BULLSHIT!

Elections have consequences. While neither political party will do EVERYTHING one might want it to do, the fact remains that one party is pushing policies that are much more destructive to our society as a whole than the other, particularly with respect to the environment.

SO WAKE UP, PEOPLE!

In a shift that began with Ronald Reagan’s administration, the current generation of the GOP—the party that, through leaders Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt bequeathed a magisterial environmental legacy by giving us our National Park and National Forest system and through Richard Nixon gave us the Environmental Protection Agency and landmark environmental legislation such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act—seems hell-bent on destroying that storied legacy as well much of the remaining wild lands that we have left to bequeath to, as our founders called it, “our posterity.”

Last week, Republican senators voted en masse (with only three holdouts) for a budget amendment allowing the sale of public lands—national forests, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas—to state and local governments. Here is the text of the resolution:

Amendment No. 838

(Purpose: To establish a spending-neutral reserve fund relating to the disposal of certain Federal land)

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. ___. SPENDING-NEUTRAL RESERVE FUND RELATING TO THE
DISPOSAL OF CERTAIN FEDERAL LAND.

The Chairman of the Committee on the Budget of the Senate may revise the allocations of a committee or committees, aggregates, and other appropriate levels in this resolution for one or more bills, joint resolutions, amendments, amendments between the Houses, motions, or conference reports relating to initiatives to sell or transfer to, or exchange with, a State or local government any Federal land that is not within the boundaries of a National Park, National Preserve, or National Monument, by the amounts provided in such legislation for those purposes, provided that such legislation would not raise new revenue and would not increase the deficit over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2020 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2025.

The amendment, offered by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R‑Alaska), carried by a vote of 51–49. (See the roll call below.) While the resolution has no legal weight, it could, with GOP control of Congress and with a sympathetic president in the White House, could become actual policy before this decade is finished.

The home of this Key deer fawn, National Key Deer Refuge on Florida’s Big Pine Key, is one of of the places that could be threatened if the proposal in Amendment 838 allowing the sale of federal lands to state and local governments eventually becomes law.

It would be a disaster if we left these lands to the states and local governments to administer. For one, most don’t have the resources to properly manage those lands for the long term. When the supposed boosts to state and local coffers fail to materialize, they would be under great pressure to sell those lands to private interests—and you should be able to imagine what would happen to those natural landscapes we treasure as a result. (To get an idea of how disastrous state and local management could be, try reading Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s classic book, The Everglades: River of Grass, and see her account of how short-term economic greed nearly destroyed one of America’s most spectacular and the world’s most unique landscapes—and how such greed might yet finish the job.)

If you care about the environment, you should think long and hard about what you do in the 2016 and subsequent elections.

Do you want REALLY want to see mountaintop removal mining—even mountain removal mining—all over the west? DO you REALLY want to see prized rivers for fishing or boating or tubing polluted with runoff from mining or logging? Do you REALLY want to see important areas for migratory waterfowl converted to industrial parks? Do you REALLY want to find prized hiking spots barred to public access because they are now part of an expensive resort?  Do you REALLY want to see large swaths of landscapes such as that of the Everglades currently outside of the National Park system become one vast (and in the Everglades’ case, poorly drained) strip mall?

Then keep doing what many of you have been doing: sitting out elections or throwing away votes to folks who will never get elected. Your principles aren’t worth a damn if what you claim to care about is destroyed as a result.

Future generations aren’t going to be able to enjoy the landscapes our nation sells off because of your so-called integrity.

If you selfishly insist on keeping to those principles rather than acknowledging reality, then please be damned sure to admit your responsibility for giving those who would destroy this nation the power to do so.

Look here to learn more about the budget amendment:

If you want to take a stand against his madness, consider signing this Wilderness Society petition against the resolution and similar efforts to sell our national heritage to the highest bidder.

Even better, consider writing to your representatives signaling your opposition to the measure. The Wilderness Society page has some suggested text. But here’s a tip, hand-write, don’t type your letters. Congress knows that handwriting takes more effort than merely copying and pasting text into a word processor or forwarding an e‑mail (or signing an online petition). Just make sure that, however you write it (block text, which is my preference, or cursive) that the staffers that open the mail can read it.

SENATORS WHO VOTED IN FAVOR OF AMENDMENT NO. 838 (51):

Barrasso (R‑WY), Blunt (R‑MO), Boozman (R‑AR), Burr (R‑NC), Capito (R‑WV), Cassidy (R‑LA), Coats (R‑IN), Cochran (R‑MS), Collins (R‑ME), Corker (R‑TN), Cornyn (R‑TX), Cotton (R‑AR), Crapo (R‑ID), Cruz (R‑TX), Daines (R‑MT), Enzi (R‑WY), Ernst (R‑IA), Fischer (R‑NE), Flake (R‑AZ), Graham (R‑SC), Grassley (R‑IA), Hatch (R‑UT), Heller (R‑NV), Hoeven (R‑ND), Inhofe (R‑OK), Isakson (R‑GA), Johnson (R‑WI), Kirk (R‑IL), Lankford (R‑OK), Lee (R‑UT), McCain (R‑AZ), McConnell (R‑KY), Moran (R‑KS), Murkowski (R‑AK), Paul (R‑KY), Perdue (R‑GA), Portman (R‑OH), Risch (R‑ID), Roberts (R‑KS), Rounds (R‑SD), Rubio (R‑FL), Sasse (R‑NE), Scott (R‑SC), Sessions (R‑AL), Shelby (R‑AL), Sullivan (R‑AK), Thune (R‑SD), Tillis (R‑NC), Toomey (R‑PA), Vitter (R‑LA)

SENATORS WHO VOTED AGAINST AMENDMENT NO. 838 (49):

Alexander (R‑TN), Ayotte (R‑NH), Baldwin (D‑WI), Bennet (D‑CO), Blumenthal (D‑CT), Booker (D‑NJ), Boxer (D‑CA), Brown (D‑OH), Cantwell (D‑WA), Cardin (D‑MD), Carper (D‑DE), Casey (D‑PA), Coons (D‑DE), Donnelly (D‑IN), Durbin (D‑IL), Feinstein (D‑CA), Franken (D‑MN), Gardner (R‑CO), Gillibrand (D‑NY), Heinrich (D‑NM), Heitkamp (D‑ND), Hirono (D‑HI), Kaine (D‑VA), King (I‑ME), Klobuchar (D‑MN), Leahy (D‑VT), Manchin (D‑WV), Markey (D‑MA), McCaskill (D‑MO), Menendez (D‑NJ), Merkley (D‑OR), Mikulski (D‑MD), Murphy (D‑CT), Murray (D‑WA), Nelson (D‑FL), Peters (D‑MI), Reed (D‑RI), Reid (D‑NV), Sanders (I‑VT), Schatz (D‑HI), Schumer (D‑NY), Shaheen (D‑NH), Stabenow (D‑MI), Tester (D‑MT), Udall (D‑NM), Warner (D‑VA), Warren (D‑MA), Whitehouse (D‑RI), Wyden (D‑OR)

BLACKWATER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Md. — A Delmarva fox squirrel poses on the root ball of a fallen tree.

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Back in March 2012, I took part in the American University Center for Environmental Filmmaking’s Classroom in the Wild: Chesapeake Bay. Over the course of a week, we immersed ourselves in a crash course in documentary film. We learned the basics of getting good footage, researched potential topics, and went to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Over course of two-and-a-half days four groups of students shot all the footage we could get, then we went back to American to make short films out of the vast amount of digital footage we shot.

