Diesel and Dust

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week on an important environmental case. What's at stake is nothing less than the economic profitability of the diesel industry.

The City of Los Angeles has passed regulations prohibiting city agencies from buying diesel vehicles, requiring instead that they purchase vehicles that use "cleaner burning" fuels instead. As a result, fewer diesel vehicles will be on the roads in Los Angeles, meaning less smog in the air. According to estimates, a disproportionate share of the smog in southern California is attributable to diesel fumes.

As common sense as it may sound, the regulations violate the federal Clean Air Act, or so says the Bush administration, which has joined with the diesel industry to argue for the overturn of the regulations. The case was lost at the district court and appellate levels so the Supreme Court is now the last hope.

I can tell you personally that I visitied Los Angeles for a few days last week, and I feel that all the talk about smog and pollution is overblown. I didn't smell any pollution while I was there, and on two of the days I could actually see the Hollywood Hills from my hotel room. Sure, there's a yellowish, brownish haze hanging over the city a lot of the time, but when you stop and consider how much money the diesel industry has been able to make by selling their air fouling vehicles to the city in the past, you have to agree that it all balances out in the end.

Is it too much to ask that the people of Los Angeles inhale a little diesel exhaust in order to help this industry profit? I don't think so, and neither does the Bush administration.

• California's Wild Fires (November 2, 2003)
• Cleaning the Air and Creating Jobs (September 18, 2003)
• Eliminating the EPA (July 24, 2003)
• Good Riddance to Whitman (May 29, 2003)
• Reducing Reliance on Foreign Wood (May 22, 2003)
• The Caribou Love Rubbing Against It (May 1, 2003)
• Cutting Down Forests To Save Them (February 20, 2003)
• Redefining "Wetlands" Policy (January 17, 2003)
• Bush The Environmentalist (January 10, 2003)

by Vince Bellingham
May 22, 2003

There's a new Ikea store going up in my neighborhood. Every time I drive by it, I raise my fist and scream "Damn you, Ikea!" You see, I know that this mega-store of Scandinavian descent is soon going to be selling foreign wood to everyone on my block. It really gets my goat.

The problem is that we have forests of trees that we can't cut down. As a result, Americans are reduced to relying on "foreign wood" furniture. Hopefully, that's about the change.

President Bush has proposed changes to the forestry's regulations that are designed to reduce our nation's reliance on foreign wood. Under the current plan, plans to cut timber from our forests have to be applied for, submitted, drooled over, amended, prodded, sniffed, pawed, and approved by an administrative agency. This lengthy process can take weeks.

Under the President's new plan, which is part of his "healthy forest initiative," anyone with a chain saw can go in and mow down a 100 year old redwood. Well, it's almost that easy.

America has for too long relied on foreign wood. We have had to bend and kow tow to the demands of the Scandinavian countries for too long. As a result, their foreign influences have overwhelmed our culture. Who hasn't started the day out with a "Danish" or some "Norwegian salmon" or come home to a dinner of "Swedish meatballs"?

President Bush has taken the sensible approach to improving the health of our forests and eliminating our reliance on foreign wood. The forests will, as a side effect, be healthier too because, let's face it, it's hard to have forest fires when you don't have any trees.

by Vince Bellingham
May 1, 2003

The Republican-controlled Congress recently betrayed President Bush by failing to pass the initiative to drill for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR, as it is commonly known. Too much focus has been placed on the harm that drilling would do to the wilderness and too little placed on the preferences of the animals that actually live in that part of the country.

I am willing to bet that if the animals could vote, they would overwhelmingly approve of drilling rigs and oil pipelines being constructed in their neighborhoods. The presence of humans, the chance to get food hand outs, and the opportunity to frolic among the machinery and equipment would be too much to resist for any polar bear or wild elk.

Alaska has a plentiful supply of oil, so much in fact that we could rid ourselves of foreign oil dependency for a long, long time. How long? That all depends on who you ask. Some environmentalists claim there's only about 3 billion gallons of oil while more mainstream projections are in the area of 6 to 16 billion gallons.

If you figure that we Americans consume about 9 billion gallons a year, you can assume that the destruction of the ANWR would provide us with anywhere from 4 to 14 months of oil. Can you imagine a whole year without foreign oil dependence?

But I have to come back to the animals.

President George H. Bush once said of the Alaskan oil pipeline: "The caribou love it. They rub against it and they have babies. There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at."

That's a sight I'd love to see.

To the opponents of drilling, I ask this question: "If it's good enough for the caribou, why isn't it good enough for you?"

by Vince Bellingham
February 20, 2003

I am pleased to hear that our enviornmental laws are finally beginning to comply with the laws of logic.

President Bush has proposed to open up vast amounts of previously protected national forest to logging interests. While left-wing types decry the proposal as "anti-environment," nothing be further from the truth. In fact, the new rules in favor of the logging industry will help cement the current President's reputation as "the environmental president."

