W

hen your local neighborhood environmentalists wax poetic about alternative energy, remember that they really hate viable alternative energy solutions because they represent progress and man exerting his will over nature.

You scoff.  I prove it.

Last Friday, the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity and Sierra Club cleared a major hurdle in our campaign to defeat the Sunrise Powerlink, a controversial transmission line proposed for Southern California, when the state’s Public Utilities Commission proposed two decisions opposing the project’s current plan. The administrative law judge’s proposed decision would totally deny San Diego Gas & Electric’s request to build the 150-mile-long transmission line, planned to stretch from the Imperial Valley desert to San Diego and cut across Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, as well as many other protected parks and preserves. This decision, if adopted, will mean a complete victory for the Center, the Sierra Club, and Southern California, halting a project that would ravage species habitat, contribute to global warming, and pose a significant wildfire threat.

What the CBD coyly and dishonestly doesn’t say in its email (which you can sign up for here) is that the Sunrise Powerlink is more than a “controversial transmission line” - it’s a transmission line dedicated wholly to carrying “Save the Earth” solar and geothermal power from plants in the desert to power users in San Diego.

It would not “ravage species habitat” - power lines go through species habitat throughout the region and, in fact, the habitat that’s protected around these lines creates wildlife movement corridors that enhance species populations.

It would not “contribute to global warming” - it would reduce reliance on California’s oil-burning electric power plants.

It would not “pose a significant wildlife threat” - few birds a year might die from electric shocks. That’s insignificant (unless you’re a wildlife absolutist).

The enviros forced measures through our legislature requiring electric utilities to rely more and more on alternative energy sources, but when the utilities actually try to do this, they face this kind of litigation and obfuscation from the greenies.

I see them as hypocrites, but it’s important to remember that there’s one word that describes them much better:  Fundamentalists.  And their aggressive adherance to their belief system is more akin to the Islamist jihadists than it is to the Christian fundamentalists they so often ridicule.

I

nsanity knows no bounds, and eco-insanity is particularly immune from boundaries.  As the nation’s fiscal crisis deteriorates, whacked-out judges continue to make decisions that would bring incremental improvements to the environment, if any, at a cost of billions.

In case you haven’t read your most recent copy of the Capital Ag Press, here’s the latest:

A court ruling that forces New York City to have a pollution discharge permit for drinking water the city pipes in from elsewhere may threaten irrigation systems in the West.

Let’s pause here for a moment for the uninitiated. A discharge permit is what you need to get if you’re discharging pollutants to the environment. Back in the 70s when the Clean Water Act went into effect, this was a good thing. Industries and municipalities were dumping all sorts of nastiness into the nation’s waters - our waters - and it caused nasty things to happen, like the Cuyahoga River catching fire.

But that was long ago, and the big nasty pollutants and polluters are all under control. What’s not under control are environmentalists intent on using these laws to bring down our nation, so they came up with the idea of calling water a pollutant. If New York City buys water from upstate New York and puts it into its pipe, these guys want New York to have to consider that water a pollutant and get a discharge permit.

The ruling specifically relates to water transfers, something that happens literally thousands of times a year in Idaho and the West, says Scott Campbell, Boise attorney and chairman of the Water Quality Task Force for the National Water Resources Association.

Irrigation canals and ditches are specifically exempt from regulation under the Clean Water Act, but that may change if the court ruling stands, Campbell said. …

“That ruling is literally costing New York City millions of dollars,” Campbell said.

And why should they have to pay? Is there evidence that this transferred water has ever made anyone sick? No, of course not; it’s not a pollutant. But by mincing the letter of the law and finding a judge who apparently recently escaped the insane asylum, the enviros prevailed.

“There are a lot of other states with massive water transfer systems, such as Colorado, which pipes water from the West Slope of the Rockies to its eastern plains. That water moves through pipes and lakes. If the state is required to have a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, we’re talking billions and billions of dollars. In some instances, there’s no way the water could be treated.”

