Quote of Note

Now, there may be an energy crisis. This president has a very forward-thinking energy policy. Why do you think he's down on the ranch cutting that brush all the time? He's trying to create an alternative energy source. By 2008 we will have a mesquite-powered car!

      Comedian Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Index - May 2006

Arctic Drilling
Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
EPA Prematurely Shutting Important Research Libraries
Feds Want to Sell My Land
GAS PRICES: Don't Spend it All in One Place
HOSEC-SEATAC Turns Down AERA Mitigation Plan
KCET — Kelso Depot Dedication
Lighthawk Offers Flights for Environmental Groups
Orange County's Environmental Challenges
Rising Sea Levels Could Submerge Coastal Cities by 2100
River of Life Conference - The Clock Is Ticking
Second Cycle Angeles Chapter Conservation Grants for 2006
Stop Global Warming March and Rally
Tough Turf for Bush's Energy Speech

Environmental Resolutions Passed (April 23, 2006)

Useful Information

Chapter Conservation Committees Calendar
Chapter Conservation Management Committee
Chapter Conservation Grants Committee
Chapter Conservation Committee Agenda
Orange County Conservation Committee Agenda

Stop Global Warming March and Rally
Downtown LA, Saturday, May 20, 2006, Noon
Show Your Concern for the Earth’s Future

Meet at the LA County Hall of Administration, 500 W Temple St, LA 90012
Dress as an endangered plant or animal or in green.

March West on Temple St, South on Hope, East on 1st St. End on south lawn of LA City Hall, at West 1st St & South Spring St. (less than 1 mile) (Take transit — www.mta.net — or park across the street in Cathedral Parking lot ($14) or use 5-hour meters 3 blocks west on Fremont Ave.) Rally with musicians and speakers at LA City Hall, south lawn, 1 - 2:30 pm

Organized by Earth Day Los Angeles, Jim Stewart & Susan Leonard

River of Life Conference — The Clock Is Ticking

The River of Life Conference on Friday, May 19, will be held at the DoubleTree Orange County (100 City Drive, Orange). This day long event on the Santa Ana River will address ways to reduce water imports while enhancing the river's potential as a community asset. It will be a high energy, fun-filled, educational day for Santa Ana River advocates from crest to coast! Gary Patton of the Planning and Conservation League will kickoff the conference with a keynote address on: Two Worlds — and the River!

In the afternoon, Former Assemblymember Fred Keeley will enlighten us with his keynote address on: Rivers - Metaphors for Modern California.

We also have nine great panels that will lead the discussion on how to find balance along the Santa Ana River. Learn more about the panels and speakers by visiting us on the web.

Tell Your Senators that Arctic Drilling is NOT a Solution

Some politicians, including President Bush, have argued that if we'd drilled in the Arctic Refuge years ago that we would not have today's high gas prices. The facts tell us otherwise. According to the President's own Energy Information Administration, drilling in the Arctic would destroy a pristine wildlife refuge in order to save us about a penny at the pump in 20 years time. America sits on 3 percent of the world's oil supply, yet uses 25 percent of it. Energy dependence is simply not a problem we can drill our way out of. By contrast, had we raised fuel economy standards in 1990, we'd be using half the gas we are today.

Call the Capital switchboard at (202) 224-3121, ask for your Representative, and tell them to support real, long-term energy solutions — not the same failed attempts to drill in the Arctic.

Rising Sea Levels Could Submerge Coastal Cities by 2100

While Washington slept, the Queen of England is afraid. International CEO's are nervous. And the scientific establishment is loud and clear. If global warming isn't halted, rising sea levels could submerge coastal cities by 2100. So how did this virtual certainty get labeled a "liberal hoax?"

Ten months before Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans underwater, Queen Elizabeth II had a private conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair about George W Bush. The Queen's tradition of meeting once a week with Britain's elected head of government to discuss matters of state — usually on Tuesday evenings in Buckingham Palace and always alone, to ensure maximum confidentiality — goes back to 1952, the year she ascended the throne. In all that time, the contents of those chats rarely if ever leaked.

So it was extraordinary when London's Observer reported, on October 31, 2004, that the Queen had "made a rare intervention in world politics" by telling Blair of "her grave concerns over the White House's stance on global warming."

"The Queen first of all made it clear that Buckingham Palace would be happy to help raise awareness about the climate problem," She was definitely concerned about the American position and hoped the prime minister could help change it.

