The View from Right Field

Is Judge Brett Kavanaugh Anti-EPA or Just Pro-Proper Process?

Environmentalists are worried about Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court.  According to David Savage of the Los Angeles Times, “Environmentalists fear that if Kavanaugh joins the court, he would vote to block anti-pollution regulations for decades, long after President Trump has departed.”  Pat Gallagher, legal director for the Sierra Club, goes perhaps further:

“He would be a disaster for the environment.  He has a disdain for regulation, particularly from the EPA.  Kennedy was the swing vote in this area.  If we have to wait for Congress to act on climate change, we are doomed.”

The last sentence gives the story away.  Environmentalists haven’t been able to convince Congress to pass the legislation they think is necessary so they have been relying, during the Obama administration, on federal agencies, especially the EPA, to do what they want.  What environmentalists don’t like about Judge Kavanaugh is that he has been skeptical of federal agencies doing things that are arguably beyond what Congress has authorized them to do and that, ultimately, he is unwilling to let policy ends prevail over the means of proper process.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal

In an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung weekly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said:

“America is and remains the superpower, but at the moment it doesn’t recognize multilateral agreements in all areas, as shown by the decision to leave the [Paris] climate accord and now the tariffs that President Trump has levied against Europe.”

I would agree with Chancellor Merkel with respect to the tariffs that the Trump administration has levied (or is threatening to levy, I am not sure which it is) against Europe (and other places).  However, when it comes to the Paris climate accord, and similarly the Iran nuclear agreement, I think Chancellor Merkel is missing an important point regarding the American system.

When Housing Is Expensive, the Solution Is to Make It More Expensive

With California already being one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, what is the only sensible thing to do?  Make housing more expensive, of course, which is what California is on course to do.  Last Wednesday, the California Energy Commission voted 5 to 0 to require all new residential buildings, up to three stories high, including single-family houses and condominiums, to have solar panel installations beginning in 2020.  The commission estimates this will add $9,500 to the cost of a single-family home.¹ 

Of course, with the median price of a house in California already being almost $565,000, $9.500 is not going to matter much to somebody buying an above-average price home.  Also, there are tax credits, etc., that can help cut the cost – for people who can already afford a house and probably don’t need a government subsidy anyway.

Paying for Harvey

Hurricane Harvey has been mind-boggling, and the costs for the people in Texas, and beyond as Harvey moves east, will be massive.  Now is probably not the best time to talk about flood insurance, but Congress’s failure to address it when there wasn’t a national emergency means we have to deal with it now.

Because private insurance companies have been unwilling to provide flood insurance, or at least have been unwilling to provide flood insurance at prices people are willing to pay and/or at prices state governments are willing to approve (in those states where the state has the right to approve insurance rates), the federal government provides flood insurance.  Unfortunately, there are two problems with the federal government’s flood insurance program.  First, it is set to expire at the end of September. 

Democrats/Progressives Need to Relax. Good Things Can Happen in Spite of the President.

As President-elect Donald Trump fills out his cabinet, and progressives/liberals exhibit signs of mass hysteria, it might be a good idea to sit back and reflect on the extent of the president’s power to actually affect things – and how many things happen that the president has nothing to do with.

Consider a report in last Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  According to the article, in November, the U.S. exported more natural gas than it imported.  It has been almost 60 years since the U.S. exported more natural gas than it imported on an annual basis, but that is where we are headed – and soon.  Further, the Energy Department predicts that, by 2020, the United States will be the third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, behind Australia and Qatar.  And President Obama has had almost nothing to do with any of this.

Fracking for Freedom – Again

I have written about fracking before – lots of times¹, but it looks like it may be time to do so again.  At the Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, Sunday night, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were asked if they supported fracking.²  Senator Sanders was direct: “I do not support fracking.” Secretary Clinton gave a longer answer, with all kinds of conditions that would need to be met before she would support fracking.  The result, however, would be much the same.  In her words: “So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”  Which she seems happy about.

As clear from what I have said before, I disagree.  Let’s get the less important reasons (though still important) why I support fracking out of the way first, so I can get to the biggest reason.  First, fracking has lowered energy costs, which helps people, especially people who don’t have a lot of extra money.  If you’re rich (or upper middle class), lower natural gas costs (and gasoline prices) don’t matter that much.  You can afford the extra costs if we didn’t frack.  If you’re just getting by or living paycheck to paycheck, however, lower heating costs may mean you don’t have to decide between heating the apartment and buying food or going to see the doctor.

