Politics

Bad and worse, from an environmental perspective

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NBC News

As the election campaign overheats, here are a couple critiques of current Biden and future Trump policies affecting the Forest Service.

WildEarth Guardians recently reviewed a FY 2022 Forest Service Report to Congress, which discusses “timber program performance.”  (I’d note that the context was “the unexpected increase in demand for lumber during the recent period of quarantine and social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic…”)  WildEarth Guardians said,

The document outlines how the agency can increase logging in our national forests by at least 25 percent above current levels, to four billion board feet each year! The last time the Forest Service sold that much timber from our national forests was 1993, the year the agency started developing the Northwest Forest Plan to address habitat loss for the northern spotted owl caused by—that’s right—overlogging. That level of logging was not sustainable then and it isn’t sustainable now, especially in light of what we know now about the importance of protecting mature and old-growth forests to mitigate the effects of climate change. Nevertheless, the Forest Service wants to turn the clock back and actually spells out just how it wants to do that.

The remedy, according to the Forest Service, is not to stop proposing ecologically damaging timber sales that violate the law, but rather to ask Congress for “legislative fixes” that make it harder, if not impossible, to challenge ecologically damaging timber sales in court. Streamlining environmental reviews and limiting public input, the Forest Service says, “will help increase timber volume sold.”

We shouldn’t wonder why there is skepticism from these parts when the Forest Service says “trust us.”  As WildEarth Guardians summarized (with their emphasis):

Such perverse incentives are a stark reminder that timber production remains the overarching priority for the Forest Service while all other values, like wildlife or climate mitigation, are a distant second. As the Forest Service seeks to push timber production levels even higher, those of us who care about our national forests must be ready to speak up and tell the agency and lawmakers that we cannot turn the clock back to a time when unsustainable logging pushed species like the northern spotted owl to the brink of extinction.

An article in the Huffington Post focused on the Department of Interior (but has implications for national forests), and indicates the incentives would be even more perverse for management of our public lands under Trump II, requiring even more public oversight (if they don’t take away the ability to do that):

Pendley’s blueprint for Trump, if he should win in November, includes holding robust oil and gas lease sales on- and offshore, boosting drilling across northern Alaska, slashing the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to drill on federal lands, expediting oil and gas permitting, and rescinding Biden-era rules aimed at protecting endangered species and limiting methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

Along with a series of actions to boost drilling and mining across the federal estate, Pendley calls for a future Republican administration to not only dismantle existing protected landscapes but limit presidents’ ability to protect others in the future. He advocates for vacating Biden’s executive order establishing a goal of conserving 30% of federal lands and waters by 2030; rescinding the Biden administration’s drilling and mining moratoriums in Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota; reviewing all Biden-era resource management plans, which cover millions of acres of federal lands; and repealing the Antiquities Act, the landmark 1906 law that 18 presidents have used to designate 161 national monuments.

If that reads like a fossil fuel industry wish list, it’s because it is. Rather than personally calling for the keys to America’s public lands to be turned over to America’s fossil fuel sector, Pendley let the head of a powerful industry group do it for him.

“Beyond posing an existential threat to democracy, Project 2025 puts special interests over everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group that shared its research on Project 2025 with HuffPost. “The dangerous initiative has handed off its policy proposals to the same industry players who have dumped millions into the project — and who will massively benefit from its industry-friendly policies.”

“They could have found any number of mainstream conservatives to write their agenda for them. They didn’t,” Weiss said. “They picked the notorious anti-public lands extremist, because that is at the end of the day what they want.

 

Presidential election has consequences for BLM plan?

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The Rock Springs (WY) office of the BLM has recently released a draft of its resource management plan.  The DEIS includes the traditional four alternatives:  no-change, protection, development, and “balanced.”  As Governor Gordon’s natural resources policy advisor put it, “In this case they kind of broke precedent and chose (alternative) B, the most resource-restrictive development.”  A retired BLM employee has alleged that presidential politics played a role.

The most balanced plan for managing millions of acres of federal land in central Wyoming — and the alternative that Bureau of Land Management employees and others put the most time, effort and money into — was rejected by the past two presidential administrations, a retired BLM employee said.

The Trump administration likely would have pushed Alternative C because it favors more drilling for oil, he said.

But the Biden administration has gone to the opposite extreme, so the BLM now is pushing forward with Alternative B, which designates 1.8 million acres as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACES).

