An Environmental Agenda

[This is actually a belated response to a request from Deborah, which I misunderstood the first time around.]

I was elated about getting rid of Pombo--one of the worst anti-environmental representatives in the House. I didn't realize just how good an election this was for the environment, though, until I was browsing the September/October issue of Sierra and ran across this article about the worst of the worst. They had a rundown of ten 'two-time losers'--the ones who scored below 15% on the League of Conservation Voters scorecard, and were ethically challenged (the two seem to go together; the Lorax just doesn't pay as much as Chuck Hurwitz). Here it is:

DeLay (TX)
Pombo (CA)
Doolittle (CA)
Hayworth (AZ)
Ryun (KS)
Burns (MT)
Taylor (NC)
Cornyn (TX)
Cunningham (CA)
Lewis (CA)

Bolded names [on edit: bold doesn't show up so well, so I went with strikethrough] are those who are no longer serving as of January 1. That's seven out of ten. DeLay and Cunningham cut and run earlier, but five of these clowns went down to defeat in the election. That is a stunning victory.

So...what do we do with it? What should the agenda be? My (inexpert, top-of-the-head) thoughts below the fold...

Obviously, the environmental issue is global warming. That's a little unfair, though, because it's also the national security issue and the economic issue; global warming threatens more loss of life than any terrorist group could dream of, and greater economic disruption than anything since the Great Depression.

I would say that we've already made progress just by getting James Inhofe out of the top seat on the Senate environmental committee. The new chair is Barbara Boxer, who has announced plans to hold hearings on global warming, and is pushing Bush for mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. (Credit where credit is due: Joe Lieberman also signed the letter to Bush. He's terrible on Iraq, but not bad on the environment.) Hearings are a start, and probably necessary to build public support for action, but we need to see some concrete proposals coming out of them--some combination of mandatory emissions standards and tradeable pollution credits, alternative energy research and development.

Of course, carbon emissions are just one side of the equation; the other side is the forests, which trap and store CO2 (and release it when they're cut down). The more healthy forest we have, the less CO2 remains in the atmosphere. Deforestation has been reversed in some countries (including the US), but in others (such as Brazil and Indonesia) is still going on at a dangerous rate. I would love to see the United States offer trade or other economic incentives aimed at reversing or halting deforestation in the areas where it remains a problem.

The issue nearest and dearest to me is, of course, wilderness; preserving what we can of the remaining unprotected wild areas is a priority of mine. A number of bills that had no chance in a Republican Congress now have a shot at passing, including a comprehensive California wilderness bill and a bill to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystem.

But 'wilderness' is more than just the lands that fit the narrow definition in the Wilderness Act; in a broader sense, it's any relatively unspoiled open space. And as Nobody in Particular says:

The need to preserve the wilderness....goes way beyond aesthetics. Spiritually and emotionally, it's all tied into the meaning of life; pragmatically, I think it's tied to mental health -- on both individual and mass scales. I firmly believe that human sanity is dependent, in some way, on some level of understanding of -- and communion with -- nature.

The need for publicly accessible open space is enormous and growing, even as more of it is lost to development every day. Preserving open space within the reach of urban areas, open space that the public can enjoy, is a priority as well. We in the Bay Area have the Golden Gate National Recreation Area as a great example of what the Federal government can do in this area; I would love it if this Congress had the vision to follow the example and put its weight behind creating comprehensive parklands in other urban areas.

But the most daunting environmental challenge we face is radically changing our settlement patterns. The American style of growth (big houses in residential suburbs divorced from workplace and commercial services) destroys millions of acres of open space and farmland every year, and mandates mind-boggling levels of fossil fuel use. All of these issues are connected: the sprawl that obliterates open space also exacerbates global warming by creating heat islands and forcing people to drive everywhere (emitting greenhouse gases along the way), while also causing pollution that finds its way into even the wildest areas as acid rain. In order to deal with global warming, with our need for open space, with a whole host of other environmental issues, we need to drastically slow the sprawl.

So I would like to see some effort to that end--regulation or financial incentives to discourage suburban sprawl, support for smart growth--become a top legislative priority. Even though these issues are mostly handled at the local level, the Federal government does have tools at its disposal: the tax code (tax credits for transit- and pedestrian-friendly mixed use development, say, or putting a square-footage cap on the mortgage interest deduction), guaranteed loans (subsidized home loans in smart-growth neighborhoods), transportation funding (more for public transit, less for freeways; highway funds contingent on smart growth principles).

Now, we all know none of the above would survive Bush's veto even if it did pass Congress. Still, just introducing the bills, just getting them heard, is a step toward getting them enacted after 2008, under a more environmentally-friendly president. (And yes, even most other Republicans would be more environmentally-friendly than Bush.) I'm just happy that we finally have a Congress where they won't be dead on arrival.

[That's all, folks]