A fisherman’s enormous catch recently ignited a debate over whether fishers should be allowed to keep bycatch that is caught and landed without the proper permit, which would have allowed the fishing vessel to legally keep or sell the catch. Unfortunately, small-government advocates pounced and argued that the seizure was yet another example of federal government overreach and mismanagement. However, small-government advocates are either naive or are ignoring a plethora of facts and issues.
Basically, if commercial fishing vessels fish in state or U.S. federal government waters, then these fishing vessels are required to hold a permit. The permit allows the fishing vessels to use certain gear, in certain areas, to fish for, catch, land and sell certain species. For example, a fishing vessel with a groundfish permit to catch cod, haddock, and certain flounder species with a bottom trawl net can’t keep a bluefin tuna, an endangered, pelagic species, that is caught with the fishing vessel’s bottom trawl net — unless, for some reason, the permit authorizes the fishing vessel to keep the tuna. The purpose of utilizing permits is to control the number and types of fish caught in order to avoid overfishing and the economic collapse of fisheries.
Recently, a bottom trawler owned by Carlos Rafael landed a bluefin tuna weighing an incredible 881 pounds. However, since his fishing vessel’s permit didn’t allow him to keep the bluefin tuna, which was caught in his bottom trawl, the boat owner, unfortunately, had to surrender his tuna over to the feds. The commercial fishing vessel, apparently, did have a permit to keep a bluefin tuna caught and landed on a rod and reel.
Of course, debate ensued regarding whether the fishing vessel should have been forced to surrender its valuable catch, which was sold for “less than $5,000.” I believe that Monica Allen, the deputy director at NOAA Fisheries public affairs, put it best:
“We’re leaders among 45 countries in the conservation of this fish. Failure to enforce the regulations would damage our credibility internationally,” Allen said. There are not enough bluefin for those fishermen who target it as their sole focus, she added. “If trawl fishermen were allowed to keep bluefin, even when caught accidentally, that would create an incentive. If the stocks are rebuilt, this could actually become a way to catch them.”
Rafael, however, dismissed this logic out of hand. “That makes no sense, and I think that shows what they know about these fish,” he said.
Of course, seizing the bluefin tuna makes sense. If one fisher, who doesn’t have the proper permit, is allowed to keep a bluefin tuna, then more fishers would want to keep a tuna that was caught and landed without the proper permit. Furthermore, it would be a nightmare for enforcement and for efforts to conserve species that are severely depleted. Also, allowing a fisher to keep a tuna, if he or she doesn’t have the proper permit to do so, would make a mockery of the regulatory system. Obviously, such a move would also be unfair to fishers that have had their catches seized in the past or who have been fined in the past or who have had to discard bycatch overboard in the past.
No one, I imagine, wants to regulate commercial fishing, but the practice is inherently unsustainable, so regulations and plans are required. It’s true that there are many fishers that are conservation-minded, but it still takes cooperation between fishers, fishery managers, fishery observers, regulators (and regulation), and scientists to produce a sustainable fishery. No group can do it alone.
Despite a looming government shutdown, Republicans are still using the budget bill process to impose right-wing policies on all Americans by inserting policy riders that have no place in a budget bill. These policy riders have included riders to defund healthcare reform, defund NPR, defund PBS, cut spending for Planned Parenthood, and cut spending to the Environmental Protection Agency, thereby attacking healthcare reform, women’s health, clean air, and clean water. Furthermore, these policy riders attack domestic discretionary spending that has nothing to do with avoiding a government shutdown or reducing the national deficit or the national debt and could actually result in more debt and put Americans at risk. Republican shenanigans to force a government shutdown could also hurt economic recovery. Undoubtedly, the spending cuts are more ideological in nature and have nothing to do with passing a budget or keeping the U.S. government running. Most recently, Tea Party members actually cheered for a government shutdown (and it appears that a majority of Republicans actually favor a government shutdown over a budget compromise), but a government shutdown would actually cost taxpayers money. According to U.S. Senator Jack Reed, “The Gingrich-led government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996 lasted 26 days and cost taxpayers over $1.4 billion.”