Evans said it’s disheartening that two presidential administrations boosted the plans with the least amount of effort put into them.

“The science and the work to do that was all done on D,” Evans said. “And it’s kind of a shame that what the people in the field office and the cooperators spent all that time doing was rejected.”

Now many of those same BLM insiders who worked for years and spent millions of dollars fleshing out a balanced alternative instead have to push the administration’s preference and sell it to Wyoming residents and officials.

The State of Wyoming is considering suing over the plan (even though is not final yet).  Road management and minerals are key issues.

Based on my experience, I would agree that there may not be a precedent for selecting the most resource-restrictive land management plan alternative .  I also have not seen this level of direct political involvement in picking an alternative in Forest Service planning.  Typically in the Forest Service, any political “wants” would be built into the “balanced” alternative that would end up being selected.  Please let us know if anyone has had a different experience.  (Maybe this is a result of the different structures and cultures of the Forest Service and BLM.)
I have mixed feelings about this approach, where all but one are essentially straw alternatives.  Legally, all action alternative must be given equal treatment in the effects analysis, but that doesn’t preclude more serious thought being put into to the design of one alternative.   If one of the others is actually selected it would create the problem the employee described here – it has to be prettied-up at the end of the process.  I think it is important to meaningfully evaluate all reasonable alternatives, but there is a difference between “reasonable” meaning “what would meet the purpose and need” and “reasonable” meaning, “what the agency could realistically select.”  I think what is missing from public disclosure is the actual iterative alternatives that are considered in building the preferred alternative.
On October 9, the BLM extended the public comment period to January 17.  I guess that would buy them more time to refigure out the details of this alternative, or as they point out “In any resource management planning process, the final plan may mix and match portions from all the alternatives.”   “Rebalancing” them I suppose.

Undermining science to undermine renewable energy

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We’ve talked a little about energy transmission, especially in conjunction with renewable energy production, and the need to improve the electrical grid.  One thought seems to be that conservation interests are a barrier to that.  It turns out that the coal industry may be an even bigger barrier.  At least, here’s an example from the Trump Administration.

The Seams study demonstrated that stronger connections between the U.S. power system’s massive eastern and western power grids would accelerate the growth of wind and solar energy—hugely reducing American reliance on coal, the fuel contributing the most to climate change, and saving consumers billions.

But a study like Seams was politically dangerous territory for a federally funded lab while coal-industry advocates—and climate-change deniers—reign in the White House.

According to interviews with five current and former DOE and NREL sources, supported by more than 900 pages of documents and emails obtained by InvestigateWest through Freedom of Information Act requests and by additional documentation from industry sources, Trump officials would ultimately block Seams from seeing the light of day. And in doing so, they would set back America’s efforts to slow climate change.

The fallout was swift: The lab grounded Bloom and Novacheck (the lead researchers), prohibiting them from presenting the Seams results or even discussing the study outside NREL.  And the $1.6 million study itself disappeared. NREL yanked the completed findings from its website and deleted power-flow visualizations from its YouTube channel.

If NREL researchers are able to work unencumbered by political concerns and release Seams in its entirety, it could help point the U.S. toward a greener future, in which a robust economy runs on renewable energy. But for now, Seams is demonstrating an unintended finding—that when administrations stick their hands into scientific research, politically inconvenient truths are in peril.

The author indicated later that Congress had demanded that the study be released (and here it is).

This story is another example of political interference in science production and distribution.  I remain a strong skeptic that the pro-environment side can match this kind of interference by the coal lobby and “climate-change deniers” (as some have suggested here, including self-proclaimed climate-change “skeptics”).  It also seems obvious that this direct intervention is a lot more influential than any bias that exists in research funding.

Over the Weekend – Blue Mtn. blues, Flathead secrets and monumental benefits

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I guess this is a bookend to Sharon’s “Friday News Roundup.”

 

BLUE MOUNTAINS

I recently provided an update on the status of the Blue Mountains forest plan revisions here.   And here’s a little more detail on that, especially on the question of “access.”  (This term gets used for a couple of different things, and this one is about closing roads on national forests rather than creating access across private property to reach public lands.)