The group I was in decided to focus on refuge’s effort to save the endangered Delmarva fox squirrel, a subspecies found only on the Delmarva Peninsula today. I finished a first draft of this film that week — with American University police officers wanting to kick me out of the video lab late my final night there. (Understandably, as no official AU folks were around.)

I finally managed to revised the film in preparation for a Classroom in the Wild film showcase on Nov. 6, 2012 (election night), and tweaked it a bit more the day after. Below is the result:

—30—

National Biological Information Infratructure home page

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — My apologies to those who have already seen my Facebook pages and listserv posts about this.  I just learned from David Inouye, moderator of the ECOLOG‑L list, that the National Biological Information Infrastructure program will be terminated in January.

According to the NBII Web site:

In the 2012 President’s Budget Request, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is terminated. As a result, all resources, databases, tools, and applications within this web site will be removed on January 15, 2012. For more information, please refer to the NBII Program Termination page.

This seems an affront to the principle of open government — certainly a retreat from past progress in that area — and may affect the ability of some of you to get information you need in your reporting. I doubt the programmatic savings is worth the loss of scientist, activist, journalist, and public access to the information contained.

In the next few days and weeks, I will find out more about how the closure will affect the research, conservation, and journalist communities and post updates here.

–30–

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli speaks at the annual Jewish Advocacy Day luncheon in Feburary. (Office of the Attorney General)

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Last year, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli made himself a hero to climate change sceptics worldwide by calling into question the science of climate change.

One of his first shots against climate change occurred in December 2009 before he took office. In his newsletter, Cuccinelli Compass, he claimed that seasonal winter weather—snowstorms—was inconvenient for those who believe in anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW).

Shortly after he assumed office, he launched two high-profile legal cases. The first was launched in February 2010 when he filed two petitions: one asking asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its endangerment finding that increasing greenhouse gas emissions  posed a threat to the health and welfare of current and future generations; another asking the federal courts to review EPA’s endangerment finding.

In April, Cuccinelli filed a joint motion (with the attorney general of Alabama) to compel the EPA to consider “evidence” that the climate data on which EPA based its finding were faulty.

His second official action was revealed in April. Cuccinelli began an investigation into what the attorney general alleges are fraudulent claims in grant applications by a former University of Virginia (UVa) professor, Michael Mann, whose research supports the theory that humans are changing Earth’s climate. Cuccinelli’s office sent a civil investigative demand (CID) to the university to compel it to hand over documents related to Mann’s research.

UVa challenged the initial CID in Albermarle Circuit Court. In August, Judge Paul Peatross Jr. ruled in favor of the university in August. Cuccinelli revised and resubmitted his CID in September. (UVa has again challenged the CID.) In December, Cuccinelli appealed the Peatross decision to the state supreme court. The state supreme court announced this month that it will hear Cuccinelli’s appeal.

Whew! It’s enough to make TCR seek the sanity and logic of a daytime soap opera.

TCR first took notice of Cuccinelli’s actions in February 2010, when the attorney general held a press conference announcing his challenge to USEPA’s endangerment finding. Cuccinelli invoked a scandal called Climate-gate—in which emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were stolen and published on the Web—to justify his request. (TCR feels compelled to point out that two of his e‑mails were among those released in Climate-gate: Look for posts by “David M. Lawrence” here and here. TCR regrets that his hacked messages were uncharacteristically temperate.)

In his Feb. 17, 2010, press conference, Cuccinelli argued the climate data had been intentionally manipulated as part of some environmental conspiracy.

“We’re asking the EPA to re-open its public hearings about this issue so we can add to the record information that has emerged in the climate change scandal called Climate-gate from recent months,” Cuccinelli said. “The EPA’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide was based on what we now know was bad temperature data that was intentionally manipulated to sell the world on the idea that carbon dioxide emitted as a result of human activity was causing global warming.”

Cuccinelli had more heat to shed on this theme:

“Britain’s Daily Mail even quoted the head climatologist at the center of the Climate-gate controversy saying he couldn’t reproduce the temperature data that he and his colleagues used to convince the world, including the EPA, of impending global warming. And it’s generally admitted at this point that while the climate models used to be argued to predict constant warming here on Earth, that the Earth in fact hasn’t warmed in the last 15 years.

“As someone who has an engineering background, look, I can tell you that for scientific research to be credible, the data has [sic] to be verifiable, it has [sic] to be repeatable. And the data the EPA relied on is neither of those things, neither verifiable or [sic] repeatable. And it even looks like some climatologists have admitted that much of the data was made up, or at least the conclusions from the data were made up. And that’s what the EPA has been relying on.”

TCR agrees that data have to be verifiable, and that they have to be repeatable. TCR would like to take Cuccinelli’s argument a bit further. When invoking what he later calls “good science” to advance one or another public policy, policymakers and the scientists advising them should consider all relevant data. They should be honest about uncertainties in the data and theories underpinning a particular policy position, and that they should not misrepresent what is currently understood. (As a college instructor of subjects such as biology, geography, meteorology, and oceanography, TCR would also appreciate it if people cite proper sources—the Daily Mail article Cuccinelli cited in one of the quotes above was actually a rewrite of a story that originally appeared on the BBC’s Web site.)

Some months ago, TCR sent Cuccinelli a set of questions based upon the claims the attorney general made in his press conference. The goal was to asses the attorney general’s understanding of the science he criticizes. Below is the text of TCR’s email to Cuccinelli spokesman Charles E. James:

Dear Mr. James:

Thank you for sending me information about the challenge to the EPA finding on climate change yesterday. I am preparing a follow-up story on the announcement for publication. Below are some questions I have for the attorney general or one of your staff.

1) What will the commonwealth have to prove in order to prevail in the courts and with the EPA?

2) Has the attorney general evaluated the probability of achieving these objectives?

3) If so, what are the odds that the commonwealth with succeed?

4) Does the attorney general have an estimated budget for the total cost of these challenges? If so, I would like to have a copy of the estimated costs.

5) How much money has been spent so far — in terms of filing fees, research and preparation time, etc.?

6) Does the attorney general agree or disagree with this statement:

Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

7) What credible evidence do you have that “much” — the AG’s word — of the data used to argue that climate change is occurring is made up?

8) What specific data does the attorney general claim has been falsified?

9) How does questions about one temperature dataset (the CRU data highlighted in the Climategate controversy) undermine similar findings by at least two other temperature datasets compiled by two other independent research teams? Can the attorney general name the groups that compiled the other global datasets that show a similar trend?

10) Can the attorney general name a single climate model that predicts or predicted “constant warming” on Earth — with no seasonal or annual variation in temperature?

11) In referring to Phil Jones’s statement that there has been no statistically significant (at the 95 percent confidence level) warming since 1995, does the attorney general take issue with Jones’s explanation of the difficulty of obtaining statistically significant results in small data sets? Here is what Jones said — to the BBC, not the Daily Mail:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

PJ: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

12) The data presented in the BBC Q&A (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm) show a statistically significant warming from 1975 to 2009. How, then, is that inconsistent with the EPA’s finding?

Thank you very much for your time. …

Cuccinelli’s director of communications, Brian Gottstein, did respond to some of the cost questions. Back in May, Gottstein claimed that the office had spent only $455 on the filing fee of its suit to compel EPA to hear additional evidence. As a former employee of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, TCR knows the answer was not credible—staff time and office expenditures such as paper count as costs. But Gottstein said the attorney general’s office does not keep track of staff time spent on individual cases.

David Mills, executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said that in this matter, the attorney general’s office follows a longstanding pattern.

“The attorney general does not bill hours like a law firm,” Mills told TCR in a telephone interview last May. “I’ve asked Democratic attorney generals [sic], I’ve asked former Republican attorney generals [sic] and people who worked in their offices. Genuinely, they just don’t keep track of the hours they spend working on a case the way you work for a law firm because they don’t bill by the hour. They’re all salaried state employees.”

