Environmental briefs: Citizen suit, criminal charges win out

Oxy, one of the big gas drillers even after an overpay merger with Anadarko, agreed to settle a lawsuit without admitting liability over massive gas flaring in the Carlsbad, New Mexico area. The suer was not a state government, nor the feds, but Wild Earth Guardians, using a provision in the federal Clean Air Act. See here for details. WEG is right that oil and gas companies see such flaring as normal, but given the overpay and other costs with that questionable acquisition of Anadarko, one wonders how much extra "pressure" Oxy may see to be cheap.

On the criminal side, just in time to move into his new role as the state's governor, Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro got Coterra Energy, the successor company to Cabot Oil and Gas of "Gasland" documentary fame, to take a nolo on state criminal environmental charges. It includes actual good news for Dimock-area residents: a clean water line to them, and other support for the next 75 years. (I hope Shapiro got something for that escrowed.)

Texas roundup: TxDOT cheating, Alex Jones cheating, Three Percenters, Ike Dike

Wylie's Guy Reffert, described as a ringleader of stirring up Jan. 6 insurrectionist, now has his reward. It's seven years in the federal stir. Looks like sentences are getting tougher. Unfortunately, though legally understandable, the judge rejected a terrorism enhancement, and yes, why haven't prosecutors followed that angle before. 

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The state is being sued for breaking the new Austin I-35 work into segments small enough to try to dodge environmental impact statements. It's by some of the same people who fought the I-45 expansion in Houston, and the story shows just how much TxDOT has used this dodge. This:

The case, filed in U.S. district court, raises larger questions about the federal government’s decision to give TxDOT the authority to approve its own environmental reviews.

is the key, and how it's laughable that the federal government outsources too much work to states. And whose fault is that?

Uh, Dear Leader's, not Shrub Bush and not Trump. Read the words:

In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA — which oversees the construction and maintenance of highways — created a program that would allow state transportation departments to assume federal responsibility to enforce NEPA.

Disgusting.

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Dan Solomon comments on the lack of free speech implications in the Alex Jones trial. That's because Jones and his attorneys didn't care to pursue First Amendment angles. They DO care to abuse other parts of the legal process, with Jones' parent company filing for bankruptcy last week, and using a part of the bankruptcy code intended for small business.

UPDATE: In a colossal self-own, Jones has now been busted in lies about never using email and not being able to find Sandy Hook info on his smartphone when one of his attorneys accidentally shared some of Jones' cellphone records with attorneys for Sandy Hook people suing Jones for defamation. This of course opens Jones up to perjury charges. It also opens both him AND his attorneys, if they had any inkling that Jones was lying about this, to other legal sanctions or charges.

As for the $45 million punitive damages verdict?

Not only will it likely be legally reduced, but, per Jones' bankruptcy cheating, how much money anybody from Sandy Hook will ever get out of Jones is debatable. Months ago, I blogged that anybody suing Jones needed to ask the judge in the case for an asset freeze order right off the top of the bat, and he's now proven why.

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The Senate OKed the antienvironmentalist Corps of Engineers to start planning for an Ike Dike that isn't funded yet, but once the Corps has its claws in it, probably will get the bucks, even though it's not only environmentalist but won't do half of what most people think it will do, and even that much is only if it works perfectly. Stuff it on this one, any Houstonians with whom I've argued directly or indirectly. I'm right, and I collected past receipts on this when I called out The Fraud (aka "The Squad") and other allegedly environmentalist House Dems for voting in favor of this a month ago. David Bruce Collins doesn't fully like the Ike Dike but doesn't think it's the end of the world, either. Texas Greens, by webmail and email, as well as Twitter, haven't answered me yet. Maybe they're less environmentalist than even the #GangGreen Sierra Club, which expressed concerns about an Ike Dike when the idea was first broached?

Update? Adding to the fun, the email address cochairs@txgreens.com doesn't work!

I would have searched on the website, but, guess what? The Texas Green Party's website ... doesn't have a search feature. This is 2022, not 2002. Seriously.