Gasland, a documentary that tackles the environmental side effects associated with drilling for natural gas, is up for an Oscar for the best documentary feature at the Academy Awards ceremony tomorrow. Not surprisingly, the fossil-fuel industry attacked the claims that are made in the documentary. However, given the history of environmental litigation that’s associated with fossil-fuel companies and their wrongdoings, the efforts of fossil-fuel companies to circumvent and stifle environmental regulations, and the known environmental crimes that have been committed against the human environment by the fossil-fuel industry, I believe that claims made by the fossil-fuel industry should be taken with a grain of salt. Here is a review of Gasland via Scientific American (a comprehensive review of claims made in Gasland can be found at Greenwire):
Scientific American got its hands on a pre-release copy of the film months before it aired on HBO, and the movie convinced me to write a feature article investigating the claims of fracking critics and promoters. After doing my own research and interviews, it became apparent that, like most documentaries, Gasland revealed surprising facts, amplified a few, and chose to gloss over a couple others. What writer and producer Josh Fox did achieve, regardless, was to blow the lid off the secrecy that kept most local residents, not to mention scientists and regulators, in the dark about the chemicals used in fracking and their possible effects. And he certainly put me on the reporting trail.
[Josh Fox] spends a lot of time on three Colorado households who can all set their water on fire. All three cases were investigated by Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, and while one was indeed traced to fracking, the other two apparently have nothing to do with it. One homeowner had inadvertently drilled his well through four coal beds, which contained natural gas.
Regardless of the arguments, will Gasland take home the Oscar? It seems unlikely that arguments about its accuracy will sway the Academy much. But for the record, my money’s on Banksy.
“Gasland” is up for best documentary at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. Director Josh Fox’s dark portrayal of greedy energy companies, sickened homeowners and oblivious regulators has stirred heated debate among the various stakeholders in a natural gas boom that is sweeping parts of the U.S. The film has galvanized anti-drilling activists while drawing complaints about its accuracy and objectivity.
In a letter to the academy, Lee Fuller, the executive director of an industry-sponsored group named Energy In Depth, called “Gasland” an “expression of stylized fiction” with “errors, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods.”
He asked the academy to consider “remedial actions” against the film.
Davis, the executive director, wrote to Fuller that if the academy were to act on every complaint made about a nominated film, “it would not be possible even to have a documentary category.” He said the academy must “trust the intelligence of our members” to sort out fact from fiction.
. . .
Fox said the industry’s campaign against “Gasland” has backfired.
“What they’re doing is calling more attention to the film, so I think it works against them,” the director said from Los Angeles. “But I think it shows how aggressive they are, how bullying they are, and how willing they are to lie to promote the falsehood that it’s OK to live in a gas drilling area.”
The documentary category is no stranger to controversy. Michael Moore films like “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko,” as well as Al Gore’s 2006 global-warming tale, “An Inconvenient Truth,” have likewise been attacked as biased and inaccurate.
When the article was published on Friday night, it was the first time an industry spokesperson deployed a shift in strategy from the industry’s standard denials and repeated assertions that fracking is safe, despite the numerous reports of problems, such as flammable water, contamination of drinking water, trucks leaking toxic and radioactive waste-water on public highways, the pollution of streams, as well as fires, and explosions in which people have been injured.
“We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror,” Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., was quoted as saying in WSJ.
However, if you go to the article, you won’t find Pitzarella’s statement because within the hour the quote disappeared, say citizen journalists, who screen captured it and posted it on Twitter. Gasland director Fox, in Los Angeles, awaiting Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, has the screen shot of the original version. He also has questions:
“Why did this key quote disappear from the article? Why did the WSJ censor its own piece ? Does the Gas industry get to edit the Wall Street Journal?” Fox wondered. “Who pulled the quote?”
It’s more innocuous replacement from Tom Price, a Chesapeake Vice-President reads, “We need to be able to respond objectively and accurately.”
. . .
Although it’s unknown who ordered the yanking of the quote published in the Wall Street Journal, the appearance of censorship, whatever its source, does little to restore public confidence in either the industry reported on, or the media outlet doing the reporting.
Meanwhile citizens are rooting for Gasland to win the Oscar Sunday night at nationwide Gasland parties, and by writing letters to President Obama, asking for a nation-wide moratorium on fracking and safety studies. To learn more and participate, go here.