One group says its leading the charge to fight for what they call “original rights” is Forest Access for All.  “We defend the rights that we’ve had since Oregon was a territory, free reign where we go and utilize the forests which are public lands,” says Bill Harvey, a group member and former Baker County Commissioner. “A couple decades ago the Forest Service began closing off sections of the forest and that’s when Forest Access for All was formed.” Harvey says his group’s particular ire is at the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (WWNF), which he claims “have closed thousands of miles of roads in the forest the last twenty years.”

The group also has other “conflicts” with the Forest Service include the need for  more vegetation management, economic benefits of (motorized) recreation, and better public engagement.

“By law right now, we have an open forest. They will admit it, everybody admits it, and it’s in the books, I’ve seen it a million times. It is an open access forest,” says Harvey. “Why in God’s name would we want to give that up? Nothing benefits us to give up our rights that we have currently. We’re not asking for more rights, we’re asking for the existing rights to stay in place.

I’m going to disagree with him on this one, and I hope the Forest Service does, too (although it looks like they could have done a better job of setting the locals straight on this before now).  In 2005, Subpart B of the Travel Management Rule changed the culture of motor vehicle use on roads, trails, and areas from “Open unless closed” to a system of designated routes.  As for why?  The goal was to reduce resource damage from unmanaged motor vehicle use off that road system.

 

FLATHEAD

Newly revealed emails show that the Flathead National Forest under then supervisor Kurt Steele looked to keep a proposal of a tram up Columbia Mountain from public view for more than year prior to it being first proposed.

Does this sound familiar?  It sounds to me like the “Holland Lake Model” that got the forest supervisor a “promotion” to forest planning.  In this case the Forest properly rejected the proposal as inconsistent with its forest plan (thank you forest plan!).  But it does suggest a pattern of incentives and behavior that may be broader than the Flathead National Forest.

“The process where the public comes into play is when it becomes the NEPA process,” Flathead Forest spokesperson Kira Powell said about the emails.

“Bringing you into the conversation about this potential project on the Flathead NF because it’s coming from investors who apparently have the financial resources to build a tramway, meaning they likely have political savvy also … wrote Keith Lannom, who was deputy regional forester for Region 1 at the time …”

This account offers a window into the role of “political savvy” in Forest Service decision-making.

 

ORGAN MOUNTAINS – DESERT PEAKS NATIONAL MONUMENT

Since President Barack Obama created the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in 2014, visitation has tripled and the national monument has spurred economic growth in the Las Cruces area as well as other communities near the national monument, according to a new report.

According to this overview, the report looks at the various factors that made this particular monument so successful, including its location relative to population centers and the uses it caters to.  Also local community support.

“We have always recognized that the establishment of the monument was due in large part to the grassroots effort at the local community organizations and individuals,” Melanie Barnes, the state BLM director, said. “And due to this engaged and proud community, the monument has seen an increase in visitation.”

She said the BLM is working on a resource management plan that will address land use and resource protection. The public scoping period for that plan recently ended.

 

House of Representatives v. BLM – monuments and the public lands rule

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Grand Staircase – “visitutah.com” (Larry C. Price)

Dismissal of a lawsuit against President Biden’s proclamation restoring the boundaries of the Grand Staircase and Bears Ears national monuments allows the NEPA process to develop a management plan for these areas to proceed unhindered.  Biden ordered the BLM to work on replacing the Trump Administration’s resource management plan, and the BLM published its draft RMP on August 11 for public comment.

BLM may proceed unhindered, that is unless Congress decides to hinder them.  The FY2024 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Bill the House Appropriations Committee passed in July, which the full House of Representatives is expected to vote on in September, includes a rider that would require the BLM to manage the Grand Staircase NM in accordance with the plan finalized after Trump reduced the monument.

Which is the better planning process – RMPs based on public involvement through NEPA or RMPs based on appropriations riders?

The bill would also deny funding to implement the BLM’s public lands rule (a popular topic with many posts here from Sharon).  Another bill would force BLM to withdraw the rule (without considering all those public comments).

Kya Marienfeld, wild lands attorney for SUWA, called the Utah congressional delegation’s lack of support for the state’s public lands disappointing but adds that opposition is offset by more enlightened members of Congress who actively support the Grand Staircase and other public lands.

Appropriation riders seem to be kind of crap-shoot in the turmoil of budget negotiations, so I have no idea what the betting line would be on President Biden signing off on this one.  The “more enlightened members of Congress” may have more of an influence on defeating the withdrawal proposal.  Is that a bad thing?