The attorney general’s office declined to address any of the scientific questions TCR raised. Let the record show, however, that the Climatic Research Unit—the group at the heart of the Climate-gate scandal—did not make anything up. The allegations that the emails prove some green conspiracy have been debunked in a series of investigations and by non-partisan groups such as FactCheck.org. The Guardian (U.K.) has had some excellent coverage of the scandal. (See its Q&A for a brief overview of the Climate-gate scandal and its aftermath.)

TCR suggests an inconvenient truth for climatological conspiracy theorists: Over the course of the more than two decades since assembling their controversial data set, CRU staff moved offices, cleaned offices, misplaced documents, lended things to students, worked on something else, grew older, etc.; then when challenged to reconstruct what they had done in the 1980s, they found it difficult to document or remember all the steps. CRU director Phil Jones has admitted to being organizationally challenged, but that is nowhere near the same as being guilty of falsifying data. (TCR, whose editor and publisher periodically receives inquiries for documents he produced on while a consultant for EPA in the 1980s—and who cannot, along with the EPA who recommends that he be contacted in such matters, produce said documents—does not find the loss of decades-old material at CRU evidence of a conspiracy.)

While the attorney general and his staff declined to answer TCR’s science-related questions, a scientist did not. Virginia- and North Carolina-based readers of this Blog may have heard of Malcolm Cleaveland, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Arkansas. Cleaveland was a member of the research team that found evidence for severe droughts that may have helped destroy the Roanoke’s Lost Colony and which nearly destroyed the Jamestown Colony. He is a dendrochronologist (tree-ring scientist) who has spent most of his career doing climate reconstruction research of the type that has helped fuel scientific concern over AGW.

Cleaveland said it is highly unlikely that evidence for climate change has been falsified is highly unlikely “because the data comes in many forms from many institutions and individual investigators.” Cleaveland also shot down Cuccinelli’s reliance upon potential problems with the CRU temperature data in an effort to refute AGW theory. He named a number of lines of evidence that support the notion that humans can and are changing climate:

1. historical documents and records
2. the instrumental (thermometers and such) record
3. tree-ring reconstructions of past climate conditions (like those Cleaveland has worked on)
4. temperature data derived from isotope ratios in things like the gas bubbles trapped in ice cores
5. loss of alpine ice and snow
6. loss of ice in the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps
7. thinning of Arctic sea ice
8. warming of ocean waters
9. changing geographic distributions of plants and animals; and
10. multi-proxy (combinations of things like tree-rings, isotope ratios, growth bands in shells, etc.) reconstructions of past climate conditions.

The Science of Michael Crichton

In his discussion of these lines of evidence, Cleaveland cited close to 80 peer-reviewed scientific references—in a 3‑page-long discussion! (Cleaveland attached a 23-page-long bibliography on climate change as well.)

Cuccinelli, in his joint motion to compel EPA to consider new evidence, cited news reports from the Guardian (four articles), USA Today (one article) , the Daily Mail (one article), International Business Times (one article), RIA Novosti (one article), the Telegraph (one article), The New Zealand Herald (one article), the National Post (one article), the Times (U.K.; two articles), NRC Handelsblad (one article). He cites the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) twice—the Fourth Assessment Report is cited once a supplemental report on Indian glaciers is cited once. Almost all of the references Cuccinelli cites refer to Climate-gate or a handful of errors in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. TCR wonders whether someone who truly believes in “good science”—as Cuccinelli claims—could honestly call such a one-sided (and scientifically sparse) literature review sufficient.

TCR submits that the theory behind AGW is not new, is not based on “falsified” data, and does not originate in faulty computer models. TCR reviewed the state of climate science in an essay on Michael Crichton’s turgid anti-global warming tirade, State of Fear, in 2008. The fact is that the theory of greenhouse warming is nearly 200 years old, dating back to the work of the French mathematician, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, who first described the so-called greenhouse effect in the 1824. (TCR admits to missing the 1824 paper—he cited an 1827 paper in the State of Fear essay.)

Fourier’s early insights were tested by scholars such as John Tyndall, who in 1861 demonstrated that trace gases in the atmosphere—such as carbon dioxide—can absorb heat in the atmosphere and, as a result, affect the global climate. Svante August Arrhenius began to model how Earth surface temperatures would be affected by changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide (which he called carbonic acid) in the atmosphere. The first of several papers he wrote on the topic was published in 1896. (Those interested in the historical development of climate change theory should check out James Fleming’s online collection, “Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming: A Selection of Key Articles, 1824–1995, with Interpretive Essays.”)

Given the length of Cleaveland’s bibliography, it is clear that quite a bit more research into climate change has been published since 1896, so Cuccinelli’s focus on the questions about alleged flaws in one data set seems rather myopic.

TCR has one final scientific point to address: Cuccinelli’s assertion that climate models predict a “constant warming” from AGW. TCR suggests a one-word reply: bunk. No one who has read Edward Lorenz’s 1963 paper, “Deterministic nonperiodic flow,” would expect such a simple response. In that paper Lorenz described the “butterfly effect” — in which tiny changes in initial conditions could produce drastic changes in outcomes — and helped found chaos theory.

Many factors affect Earth surface temperatures: intensity of incoming solar radiation, albedo (reflectance) of the atmosphere and surface, elevation of the surface, time of year and day (which affect solar angle), shading effects, particulates (such as volcanic dust), absorption and emission of heat by the ground surface, and much, much more. Changes in any one of these can affect the long-term trend in Earth surface temperatures. (For those of you who wish to experiment with some of those factors and see how they affect temperature, check out the solar radiation model TCR has been tinkering with for nearly 20 years now. It predicts average daily temperature for a site based on latitude, elevation, time of year, slope configuration, and cooling effects from evapotranspiration. TCR admits the model could use better documentation.)

Given the dearth of scientific basis for Cuccinelli’s claims, TCR wonders what has motivated him to fight the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations and to investigate Michael Mann. Significant clues are given in the audio from his Feb. 17, 2010, press conference:

“The decision by the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant is going to have a severe impact on the people of Virginia and on Virginia’s economy. This is a very serious concern to me. The president has already indicated that he wants to force the coal industry out of business because of the carbon dioxide emitted when coal is burned to create electricity. Coal, as you know, is the economic engine of the southwestern part of Virginia and is one of the main job providers down there. Not to mention over half of America’s electricity comes from coal.

“Additionally, coal provides one of the cheapest sources of electricity for every Virginian and for most Americans. Getting rid of coal as a primary source for American electricity means that energy prices are going to skyrocket, essentially gutting Americans’ wallets at a time when we can least afford it. This becomes a back-door tax for every American, every Virginian at a time when our economy is already reeling.”

TCR believes that Cuccinelli revealed his true motive in these last two statements. The attorney general is not concerned with sound science, he ignores too much of it to be taken seriously on that point. His prime motive is to protect the profitability of the coal industry despite the well documented environmental damage it causes.

-30-

One of the 112th Congress’s earliest environmental accomplishments — bringing plastics back to the cafeteria. (Brendan Buck)

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Environmental protection programs took a disproportionate hit in the recent congressional debate over H.R. 1, a continuing resolution to fund the federal government the rest of the current fiscal year.

The core resolution proposed to slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 30 percent—the largest cut, percentage-wise, of any federal government agency. Amendments to H.R. 1 were even more drastic: among other things, they would prohibit the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases and from implementing water-pollution controls in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and in Florida. In a smaller, yet symbolically significant move, the House leadership, reversed former policies that promoted recycling and reduced plastic waste inside the halls of Congress.

