Saturday, May 17, 2008

File A Complaint

Under the Endangered Species Act the polar bear is now listed as a threatened species.

After 18 years of a law practice devoted to counseling landowners, home builders and commercial interests affected by the long arm and severe penalties of the Endangered Species Act, I am used to incredulous looks and outraged oaths from clients coming to grips with the Act's incredible burdens on impacted private citizens.

"Are you telling me I can't build my Burger King because a Delhi Sands flower-loving fly that has never been seen and is above ground only a few days a year might be near-by?"

"I can't build a connector road because the noise from construction might damage the hearing of the Stephens' kangaroo rat thus impairing its reproduction?"

"All construction in San Diego involving impacts to road ruts which might contain Vernal Pool Fairy Shrimp is enjoined? All construction?"

Yes, yes, and yes. The list of situations in which the ESA has stopped otherwise legal and fully permitted projects from proceeding is extraordinarily long and getting longer. With Wednesday's decision to list the polar bear as "threatened" the burden on the American economy brought about by the ESA grew exponentially.
How about that. It looks like the socialists and luddites have won the day.
I have written here and here on the polar bear controversy. Those columns delineated how the advocates of the polar bear listing planned on using the bear to impose vast new controls on the emissions of greenhouse gases across the United States. When Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced the listing, he also made a bold statement that the new status of the polar bear would not lead to such consequences.

To which the environmental activists replied immediately: "Says who?" The law is the law, they correctly noted, and it cannot be cabined by "guidance" issued by the executive branch.
I'm assuming that Bush is no dummy. So what can be done?
Because the polar bear has been listed as threatened due to alleged deterioration of its ice habitat, and because the alleged loss of the ice habitat has occurred because of global warming caused at least in part by the emission of greenhouse gases, environmental activists will argue that all emissions of greenhouse gases that flow as a consequence of the grant of a federal permit of any sort are now subject to review under the ESA and, crucially, that those permits cannot be issued unless and until the United States Fish & Wildlife Service reviews and approves of the requested permit under Section 7 of the ESA, a process which takes at a minimum months and which can cost millions of dollars even if it is successful.

Because of the generous "citizen standing" provisions of the ESA, expect dozens of "60-day" letters to begin to arrive in the offices of Secretary Kempthorne very soon, announcing that unless the Department and the Service act to invoke Section 7 vis-a-vis this or that federal permit, a lawsuit will be filed to force compliance. Expect most of those suits to be filed in the Ninth Circuit, where the appeals court has been very expansive in applying the ESA.
Well it is obvious what is to be done. Start filing those 60 day letters. As the article points out:
Swarming the courts has long been a tactic of the left, but private sector firms and sectors threatened by the threatened polar bears need to do more than sit back and wait for bills to come do and projects to be canceled.
Start a cottage industry with standard forms and get those letters out to the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. Don't like City Hall in your town? File a letter. Hate the Saudis? File a letter. Down on Cezar Chavez? File a letter. Don't like Chinese imports? File a letter. Don't like Al Gore's mansion? File a letter. In fact file letters even for industries you like. Bury this decision under a blizzard of paper.

Once this gets going if some one will direct me to the requirements for letter filing and standard forms or groups that will help I'll post them. The way to put an end to bad law is to get it strictly enforced. The stricter the better.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

4 comments:

Honour said...

Oh well if you powerful guys can spend a trillion bucks on a useless and destructive war I guess you can spare a few cents for a couple of polar bears.

linearthinker said...

Don't feed the troll.

Simon, a suggestion.
Contact HH directly for advice on filings. He's wound up tight on this one.

LifeTrek said...

Love the idea, I will link later today, let us know if you get form letters.
DKK

papertiger said...

The most austentatous cathedral in town is the California EPA building.
Welcome to the belly of the beast. How many trillions do you think this fucker has cost?
First sentence.
"The California Environmental Protection Agency [is] charged with restoring, protecting and enhancing California’s environment, and to ensuring the state’s public health and economic vitality..."
Public health and economic vitality? There's a line straight out of Planet of the Apes which sums it up nicely - Ministry of Science and chief Defenders of the Faith.
The EPA is the Dr. Zaius of State Government. Oh how I would love to bury it in paper. Mountains and mountains of tree pulp (which will have to be imported from out of state due to a previous EPA ruling which killed the California paper mill industry).


This is the thing about Republicans that I have no use for whatsoever. They will eschew litigating these EPA assholes on the basis of legislating from the bench being against their principles. Fuck principles, we are talking survival here.
Did you happen to see that Instapundit link to Joe Hoffman's, A time machine and scoped rifle?
IF I were to go back in time I would off Goldwater. That worthless bag of ego sold the party out for personal vanity, seeking the perfect, when we had the good rapped up in a bow delivered on our doorstep.
It led to the election of Nixon who instituted the EPA. All because Barry's delicate sensitivities regarding gov coersion of private enterprize wouldn't allow him to vote in favor of the civil rights act of 1964.
Fucking putz. God damn him. And GD any other RMB who thinks that paperwork shutting down California State Government all together, for the benefit of our endangered polar bear cousins, is somehow immoral.
Save those damned bears. Hell lets save the empiror penguins while we're at it.

In the EPA library, under such headings as Scientific literature, Legal Research, Business/Industries and Maps, customers will find over 200 journals dating back to the 1960's, 100-150 active subscriptions, and over 20 thousand hard copy reports and texts, many of which professional Cal/EPA staff has written.
The Air Resources Board (ARB), a national leader in air pollution sciences, has a large collection comprised largely of reports concerned with air pollution and atmospheric science, a field that addresses not just automobile exhaust but how power plants, tobacco smoke, perfume, and even air purifiers can compromise California’s air resources.


These people have been talking about rolling back CO2 production to 1990 levels. The EPA building wasn't there in 1990. What are the chances we could litigate it out of existence?
What are the chances we could litigate real cuts in government bureaucracy. Back to 1990 levels?
Sounds good to me.