The Heck with Climate Change, We Need to Stop El Nino

If NASA is right, it looks like El Nino is going to cause more problems this year than climate change.  The people worried about climate change (the weather phenomenon formerly known global warming) talk about what could happen 100 years from now.  According to these reports, this year’s El Nino is going to be as bad as 1998, which was only seventeen years ago.  That schedule means we are going to have another bad El Nino, maybe lots of them, a lot sooner than next century.

One question:  Could we keep El Nino out if Donald Trump gets to build his fence on the Mexican border?

Why Is President Obama Still Blaming George W. Bush?

While President Obama was in New Orleans yesterday for the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the President couldn’t resist yet another chance to blame George W. Bush:

"We came to realize that what started out as a natural disaster became a man-made disaster, a failure of government to look after its own citizens." 

What a sad thing to say.  Is President Obama really so desperate to prove his presidency a success that he has to keep attacking his predecessor seven years after he beat him?

Should a president whose administration:

• Couldn’t build a proper healthcare website in 3½ years
• Turned the Animas River yellow
• Appears to be blocking an investigation by one of its own Inspector Generals into a security breach involving records of almost 22 million current and federal workers
• Doesn’t seem to be properly screening the people into whose custody it is placing thousands of illegal immigrant children
• Whose VA was, and may still be, doing a worse job in caring for our veterans than its predecessor
• And more and more

really be criticizing his predecessor for failures of government?  Maybe instead of worrying about what his predecessor did wrong, he should be spending more time getting his administration to do things right.

Contaminating the Animas River: No Big Deal As Long As the EPA Does It

A couple of weeks ago we were in Durango, Colorado.  We were there to ride the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  (It’s a great trip; I recommend it.)  While we were on the train, and while we were driving in the area, we passed the Animas River numerous times.  We saw lots of kayakers and others enjoying the river.  Because of that, I have been particularly interested in the story of the EPA’s screw-up of last week which spilled I don’t know how much contaminated sludge into the Animas River, turning it orange and putting it off-limits for recreational use for maybe the rest of the summer.

What is most interesting about the story, though, is not that the government messed up.  Mistakes happen, even in government (sarcasm intended).  But what isn’t okay is how the EPA failed to immediately notify other government agencies, and the public, of the accident.  The Secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department said that they were not told of the incident until 24 hours after it happened.  Media reports are that local officials only learned about the leak when they saw their river change color.  And this is for sludge that has showed “scary” levels of toxicity, in the words of an EPA toxicologist.

What is also fascinating is the relative lack of outrage from so many people.  Can you imagine the responses if a private company had done this – and then failed to report it for 24 hours?  The fact is a private company or individual can’t do that.  If you cause an environmental emergency like this, you have to report it – NOW.  For causing it, there are penalties.  For not reporting it on a timely basis, there are even bigger penalties.

But if you’re government, apparently, it’s no big deal – at least for those who would be calling for penalties and sanctions, if not more, if a private individual did it.

A Simple Solution to Crude Oil Derailments – That’s Not Going to Happen

There was a big train derailment on Thursday near Galena, Illinois.  The train was carrying crude oil, and a number of the cars burst into flames when the train derailed.  As the Chicago Tribune details, derailments of trains carrying crude oil are becoming more common.  Senator Richard Durbin, among others, has called for safer railroad tank cars, cars that are less likely to split apart or crack open in a derailment. 

That would probably help.  However, one of the reasons that we are reading about so many more derailments of trains carrying crude oil, is that so many more trains are carrying crude oil.  Fracking and other new exploration techniques have greatly increased oil production in the United States.  The oil has to get to refineries, and trains are one way to do it.

Of course, there is another way to transport oil.  It’s safer, better for the environment (because you don’t have as many spills), and, in the long run, cheaper.  But it’s pipelines, and that’s a non-starter for the Obama administration.  And as for Senator Durbin’s concern about the safety of tank cars, you won’t see it extending to support for something that really is safer.  Because no matter how safe, efficient, and environmentally-friendly pipelines are, they aren’t “green”.