California could find itself in a similar situation, given a massive water transfer system there that conveys water from the northern to the southern part of the state, he said.

Read more from the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.

C-SM readers know that Kieran Suckling, founder of the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity, promised long ago to change the way we in the West live by attacking our water supplies.  His goal is simple:  He wants to depopulate the West.  The CBD is sure to jump on this lawsuit and try to apply it here, where water districts are already looking at having to increase rates dramatically to keep up with the “regulatory drought” brought by environmental lawsuits.

Again, forcing discharge permits onto water transfers will do nothing directly to improve the environment.  But by making life more miserable for the people, it will accomplish the goals of the radical environmental movement.

hat-tip: Aquafornia

Sunday Scan items are published as each is completed; most recent at the top, so be sure to click through if you see the “continue reading” note at the bottom of the post. This note will be removed after the last item is posted, so if you’re reading this, please come back for more.

Palin Packs ‘Em In

H

ere’s the report from Shawn Steele (fomrer Cal. GOP chair) from last night’s Sarah Palin event in SoCal:

Not since Ronald Reagan’s final campaign rally at Orange County’s Mile Square Park on the eve of the 1984 election, have thousands of Californian Republicans gathered. Neither Bush could do it. None of last year’s Republican presidential candidates could fill the Home Depot Tennis Center.

The Center has 13,000 court side seats. All those seats plus the suites were filled to capacity. Still thousands more were slowly streaming into the stadium quickly filled up the court yard. Thousands more found standing room around the rim of the stadium. Over 20,000 people were there to celebrate, shout and scream.

SNL can continue to poke fun at Palin, but real people get her and want to get close to her. If you have any doubts what she’s done to the ticket, check out who introduced her:

Shelly Mandell, the current President of Los Angeles National Organization for Women [NOW] — in the Republican OC suite several of us were scratching our heads— introduced Sarah Palin. It was an awkward introduction. . Mandell, stated she didn’t agree with Sarah on everything, that she is a democrat, that she Mandell supported the failed Equal Rights Amendment campaign but the crowd exercised tolerance. Ms. Mandell will get a lot of angry calls from the hard left, but she embraced the moment and stood with Sarah Palin.

The OC Register also covered the event:

“Electrifying,” “genuine” and “inspiring” were a few of the adjectives that Orange County voters used to describe Sarah Palin after her rally at the Home Depot Center in Carson on Saturday.

The lead of the LA Times story was a bit different:

You can’t say she didn’t warn them.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced herself to the nation with a now-famous joke about lipstick being the only difference between a certain dog breed and a hockey mom. On Saturday, the Republican vice presidential nominee unleashed her inner pit bull, accusing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of being someone who would “pal around with terrorists.”

The reporter let us know that in her opinion (yes, yes, it was a news story, I know) Palin’s new tone was “abrasive.” That’s a fine alternative for “truthful,” isn’t it?

G

lobal warming has given us, most incredibly, a new version of the Twinkie defense. Fellow blogger Elvis Julep writes:

On September 11, a British court found six Greenpeace activists not guilty of causing over $50,000 in damage to a UK coal plant. It was never in dispute that the “Kingsnorth Six” did what they were accused of nor that they caused damage and endangered lives, including their own. They did it and are proud of it. Still, they were exonerated by a British court. Here’s why:

The activists argued that they possessed a “lawful excuse” for trying to shut the plant down, because they were trying to prevent the coal plant from causing greater property damage around the world by way of global warming. An example of lawful excuse, as cited by the prosecution and quoted in a Greenpeace blog, would be breaking a window to rescue a child from a burning car.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I’m not going to freak out too much … yet. It’s England, not America. Incredibly bad decisions get overturned. Judges get impeached.

Were the decision to stand, it would mean that English law would allow crime based on an unproven and unprovable belief. This would not only open the door to an assault of similar crimes against property - and even persons - with no ability to use the courts and prisons as deterrence.