When the latter policy was implemented, Brendan Buck, press secretary for Speaker of the House John Boehner (R‑Ohio) tweeted, “The new majority – plasticware is back.”

The actions of this two-month-old Congress prompt the League of Conservation Voters to do something it rarely does: produce a special edition of its environmental voting scorecard just for this one spending bill rather than an entire session of Congress.

“The Continuing Resolution’s sweeping assaults on the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the wildlife and wild places Americans hold dear make it the most anti-environmental piece of legislation in recent memory,” said League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld in a statement released on the League’s Web site. “The depth and breadth of the anti-environmental amendments to this legislation is truly astounding, which is why LCV has taken the extraordinary step of creating a Continuing Resolution Special Edition National Environmental Scorecard.”

TCR to wonder: Has the GOP has launched a war on the environment?

In order to answer the question, one must first establish whether these policies originate primarily from the Republican side of the aisle, or whether they represent a more bipartisan effort. To that end, a document circulated by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation provided a great amount of raw data.

The document is a group letter by dozens of environmental and scientific organizations organizations (listed at the bottom of this post) that identified more than two dozen anti-environmental amendments the groups collectively opposed. An examination of the League of Conservation Voters scorecard discovered an additional amendment that could be considered anti-environment.

An examination of the data reveals that all of the provisions of concern originated from GOP representatives. Below is a listing of the representatives and the provisions they introduced.

Rep. Todd Akin (R‑Mo.) introduced an amendment that would eliminate funding for the Global Environment Facility, which supports international environment and develop projects.

Rep. Judy Biggert (R‑Ill.) introduced an amendment that would eliminate funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA‑E), which supports clean energy research.

Rep. Rob Bishop (R‑Utah) introduced an amendment that would eliminate funding for the National Landscape Conservation System.

Rep. John Carter (R‑Texas) introduced amendments that would block or weaken EPA enforcement of restrictions on toxic air pollution and eliminate funding for the salary and expenses of the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R‑Ariz.) introduced amendments that would reduce or eliminate support for international climate programs for adaptation and mitigation.

Rep. Cory Gardner (R‑Colo.) introduced an amendment that would prohibit EPA from regulating any use of chemicals present in hunting or fishing equipment.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R‑Va.) introduced amendments that would prevent EPA from using federal funds to implement the Chesapeake Bay restoration plan.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R‑Va.) and Bill Johnson (R‑Ohio) introduced amendments that would prohibit federal agencies from regulating mountain-top removal mining.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R‑Texas) introduced one amendment that called for a National Academies of Science study of hazardous air pollution regulations and discouraged such regulations from being promulgated for cement plants, industrial facilities and utilities and introduced amendments that would block scientific research into the effects of climate change.

Rep. Dean Heller (R‑Nev.) introduced amendments that would halt funding of the Antiquities Act.

Rep. Wally Herger (R‑Calif.) introduced an amendment that would prevent the USDA Forest Service from regulating off-road-vehicle use.

Rep. Walter Jones (R‑N.C.) introduced amendments that would prohibit foreign travel for NOAA law enforcement officers (which would impede their ability to regulate illegal fishing activity) and which would prohibit new fishery regulations that are intended to help rebuild declining or collapsed fisheries.

Rep. Raúl Labrador (R‑Idaho) introduced amendments that would block or weaken EPA enforcement of restrictions on toxic air pollution from cement plants and industrial facilities, defund the Council on Environmental Quality and eliminate any funding for the implementation of the Antiquities Act.

Rep. Bob Latta (R‑Ohio) introduced amendments that would cut $70 million from the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program, cut $10 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Construction of Research Facilities program and zero out funding for international family planning programs.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R‑Mo.) introduced amendments that would prohibit funding for the study of the Missouri River ecosystem restoration projects authorized by Water Resources Development Act of 2009 and block scientific research into the effects of climate change.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R‑Wyo.) introduced amendments that would zero out funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and undermine ability to enforce the Endangered Species Act and protections for wolves.

Rep. Tom McClintock (R‑Calif.) introduced amendments eliminate funding for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, defund the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSmart Grant program, zero out funding for Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act grants, prevent the Department of the Interior from completing science-based planning for the coho salmon recovery (which includes dam removal) in the Klamath River basin,  eliminate public access to information about whether or not dam removal is in the public interest and cut funding for the Tropical Forest Conservation Act.

Rep. David McKinley (R‑W.Va.) introduced amendments that would prohibit EPA from enforcing Section 404© of the Clean Water Act, prevent government regulation of mountain-top removal mining, and weaken proposed federal regulations regarding the treatment of hazardous waste.

Rep.  Kristi Noem (R‑S.D.) introduced an amendment that would end federal enforcement of clean air regulations.

Rep. Steve Pearce (R‑N.M.) was especially busy, introducing more than one dozen amendments that would stop funding of White House task forces, such as the Gulf Coast Recovery Fund; impede coordination and integration of intergovernmental initiatives, such as the Gulf Ecosystem Restoration Task Force and National Ocean Council; undermine ability to enforce the Endangered Species Act; halt efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate change; eliminate funding for all programs under fundamental environmental protection laws such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act; eliminate the land acquisition budget for the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the Forest Service; eliminate all funding for construction projects  in the BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service budgets; block scientific research into the effects of climate change; impede the right of citizens to seek legal enforcement of provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act; and zero out funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Rep. Ted Poe (R‑Texas) introduced an amendment to stop efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate change.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R‑Kans.) introduced an amendment to prevent the EPA from collecting data on greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources.

Rep. Tom Rooney (R‑Fla.) introduced an amendment to prevent EPA from implementing or enforcing water quality standards for Florida’s lakes, rivers and streams.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R‑La.) introduced an amendment to weaken management of oil and gas drilling off the outer continental shelf.

Rep. Aaron Schock (R‑Ill.) introduced an amendment to prevent EPA from investigating the health effects of the herbicide atrazine.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R‑Fla.) introduced an amendment to weaken proposed rules regarding the treatment of hazardous waste.

Rep. Don Young (R‑Alaska) introduced amendments to take away EPA’s authority to regulate air emissions in the Arctic and remove the Environmental Appeals Board’s authority to review air permits related to drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

The League of Conservation voters noted there were some environmentally friendly amendments—all by Democrats.

Rep. Edward Markey (D‑Mass.) introduced an amendment to eliminate subsidies for offshore oil and gas drilling.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D‑Ore.) introduced an amendment to cap agricultural subsidies, especially those to factory farms.

Rep. Paul Tonko (D‑N.Y.) introduced an amendment to prevent diversion of federal funding for a program that helps low-income families make their homes more energy efficient.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D‑Wash.) introduced an amendment to increase funding for the Department of Energy’s ARPA‑E program.

Of the amendments covered under the League of Conservation Voters’ scorecard, all of the GOP-sponsored amendments passed, save one that sought to eliminate the president’s power to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act. All of the Democrat-sponsored amendments failed.

TCR decided to look deeper into the data to find out if the anti-environment/pro-environment pattern evident so far extended beyond the mere introduction and sponsorship of amendments that weaken or enhanced environmental protection. For this, the voting data recorded in the League of Conservation Voters’ scorecard was extracted and analyzed. The League assigns scores ranging from 0 to 100 to legislators based on their voting records—as with most sports, a higher score is better.

While Congress should have 435 voting members, in fact only the data for 431 votes were examined. Speaker Boehner votes at his prerogative—he chose to not vote on any of these amendments. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (R‑Ariz.) did not vote on any of the amendments because she is recovering from an attempted assassination. Two representatives resigned: Jane Harman (R‑Calif.) resigned in February to accept a position as head of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Rep. Chris Lee (R‑N.Y.) resigned for reasons better left unsaid.