SCOTUS gets halfway pro-environmentalist

And on a Clean Water Act case, no less, and with two conservatives — Roberts and Kavanaugh — joining the four Dems for a 6-3 ruling on County of Maui. This Texas ag lawyer's state Extension site blog has some excellent takes.

Given today's court tenor, especially, this is surely the best that can be expected.

Re the three dissenters, yes, the Supreme Court does sometimes make law.

Contra the three dissenters, this is nothing new. Statutory rules of regulatory agencies can't anticipate in advance every issue and, as the majority notes, if they tried to, they would set themselves up for evasion by loopholes.

The functional equivalent standard sounds reasonable, as long as future courts don't erode it. This court held that a functional equivalent DID exist in this case. (Oh, so much for all of Hawaii being pristine environmentalists, eh?) That said, let's note Roberts' joining the majority on Obamacare to set up a tool for later carve-outs.

Anyway, the case was remanded, presumably back to the district court level. But, with time and distance being the big standards, and given the district court's original ruling, I can't but see that it will hold for the environmental plaintiffs again and that the appeals court would refuse a new appeal.

Green New Deal vs Green New Deal, part 2 Cost, affordability and more

My first post comparing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Dems' version of a Green New Deal to the original US political version of that by the Green Party had gotten so many updates, I realized that it was time for a second post.

First, now that AOC has released her own Green New Deal document, it looks highly aspirational. No carbon tax or other sticks to go with carrots. No real estimate of costs. No carbon tariff to increase domestic political feasibility, plus, per the reality of climate change, to force the whole world on the same page. These are going to be questions that need to be answered, issues that need to be addressed. Carl Beijer notes this, in noting AOC's document does discuss "funding" with no talk about real costs. The Green Party has also weighed in, saying it has fossil fuel industry loopholes. And that photo reminds us where, within the political world, the idea first articulated in the US>

Michael Grunwald has another critique. That is that the manifesto is a laundry list grab back. Agreed! Prioritization is important. For example, were I president? Climate change and national healthcare would be the top priorities. A step below that would be a minimum wage hike. Other things fall yet lower.

As for the cost? Contra a Reason claim of $7 trillion, this Stanford study goes much lower, without specific final numbers. Among other things, it says that reduced electric generation costs would offset some of the construction and installation costs. I'm going to say $3 trillion over a time period until 2040 rather than 2030, and scrapping some localization issues of the Stanford study. Still pricey? Yes, but not THAT pricey. At $150 billion/year, less than half of DoD's budget. And, Reason also ignores technology improvements, as well as the possibility of nuclear being part of the renewables mix. The Green Party response to AOC, meanwhile, notes that cutting the defense budget by 50 percent would take care of things. The allegedly libertarian Reason, often a foreign policy imperialist squish, ignores that.

And, it is a squish. That includes, under a No True Scotsman pleading, the claim that capitalism does not almost inexorably lead to imperialism. Small-l libertarians are generally squishes on imperialism. The Libertarian Party is better ... though not perfect. The Koch Bros help fund a Latin American think tank growth project, which is OK with local think tanks that are OK with military-backed authoritarianism, including when it's connected to the US.

European Greens have done some calculations years ago and say 3 percent of GDP per year. In the US?

Showing that the wingnuts are running scared, the Washington Times has also weighed in. There's a fair amount of whataboutism in the piece. Let's just tackle a couple of them.

1. High-speed rail. It talks about the cost of this while ignoring the cost of airport runways, the higher cost of airports vs train stations, the cost of air traffic controllers and many other things.

2. Interstate Highway System? Ike got the money by declaring it the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, as the 1956 act notes. Klein surely knows that and ignores it. The Green Party specifically notes we can cut defense spending by 50 percent. At the same time, speaking of, the Pentagon is repeatedly on the record as noting that climate change is an issue.

3. Apollo? This is silly. The rockets were already being built for the Defense Department at Mercury and Gemini stages. And, the capsule and lander were all contracted out to defense contractors. Apples and oranges.

4. World War II? Well, not silly, since many people have said we need the equivalent of a Manhattan Project funding level and mindset to tackle climate change. Manhattan Project? Refresh me again if that wasn't about national defense and national security.

That said, I'm seeing a trend here. Let's call this the National Defense Green New Deal. Problem solved! (We can also put former, post-abolishment, ICE workers to new use, eh?)