 

 

The Amazing World of Political Byzantinery… How a CEQ Underling Overruled a Senate-Confirmed Cabinet Secretary

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And I’ve been interested, as you know, in how alignment in the USG currently works. Because if the Admin has a stated policy, then are the agencies working together to implement it? What if they disagree? How are arguments worked out in practice? Who is really holding the cards, and why.. and what makes political power exactly.. donations, the buddy system??? And when we think about voting, we need to think not only about the candidate themselves, but who in the Admin will be making decisions and why. Because I’m not a political person (I consider myself politically-impaired and many of my former bosses will agree) but based on my experience, every notable decision from here on in has some 2024 considerations involved. (We used to call this “silly season” and like many things it was shorter during less partisan times).

So today, we have an interesting example, based on the rumor mill (several sources). In this case, the USDA wanted to support the bill on fire retardant that was discussed last week at the Federal Lands Subcommittee Hearing (which was interesting and I’ll have a post or two just on that).

However, as I understand it, the Secretary of Agriculture (a Senate-confirmed Cabinet member) was overruled by an underling at the Council on Environmental Quality. How did this happen? I filed a FOIA to learn more, but anyone who has more information please contact me.

Right now, I can think of two rational reasons for this point of view. 1. Giving more power to the EPA or 2. “They shouldn’t live there anyway”.- kind of a pre-re-wilding point of view. But we’ll see what it says in the FOIA.

New (revived) weapon to attack the “deep state” (aka federal employees)

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Image: CrowD Games

Maybe the less that’s known about this the better, since it could be intimidating, but it’s unlikely to be used for two years any way, and even when the Republicans had the power to use it before they couldn’t, but I think it’s relevant to discussions we sometimes have about the “political” nature of federal agency decisions.  This would be that on steroids.  I’ve excerpted much of this Washington Post article:

GOP revives rule allowing lawmakers to target federal agencies, staffers

The rules package House Republicans approved late Monday (January 9) includes a provision allowing lawmakers to reduce or eliminate federal agency programs and to slash the salaries of individual federal employees.

Called the Holman Rule, the measure was proposed in 1876 but was sparingly used until it was reinstated by Republicans in 2017 and then dropped by Democrats two years later. In theory, it could apply to any federal worker or agency — but for now the move is seen as mostly symbolic, as the Democratic Senate could block Republicans from using the provision.

The rule is named for a House member who proposed it nearly 150 years ago as an exception to the general practice of keeping policy decisions separate from spending decisions

One attempt … in 2018, would have reduced to $1 the pay of a federal employee in charge of an office that had been the subject of whistleblower complaints; opponents called the move an attempt to punish without due process one individual who was involved in a wide-ranging dispute.

Even if an attempt to use the rule is ultimately blocked, though, “It’s the potential use that makes it so concerning,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. “If you’re a federal employee, this now becomes a risk that you have to think ‘I may get myself in hot water or have my salary dropped to zero or my job could get axed’” when making a professional decision.

“Symbols can cause harm. We need a workforce that is committed to the public good and feels safe to make that choice. That’s what’s at risk here,” he said.

Republicans have embraced the Holman Rule as part of the party’s aggressive stance toward the federal government, including President Donald Trump’s attempts to create new job classifications that would make it easier to fire government workers and his decision to move federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management out of D.C.

During the House floor debate, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), an ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), blasted federal officials as “unelected bureaucrats, the true, real swamp creatures here in D.C.,” saying they had “run roughshod over the American people without consequence.”

Democrats and union leaders, though, denounced the rule’s revival as an opening for the GOP to attack federal agencies and the people working in them for political reasons. Democrats warned that Republicans could abuse the power to lessen federal workers’ salaries or fire them outright — particularly at a time when the government is investigating former president Donald Trump.

Republican backers on Monday, though, said that reinstating the rule would provide an important check on the federal government.Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) — a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — said the Holman Rule would “restore the people’s House” in the face of administrative action.

“I think it’s another intimidation tool for civil servants who are simply doing their job,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) in an interview. “It is designed to provide a chill effect on the ability of civil servants to do their jobs and carry out enforcement regulations and compliance with the law.”

“The whole point of it is to use it recklessly. There’s no way to use it responsibly,” said the public policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, Jacqueline Simon. “It goes around everything that protects the civil service from political corruption — not just federal employees but entire agencies.”