Harman cast some votes, and has a score, but as the votes that took place after her resignation count against her score, TCR felt it was unfair to include it in the resulting analysis.

Of the 431 representatives whose votes are included, 240 are Republicans and 191 are Democrats.  The average League of Conservation Voters’ score for the GOP representatives was 7.583 (±11.875), with a minimum score of 0 and a maximum of 76. The average score for Democratic representatives was 90.764 (±17.204), with a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 100. The difference is statistically significant with a less than 1 in 1 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) chance of the result occurring by chance alone.

TCR also examined scores by congressional delegation. Those of Maine (two representatives), Rhode Island (two representatives), and Vermont (one representative) had perfect scores: 100. Delegations from Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut and Delaware averaged above 90. Oregon, Maryland and New York averaged above 70, and New Jersey, New Mexico, Washington and California averaged above 60.

Wyoming, with one representative, had the lowest score: 0. Kansas, with four representatives, had an average score of 1. Other states with deleg ations that with average scores of 10 or less were Montana, Alaska, Oklahoma, Idaho, North Dakota and Arkansas. The delegations of South Dakota, Nebraska, South Carolina, Louisiana, Utah and Alabama scored between 10 and 20. The average scores of the delegations of West Virginia, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Florida fell between 20 and 30. The Arizona, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Minnesota, Nevada, Kentucky, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin delegations scored between 30 and 40.

Not all Republicans are happy with the actions of the House GOP.

“The continuing resolution (CR) that the House passed fulfills many items on the wish list of anti-environmental radicals,” David Jenkins, vice president for government and political affairs of the Republicans for Environmental Protection, said in a statement on the organization’s Web site. “Republicans were not elected to gut environmental protections, and this legislation’s attempt to do so is at odds with the stewardship values espoused by Americans of all political stripes. They were elected to practice fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, they are doing the former and weaseling on the latter. This duplicity brings with it the risk of serious political consequences for our party in 2012 and beyond.”

TCR imagines Republican pioneers such as Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and even Richard Nixon would agree.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: The signatories to the group letter were Alaska Wilderness League, American Bird Conservancy, American Rivers, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Native Ecosystems, Center for Plant Conservation, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Clean Water Action, Conservation Lands Foundation, Conservation Northwest, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Earthworks, Endangered Species Coalition, Environment America, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Working Group, Geos Institute, Greenpeace, Marine Conservation Biology Institute, Marine Fish Conservation Network, National Audubon Society • National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, National Wildlife Refuge Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, Oregon Wild, Population Action International, Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center, Southwest Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Wilderness Society, Trust for Public Land, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Wildlife Fund and Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

Henry Potter was the villain who tried to ruin George Bailey, the hero of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Check out how the The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star began an editorial response to the House approval of Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R‑Va.) amendment to prevent federal funding of the EPA’s Chesapeake  Bay restoration effort:

At the time of the last TCR post on the matter, the roll call data were not available. It is now, so it seems a good time to look at how the congressional delegations from the Bay watershed states voted.

Overall, Democrats opposed the Goodlatte amendment by a wide margin—36 showed their support for the Bay cleanup plan by voting against the amendment. Three Democrats from Pennsylvania—Jason Altmire, Mark Critz, and Tim Holden—joined Republicans by voting to cut federal funding for the plan.

Likewise, Republicans largely supported the Goodlatte amendment. Twenty-eight GOP representatives, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R‑Va.) voted in favor of cutting federal funding for the Bay cleanup. Three GOP congressmen—Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Nan Hayworth of New York, and Rob Wittman of Virginia—broke with their colleagues and voted against the amendment.

The results are presented below by state. A “No” vote is against Goodlatte’s amendment and indicates support for the Chesapeake restoration plan. A “Yes” vote is for Goodlatte’s amendment—against federal funding for the restoration plan. Party affiliation is given in parentheses: D for Democrat, R for Republican.

Delaware

Rep. John Carney (D‑All)—No

Maryland

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R‑6)—Yes
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D‑7)— No
Rep. Donna Edwards (D‑4)—No
Rep. Andy Harris (R‑1)—Yes
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D‑5)—No
Rep. C.A. Ruppersberger (D‑2)—No
Rep. John Sarbanes (D‑3)—No
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D‑8)—No

New York

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D‑5)—No
Rep. Timothy Bishop (D‑1)—No
Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R‑25)—Yes
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D‑11)—No
Rep. Joseph Crowley (D‑7)— No
Rep. Eliot Engel (D‑17)—No
Rep. Chris Gibson (R‑20)—Yes
Rep. Michael Grimm (R‑13)—Yes
Rep. Richard Hanna (R‑24)—Yes
Rep. Nan Hayworth (R‑19)—No
Rep. Brian Higgins (D‑27)—No
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D‑22)—No
Rep. Steve Israel (D‑2)—No
Rep. Peter King (R‑3)—Yes
Rep. Nita Lowey (D‑18)—No
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D‑14)—No
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D‑4)—No
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D‑6)—No
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D‑8)—No
Rep. Bill Owens (D‑23)—No
Rep. Charles Rangel (D‑15)—No
Rep. Tom Reed (R‑29)—Yes
Rep. Jose Serrano (D‑16)—No
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D‑28)—No
Rep. Paul Tonko (D‑21)—No
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D‑10)—No
Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D‑12)—No
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D‑9)—No

Pennsylvania

Rep. Jason Altmire (D‑4)—Yes
Rep. Lou Barletta (R‑11)—Yes
Rep. Robert Brady (D‑1)—No
Rep. Mark Critz (D‑12)—Yes
Rep. Charlie Dent (R‑15)—Yes
Rep. Mike Doyle (D‑14)—No
Rep. Chaka Fattah (D‑2)—No
Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R‑8)—No
Rep. Jim Gerlach (R‑6)—Yes
Rep. Tim Holden (D‑17)—Yes
Rep. Mike Kelly (R‑3)—Yes
Rep. Tom Marino (R‑10)—Yes
Rep. Patrick Meehan (R‑7)—Yes
Rep. Tim Murphy (R‑18)—Yes
Rep. Joe Pitts (R‑16)—Yes
Rep. Todd Platts (R‑19)—Yes
Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D‑13)—No
Rep. Bill Shuster (R‑9)—Yes
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R‑5)—Yes

West Virginia

Rep. Shelley Capito (R‑2)—Yes
Rep. David McKinley (R‑1)— Yes
Rep. Nick Rahall, II (D‑3)—No

Virginia

Rep. Eric Cantor (R‑7)—Yes
Rep. Gerald Connolly (D‑11)—No
Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R‑4)—Yes
Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R‑6)—Yes
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R‑9)—Yes
Rep. Robert Hurt (R‑5)—Yes
Rep. James Moran (D‑8)—No
Rep. Scott Rigell (R‑2)—Yes
Rep. Robert Scott (D‑3)—No
Rep. Rob Wittman (R‑1)—No
Rep. Frank Wolf (R‑10)—Yes

–30–

Rep. Bob Goodlatte

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — The House voted late tonight to approve a budget amendment by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R‑Va.) that would prohibit federal funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay restoration plan.

Goodlatte’s amendment to the House continuing resolution (H.R. 1), mandates that “None of the funds made avail­able by this Act may be used to develop, pro­mul­gate, eval­u­ate, imple­ment, pro­vide over­sight to, or back­stop total max­i­mum daily loads or water­shed imple­men­ta­tion plans for the Chesa­peake Bay Watershed.”

