Deep Blade Journal

National parks management 2006 policy revisions

Will jet skis break the serenity?

Been wondering what is happening with management of our national parks recently? I was jostled a bit today by this story:

Friends of Acadia faults NPS policy proposal
Thursday, January 12, 2006 - Bangor Daily News

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK - Jet-skis in Echo Lake? Snowmobiles roaring throughout the park’s network of carriage trails? Cell phone towers rising over Cadillac Mountain?

These dire predictions are in the minds of officials at Friends of Acadia, who are alarmed at the changes that might be in store for Maine’s only national park if a proposed rewrite of the National Park Service’s 2001 basic management policy statement is passed.

Critics of the rewrite fear that the changes will make protected areas more vulnerable to development and technology. They also worry that conservation of public lands will no longer be the foremost goal of the park service.

“The proposed changes from the plain language seem to lessen the standards by which the national parks will be protected by the National Park Service,” Ken Olson, president of the nonprofit park advocacy group, said Wednesday. “It seems to be contrary to the Organic Act of 1916, the act that created the park service.”

Olson wrote to NPS officials on Friday to register his dissatisfaction with the proposed changes.

“Friends of Acadia believes the re-draft of the policies is unnecessary at this time,” Olson said in the letter. “We feel that some of the changes suggested for the 2006 version create an impression that the National Park Service is moving away from a resource management protection emphasis to one of broader use.”

Len Bobinchock, deputy superintendent of Acadia National Park, declined to comment on the policy draft until next week, when all park staff will have had the chance to register their thoughts about the proposed changes.

Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe wrote in October to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton expressing their concerns about what they characterized as efforts by the Department of the Interior to modify the park service.

“We are concerned that … the primary mandate of the National Park Service to err on the side of preservation appears to be de-emphasized in the draft,” the senators said.

Snowe and Collins mentioned the relative speed of the rewrite process and questioned the need for policy change so soon after the 2001 revision. In the past quarter century, park management policies were revised only twice, in 1988 and 2001.

“Both versions underwent much more extensive professional review than the current draft, both were made available to the public for comment for long periods of time, and both were virtually identical in their interpretation of the meaning of the key language of the National Park Service Organic Act,” the senators said.

The strong cautionary words from Friends of Acadia join those of the state’s senators and other advocacy groups such as National Park Service Retirees, who have spoken out against the policy change.

“The National Park Service is one of the most respected agencies in government,” Olson said. “We want the park service to retain that high position, the high esteem it has in the public’s eye.”

I saved a handy copy of the draft revisions here. Go here for the Park Service’s own somewhat convoluted page on the revisions.

I started to wade through this document. The first thing that hits you is a denial from Park Service Director Fran P. Mainella that “what you may have heard or read in the media” means that the revision will “increase the likelihood of more snowmobiles, cell towers, personal watercraft, commercial activities, reduced air quality or other activities currently governed by law or regulation in the national parks.”

Maybe. But in just a brief reading, I see reasons to raise flags of worry. Trust in the intentions of the Bush Administration in any area is in short supply these days, and it’s not hard to see why.

Here is one such proposed park policy revision (p. 178-9):

A new form of recreational activity will not be allowed within a park until after an environmental analysis has determined if a park manager determines that it will not result in unacceptable impacts on park resources. Restrictions placed on or values consistent with the criteria in 8.1. Management of recreational uses that have been found to be appropriate approved according to the criteria in 8.1 will be limited to the minimum that which is necessary to protect park resources and values, and promote visitor safety and enjoyment.

This changes the whole approach to evaluating “new forms of recreation”, doesn’t it? In the current policy, an environmental analysis must show that there will not be an adverse impact. The new draft leaves it up to a park manager to say that an impact is unacceptable, or the “new” use can just happen. Right? Tell me if I’m reading this wrong. Not hard to see how heavy-handed orders from above would find it easier to force all sorts of “new” motorized assaults on our parks, despite constant commentary to the contrary seen throughout the document–“There is no substantive change to this section”.