Why stop at “lawful excuse” for global warming related crimes? I believe aliens are using Big Ben as their homing signal for an imminent attack, so I plead lawful excuse to the non-crime of blowing that sucker up. I believe if my ex-wife continues to live, she’s going to make some other poor bloke’s life a living Hell, so what’s the difference between breaking a window to save a child and breaking her neck to save a man?

Worse because it’s a more direct and applicable outgrowth of the decision, the court has branded conventional power generation in England criminal - based, again, on an unproven and unprovable hypothesis. It’s easy enough to prove that death and economic disaster would follow if England’s conventional power sources were lawfully excused out of business. People would die of heat or cold, or because hospitals couldn’t function, and England’s economy would quickly return to pre-industrial levels because even if sufficient alternative energy sources were on the verge (that’s a joke, feel free to laugh), it would take conventional power to get them manufactured and installed.  But that proof apparently cannot stand up against the mere belief in global warming.

We eagerly await the appeal, and the jail time these Greenpeace fruitcakes must serve, but our worries about the fate of England grow and grow.

I

s there a rock the media and their friends in the Obama camp have not turned over since McCain named Sarah Palin to the ticket? Probably. But here’s one turned-over rock you may have missed.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, has urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto a fee on cargo containers going through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, setting off a wave of criticism from California environmentalists.

Palin’s letter to Schwarzenegger is dated Aug. 28 — one day before presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he had picked her as his running mate. The letter argues that both consumers and the economy in California and Alaska would suffer as a result of the fee.

Though the issue might otherwise be viewed as a relatively parochial port matter, Palin’s newfound status as a national political figure has raised the stakes in what state environmentalists consider to be their most important pollution reduction effort this year. They say Palin has no business getting involved in the California issue.

“Why should Gov. Schwarzenegger take into account what out-of-state interests are saying?” said Lisa Warshaw, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for Clean Air. “It’s unfortunate that she is using her popularity to push her agenda on this state.” (LA Times)

To those unfamiliar with governance and eager to find whole new ways to hate McCain/Palin, this all may make sense, but it is nonsensical. Governors of states comment routinely in the interest of their state on the matters of other states. These letters, drafted by staffers, legislative committees, special interest lobbyists - and almost never by governors themselves - flow like currents from capital to capital across the country.

It’s unlikely that Palin even read this particularly unimportant letter before signing it. She probably knows more about the current state of Uzbek-Azerbaijani relations than she knows about this issue. And “using her popularity to push her agenda?” The letter was signed before Palin had any popularity outside Alaska.

Air quality lawyers for the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, among others, have been focused on California’s shipping and trucking industries, in part because it does create a lot of air pollution, and in part because it generates good money for them and is another weapon in their battle against economic advancement. So having Palin to attack instead of some unknown face in the governor’s office in Juneau is a great benefit to them. They are shedding crocodile tears in their statement. In fact, the Greenies are disparate to save this bill from a likely Schwarzenegger veto, and are happy to have Palin to throw into the mix. Otherwise, it’s an anonymous, second-tier bill that’s getting no visibility, making it easy for Schwarzenegger to nix.

The two govs share common concerns: That the new fee, in effect, a new tax on shipping, will increase consumer costs with no proof provided that the money will be spent as effectively by government as it would be by the private sector. The tax is $60 per container, or about $400 million a year.

Palin said many Alaskan communities lack road access and depend entirely on goods shipped by container, something that has significantly increased in cost in recent years. Many of those containers pass through the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports before arriving in Alaska, and Palin argues that the fee will add even more to the cost of goods shipped to her state.

“This tax makes the situation worse,” Palin wrote. “Similarly, the tax may harm California by driving port business away from its ports.”

The letter concludes by requesting that “due consideration be given to our state and that you not sign Senate Bill 974.”