Press aides for both the Queen and the prime minister declined to comment on the meeting, as is their habit. But days after the Observer story appeared, the Queen indeed raised awareness by presiding over the opening of a British-German conference on climate change, in Berlin. "I might just point out, that's a pretty unusual thing for her to do," says Sir David King, Britain's chief scientific adviser. "She doesn't take part in anything that would be overtly political." King, who has briefed the Queen on climate change, would not comment on the Observer report except to say, "If it were true, it wouldn't surprise me."

With spring arriving in England three weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago, the Queen could now see signs of climate change with her own eyes. Sandringham, her country estate north of London, overlooks Britain's premier bird-watching spot: the vast North Sea wetlands known as the Wash. A lifelong outdoorswoman, the Queen had doubtless observed the V-shaped flocks of pink-footed geese that descend on the Wash every winter. But in recent years, says Mark Avery, conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, she also would have seen a species new to the area: little egrets. These shiny white birds are native to Southern Europe, Avery says, "but in the last 5 to 10 years they have spread very rapidly to Northern Europe. We can't prove this is because of rising temperatures, but it sure looks like it."

Temperatures are rising, the Queen learned from King and other scientists, because greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of such gases, is released whenever fossil fuels are burned or forests catch fire. Global warming, the scientists explained, threatens to raise sea levels as much as three feet by the end of the 21st century, thanks to melting glaciers and swollen oceans. (Water expands when heated.)

This would leave much of eastern England, including areas near Sandringham, underwater. Global warming would also bring more heat waves like the one in the summer of 2003 that killed 31,000 people across Europe. It might even shut down the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that gives Europe its mild climate. If the Gulf Stream were to halt — and it has already slowed 30 percent since 1992 — Europe's temperatures would plunge, agriculture would collapse, London would no longer feel like New York but like Anchorage.

Sad to say, Katrina was the perfect preview of what global warming might look like in the 21st century. First, Katrina struck a city that was already below sea level — which is where rising waters could put many coastal dwellers in the years ahead. In 2001, the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a peer-reviewed, international collaboration among thousands of scientists that is the world's leading authority on climate change, predicted that sea levels could rise as much as three feet by 2100. By coincidence, three feet is about how much New Orleans sank during the 20th century.

No matter what happens, the global warming that past human activity has already unleashed will make this a different planet in the years ahead.

But it could still be a livable, even hospitable, planet, if enough of us get smart in time. If we don't, three feet of water could be just the beginning.

Tough Turf for Bush's Energy Speech
In a State Hostile to his Environmental Policies, he Touts Hydrogen as New Fuel

President Bush declared hydrogen the fuel of the future in an Earth Day speech that highlighted the second day of his visit to California, a state that has continually clashed with the president over environmental policy. Saying the country has a "real problem when it comes to oil," Bush touted his plan to boost federal funding for research into making hydrogen a commercially viable alternative to gasoline as he spoke Saturday at the headquarters of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. The partnership is funded by automakers, government agencies and energy companies to promote hydrogen fuel cell technology for use in vehicles.

"It (hydrogen) has the potential — a vast potential to dramatically cut our dependence on foreign oil," Bush said, warning that gasoline prices will probably continue rising this summer. "Hydrogen is clean, hydrogen is domestically produced and hydrogen is the way of the future."

Bush, who spent Saturday morning on a bike ride in Napa County, said California was "a good place to spend Earth Day."

But from policies on fish, forests, air quality and global warming, the state and the president have rarely been in harmony. Through litigation and legislation, it's often Bush vs. California on environmental issues.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, has played a part in several major lawsuits against federal government environmental policies. Democratic lawmakers have frequently authored bills intended to counter federal proposals on air, water or forestry by increasing state regulation. And Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said earlier this month that the federal government had "fallen short" in environmental protection.

"California is totally at loggerheads (with the president) on virtually every environmental issue that there is," Carl Zichella, regional director for the Sierra Club chapters in California, Nevada and Hawaii, said on Friday.

Part of the frequent fighting is political, stemming from a state dominated by Democratic officeholders versus a Republican president. Democrats rarely miss a chance to snipe at Bush on the environment, an issue on which only 27 percent of Californians think Bush is doing a good job, according to a recent poll taken by the Public Policy Institute of California.

"George Bush is to environmental protection what the Exxon Valdez was to seals," quipped Lockyer earlier this week, referring to the tanker involved in the huge Alaska oil spill in 1989.