The problem is that the forests get overcrowded. In my years with the Interior Department, I saw first-hand how this works. The trees grow right up next to each other, then some clown out hunting for bears throws down a cigarette, and the whole place goes up in flames. Fire is one of the worst things for a forest, because it burns up the trees. No trees, no forest.

That's why it makes perfect sense to do whatever it takes to prevent forest fires. The President's plan involves cutting down the trees. If the trees are cut down, they can't burn. Fewer trees, no forest fires.

I suppose the tree hugging left-wingers will argue that cutting down the trees defeats the purpose of protecting the forests. However, this talk is nothing more than "anti-fire prevention" rhetoric. Sometimes trees need to be cut down in order to save them.

If it makes the greens any happier, the trees will actually be saved because the logging industry is going to cut them down and make them into furniture. That way, we can all enjoy a little of the forest right in our own living rooms. Just imagine how many coffee tables can be made out of one giant redwood tree.

The President has done the right thing in protecting from forest fires the trees that will be cut down. It's a horrible thing when a tree catches fire. Thanks to our President's innovative proposal, there will be fewer trees to catch fire in the future.

by Vince Bellingham
January 17, 2003

President Bush, in furtherance of his environmental goals, has pledged to uphold the "no net loss" of wetlands policy adopted during his father's presidency. New regulations being passed do exactly that.

These regulations will redefine what constitutes a "wetland" but those areas that still remain wetlands after the regulations pass will remain protected by the federal government. You might want to know why it is necessary to redefine the definition of "wetland" so I'll offer you my perspective.

Our economy is in an economic slump, and the President and his advisors want to do whatever they can to give it a goose. One way to do that which doesn't hurt anyone other than a few odd species of birds, fish and plants, is to redesignate some of these wetlands as non-wetlands. What will happen next is that developers, no longer restrained by unnecessary federal regulation, will buy up these properties and bring in the cement trucks.

Sure, the yellow bellied sapsucker or the pygmie goldfish or the striped salamander or whatever else the hell else lives in these places will be gone, but I say good riddance. Who needs them? They're mostly slimy little things that don't do much good for anybody. So what if the price of commerce is wiping out a few varieties of orchids or plants. I much prefer the artificial plants anyway because they don't require watering.

What we get in place of these so-called "nature habitats" is the fat pill that cures our economic woes: strip malls. Lots of nice, pretty strip malls. A 7-11 on one end, maybe a dry cleaners in there, a nail salon, maybe even a travel agency or a video arcade, all of it acting like a french tickler stimulating the economy. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

The best thing about it is that by redefining what constitutes a "wetland," the Bush Administration can get rid of about a third of all the presently-existing "wetlands" without violating his promise of "no net loss" of wetlands. It's very clever, I must say.

Paving over some of these wetlands is an idea whose time has come, and we have George W. Bush, quickly becoming known as "the environmental president" to credit for it.

by Vince Bellingham
January 10, 2003

President George W. Bush has already built his reputation on being a "uniter" and a "humble man." Now, it's time to recognize that some of his greatest achievements in the past two years have occurred in the environmental area.

Since taking office, President Bush has sought to balance the interests of industry with those of environmentalists. That balance has been out of whack for a long time now, thanks to the pro-environmental policies of Clinton/Gore. I can only guess how much worse the economy would be today if Al Gore had been elected President and continued the assault on business.

Now, for the specifics of what President Bush has accomplished. In just the first two years of his presidency:

1. The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to strip away the Clean Air Act's requirement directing older power plants, refineries and other major air pollution sources to install state-of-the-art cleanup equipment when they expand or modernize their facilities. In my opinion, we've needed this type of proposal for a long time. Instead of investing money in plants that work just fine, businesses can salt that money away for a rainy day.

2. The Army Corps of Engineers has led the way to getting rid of the "no net loss" of wetlands policy. It's about time we dumped this decade-old policy, which keeps us from using these wetland swamps for constructive business purposes. In due time, these wetlands can easily be developed into sites for storage or parking lots.

3. The President has worked to shift Superfund hazardous waste clean up costs from polluters to taxpayers. Anything that reduces the costs that our corporations have to pay increases bottom-line profit, which is good for everyone.

4. The Interior Department has implemented new rules minimizing environmental safeguards for private mining company operations on public lands. No longer does the agency deny permits to mines that cause "irreparable harm" to the enviroment. I've always wondered, who is to say what is "irreparable"? The Interior Department? Hardly.

5. Lastly, the White House interevened to block an EPA program designed to stem the discharge of raw sewage into America's waters. This one may sound bad, but sewage is mostly organic and anything organic is good. Besides, don't the creatures that live in the sea discharge waste too? What's the difference if we dump a little of our waste in the ocean too? It's not like anybody drinks ocean water.

Already, President Bush has far exceeded the accomplishments of Clinton/Gore on the environmental front by giving back to business what had so callously been taken away by environmental extremists. It's hard to believe that all of this has happened in the span of two short years. At this rate, EPA workers will be like Maytag repairmen in another two years -- sitting around with nothing to do because everything is working just fine, thanks to George W. Bush, the "environmental president".