“Due consideration” is hardly Palin throwing the weight of national celebrity around.

Warring Arguments

The bill’s author, Cal. Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Natch -Long Beach), makes two points: That the $400 million raised can be used for pollution-reduction schemes like installing low-pollution engines in trucks and trains, or creating grade separations at railroad/roadway intersections, to reduce long lines of idling vehicles. And , second, he argues that air pollution kills 3,400 Californians a year.

Schwarzenegger and Palin argue that it’s just another tax, and that it’s been proven over and over again that taxing money to government to solve problems doesn’t work as efficiently as incentivizing - positively or negatively - the private sector to do the work itself. As a free marketeer, I think the govs prevail over the Senator on this score.

As for the 3,400 (not 3,412 or 3,371?) dead Californians, show me one who died of air pollution. Just one. The statistic is so bogus it makes me hack violently and cough up phlegm. Air pollution can be a complicating factor in someone who’s already dying of something else - say lung disease brought on by years of smoking - but it’s quite impossible to scientifically nail down 3,400 Californians killed by pollution.

So it’s all nonsense, except that the Greenies went to the LA Times with their little, inconsequential story. And being all cuddled up under the covers with the Greenies the way the LA Times is, they actually put this nasty thing on their front page yesterday.

W

hy would any sane parent allow their child to go to Berkeley in this day and age? Why would anyone want to hand over trunks of money to the state for the purpose of destroying the sensibility and future productivity of their progeny? Case in point:

BERKELEY, Calif. — UC Berkeley officials say they are preparing to remove four tree-sitters protesting a planned new sports center next to Memorial Stadium.

The university has refused to meet the protesters’ demand that it donate $6 million to environmental and Native American groups as part of an agreement for the tree-sitters to come down voluntarily.

Campus spokesman Dan Mogulof said Monday the university is preparing for what it hopes will be a “quick and safe extraction” in the coming days. (source)

After these thugs have attempted to blackmail (crackmail might be more appropriate, given the photo) the university, they’re still interested in a “safe extraction?” Were it not for the fact that these self-righteous excuses for humanity are poised to sue for any mistreatment they might suffer after mistreating the university for the last 21 months while they’ve tree-sat and delayed construction, I would opt for “quick” and leave the “safe” to chance.

These tree-huggers (in the most literal sense) apparently don’t realize that when they chose to come to Berkeley they chose to come to a school that is in a heavily urbanized area and has a longstanding sports tradition. If they want to save trees, pick a place outside the city. If they don’t like sports, find a school that doesn’t have an athletic program.

I understand most madrassa don’t offer sports. Try your shenanigans there, sloth boy.

Putting The Freak In Eco-Freak

“I

‘m crying,” emailed Incredible Daughter #2, “because I’m laughing so hard.”I laughed too, but I also was more than a little troubled by the clip she attached to her email:

(If link is broken, click here)

This wailing and flailing over fallen trees is terrifically funny because they all seem so foolish, so out of whack with normal priorities and sensibilities, so ignorant of the cruel ways of nature.

But these people are the reality of the hardcore environmental movement, and watching them you look into the soul of the movement and discover how sick and extreme it really is.

So watch, laugh … and ponder.

I

‘m all for John McCain’s proposal to unleash the Treasury in support of nuclear power, but anyone in the development business knows it may fall flat unless he unleashes the Department of Justice as well. If you haven’t been keeping up on your Waste News reading (registration required - DRAT!), you may not know the latest in the nuke-building wars. Here’s the story:

Alternative Energy Holdings Inc., which has proposed to build a nuclear power plant in southwestern Idaho, is suing an environmental group for making defamatory remarks.

The Boise, Idaho-based company filed the lawsuit in Idaho’s 4th District Court after the Snake River Alliance called the company “scammers.” The comments, broadcast Aug. 11, defame the company and its stockholders, said Donald Gillispie, president and CEO of AEHI. The company has passesd two independent financial audits, which have found nothing amiss, he said.