The Washington Post reports that the amendment passed 230–195, with eight Democrats joining 222 Republicans voting in favor of the resolution and 15 Republicans joining 180 Democrats opposing it.

In urging Congress to vote against the measure, Goodlatte raised the boogeyman of an overreaching federal government planning to wreck the economy in favor of the environment.

The Post report said that Goodlatte wrote a letter to his House colleagues that the Bay restoration plan was a “demonstration” project.

“If the EPA has its way, your local communities will also have to find the money for these costly regulations,” he wrote. “Congress must tell the EPA we do not want this overregulation in the Chesapeake Bay or any other watershed.”

Ironically, given that the Clean Water Act mandates the cleanup of the nation’s waterways regardless of who gets to pay for it, Goodlatte’s amendment will place the funding burden squarely on the backs of state and local governments in the Bay watershed. According to the Clean Water Act, the EPA only has to set water quality standards—it does not have to pay the costs of achieving them.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker issued the following amendment:

–30–

Satellite image of the Chesapeake Bay watershed (USGS)

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Weeks after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a plan to restore the Chesapeake Bay by putting it on a strict “pollution diet,” a Virginia congressman has introduced a budget amendment that would prevent the use of federal funds to carry the plan out.

Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who represents Virginia’s 6th District, introduced an amendment to the House funding bill that states that, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to develop, promulgate, evaluate, implement, provide oversight to, or backstop total maximum daily loads or watershed implementation plans for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.”

The move to cut Bay restoration funding comes amid a GOP-driven effort to trim EPA funding by 30 percent before the current fiscal year ends. Goodlatte’s amendment targets the EPA’s total maximum daily load (TMDL) requirements, which caps the allowable limits of certain pollutants (such as nitrogen or phosphorus) that are discharged into or run off into the waters that feed the Bay.

Goodlatte’s action has triggered a strong reaction among groups supporting the Bay restoration effort.

“How unfortunate that Congressman Goodlatte, who represents one of the states that would benefit most from a healthy Chesapeake Bay, is seeking to torpedo the Bay restoration plan before its ink is scarcely dry,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker in a statement released Tuesday. “The cleanup plan, finalized just weeks ago, is the result of years of intense work, community outreach, and consensus agreement among scientists, policymakers, and leaders in six states. It follows decades of widely acknowledged failure to restore a national treasure that multiple presidents, governors, and members of Congress have pledged to restore and that millions of voters have consistently said they support.”

Baker’s statement noted the importance of federal participation in any Bay restoration effort.

“A successful Chesapeake Bay restoration plan simply must have a fully supportive and involved federal partner,” Baker said. “As history has shown, the Bay states cannot do it alone. The Bay TMDL may well represent the Bay’s best and last chance for restoration. Its goal is to restore clean water to the Chesapeake and to tributaries such as the Shenandoah River, a polluted river flowing through Congressman Goodlatte’s own district, by 2025. Pollution has resulted in fish kills, dead zones, and impacts to human health, as well as costing jobs and damaging local economies. CBF fervently hopes the Goodlatte amendment will be defeated.”

According to Associated Press reports, Goodlatte said he opposed the EPA plan because, “They are trying to take control from the states the ability to manage these watershed improvement programs, which have historically and clearly been under the Clean Water Act for states to do.”

TCR finds this justification puzzling. The strategy of most major federal environmental laws (including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund, and others) is that the federal government sets overall standards. The states are free to act insofar as they can establish more stringent standards—but they are not free to set less stringent regulations.

Rather than rely on memory, TCR consulted a 2010 Congressional Research Service report on the Clean Water Act, which says, “Under this act, federal jurisdiction is broad, particularly regarding establishment of national standards or effluent limitations. Certain responsibilities are delegated to the states, and the act embodies a philosophy of federal-state partnership in which the federal government sets the agenda and standards for pollution abatement, while states carry out day-to-day activities of implementation and enforcement.”

TCR contacted Goodlatte’s office to give him an opportunity to explain his position, but has received no response to its questions from either the congressman or his press secretary, Kathryn Rexrode, by deadline (more later).

Chuck Epes, assistant director for media relations at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said the EPA’s TMDL limits were developed through just the type of federal-state partnerships that Goodlatte claims is lacking. Epes cited Virginia as an example, where EPA has for decades delegated enforcement of Clean Water Act provisions to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the State Water Control Board. He said the state played a major role in helping determine what the TMDL limits should be.

“Virginia went through an exhaustive, public process last summer/fall to develop its Bay watershed implementation plan (WIP) that spells out how Virginia intends to comply with the Bay pollution diet,” Epes said. “So for Goodlatte to claim this process somehow usurps state authority is just nonsense. It’s ALL about state authority.”

In the past, Goodlatte has called for a scientific review of the EPA’s TMDL model. TCR asked Goodlatte if he was aware of any scientfically based challenges to the model’s validity.  In fact, the model has been under development for more than a decade and has been the subject of a rather extensive scientific review effort from the start.

“I think folks readily acknowledge that the model is what is typically utilized in a situation where you don’t have all the data you need to necessarily address the issues, said R. Christopher French, Virginia director for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. “What people have to keep in mind is that a model is exactly that—it’s a model to try to help you get from point A to point B. …

“One of the things to keep in mind regarding the Chesapeake Bay Program’s model is that this has gone through a lot of changes through the past 15-plus years. That model is probably one of the most scientifically defensible models in the world because so much time and resources have been put into it.”

Epes said Goodlatte’s claim regarding the model is a a “red herring.”

Regarding the rigor of the Bay model, you are absolutely correct that it is imprecise,” Epes said. “EPA acknowledges that, and is constantly tweaking it to improve it. However, broad brush, it represents probably the most sophisticated watershed modeling of its kind on the planet and has been endorsed by the Bay region’s most respected scientists.”

The leaders of the Chesapeake Research Consortium—comprised of scientists from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland system, Smithsonian Institution, Old Dominion University, Pennsylvania State University and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science—would agree. In a Nov. 8, 2010, comment on the EPA’s restoration plan, they concluded that, “… the modeling framework used to develop the Draft TMDL represents the best current incorporation of available science with which to set and allocate maximum loads within the watershed.”

Last year, Goodlatte had introduced legislation that, according to his Web site, would assume farmers were in compliance with any Chesapeake Bay restoration plan “as long as they have undertaken approved conservation activities to comply with state and federal water quality standards.” That legislation died in last year’s session, but a similar bill (HB 1830) is circulating through Virginia’s General Assembly this session.

Epes worries that such an approach could amount to a “perpetual ‘get out of jail free card’ ” for farmers who implement certain management practices.

“While CBF is OK with that general notion, the devil of course is in the details,” Epes said. “Goodlatte (and Va. HB 1830) propose that farmers be deemed in compliance with the TMDL if they implement a ‘resource management plan,’ but precisely who would prepare the plan, what it would include, how and when it would be implemented, what practices it would require (if any), how it would be monitored, whether and how it would be enforced remain undefined.

“Just yesterday the [Virginia] legislation was amended to include a provision exempting resource management plans from FOIA requirements—in other words, it lets farmers say they’re doing BMPs, use state tax dollars to pay for them, but not make public what they’re doing and whether it is making a difference. As you might expect, CBF has serious concerns about it.”

French likewise has concerns with the approach.

“In order to meet the provisions of the Clean Water Act, water quality monitoring is the ultimate test,” French said. “For all the things we are looking for in testing our waters, whether it’s DEQ in Virginia or Maryland Department of the Environment or other groups, when they send their staff out and test [waters], those results are what it ultimately comes down to to determine if waters meet standards or not. The Clean Water Act is very clear about that. There are no deviations from that to my knowledge.”