There is way too much here for me to do much more with it right now. But do check out this extensive analysis from The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.

Sort of

Guy Caruso: “clearly a major change”

The presentation given yesterday by Energy Information Administration (EIA) director Guy Caruso and broadcast by CSPAN-2 was very worthwhile and informative. An audio file and pdf of the visuals are available from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here.

Of the many striking revisions in 2006 of past versions of the EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), I display just one of them above–the projection to 2030 of the oil price in constant dollars. Apparently the events of 2005 have completely shaken the forecasters. They were so very, very wrong just one year ago.

Why? Here is where the new EIA religion gets a little fuzzy. Caruso thinks that any supply problems are related to the cost of exploring for new oil. Of peak oil, Caruso says,

There’s a lot of attention being paid to the peak oil issue in the media and trade press. Our view is that the, although … it’s something we take seriously and look at very closely, and work very closely with the USGS and others within the US government who make resource assessments, we don’t see peak oil being the driving force leading to these higher-price assumptions, and we don’t see oil resources being constrained on the supply and demand outlook that we are now projecting for not only the US, but globally.

EIA and other government agencies take it seriously. Good. But I think Caruso’s denial of peak oil versus acceptance of exploration/new oil development cost as the major factor constraining supply expansion is a distinction without a difference. I believe that EIA and the agencies responsible for resource modeling need to take the writing on the wall even more seriously.

More fresh snow

The shrubs and the old ash tree were decorated last night.

Really beautifully this time…

My New Year’s promise to readers is that Friday garden blogging will be better than ever in ‘06. You’ll just have to keep tuning in for the many surprises I have in store for you this year.

Get used to $60 barrels, that’ll look cheap soon

Oil flirting with $64 on Friday, was below $45 at the start of 2005

Bloomberg reports that demand numbers in the US are soaring. Records were set in December for both gasoline and heating oil. The only saving grace in January may be above-average temperatures in the NE US. But, “Implied gasoline demand jumped 1.2 percent to an average 9.4 million barrels a day in the week ended Dec. 30, the Energy Department report showed. It was the highest for the last week in December since at least 1990”.

The brief post-hurricane period of gasoline demand relaxation appears to be over.

Bloomberg quotes analysts on oil market “geopolitical risks” now present.

“If some distant spat between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas can generate” new buying in crude oil, “I shudder to imagine what cold weather, a bullish DOE report or a genuine supply problem would do to this market,” said Peter Beutel, an energy consultant and president of Cameron Hanover Inc. in New Canaan, Connecticut. “It looks higher from here, although it is certainly not for a want of oil.”

They think that inventories look adequate for now, even with the stresses on gasoline. So the current rally may not sustain.

These analysts are mellow compared to the outlook given in a piece this week by James Howard Kunstler:

The problem is that the oil supply will soon steadily diminish at a rate of at least three percent a year, and that necking down of supply is likely to be expressed in greater geopolitical friction and turmoil between the great nations who crave oil. The US entered into the military phase of this turbulence before any other nation. We used our superpower status to set up a centrally-located Middle East garrison in Iraq, under the idealistic cover story that we were removing a dangerous head-of-state and helping to set up a model democracy that would invite us to stick around the vicinity indefinitely, and thus retain some control over the deportment of other oil-rich states in the region….

The world oil allocation system is now so fragile that any disturbance in one producing region can send damaging shock waves around the planet. There is no more “swing producer.” The US squeaked through the huge loss of oil production capacity this fall by taking oil from our own strategic petroleum reserves and from Europe’s. These actions kept oil prices in the high fifty-dollar-range through the holidays, giving Americans a false sense of festive security. Those withdrawals are now over. Global demand for oil is still increasing. The strategic reserves will now have to be refilled (they’re called strategic reserves for a reason). This will start oil prices moving upward again…

Kunstler thinks oil will cross into $100 territory and gasoline will strike $4/gal sometime during 2006. This will “absolutely kill” the housing bubble, according to Kuntsler’s predictions.