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Update, Feb. 22: The New Republic, of all places, not a leftist outfit, now asks if some Dems (not necessarily AOC) are deliberately trying to steal Greens' thunder.

Bag it, Ken Paxton

The blog space is being turned over to a guest post this afternoon, in the wake of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton suing the city of Brownsville over its law on charging for plastic grocery bags.

By Robin Schneider
Texas Campaign for the Environment

State and national bag law advocates convened this week to defend bag ordinances in the wake of embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against Texas’ first local law against bag pollution in Brownsville. A range of organizations plan to assist as this issue lands in the lap of the Texas Supreme Court with the City of Laredo appealing a recent decision striking down that city’s bag law.

“The reasons for bag laws are as diverse as Texas,” said Robin Schneider, Executive Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment, who played a leading role in passing the Austin bag ordinance and successfully defeating attempts to pre-empt bag ordinances at the state legislature since 2009. “For the West Texas city of Fort Stockton it was the death of livestock that ingest ‘plastic tumbleweed’ and ruin the desert landscape getting caught on cactus and barbed wire, while on the coast it’s concern over sea turtles, plastic in the food chain and beach pollution.”

The benefits of local ordinances have been obvious. “As a resident of the Rio Grande Valley, I have seen the very positive effects of the Bag Ordinances in Laguna Vista, South Padre Island and especially Brownsville.  One would not recognize Brownsville today compared to 2010 when the city very wisely passed their bag law,” said Rob Nixon, Chairman of the Surfrider Foundation South Texas Chapter and Surfrider Foundation National Boardmember. “Attorney General Ken Paxton’s claim of the ‘buck a bag’ fee is disingenuous and not true.  If you need a plastic bag at one of only the seven retailers that got exemptions and implemented the fee, it is $1 for as many bags as you require for the purchase. That fee goes to a fund to clean up the bags that are dispersed from the exemptions,” he concluded.

As Texas groups organize into a statewide network, national bag advocates are also assisting. "State pre-emption of local plastic bag laws is an issue that has become much more prevalent nationally the last few years," said Jennie Romer, attorney and founder of plasticbaglaws.org. "What's unique about pre-emption disputes in Texas right now is that they're new fights about old laws: the provision that allegedly pre-empts local bag laws in Brownsville and Laredo has been on the books since 1993 and Brownsville's ordinance was adopted in 2009."

"Single-use plastic bags may seem convenient, but that is far outweighed by their impact—which is far-reaching and ubiquitous.  Every square inch of the planet is affected.  Legislation to reduce or eliminate the consumption of single-use bags has proven to be effective.” said Christopher Chin, Executive Director of the Center for Oceanic Awareness Research and Education (COARE).

Laredo’s bag ordinance came together with the help of students, business owners and city leaders in 2015. The Fourth Court of Appeals, based in San Antonio, overturned the ordinance in August of this year. "Doesn’t the state have anything better to do than to crush the will of the people and its locally elected officials, to suit just a few business interests?”asked Tricia Cortez, director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, and the primary advocate for the ordinance.  “Conservation of our environment, and the protection of local wildlife and precious tax dollars, is at the heart of these plastic bag ordinances.  Why should protecting the wallets of the plastic bag industry be considered more important than protecting the long-term health, financial well-being, and beauty of our cities? It’s a disgrace what is happening behind closed doors in Austin right now on this issue, that attempts to address a pervasive local and global problem in our communities,” Cortez concluded.

Wildlife groups including Sea Turtle Inc. and the Turtle Island Restoration Network are concerned about the impact of bag pollution on these iconic Texas animals. “Turtle Island Restoration Network has been working with Surfrider Foundation, Galveston Chapter for two years to educate our residents and visitors about the impact of single-use plastic bags on the marine environment. With our close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston and West Bay, there is a strong possibility for single-use bags to enter our waterway,” said Joanie Steinhaus, Turtle Island Restoration Network’s Program Director for the Gulf of Mexico.

Additionally, there are many cities that have not yet enacted ordinances but which have been exploring them for some time now. These communities are looking to protect their rights to protect their environment.