In the end, Goodlatte’s move frustrates those who have spent years working to develop a plan for the Bay’s cleanup.

“It is certainly frustrating and disappointing, particularly when those trying ‘to call off the race,’ as you term it, represent Virginia and frame the issue as some kind of ‘healthy bay vs. healthy economy’ either/or issue,” Epes said. “But CBF is optimistic and confident that, like with a lot of issues in this country, the citizens are actually out in front of the politicians on bay cleanup, and that they will insist that government deliver what the Clean Water Act, Virginia law, the state Constitution, and most citizens demand—clean water.”

Accountability Alert: TCR contacted Goodlatte’s office for comment by e‑mail Wednesday night, and followed up with a phone call to his Washington office Thursday afternoon. It received an e‑mail from Rexrode asking what publication this inquiry was from. TCR promptly responded. Despite a second phone call Friday morning, TCR has received no other response from Goodlatte’s office.

TCR will be happy to update this article should Goodlatte or his representatives respond at a later date.

’

I’m pressing a milkweed I collected near El Cerrito, N.M., in the fall of 1983. (Copy­right © 1983 Richard L. Nostrand)

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Every now and then a news publication (in the traditional and 21st century senses) should rethink its mission. Why does it exist? What audience does it serve? Does it serve that audience well?

The time for such reflection (personal inventory for those of you familiar with 12-step programs) has come to The Chickahominy Report.

The topic — the environment — arises from a long personal evolution. I began as a youth with a strong interest in the nature and the natural sciences. Raised a Roman Catholic, I chose St. Francis of Assisi as my confirmation saint for a reason. While I no longer practice that religion, I stand by my veneration of the man Roman Catholics regard as the patron saint of animals and the environment.

Because of my curiosity about the natural world, I chose to major in biology while an undergraduate at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. My training began in a classical vein: taxonomy (What is it?), anatomy and morphology (How is it put together?), physiology (How does it function?) and evolution (How did it originate?).

Initially, I wanted to study animals, but — as is appropriate for someone influenced by St. Francis — I found the requirement to collect and preserve specimens caught in the wild discomforting. When I discovered geography (Where is it and why?), and that I could combine the two disciplines into one career — biogeography — I found one of the rails that would determine much of the course of my professional life.

The second rail I found by accident. Although I grew up in a newspaper family, I had no plans for a career in journalism. Nevertheless, I repeatedly found myself needing extra cash and found that I could usually get work in the sports department of a newspaper.

For more than a decade, I tried to keep science and journalism separate, but in the early 1990s, while a frustrated Ph.D. student in environmental Sciences at The University of Virginia, I met Kevin Carmody, an editor at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Va. Carmody was also a founding board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. He encouraged me to combine the two interests and become a science and environmental journalist.

In 1996, when I was working for the Tree-Ring Lab at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, I finally listened. I applied for and was accepted into the part-time program at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. I finally trod the path to my real career — a science and environmental journalist.

In the years since I started my time at Columbia, I got kicked out of their science and environmental journalism concentration because I wanted to take Sam Freedman’s book seminar — a good move on my part, as it led directly to the publication of my first book, Upheaval from the Abyss: Ocean Floor Mapping and the Earth Science Revolution in 2002. I’ve worked in journalism as a news copy editor and a sportswriter, and in science as a government regulator and a university professor.

Whatever side of the science/journalism line I’ve been on since 1996, my primary goal has been to help others learn about the living world around them, for I have one irrevocable bias: that a healthy environment is vital to the survival of our species as much as of any other. We cannot adequately protect what we do not understand.

So far this Blog has been a feeble effort toward achieving that goal. Like many bloggers, I have yet to find the balance between the work I love and the work that pays. Circumstances are complicated by the fact that I am now writing my third book, Time Detectives: Climate Change and Scientists’ Quest to Know Earth’s Future from Its Past,  and have begun a Ph.D. program in Media, Art, and Text at Virginia Commonwealth University. Both of these latest “distractions” further my long-term goal, but they take time away from the Blog you see here.

Nevertheless, I hope that — despite my divided attention, idiosyncratic choices of topics, and professed bias — it continues to serve its purpose in providing news about environmental research and policy developments in the Mid-Atlantic region.

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — On September 22, an article in The Washington Post touched off a vigorous discussion on ECOLOG‑L, a popular scientific listserv sponsored by the Ecological Society of America, about “naturefaking” in environmental films and documentaries. The story, which appeared under the somewhat misleading headline, “Wildlife filmmaker Chris Palmer shows that animals are often set up to succeed[1],” discussed some of the issues raised in Palmer’s new book, Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom.

Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom

Shooting in the Wild is no confessional. It is no polemic. Palmer, Distinguished Film Producer in Residence at American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking, offers a reasoned, nuanced view of the realities of filming the world’s animal life. The book begins with an introduction that illustrates the power of nature films. Palmer tells the story of Bruce Weide, an Alaskan who as a youth was steeped in the mythology of the evil wolf. He eagerly took part in hunts for wolves—in part to earn the $50 bounty for wolf pelts paid by the state. But shortly after seeing a Canadian film, Death of a Legend, that portrayed wolves as efficient predators but also loyal and affectionate members of extended families, Weide found that he could not shoot a wolf framed neatly in the crosshairs of the scope of his rifle. Weide eventually became a filmmaker himself. He has spent years working tirelessly to change public opinion about wolves.

The next section of Shooting in the Wild surveys the art, history, and method of nature filmmaking. Beginning with a discussion of the diversity of nature films—from television to IMAX—Palmer surveys the historical development of nature films as they evolved from entertainments featuring a highly distorted vision of reality (assuming there was much reality to begin with), to more high-minded productions featuring strong conservation messages, to the confused mix we have to day of very informative programs mixed with extremely exploitative tripe (my words, not Palmer’s).

The method section recaps the procedure of making wildlife films—from developing the concept, obtaining funding, building a crew, working with experts, scouting locations, shooting, post-production, marketing, distribution, and outreach. The section includes chapters on funding and working with celebrities.

The heart of the book addresses the ethical dilemmas one encounters in nature films. No filmmaking is easy, but Palmer points out that filming nature is especially challenging. Animals and plants carry on their lives on their schedule, not ours. If a filmmaker is interested in coral reproduction, he had best be in the water with dive gear, camera gear, and lights on the one or two nights out of the year when corals spawn. Animals and plants live in their neighborhood, not ours. A filmmaker interested in the life cycle of ancient Atlantic white cedar best not be afraid of heights—more than that, he best be a good rock climber because most of the old-age trees live on steep cliff faces. Animals and plants are adapted to the hazards and nuisances of their environment, not ours. A filmmaker trying to capture hunting behavior of the northern lynx had better be prepared for vicious attacks by mosquitoes and black flies in the summer and for extremity-destroying cold in winter.

A range of other challenges can make life hell for a nature filmmaker. Large, dangerous animals are best filmed from a distance, where long lenses can adequately capture the images, but nothing can adequately capture the sound. Rare animals may be too difficult to find, or may be too vulnerable to disturbance, in the wild. Many organisms are too small to be seen, much less filmed, without specialized equipment. These are just a small subset of the pitfalls of making nature films.

Nature filmmakers from the time of pioneers such as Jean Painelevé have resorted to a number of devices to get the proverbial and actual shot. These include the use of captive animals, enclosures, artificial sound, staged encounters, and computer graphics. For example, an episode in the BBC television series Planet Earth featured a sequence in which a mouse lemur hunts giant hawk moths seeking nectar in the flowers of a baobab tree. The lemur feeding sequence appears to be shot in an enclosure—remarkable, well-lit (for a night scene) close-ups and the scarcity of discernable shapes, such as from adjacent foliage, in the background of what is supposed to be a forest canopy at night suggest to an experienced field researcher such as myself that no forest was present. (A suggestion is not proof, however.) Whether or not the producers of Planet Earth shot the sequence in the field or in a lab, it is the kind of shot that would more easily be obtained in an artificial setting.