Meanwhile check out this APM (Minnesota Public Radio) Marketplace interview with solar business guru and environmental activist Jeremy Leggett, author of The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Coming Global Energy Crisis. Leggett gives us three to five years before the oil peak engenders serious economic problems.

LEGGETT: This is the point at which we transition from the assumption that society is making, that there is going to be a couple more decades of growing supplies of generally cheap oil to the point where actually we realize, uh ah, that isn’t going to happen, we’re going into a world where we’re dealing with rapidly shrinking supplies of ever and vastly more expensive oil…

See previous posts: Look who’s back in charge of Iraqi oil, Why the US is in Iraq, and from last spring, Chalabi holding Iraq oil portfolio

I can recommend a new post about Pentagon swindler Ahmed Chalabi and US designs on control of Iraqi oil Rodger Payne put up yesterday. In “Oil big shot” He reviews pre-war reporting on how US military intervention would lead to a “bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq.”

Rodger asks, “Could it be that they’ve gotten what they wanted all along?”

Reminds me of something Chomsky has said about the US in Vietnam, in relation to what is now happening in Iraq.

NOAM CHOMSKY (January 2005): Well, I don’t think that Vietnam was a mistake; I think it was a success. This is somewhere where I disagree with just about everyone, including the left, right, friends and so on.

…the primary concern was the one that shows up in virtually all intervention: Guatemala, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, just about everywhere you look at. The concern is independent nationalism which is unacceptable in itself because it extricates some part of the world that the US wants to dominate. And it has an extra danger if it is likely to be successful in terms that are likely to be meaningful to others who are suffering from the same conditions….

A fully independent Vietnam could truly dominate Indochina, which could become an independent nationalist force, a rotten apple which would affect others: Thailand, Malaya, which was a big problem at the time, possibly Indonesia….

By around 1960 the US recognized that it could not maintain a client state in Vietnam. The client state, which had already killed maybe 60,000 people, had engendered resistance which it could not control. So in 1962 Kennedy simply invaded the country outright. That’s when US bombing started, chemical warfare, attempts to drive people into concentration camps and so on, and from then on it just escalated. By 1967 South Vietnam was practically destroyed….

The US and England and the rest were just content to see Vietnam destroyed. That was much worse than anything happening in Iraq. It looked at that point as if they would conquer Vietnam. The Tet Offensive [a major national offensive by anti-US Vietnamese forces in early 1968] made it clear it was going to be a long war. At that point the business world turned against the war and decided this is just not worth it. They said we have already achieved the main objectives and Vietnam is not going to undergo successful independent development. It will be lucky if it survives. So it is pointless; why waste the money on it. The main goal had been achieved by the early seventies.

You start reading in the Far Eastern Economic Review that this was a pointless enterprise, you guys have basically won so just go home and quit. Why ruin your economy, spoil your situation in the world scene and so on. And they assumed that now that it is destroyed it will sooner or later be absorbed into our system, which is in fact what happened. Well that’s a partial victory not a defeat. The defeat was that they didn’t achieve their maximal goal which was to turn all of Indochina into something like Guatemala or the Philippines, and that they didn’t achieve, but they did achieve their main goal.

What about Iraq, then? Given the level of terror, assassination, and bombing — perpetrated by the US, it’s puppets, as well as by resistance to the US — it is obvious that the US has completely and utterly failed in stated goals President Bush described a couple of years ago as including “transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions” to form a “decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East” that is ”free of assassins, and torturers, and secret police.”

President Bush said of these “assassins” that, “They know that as democracy rises in Iraq, all of their hateful ambitions will fall like the statues of the former dictator.”

Just the opposite has happened. Creation of Iraq’s new pro-foreign-investment Constitution and the elections that followed permanently have split the country and have inspired even deeper sectarian conflict. Torture is rampant while hundreds of newly-assassinated bodies are found lying along the roads of Iraq every week.