Given the large amount of water that must be used and transported during the hydrofracking process (“fracing a typical Chesapeake horizontal deep shale gas well requires an average of 4.5 million gallons per well“), the large amounts of chemicals that must be produced and used in hydrofracking, and the large amount of diesel fuel that is used in hydrofracking, I’m interested in seeing data that compares the energy input that’s required to extract natural gas during the hydrofracking process against the actual energy that’s extracted from the ground in the form of natural gas. Considering the likely high costs to the human environment and to human health, it seems to me, that if the energy return is slight or even in the negative, then why do politicians allow natural-gas drilling in such an extreme and gross negligent manner without reasonable precautions to protect the environment. Of course, the answer is money in the form of profits and subsidies. However, the price paid to land owners and the price paid for natural gas by consumers vastly undervalues and ignores the human and environmental impacts that occur during and after the drilling process.
Another problem with hydrofracking is wastewater treatment. Wastewater contains carcinogens and radioactive elements, and since “radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways,” it appears that wastewater from hydrofracking is a threat to drinking water supplies and to public health. Via the New York Times (emphasis added):
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.
The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.
But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.
In other words, there is no way of guaranteeing that the drinking water taken in by all these plants is safe.
That has experts worried.
“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”
In Texas, the Republican Party is taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its obligation to regulate carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. EPA, held that the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (footnotes omitted):
On the merits, the first question is whether § 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles in the event that it forms a “judgment” that such emissions contribute to climate change. We have little trouble concluding that it does. In relevant part, § 202(a)(1) provides that EPA “shall by regulation prescribe … standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in [the Administrator's] judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” 42 U.S.C. § 7521(a)(1). Because EPA believes that Congress did not intend it to regulate substances that contribute to climate change, the agency maintains that carbon dioxide is not an “air pollutant” within the meaning of the provision.
The statutory text forecloses EPA’s reading. The Clean Air Act’s sweeping definition of “air pollutant” includes “any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical … substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air … .” § 7602(g) (emphasis added). On its face, the definition embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe, and underscores that intent through the repeated use of the word “any.” Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons are without a doubt “physical [and] chemical … substance [s] which [are] emitted into … the ambient air.” The statute is unambiguous.
SCOTUS also determined that the EPA can’t ignore science or its statutory obligations:
Under the Act’s clear terms, EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do. It has refused to do so, offering instead a laundry list of reasons not to regulate, including the existence of voluntary Executive Branch programs providing a response to global warming and impairment of the President’s ability to negotiate with developing nations to reduce emissions. These policy judgments have nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change and do not amount to a reasoned justification for declining to form a scientific judgment. Nor can EPA avoid its statutory obligation by noting the uncertainty surrounding various features of climate change and concluding that it would therefore be better not to regulate at this time. If the scientific uncertainty is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment, it must say so. The statutory question is whether sufficient information exists for it to make an endangerment finding. Instead, EPA rejected the rulemaking petition based on impermissible considerations. Its action was therefore “arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” § 7607(d)(9). On remand, EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.
Texas is staking out a role as the anti-California.
With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, powerful Texans such as Rep. Joe L. Barton of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have vowed to check the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to use its existing authority to curtail greenhouse gases.
An even more ambitious challenge is coming directly from the Texas state government and leading Texas politicians. State Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, with the support of Republican Gov. Rick Perry, has filed seven lawsuits against the EPA in the last nine months.
In some ways, Texas’ attack was bound to be bigger and bolder than it might have been from other states. After all, Texans proudly trace their lineage back to the defiant stand of Texas patriots at the Alamo and the days when Texas was an independent republic under the Lone Star flag.
The new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives will probably shift both climate and energy policy backwards or away from establishing renewables as the chief source of energy for the United States. It’s no secret that the Republican Party supports the fossil fuel industry and receives support from the fossil fuel industry. Also, members of the Republican Party aren’t shy about ignoring climate science, since members of the Republican Party frequently parrot anti-climate change nonsense in public.
A fisherman’s enormous catch recently ignited a debate over whether fishers should be allowed to keep bycatch that is caught and landed without the proper permit, which would have allowed the fishing vessel to legally keep or sell the catch. Unfortunately, small-government advocates pounced and argued that the seizure was yet another example of federal government overreach and mismanagement. However, small-government advocates are either naive or are ignoring a plethora of facts and issues.