According to Palmer, filming in artificial or restricted settings posed three primary ethical concerns: 1) scientific accuracy, 2) animal welfare, and 3) deception of the audience.

Given the feeding frenzy for every scrap of profit modern media organizations face, scientific accuracy is sometimes sacrificed. Emphasis on animal sex and violence—such as in Animal Planet’s dreadful Untamed and Uncut—titillate rather than enlighten viewers by offering the illusion of prevalent nature of what are truly rare encounters. In such programs, the role of humans in provoking animal attacks is often downplayed to feed the narrative theme of the savagery of nature. While the footage in Untamed and Uncut is often real (though appropriate context is omitted), other programs often feature captive animals trained to provide the appropriate—and exaggerated—violent response. Nevertheless, scientific accuracy, is often the easiest of these three ethical issues to address. By thorough research and consultation with scientific experts, scientific accuracy of the scenes can be assured. The concept of scientific accuracy, however, is often used to justify filming under conditions that are arguably unethical otherwise.

For example, scientific accuracy is often used as the justification for footage obtained from the use of captive animals that are not properly cared for. Many filmmakers, Palmer included, often use wild animals reared in game farms to obtain footage that is all-but-impossible to obtain in the wild—such as parenting behavior of secretive predators such as wolves or social behavior of burrowing animals such as naked mole rats. While many operators of game farms work hard to ensure the welfare of the animals in their care, many unfortunately do not, either keeping animals in conditions that are unhealthy or abusing animals that don’t perform “properly.” Wild animals handled by filmmakers or scientists, or whose movements are temporarily restricted (such as by enclosures), often face undue stress—not that life in the wild is not stressful enough.

Many field scientists realize the effect their research has on their subjects and work hard to ensure that such stress is minimized and that the scientific benefit derived from the research is worth the harm done to a small sample of individuals.[2] Most animal research proposals, as with most human research proposals, are screened by institutional review committees before such research is begun. The goal of such review is to ensure that the methods are scientifically defensible, i.e., that they are necessary and likely to get the desired results, and that no less-intrusive method can adequately substitute for the proposed research approach. No similar system of review exists for nature filmmakers, but Palmer suggests the filmmaking community should consider establishing one. He strenuously argues that welfare of the animals should be the top priority of any nature filmmaker.

Viewers of wildlife films often expect every scene to be shot in the wild and every sound to be recorded in the wild. For a variety of reasons, this is not practical. In his book, Palmer recounts an incident in which his wife called him “a big fake” when she found out that the sound of a grizzly bear splashing through a stream in one of his documentaries was actually the sound of a person splashing his hands in a basin of water. While the sound effect accurately reflected the sound of a bear walking through water, the use of such sound effects arguably deceives the audience. Other arguably deceptive techniques in nature films include the use of footage shot inside enclosures or other controlled conditions, the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI), the use of story lines that purport to follow animal characters that are actually composites of different individuals filmed at different times and/or different places.

While viewers may feel cheated when they learn of such techniques, filmmakers often have excellent reasons to use them—to minimize harm to wild animals, to capture behavior that would be impossible to capture in any other way, to just have sound to go with the images. (With a zoom lens, it is relatively easy to get a good image of a grizzly bear from a distance, but even with shotgun and parabolic microphones, it is all-but-impossible to get good sound from a distance.) Although most of the ethical burden is on the filmmaker, viewers who feel deceived by the use of such techniques should ask themselves if they would watch a film that does not include such devices.

For Palmer, the dilemma is as old as filmmaking itself, and each filmmaker has to decide for himself or herself what approach is appropriate, whether the shots to be gained are worth the ethical compromises involved. In an interview, Palmer said:

From my viewpoint as a scientist and a journalist, I understand the filmmaker’s dilemma. I have no problem with using captive animals, controlled settings, or fake but realistic sound to illustrate scientifically valid phenomena, but I do have concerns on the effects of filmmaking on the animals and environments affected. I have no answers, other than working to improve care of captive animals at game farms and laboratories and minimizing as much as possible the stress and/or harm to wild animals. Sometimes the ends do justify the means, other times they do not. Cases have to be decided on an individual basis.

For example, I have no problems if the lemur feeding sequence in Planet Earth was shot in a controlled environment rather than the canopy of an actual baobab tree—assuming that it was shot in a controlled environment rather than the canopy of an actual baobab tree. While I would not want to be reincarnated as a giant hawk moth in Madagascar, it was a relatively small sacrifice to pay for an increased awareness of the ecological linkages among plants, pollinators, and predators in forests and woodlands. But nature filmmakers should make a greater effort to make the audience aware of the techniques they use so that the realization that such “fakery” is employed does not result in a backlash that erodes public support for conservation efforts worldwide.

In the final chapter, Palmer offers eight suggestions for how to produce nature films that “make a difference.” They are: 1) Start with a statement of intent; 2) Work closely with reputable scientists; 3) Make conservation films that entertain; 4) Use new media effectively; 5) Disclose how the film was made and establish an ethics ranking system; 6) Practice green filmmaking; 7) Diversify the nature filmmaking community; and 8) Improve ethics training and guidelines. The suggestions are sound, although some may prove unworkable (the ethics ranking system comes to mind here). I do not get the impression that Palmer sees these recommendations as an endpoint. Rather, they are a starting point for a discussion that is needed throughout the nature filmmaking community.

Though the filmmakers are the focus of Palmer’s recommendations, I would argue that we should not absolve the public of its responsibility. The public should spurn productions that needlessly harm or harass wild animals as well as those that mistreat or feature mistreated captive animals. It should spurn shows that offer a steady diet of hysteria, hyberpole, and hocum—the staples of the sub-genre Palmer calls “nature porn and fang TV.”

The public should also be honest about what it wants. Would it watch a film featuring bears walking silently across distant rivers, or does it prefer a film with the sound of technicians splashing their hands in water in time with the bears’ steps? Public demand, as revealed by viewers’ purchasing choices in the media marketplace, exert a powerful influence over what choices are ultimately offered in that marketplace. We cannot escape our culpability in creating the world we find ourselves living in.

Current nature filmmakers should read Shooting in the Wild. Aspiring nature filmmakers should read Shooting in the Wild. More important, viewers of the work of nature filmmakers should read Shooting in the Wild. The discussion Palmer would like to have is not just for the filmmaking community. It is for all of us. For by having that discussion, and by acting on its results, we can begin to create a world that is better than the one we have.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Palmer, Chris. Personal interview. 20 Nov. 2010.

—. Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2010.

“Seasonal Forests.” Planet Earth: The Complete Series. Prod. Alastair Fothergill. 2006. BBC Video. 2007. DVD.

[1] The headline is misleading because some animals are set up to be eaten, which is not something I would call a “success.”

[2] While an undergraduate biology major contemplating a life as a zoologist, I changed my focus to plant geography and ecology. One of the primary reasons for the switch was my desire to avoid harming animals—no matter how necessary and unavoidable it may be—in my research.

NOTE: This is an expanded version of an essay originally written for the “History of Media, Art, and Text” class at Virginia Commonwealth University.

CLARIFICATION: I had a compulsive urge to add a reference to Palmer’s position as Distinguished Film Producer in Residence at American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking in the second paragraph. Given the focus of this blog is on the Mid-Atlantic region, the reference is needed to localize the post.

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