“Proforestation” It Aint What It Claims To Be

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‘Proforestation’ separates people from forests

AKA: Ignorance and Arrogance Still Reign Supreme at the Sierra Club.

I picked this up from Nick Smith’s Newsletter (sign up here)
Emphasis added by myself as follows:
1)  Brown Text for items NOT SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.                                                                                                                                                        2) Bold Green Text for items SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.
3) >>>Bracketed Italics for my added thoughts based on 59 years of experience and review of a vast range of literature going back to way before the internet.<<<

“Proforestation” is a relatively new term in the environmental community. The Sierra Club defines it as: “extending protections so as to allow areas of previously-logged forest to mature, removing vast amounts of atmospheric carbon and recovering their ecological and carbon storage potential.”          >>>Apparently, after 130 years of existence, the Sierra Club still doesn’t know much about plant physiology, the carbon cycle or the increased risk of calamitous wild fire spread caused by the close proximity of stems and competition driven mortality in unmanged stands (i.e. the science of plant physiology regarding competition, limited resources and fire spread physics). Nor have they thought out the real risk of permanent destruction of the desired ecosystems nor the resulting impact on climate change.<<<

Not only must we preserve untouched forests, proponents argue, but we must also walk away from previously-managed forests too. People should be entirely separate from forest ecology and succession. >>>More abject ignorance and arrogant woke policy based only on vacuous wishful thinking.<<<

Except humans have managed forests for millennia. In North America, Indigenous communities managed forests and sustained its resources for at least 8,000 years prior to European settlement. It is true people have not always managed forests sustainably. Forest practices of the late 19th century are a good example.                                                                                                                                                 >>>Yes, and the political solution pushed on us by the Sierra Club and other faux conservationists beginning with false assumptions about the Northern Spotted Owl was to throw out the continuously improving science (i.e. Continuous Process Improvement [CPI]).  The concept of using the science to create sustainable practices and laws that regulated the bad practices driven by greed and arrogance wasn’t even considered seriously.  As always, the politicians listened to the well heeled squeaky voters.  Now, their arrogant ignorance has given us National Ashtrays, destruction of soils, and an ever increasing probability that great acreages of forest ecosystems will be lost to the generations that follow who will also have to cope with the exacerbated climate change.  So here we are, in 30+/- years the Faux Conservationists have made things worse than the greedy timber barons ever could have.  And the willfully blind can’t seem to see what they have done. Talk about arrogance.<<<

Forest management provides tools to correct past mistakes and restore ecosystems. But Proforestation even seems to reject forest restoration that helps return a forest to a healthy state, including controlling invasive species, maintaining tree diversity, returning forest composition and structure to a more natural state.

Proforestation is not just a philosophical exercise. The goal is to ban active forest management on public lands. It has real policy implications for the future management (or non-management) of forests and how we deal with wildfires, climate change and other disturbances.

We’ve written before about how this concept applies to so-called “carbon reserves.” Now, powerful and well-funded anti-forestry groups are pressuring the Biden Administration to set-aside national forests and other federally-owned lands under the guise of “protecting mature and old-growth” trees.

In its recent white paper on Proforestation (read more here), the Society of American Foresters writes that “preservation can be appropriate for unique protected areas, but it has not been demonstrated as a solution for carbon storage or climate change across all forested landscapes.”

Proforestation doesn’t work when forests convert from carbon sinks into carbon sources. A United Nations report pointed out that at least 10 World Heritage sites – the places with the highest formal environmental protections on the planet – are net sources of carbon pollution. This includes the iconic Yosemite National Park.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes active forest management will yield the highest carbon benefits over the long term because of its ability to mitigate carbon emitting disturbance events and store carbon in harvested wood products. Beyond carbon, forest management ensures forests continue to provide assets like clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and economic activity.
>>>(i.e. TRUE SUSTAINABILITY)<<<

Forest management offers strategies to manage forests for carbon sequestration and long-term storage.Proforestation rejects active stewardship that can not only help cool the planet, but help meet the needs of people, wildlife and ecosystems. You can expect to see this debate intensify in 2023.

Biden DOJ Defends Bernhardt Decision on King Cove: What Makes Something a “Political” Decision?

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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, left, is honored at an assembly at the King Cove School. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Saturday I posted about a controversy between Tribal people and a ski area on federal lands.  I’d like to place that story in conversation with another story, the King Cove controversy.  We don’t hear much about it, because it’s about a Fish and Wildlife Service (US DOI) administered area, and we usually talk about the FS and BLM.  But it has many familiar issues.  Native Alaskans in the village want a road to access a hospital.  Some national ENGO’s don’t want the road.

