see some incredible successes: cleaner drinking water, less polluted rivers and streams, scrubbers on coal plants for cleaner air, and more.

But when one looks at decisions made recently by our state and federal government, one has to wonder if we aren’t approaching a point where we might be getting carried away.

First, last week, you’ll remember Gov. Tim Kaine lauding the fact that the blue crab was on the rebound – nearly doubling in size to close to 4 million in population this year. The problem is that in order to get there, the governments of Maryland and Virginia imposed severe fishing restrictions on another endangered species: the watermen. They also intend to keep those restrictions in place.

The problem does not lie with the watermen…the bigger problem is poor sewage treatment that allows sediment and nitrogen to enter the bay. As the Virginian-Pilot explained last May:

“The Chesapeake’s woes are rooted in the fertilizer that farmers put on crops and suburban home-owners deposit on lawns; the outflow from inadequate sewage treatment and broken septic systems; the chemicals that run off roads and parking lots each time it rains; the detergents used to clean dishes and clothes. All that stuff, when it washes into waterways, disrupts the ecosystem of the Bay and the economy it supports.

“Until permanent changes are made to the behavior of the watershed’s human inhabitants, disruptions like the Bay has seen in the crab population and other species will be unavoidable.”

It would be nice if the Kaine administration focused on the root cause of the problem, vice instead of punishing our Virginia heritage.

Second, the EPA has now officially declared carbon dioxide emissions a pollutant, which could lead to regulations unrelated to global climate change.

“The regulations could impose complex, costly requirements on restaurants, colleges, schools, shopping malls, bakeries and many other businesses and institutions,” said the President of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard. “The Clean Air Act was created to address local and regional air pollution, not the emission of carbon dioxide and other global greenhouse gases.”

And he’s right.

Once again, the government isn’t actually addressing the problem, but is punishing commerce and the consumer.

While Detroit is already reeling, the government seeks to impose yet another unrealistic standard on the beleaguered automobile industry.

Where is the government pressure on developing countries whose greenhouse gas emissions far out-pace our own? Has Rep. Randy Forbes “New Manhattan” project, which offers cash incentives to inventors who create more efficient vehicles even being given consideration by the Democratically- (and supposedly ‘Green’) controlled Congress?

A third issue that came up last week is that the Alaska shoreline was declared “off-limits” for oil and natural gas exploration and leasing by a federal appeals court – in DC! The leases, which were set to be issued in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas, are now put on hold for another round of environmental impact studies by the Department of the Interior.

“It would be a disservice to all Americans – and a devastating blow to the economy – if this decision were to delay further the development of vital oil and natural gas resources,” wrote API in a statement.

Additionally, the pause on exploring the waters off the coast of Virginia by Secretary of Interior Salazar is also likely to cost Virginians thousands of jobs and millions of dollars.

According to a new, independent, non-partisan study just completed by the Thomas Jefferson Institue for Public Policy:

• 72% of citizens support off-shore drilling.
• Using modern drilling techniques, off-shore oil reserves may produce from 130 million to 900 billion barrels of oil, an amount that would provide from less than one year’s worth of Virginia crude oil needs to 4,000 years of our crude oil needs.
• Estimates for off-shore natural gas reserves range from 1.14 to 18 trillion cubic feet, an amount that would provide 4,100 to 66,000 years worth of Virginia natural gas consumption.
• Off-shore production could produce about $65 million in state royalties for the Commonwealth, if that production merely supplied 100 percent of Virginia’s oil and gas needs and no more.
• Estimates of $200 million a year in royalties for natural gas alone do not seem likely at this time.
• Environmental impacts from offshore exploration and production are negligible.
• Sixty-three percent (63%) of adults now say finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans currently consume.

Yet, instead of moving forward with a plan to reduce the impact of foreign oil on our economy, renegade judges in the Beltway issue environmental rulings from thousands of miles away and the administration – both Kaine’s and Obama’s – sit idly by while gas prices continue to go up and terrorists continue to get petrol-dollars…from us!

So, on Earth Day, it’s great to recognize that our planet is getting cleaner. We should rededicate ourselves to taking personal responsibility at keeping our corner-of-the-world clean. And, we should make efforts to reduce our resource consumption.

But we should also recognize that being good environmental stewards doesn’t mean we have to forgo our economic well-being.

For more conservative perspective on Earth Day, read Jim Riley’s post at Virginia Virtucon.

Category: Government