Lockyer filed a lawsuit this week under the federal Freedom of Information Act seeking to force the Bush administration to disclose contacts the administration has had with the auto industry regarding a battle over a new California law intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

Schwarzenegger too has differed with Bush on many environmental issues. He sent a strongly worded letter to the president earlier this month demanding federal help to implement the state's auto emission law.

One of Bush's top environmental advisers disagreed that Bush and California were at odds on the environment, arguing the state is benefitting from new federal standards requiring cleaner diesel fuel, more federal dollars to clean up abandoned polluted industrial sites and agricultural incentives for farmers to restore unproductive farmland for environmental purposes.

"When you take into consideration the scope and scale of all the issues we're in agreement on, it's overwhelming," said Jim Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

But consider the following conflicts, among just a few during Bush's tenure:

And no battle looms larger currently than the one concerning the state's auto emission law.

The law, signed by Davis and supported by Schwarzenegger, requires automakers to find ways to lower the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases their cars emit beginning with 2009 models.

The law requires a waiver from the federal government because it exceeds Clean Air Act standards, and the state's Air Resources Board asked for one last December. The Bush administration has not responded, and new rules released last month by the executive branch's Department of Transportation included a 50-page document detailing why California and other states can't regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

The auto industry has sued the state over the law, and the document may help the carmakers' case.

Environmentalists complain that although Bush touts hydrogen, which isn't expected to be a viable alternative to gas for many years, he has been less interested in helping California implement a law that could make a huge environmental impact much sooner.

"Hydrogen is all well and good for the future, but California has a plan to do something much faster and the president can help the state achieve that," noted Ann Notthoff of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Connaughton, Bush's chief environmental adviser, said the administration is concerned about legal problems with California's new air quality law because the federal government is solely allowed to set fuel efficiency standards — the key issue at stake in the automaker's lawsuit against the state.

But he stressed that the Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing the state's waiver request and hadn't yet made a decision.

In his speech Saturday, Bush said his administration is on track to spend $1.2 billion on research into hydrogen-powered cars, and he noted that the federal government gives a tax credit of up to $3,400 for anyone who purchases a hybrid car like the Toyota Prius.

Bush's visit to West Sacramento Saturday, like Friday's visit to the Bay Area, was met with protests. West Sacramento police said about 1,500 protesters gathered along sidewalks about 100 yards from the building in which Bush spoke. The president's caravan entered the site from a different entrance.

During the president's visit, the police were forced to move the crowd of protesters after the discovery of an unattended backpack. West Sacramento police later said the item had been dropped as a hoax, and they planned to charge one man.

The president left Sacramento late Saturday afternoon, traveling to the Palm Springs area for a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee.

Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House

Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing. Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a US Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well. These scientists — working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, NJ, and Boulder, CO — say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers — unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters — were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.

Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.

"We've always had the policy, it just hasn't been enforced," Laborde said. "It's important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast."

Several times, however, agency officials have tried to alter what these scientists tell the media. When Tans was helping to organize the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference near Boulder last fall, his lab director told him participants could not use the term "climate change" in conference paper's titles and abstracts. Tans and others disregarded that advice. None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Indeed, several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.

NOAA scientists, however, cite repeated instances in which the administration played down the threat of climate change in their documents and news releases. Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation's economy.

In 2002, NOAA agreed to draft a report with Australian researchers aimed at helping reef managers deal with widespread coral bleaching that stems from higher sea temperatures. A March 2004 draft report had several references to global warming, including "Mass bleaching . . . affects reefs at regional to global scales, and has incontrovertibly linked to increases in sea temperature associated with global change." A later version, dated July 2005, drops those references and several others mentioning climate change. NOAA has yet to release the report on coral bleaching.

EPA Prematurely Shutting Important Research Libraries

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is prematurely closing a Midwest research library following proposed budget cuts by the Bush Administration, even though the cuts have yet to be approved by Congress. Approximately 27 libraries nation-wide will be subject to more than 80% in budget cuts in the proposed 2007 budget.

It was announced in early February that several EPA research libraries are to be shut down due to a $2 million cut in funding out of a total $2.5 million budget. The research libraries are accessible to the general public, but are largely used by EPA scientists and enforcement officials. The cuts come at a time when the Bush administration is proposing an increase in EPA research funding under the “American Competitive Initiative.”

“How are EPA scientists supposed to engage in cutting edge research when they cannot find what the agency has already done?" asked Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). "The President's plan will not make us more competitive if we have to spend half our time re-inventing the wheel."