So we often talk about “political” decisions and decisions being “corrupted”.  I’d like to delve into this further.  As a person who has worked on numerous controversial EISs and rulemakings, I think it’s safe to say that there are a number of reasonable options that could be chosen.  What makes something “political”? Obviously there are numerous levels of internal and well as external politics. I think to agency people it might mean “a decision that I don’t agree with that favors interests I don’t like.” But then I think perhaps it’s about politics in the sense of “rewarding your friends and/or punishing your enemies,”   perhaps beyond what is a reasonable approach toward your stated aims.  For example, I think if the Admin’s stated goal is decarbonization, then shutting down US production on federal lands seems like more punishing oil and gas companies, or assuaging NRDC or ??, more than a rational policy call.  Others may disagree.  I would call that a political decision in that sense.  Do you agree or disagree or do you have a different definition?

So let’s look at the King Cove cases, which looks like Native Alaskans who need the road vs. (some) national ENGO’s.  The Admin appears to be picking a side by defending the decision (pro-road). Is this political? Was Sally Jewell’s decision not to political (assuaging ENGO supporters)?  Was Bernhardt’s political? Are they all political?

An interesting aspect of this case is that  he same argument (the federal property rights trump other considerations) seems to be made by these groups for Native people as for any local people.

Does this sound familiar?From an Anchorage Daily News story on Secretary Haaland’s visit.

Others complained to Haaland that outsiders can access Izembek to hunt and fish, and that much of the opposition to the road comes from conservation groups based on Alaska’s road system or in the Lower 48.

“Those folks live there,” said Skoey Vergen, chief executive of Aleut Corp., the Native corporation for the King Cove region. “These folks live here.”

Those dissenting groups were not present Wednesday in King Cove. But they’re still examining last month’s court ruling approving the Trump-era land exchange, and an appeal is an option, said David Raskin, president of Friends of Alaska Wildlife Refuges.

“This refuge is not owned by the people of King Cove. It is a great, valued possession of the people of the United States,” Raskin said in a phone interview Thursday. “And to have a small community like that reap horrible damage on one of the jewels of the refuge system would be a travesty, and a terrible blow to the American people.”

It appears that 11 miles of the road between King Cove and Cold Bay have not been built and that is what this decision is about. People from King Cove want a road to the hospital in Cold Bay.

Would we say that if the road goes through it is politics, or if the road doesn’t go, through it’s politics.  Do we feel more sympathy for the native Alaskans, or for far away people with environmental concerns.  If the Biden Admin were to give in to them, would that be undue political influence.

What groups, might we ask, are concerned about this road (desired by local Native Alaskans) to the extent that they are litigating it? Well, plaintiffs include The Wilderness Society; Defenders of Wildlife; National Audubon Society; Wilderness Watch; Center for Biological Diversity; National Wildlife Refuge Association; Alaska Wilderness League; and Sierra Club (collectively “Plaintiffs”). Many of these are powerful friends of the Obama/Biden Administrations.  Perhaps why Sally Jewell made her decision (political influence?).

And how did our friends at the New York Times cover the Jimmy Carter angle?  “The legal battle over the gravel route could gut an environmental law that the 39th president called one of his highest achievements.”

They are arguing the precedent of course, not the actual road.

***********************

Another interesting angle is how political decisions get validated or invalidated by the courts.

I got hopelessly confused over the legal questions involved.  At first it sounded a little like that Sec. Jewell made a decision from an EIS, and Sec. Bernhart couldn’t make a different decision off the same EIS by weighing things differently.  Then the judges became frustrated at having their time potentially wasted because conceivably Sec. Haaland could make a new decision (with a new EIS?) .

But then there’s this explanation in the Anchorage Daily News article.

Trump’s administration was good to King Cove. After a federal judge invalidated a land exchange aimed at authorizing the road, Trump’s Interior Department redid the plan and tried it again. A different judge rejected it a second time, in 2020. But last month, a federal appeals panel reversed that decision and said the land exchange could proceed,..

In the NYT article:

The exchange was authorized by Congress during the Obama administration, but was rejected by Sally Jewell, then the interior secretary, after a review found it would cause irreversible damage to the refuge and its wildlife.