“These radical groups are allowed to make almost any claim they wish, regardless of the facts, and the media rarely questions [sic] them,” Gillispie said. “Someone has to hold them accountable.”

Indeed, someone should hold them accountable, with one of those Indonesian canes, if possible. But if litigation’s the preferred approach, just don’t do it in California. Suing a lie-spewing whacko in California can get you in big trouble because of legislation prohibiting or limiting SLAPP lawsuits (that’s Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation for the unitiated). A stupid-a$$ law if ever there was one, it’s used by Greenies, NIMBYs and other loud-mouthed fact-fabricators to keep those they abuse from using the courts against them.

In other words, in the eyes of California’s crazy, liberal legislature, some people have more First Amendment freedoms than others. The key word is “liberal.”

Life In A Liberal Democracy

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h, liberal democracies, where political discord is honored, debate is civil, where respect for opposing views is understood as the foundation of compromise, and where compromise is seen as the glue that binds together the republic.

Someone apparently forgot to teach this to the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist group poised to disrupt this week’s GOP convention. Police raids at several of the groups’ domiciles resulted in the confiscation of:

Materials to create “sleeping dragons” (PVC pipe, chicken wire, duct tape), which is when protesters lock themselves together
Large amounts of urine, including three to five gallon buckets of urine
Wrist rockets (high-powered
slingshots)
A machete, hatchet and several throwing knives
a gas mask and filter
Empty glass bottles
Rags
Flammable liquids
Homemade caltrops (devises used to disable buses in roads)
Metal pipes
Axes
Bolt cutters
Sledge hammers
Repelling equipment
Kryptonite locks
Empty plastic buckets cut and made into shields
Material for protective padding
An Army helmet.

Read more about the raids here.

That’s not the stuff of peaceful protest, so we can thank the investigators at the St. Paul police who uncovered what the RNC Welcoming Committee was up to and pulled off a successful raid. The Left, however, does not share my view:

Members of various protest groups targeted in last night’s raid held a press conference today to express their anger and frustration.

The raid was an effort to “derail RNC protest organizing efforts and to intimidate and terrorize individuals and groups converging in the Twin Cities to exercise what are supposed to be their basic civil rights,” RNC Welcoming Committee member Tony Jones read from a statement.

“We will not be intimidated,” Jones exclaimed.

Yeah, well neither will we, punk.

T

o listen to Nancy Pelosi, the GOP is fixated on drilling and drilling only, while the Dems want a healthy smörgåsbord (oxymoron alert!) of energy options. I’ll translate: She’s fabricating the GOP policy and the Dem smörgåsbord is all kinds of oil, as long as it’s grossly over-regulated and negatively incentivized, and all kinds of alternative fuels - except nuclear - as long as they have zero environmental impact and don’t raise the price of arugula.

For all the hoopla on wind - which overlooks the Dem constituencies that fight wind installations - it will never be ready for prime time, says Dr. Robert Zubrin of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

Simply to replace the 18% of our natural gas we currently import would require multiplying the nation’s current total wind power tenfold; to free up enough domestic natural gas to replace half our gasoline would require a thirty-fold wind power increase. The feasibility of doing this is very doubtful, not merely because of the size of the project but because wind power is intrinsically unreliable. When the wind speed drops in half, power output drops by a factor of eight, so wind simply cannot provide the baseload power.

And remember: Enviros will sue to stop the windmill farms (can you say “Kennedy?”) and the construction of new transmission lines to carry solar- and wind-generated electricity from the deserts and plains to the cities (Why, it’s the Sierra Club!) .

To solve the energy crisis America needs to get real. Aggressive responses will require environmental impacts, but those impacts will be regulated and excesses will be penalized by laws already in place. And the Enviros will have to forfeit their desire to save every bunny and bush from any contact with evil humans.