"The Greater Fort Worth Sierra Club has campaigned for the last three years for a bag ordinance in Fort Worth,” said Conservation Chair John MacFarlane. “We believe that an ordinance to phase out these single use bags will improve the aesthetic of Fort Worth, help to mitigate storm drain clogging, and will help save aquatic animals and terrestrial wildlife from a slow toxic death. Attorney General Ken Paxton should spend his time solving problems, not attacking good local policies that are protecting wildlife, livestock, water resources and the environment."

Many groups are coming together to support the legal efforts to defend bag pollution and to work at the Legislature in the 2017 session to address state law as well. These new threats have sparked the formation of a new network among advocates from across Texas with the input of national bag ordinance experts.

The Texas communities with bag ordinances on the books include: Brownsville, South Padre Island, Laguna Vista, Fort Stockton, Laredo, Austin, Freer, Sunset Valley, Kermit and Port Aransas.

High speed rail in Texas? #HSR before California?

Jeff Turretine says that the Pointy Abandoned Object State could zip past the Leaden State (California, y'all) on high speed rail. A Texas consortium is organized to back HSR to connect the Texas Triangle.

I've long said that Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio/Austin are perfectly situated for HSR. There's cities of big enough size to justify it, cities that are connected to each other for business reasons (or politics, with Austin), and just the right distance apart that HSR can easily compete with planes, especially with airport parking and boarding times, etc., on travel time.

The Texas group is also pitching this as a totally private issue, no "gummint" involved.

Flip side? Beyond the eminent domain Perry mentions (he'll have an update tonight or tomorrow) as part of his take, along with the conservative politics of the no "gummint," will be related issues. Among them, I'm sure, will be attempts to railroad through (I see what I did there) all the environmental parts of the permitting process. We've already seen that if it's oil vs. lizards, or water vs. cranes, we know who wins, damn the paperwork and damn the feds who are part of that "gummint."

Anyway, since the biggest push right now is coming from H-town, go back to Perry's website and look for updates. Or click this link; it's a fairly detailed update from him, linked to one from another Houston blogger.

#ExxonValdez — remembering 25 years

One dead whale in Prince William Sound, 1989, via Exxon.
AP photo via Houston Chronicle

In the spring of 1989, I was in the first full year of graduate divinity school. I still belonged to, and believed in the tenets of, a fundamentalist Lutheran church. (No, family and friends, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod doesn't fit a narrower definition of Christian fundamentalists, but it does fit nicely in a broader sociology of religion definition.)

Anyway, I digress.

I was also, for the most part, still steeped in my parents' political beliefs, between my dad's Eisenhower-Main Street conservativism (with his twinge of Eisenhower-Main Street racism), and my mom's "None Dare Call It Treason" moving to Art Bell-listening Tea Party progenitorship (as I know with that anecdotal proof positive that the Tea Party idea is nothing new).

Anyway, again I digress.

I was already a bit of an environmentalist, at least in the sense of believing that Christian creationism did imply some sort of "good stewardship." And I was moving a bit beyond that, even.

Then, a seemingly drunken captain, Joseph Hazelwood, sailing a past-its-due-date, environmentally inadequate oil tanker, ran it aground on Alaskan rocks. And caused a massive animal die-off and other problems for which eXXXon (that's the correct spelling, folks) still refuses to admit full responsibility today.

That includes full financial responsibility, getting punitive damages cut to 10 percent of the original award due to "quirks" in maritime common law, per Wikipedia. And, since then? I've not seen either major party make major changes to environmental civil law to increase punitive damages for "takings" of reducing environmental and scenic value.

As for me? I took the next steps toward becoming a real environmentalist. (In the next five years, I took a chunk of steps toward becoming a real secularist [I avoid the Big A label, as much at times due to some Big As as well as Christian fundamentalists] and becoming a real liberal. By the end of the 1990s, I had moved beyond the Democratic Party, in fact and fortunately.) As part of that, I also became even more of an environmentalist, and a more activist one.

Indeed, while I had the pleasure of living in the Dallas area for most of the first decade of this century, I even "visited" a couple of eXXXon's annual shareholder meetings, as you can see. 