Chomsky sees, however, that unlike Vietnam, “Iraq is worth owning”. With decisions about the future control of Iraq’s oil now at a critical point, the table has been set through the pro-US-oil-company Constitution writing phase. All the reconstruction failure, death & destruction is irrelevant as long as the major goals are met.

And that major goal is, according to Chomsky, a desire of US warmakers to “control that massive [oil] resource” because “it is a source of world control.”

Also, “the profit from it also matters, and having bases there that allow you to organize the region in your own interests, of course that matters”.

It is yet to be seen if the US ultimately will succeed. The Iraqi resistance has proven surprisingly tenacious. It is able to beat down oil production nearly to the crisis point. Hence the takeover of the oil ministry by the Pentagon agent Chalabi.

Meanwhile Cheney is out again, in friendly confines at the Heritage foundation, continuing to peddle “a long struggle, unlike any we have ever known”, following up on his October declaration that the “fight” the US now has in Iraq and other places will require “decades of patient effort”.

Curiously, Cheney never utters the word “oil” during his self-declarations of the nobility of his ruinous war.

Bush in self-declared state of war, grants himself Commander-in-Chief override of the law

A few posts ago I discussed the post-911 Enabling Act that President Bush has seized upon as the key underlying trigger for his constitutional authority to declare — by his own fiat — persons as “enemy combatants” and to imprison them indefinitely without charge or trial. Fit into the larger picture now evidently is unlimited presidential authority for warrantless spying on whoever he says he wants.

Amidst wounded soldiers in San Antonio, the president thusly greets the new year…

President Bush, Sunday: We’re at war, and as Commander-in-Chief, I’ve got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people. And that’s what we’re doing….Now, some say, well, maybe this isn’t a war; maybe this is just a law enforcement operation. I strongly disagree. We’re at war with an enemy that wants to hurt us again, and the American people expect the Commander-in-Chief to protect them, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.

This amazing declaration has always been entirely hyperbolic, despite the horror of 911 and the very real possibility of more domestic terrorism — specifically the detonation of a nuclear weapon on US soil. The US is not at war. It has invaded two broken countries and faces continuing resistance. But there is no party with whom to be at war, except perhaps the civilian populations of Iraq, Afghanistan, maybe even the entire Muslim world, or maybe political opponents perceived to be standing in the way of the imperial policies and energy resource controls desired by George W. Bush and his cronies.

I like the way Atrios put it:

The issue is simple: Bush has declared that one man has the right to make the law whenever, in his determination, national security warrants it. While even I can understand the necessity of broad executive powers in emergency situations, we aren’t anywhere close to being in one of those. If Bush decides that personally shooting dissident bloggers or pesky journalists in the head is in fact necessary for national security, then no one can object. The fact that he has not, as far as we know, done any such thing does not matter in the slightest. By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn’t (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability.

A policy of invasion coupled with lawless domestic spying and repression in response to what amounts to a bomb threat makes no sense, even on its own merits. Let’s take Iraq. The cost there is by the president’s own count 30,000 innocent lives. (Note here, all Iraqis, Sunni, Shia, Kurd, or otherwise are 100% innocent of the atrocities of 911.) Has even one of those lost lives contributed to the greater good of the safety of the American people? No way! Just the opposite is true. We now have tens of thousands (probably millions) more foreign people interested in harming Americans for revenge.

And what for? Iraq is a political mess that America simply will not be able to clean up. As I quoted Patrick Cockburn a couple of weeks ago, “The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq. Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities. `In two-and-a-half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq,’ said Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator… The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair, as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral.”

Bush to McCain: go screw
Political assertions of the Bush imperium
Meanwhile, President Bush has made it clear that there will be no Congressional interference with his imperial authority. This is evident from his recent statement accompanying his signature on the Defense Authorization Bill containing the McCain anti-torture amendment:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

Marty Lederman at Balkinization analyzes this and the accompanying Graham amendment limiting habeas review for foreign detainees to mean that the US still will be waterboarding them as it damn well sees fit.