If Congress asks the Admin to do something, it can just decide not to?  Hopefully someone knowledgeable can explain.

Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, a Clinton appointee, disagreed with her two colleagues, writing in a dissenting opinion that Bernhardt never explained the reasoning for this policy shift from Jewell and that she would have found that the land swap violated the Administrative Procedure Act and other federal laws.

DOJ argues in its brief that Bernhardt’s explanation placing public welfare over other concerns “sufficiently explained the change in policy,” in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act, and that no other documentation was needed.

I thought that it was interesting that of three judges two thought (and DOJ thinks) that it was adequately explained, and one thought not.  That’s why to us observers, it sometimes seems like when we go to court the decisions are more or less random.  If I were redesigning the system, the judge would have to explain what they thought would be an adequate explanation. Otherwise it’s like “bring me a rock”; decisions can’t be improved without constructive feedback.

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Here’s one from E&E News, part of a long interesting article from 08/08/2022, if you are interested in more background.

 

DePartisanizing Issues: Biomass Utilization and Fuel Treatments

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It’s been interesting to watch the mechanics of how an issue becomes partisanized.. or departisanized. Two cheery notes on this wherein what used to be considered that bad R people had are now the same ideas that good D people from states like California and Colorado have.

At a alumni gathering a few years ago at Yale, Gina  McCarthy gave what amounted to a rousing very partisan political speech (personally that’s not why I show up for reunions, but that’s a different topic) that included the concept of biomass being bad for climate as if it were something everyone knows the “right answer” to.

Fast forward a few years and here’s Senator Feinstein saying what we’ve always said here- it depends.. Don’t look at our problems through an “east coastal” lens.

“I write to request that the Environmental Protection Agency use its administrative authority to revise the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) to expand allowable sources for biomass to include vegetation cleared from human-occupied areas where it creates wildfire hazards,” Feinstein wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan. “Since 2010, California has experienced unprecedented wildfires and this change would help reduce risk in my state, improve forest health, and make use of cleared vegetation.”

Here’s what her letter said:

As you may know, Section 201 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) allows biomass from federal land to be sourced “from the immediate vicinity of buildings and other areas regularly occupied by people, or of public infrastructure, at risk from wildfire.” In 2010, the EPA published implementation guidelines for that category in its final rule, “Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives: Changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard Program.” Unfortunately, the implementation of this law did not account for areas with wildfire hazard potential and excluded most of the Western United States where catastrophic wildfires are increasing common. (See attached map, “2020 U.S. Forest Service Wildfire Hazard Potential,” which underscores the risk in the West.)

As this year’s fuel quantities become finalized, I urge the EPA, in conjunction with federal land management agencies, to expand the criteria for which qualifying biomass could be sourced and, thus, eligible for credits under the cellulosic category in the RFS. This determination should be made in accordance with the latest science, and to recognize the exacerbating threat that climate change poses to catastrophic wildfire in the American West.

This one from the formerly “fuel treatments don’t work” Los Angeles Times.. (this is from a political reporter, not an environmental reporter, so..)

Democrats are proposing a potentially seismic shift in how the nation battles wildfires by dramatically increasing funding for efforts that aim to prevent blazes, rather than focusing on the tools to put them out.
Under the social safety-net and climate bill passed by the House and now being negotiated in the Senate, Democrats would funnel $27 billion into the nation’s forests, including a sizable $14 billion over a decade for clearing vegetation and other dry debris that can fuel a fire.

What this article seems to overlook is that there is a substantial chunk of change in the bipartisan Infrastructure bill, and that the BBB $ come with restrictions that may make them less useful than they could be.

Still, the $27 billion would represent the largest investment the federal government has made in its forests, according to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who introduced a similar forestry bill this year. Funding for the preventative hazardous fuels reduction — to be spread over a decade — is more than double what Congress spent on such efforts annually between 2011 and 2020, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Traditionally, the federal government has focused its wildfire spending on suppression at the expense of prevention. The Interior Department and Forest Service are even allowed to unilaterally move money from any of its programs, including fire prevention, to fund more urgent suppression efforts.

“When you combine the effects of climate change with the profound negligence of the federal government in terms of managing its national forests, these places are profound dangers to our communities and to our economy,” Bennet said.

“Profound negligence of the federal government in terms of managing its national forests”.. sounds almost like an R Congressperson from the Sierra, or dare I say, the Western Slope.