And, per the poster, we had even more to protest against eXXXon by 2008, or earlier. Since then, eXXXon has continued to be just as responsible of a corporate citizen on global warming and climate change, and now on oil and gas fracking, as it was on the Exxon Valdez. So eXXXon is the gift that keeps on giving.

And, in more ways than one. Per Wikipedia's story on the disaster, when in the original suit, eXXXon was hit with $5 billion in punitive damages, it got a $4.8 billion line of credit from J.P. Morgan. To insulate itself, Morgan created the first modern credit default swap.

In other words, eXXXon's Alaskan oil slick helped crap on the American economy nearly 20 years later. That said, why would anything about any unholy alliance between Wall Street and Big Oil surprise you? See: "Bros., Koch" for more.

Meanwhile, as High Country News notes, eXXXon's "cleanup" wasn't. There's still officially 21,000 gallons of oil in Prince William Sound and unofficially, much more.

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And Perry reminds us, in light of the Houston Ship Channel collision over the weekend, that things haven't changed a lot. That includes the damage to wildlife, not just the inconvenience to the modern economy.

Obama ready to show Reid how to run Senate?

President Barack Obama, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag, is ready to use 50-vote Senate procedural rules to short-circuit filibuster attempts against his energy and healthcare reform programs. Orzag said on ABC that Obama was looking at using the Senate’s budget reconciliation system.

He added that an alternative was to form a commission, similar to the military base closure commission, and then vote its recommendation up or down, without amendment.

I deliberately did NOT put “GOP/Republican” in the URL link, because a few Democrats — Robert Byrd springs immediately to mind — could well decide to support a filibuster on the energy program, depending on just how “green” it is on carbon dioxide emissions.

Also, Byrd is a stickler for both Senate rules and for Constitutional checks and balances, as he made clear last year. Between that and the fact that Obama certainly had some hand in easing him out of the Appropriations chair last year, means that the White House is probably playing with some charge of dynamite unless it’s already working directly with Byrd.

That said, this may be the clearest indication yet that Obama plans a different governing approach than we've seen in the past, and a more hands-on one.

As for how serious Orzag is about the commission idea, I don't know. That may have been nothing more than a political tactics sop, to somebody. In reality, unless the commission is structured, on the two issues at hand, to avoid Senate GOP obstructionism, I do not see how it adds much to the tactical angles.

Plastic bag tax in Texas?

Even if Texas state Rep. Rafael Anchia’s seven-cent plastic bag tax fails in the Texas Legislature, nonetheless, it’s a sign of Lone Star environmental progress for it just to get a respectful consideration.

That said, I don’t favor state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte’s idea of a more voluntary plan, where plastic-bagging retailers would have to offer alternative reusable bags and recycling bins.

Of course, Wal-Mart supports this idea, and not only because it has recycling in place. Nobody besides real environmentalists like me use its front-doot plastic bag drops, and it charges, it sells, reusable bags.

The world’s largest retailer does NOT want to pay a seven-cent-a-bag tax at all.

Anchia has introduced Van de Putte’s bill in the Texas House as “Plan B.”

I disagree with that, both tactically and strategically.

You never introduce Plan B until Plan A is exhausted.

And, Plan B isn’t really much of a plan.

Put Washington on the lawsuit witness stand for global warming

Invoking the idea of “public trust” (gee, what a novel concept), that’s exactly what environmental law professor is trying to do, namely, laying the legal groundwork for suing the federal government over failure to adequately take action against global warming.

I characterize the atmosphere as an asset that the people own in common. The government is a trustee of that asset. This approach has a basis in our environmental law. You can even think of it as an attribute of sovereignty ... that is, the duty of government to protect our natural resources. The atmosphere is one of those natural resources. In fact, it’s the most crucial resource in our trust, because it holds everything else together.

She calls it a much more “macro” level approach rather than using existing regulatory frameworks like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act (as in the case of the recent polar bear listing), etc. Not only would her approach have a broader focus on the number of issues, all hinged on global warming, it would address, because of that, one single suit would target a much greater number of government agencies than something like a Clean Air Act suit.

For more about Wood, a professor at the University of Oregon, visit her website.