Originally, the proposed cuts to the EPA budget — totaling $300 million — included the dismantling of an electronic catalog that provides access to EPA research. Within the catalog collection are more than 50,000 documents that cannot be found elsewhere. The elimination of such a program would have made navigation of the research network impossible. Funds were shifted to enable the continued operation of the system, but that has also led to an additional $500,000 in budget cuts to EPA libraries across the country.

The early closure of the Midwest Regional library, which serves EPA staff and universities in six states, is not an isolated event. Many other branches are pursuing similar cutbacks in anticipation of Congressional approval of the budget. Noted Ruch, "EPA might want to wait for Congress to act before its shuts its libraries." Moreover, said Ruch, "EPA's national research plan is supposed to build on what we already know. But effectively deploying our existing knowledge base will be increasingly difficult if decades of research are locked away in storage."

Orange County's Environmental Challenges
The Greening of Orange County
Sponsored by the Southern California Gas Company
Co-sponsored by the United States Green Building Council, Orange County Chapter

Thursday, May 18, 2006
Reception: 5:30 pm
Program: 6:30 pm

Speakers:

Terry Tamminen, Governor's Special Advisor for Energy and the Environment
Thomas Wilson, Orange County Supervisor
Miguel Pulido, Mayor of Santa Ana
Debbie Cook, Huntington Beach City Councilperson
Garry Brown, Orange County Coastkeeper
Robin Everett, Sierra Club
Rayne Nastri, EPA Regional Administrator, Pacific Southwest
Jordan Segraves, Chair, US Green Building Council, Orange County Chapter
Dan Silver, Endangered Habitat League
Scott Thomas, Sea and Sage Audubon Society

This will all be moderated by Steve Churm, Churm Publishing Inc.

Please RSVP by May 15, 2006. Seating is free, but limited to RSVP guests only.

Call 1-800-427-6584 or email crc@southerncaliforniagas.com
Event #15657

This event will take place at the Orange County Pavilion, 801 North Main St, Santa Ana CA 92701.
The event will be televised by KOCE, Orange County and LA 36.

Second Cycle Angeles Chapter Conservation Grants for 2006

- May 26 for staff assistance with your grant
- June 9 at 5 pm is the final grant deadline.

For more information about Conservation Grants, go to http://www.angeles.sierraclub.org/environmental/ConsGrants.asp.

If you have any questions, please contact Jennifer Robinson, Conservation Coordinator at jennifer.robinson@sierraclub.org or (213) 387-4287 x204.

As you may know, LightHawk has been providing donated flights in small aircraft to environmental groups for the past 26 years. We and our partners have found that the view from above can enlighten, inform, and frequently lead to the protection of our natural heritage. Our work in North and Central America is made possible by an exceptionally dedicated volunteer pilot corps. For more information, please visit our website at www.lighthawk.org. The Grist online magazine recently highlighted our
work at http://www.grist.org/comments/interactivist/2005/11/14/durden/index.html.

We have many volunteer pilots in California and plan to expand our programs in that state. We can't offer transportation flights, but we do fly for a variety of issues, from water protection to urban growth. Over the years we have flown researchers, elected officials, media representatives, tribal members, and many others to help them better understand the interconnectedness of resources.

There is no charge for these flights — aircraft, fuel and, of course, time and expertise are all donated by our volunteer pilots. Our program staff works closely with groups to ensure the most effective use of the aerial perspective.

KCET
Kelso Depot Dedication

Kelso Depot show will air on May 18, 6:00 pm.

HOSEC-SEATAC Turns Down Aera Mitigation Plan
by Jeff Yann

I imagine that you all have seen Claire's email about SEATAC turning down Aera's plan but I wanted to elaborate some on what this may mean. You will recall that SEATAC is the special biological review that LA County requires for any on the properties that have been previously designated by them in the General Plan as Significant Ecological Areas. This committee is composed of people in the biological or ecological fields and are much more knowledgeable than the regular review that would take place in the review of the EIR. They render an opinion to Regional Planning about whether or not a proposed plan is consistent with the protection of these Significant Areas.

Aera has been working with this committee for about 3 years. Claire and I have attended several of its meetings. This last submission brought together all the biological studies and discussed these findings in relation to Aera's proposed development (about 600 pages).

In the last two meetings we attended I was very impressed that the committee was quite unimpressed with much of the applicant's reasoning. As we had been telling Aera since they first proposed the 3600 home plan, the plan has several major problems: