 Cap-and-Trade Bill’s Hidden Casualties: If the devil is in the details, then the Climate Change bill in Congress may look like Dante’s Inferno. The House version, H.R. 2454, “the American Clean Energy and Security Act,” contains dozens of obscure and problematic details that have been overshadowed by the well-reported CO2 emissions mandates in the proposed “Cap and Trade” system. The problems aren’t trivial, either. Some threaten your hunting and fishing, others override your property rights, and combined, all the murky provisions of the bill could turn American liberty on its head. None of these troublesome details were debated when the House version passed in June on a 219-212 vote. Most of them found their way into the Senate version, S.1733, still in committee awaiting a cost estimate from the Environmental Protection Agency. How could a climate change law affect hunting and fishing, or property rights, much less your individual liberties? Begin with the bill’s Section 472, “Natural Resources Climate Change Adaptation Policy.” Note the operative word here: “Adaptation.” Adaptation is the new buzzword in the climate change debate. It implies that Congress can not only predict the uncertain future of climate change, but can also cope with its uncertain future problems in advance. Many would consider that a rash assumption, and history tells us that when Congress makes a rash assumption, it usually results in a new bureaucracy or two. To underscore that point, H.R. 2454 creates a National Climate Service within NOAA, a National Climate Change Adaptation Program within the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and a Natural Resources Climate Change Adaptation Fund. But Section 472 makes the point in fine detail: it creates a Climate Change Adaptation Panel comprised of every federal agency head with responsibility for some part of America’s natural resources. In today’s federal government, that’s more than twenty administrative executives ranging from the heads of the national forests and national parks to the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This panel of “Deputy Climate Czars” would be chaired by the head of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), Nancy Sutley. The House bill instructs the panel to come up with a “Natural Resources Climate Change Adaptation Strategy” that would make climate change each agency’s highest priority. That requirement is not yet law, but President Barack Obama has ordered his administration to act as if it were – and to promulgate those strategies now. Quite a few are in place already. One of them was promulgated by up-through-the-ranks veteran Sam Hamilton, who leads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which is a part of Secretary Ken Salazar’s Department of the Interior. The Fish and Wildlife Service is a big agency with nearly 8,000 employees and a $2.3 billion budget (2008) that manages a large number of hunting and fishing opportunities – its units include the Federal Duck Stamp and National Fish Hatchery programs, as well as the Migratory Birds and Endangered Species programs. One of FWS’s star projects is the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) – 550 national wildlife refuges and 37 wetland management districts covering more than 150 million acres. Not many people besides hunters and anglers know this, but the refuge system also manages six wildlife-dependent recreational uses, topped by hunting and fishing. Hunting and fishing in national wildlife refuges? Many Americans find that a contradiction in terms, but hunting and fishing license fees have supported the refuges since predecessor agencies were established in the 19th Century. As the NWRS website says: Hunters get a warm welcome at more than 300 hunting programs on refuges and on about 36,000 Waterfowl Production Areas. Opportunities for fresh or saltwater fishing are available at more than 270 refuges. There is at least one wildlife refuge in every state and one within an hour’s drive of most major cities. Nearly 40 million people visit national wildlife refuges each year. The $1.7 billion in sales they generate for regional economies supports about 27,000 jobs and $542.8 million in employment income. Hamilton’s staff released the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's “proposed Strategic Plan for Climate Change” in late September, with this notice: Climate change must become our highest priority. Consequently, we will deploy our resources, creativity and energy in a long-term campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard fish, wildlife and their habitats. The proposed Action Plan for Climate Change, an appendix to the Strategic Plan, details the specific actions the Service will take during the next five years to implement the Strategic Plan. Neither the proposed FWS Strategic Plan nor its detailed Action Plan even mentions the words “hunting” or “fishing.” It was not an oversight. The new FWS Climate Change web page links directly to a page titled, “Season’s End: Global Warming’s Threat to Hunting and Fishing.” You have to look carefully to realize that you have left the official FWS website. “Season’s End” paints a grim picture of ruined habitat, species extinction, refuge closures, visitor shut-outs, travel restrictions, and general gloom, to be prevented only by adoption of “a robust answer to the threat of climate change,” which includes “preventing the worst impacts and preparing for the reality that global warming impacts are already occurring.” In other words, vote for the Climate Change bill in order to fund federal programs “preventing the worst impacts” – and hopefully keep the refuges open for hunting and fishing, which otherwise might not happen. The political message is not subtle. “Season’s End” is a public / private partnership, funded privately but promoting government projects. The website is the work of the Bi-Partisan Policy Center, a private group supported by $16 million in grants from The Energy Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Joyce Foundation, none of which is known for vigorous support of hunting and fishing. In fact, during the 1980s and ’90s, the Joyce Foundation was the nation’s premier funder of gun control organizations. “Season’s End” is also a part of the Fish and Wildlife Service Action Plan (Action 6.2.4) to “engage non-traditional and traditional partners” to “help all Americans understand the urgency of climate change,” which is why it is linked directly from the official government website. “Season’s End” is a very traditional type of partner in such public / private partnerships: a foundation-funded group which benefits from government programs that flush members and donations their direction. Perhaps the most pernicious part of Adaptation is the role of the Endangered Species Act, or ESA, as it is usually known. The Fish and Wildlife Service is the primary law enforcement agency of the ESA. As many analysts have pointed out, the ESA is not an animal and plant protection law, it is a federal land control law: its main job is to protect habitat from human disturbance any place it may be found, including private property. The penalties for disturbing “critical habitat” on your own property, even such small measures as cutting brush that’s invading your backyard – are near-draconian. Cutting your own brush that might be used at some future time for nesting by an endangered bird can bring a $50,000 fine and a one year felony sentence in federal prison per incident. One such horrific incident happened to an elderly lady with a small farm near Austin, Texas, who cut several small cedar trees that were pushing her fence over and letting her cows out onto neighbors’ property. She received a threat from FWS that she had destroyed potential nesting habitat for the endangered black-capped vireo and faced federal prosecution. Only the concerted action of state officials and local property rights activists kept her out of prison. And that was more than a decade ago, long before the new policy of making climate change Adaptation the agency’s highest priority. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what impact this Adaptation policy could have on America’s most fundamental right to own and enjoy private property. Today, the threat of these and other infringements on citizen rights is palpable. Perhaps most alarming is how politicized the Adaptation issue has become. For example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in late October titled, "Climate Change Adaptation,” supposedly based on a survey of nearly 200 officials “knowledgeable about adaptation to climate change from federal, state and local government offices and agencies, including planners, scientists and public health officials.” The GAO report complained that lack of funding for adaptation measures (83.8% of respondents) and the complexity of future impacts (76.7% of respondents) are "very or extremely challenging" barriers to addressing Adaptation. The GAO did not seem to have surveyed President Obama’s agency heads that had already promulgated their “Strategic Plan for Climate Change,” a strange omission whether accidental or intentional. That made more sense when it was revealed that Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) had requested the report for use in a hearing of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, of which he is chairman. Rep. Markey used the GAO report as a bully pulpit: "If we are going to avoid the worst effects of global warming, we must pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. However, we also must prepare for the effects of global warming that will realistically occur." He said nothing about hunting, fishing, property rights or basic American liberty. Those are details. That’s where you’ll find the devil in H.R. 2454, “the American Clean Energy and Security Act.” |
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