"Kralik is Gingrich's point man in the Valley, arriving nearly five months ago. He describes himself as a bridge between "a world that works: the Valley" and "a world that doesn't: Washington." The political gridlock. The circular bureaucracies. What Kralik fails to mention is that the Valley, too, has its faults, its own shortcomings. It's a bubble. And, just a few years ago, the bubble burst."

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the group does not accept Kempthorne's view.

The act requires federal agencies to take steps to reduce or eliminate those impacts on threatened species, she said. "There is no exemption for greenhouse gas emissions."

If the government fails to address global warming, "we can and will go to court to enforce the law," she said.

I am writing a column on a legal strategy that should be deployed to blunt the almost certain blizzard of litigation that the environmental groups will launch to force review of all greenhouse gas emission operations that rely on new federal permits.  For the moment, though, the advocates of Kyoto-style command-and-control regulation of gases tied to climate change have won an enormous victory. 

UPDATE:  An e-mail on where the first wave of ESA-polar bear litigation could hit:

Hugh, 

 

     I just heard on the podcast your request for a pilot to let you know about FAA involvement in private aircraft certification.  The short answer is that the FAA is HEAVILY involved in the approval and certification of all things aviation.  Every aircraft design must be certified by the FAA before the manufacturer may sell it, and then every single airplane that rolls off the production line must have an FAA-issued Airworthiness Certificate and an FAA Registration Certificate before it can ever leave the ground.  The environmental groups will have no trouble tying aircraft to the polar bear now that it is on the Endangered Species List.

 

Here's another one:  Nearly all small, propeller driven aircraft in the world use high octane, LEADED GASOLINE.  How easy will it be to connect the burning of leaded fuels to global warming?  That alone could devastate the thousands of businesses that rely on small aircraft to conduct their operations, i.e. flight schools, sight-seeing, air-freight, air-taxi's, etc.  This is very serious.

 

Hope that helps.  Keep up the good work.

How do I use it?

Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

The questions I have yet to see answered in a newspaper account (or anywhere for that matter):

Where and when did the 19 fatalities occur?

During what time frame did the "hundreds" of allergic reactions occur?

Are there possible long-term consequences from use of the adulterated heparin which patients have to be vigilant about?

Have all patients who received potentially contaminated heparin been informed?

Why are there still possibly-contaminated Heparin products on the market?

My guess is that it's mostly political. There's no domestic political angle. If An American firm were at fault, this would be a big story.

Protection under the Endangered Species Act will provide concrete help to polar bears and could revolutionize American climate policy. Since U.S. resistance to curbing greenhouse gases has allowed other countries to shirk their responsibilities as well, major changes in American policy are likely to have a powerful domino effect, catalyzing change in climate policy worldwide. The polar bear’s protected status will require a new level of environmental review before oil and gas development continue in polar bear habitat in the American Arctic. Even more critically, because it is illegal to harm threatened species or jeopardize their survival, the polar bear listing could mean that all U.S. industries emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases — and requiring a federal permit to do so — will come under the purview of the Endangered Species Act. From polluting power plants in the Midwest to auto manufacturers, a vast array of industries may have to clean up their acts to give the polar bear a chance to survive.

The first comment period on the proposed listing ended in early April, 2007, but was reopened in October of 2007 for a brief time.  It might yet be reopened again.  Interested parties --basically everyone that uses oil or gas-- need to file comments in order to have standing to challenge the eventual decision, and ought to file even though the formal comment period has closed for the time being..

Written comments may be sent to:  Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Marine Mammals Management Office, 1011 East Tudor Road, Anchorage, Alaska 99503.  Comments can also be e-mailed to Polar_Bear_Finding@fws.gov

The proposed rule is here.

If you operate pursuant to a federal permit and emit hydrocarbons or any other emission believed to be connected to global warming, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Wolverines tend to prefer higher-altitude snowfields, from 9,000 to 12,000 feet.

The males roam large areas, loops of as much as 200 miles, as they search for mates. They are love-'em and leave-'em types.

"They can have a number of mates -- three, four or five -- within a 60-mile radius," Carkeet said. "They're real cads. They knock 'em up and take off."

That's assuming they can find females at all. The species isn't reproducing at a great rate. Carkeet suspects there might be only a few dozen mated pairs in the entire Sierra.

Note the estimated size of the wolverine's range --200 miles.  That's what the inevitable lawsuit to shut down development in large parts of the Sierra will assert as a marker from which to begin designating the area in which nothing should be disturbed in order to prevent harm to Go Blue and his secretive mates.

The North American wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family. Adult males weigh 26 to 40 pounds, while females are 17 to 26 pounds. It resembles a small bear, with a bushy tail and broad head. Its diet includes carrion, small animals, birds, insects and berries.

U.S. populations are found largely in the Northern Cascades in Washington, and Northern Rockies in Montana and Idaho. The nearest known resident population is about 900 miles north of the Tahoe National Forest in Northern Washington.

Heparin is a blood thinner made by Baxter and used by hundreds of thousands of American patients.  After at least 17 deaths that may be linked to the drug, the firm is recalling it and the FDA is investigating.  (Non-Baxter manufactured Heparin remains in use and is not a danger.)

Focus is on the China-portion of the Heparin manufacturing chain.  From the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

The FDA says it found significant amounts of a contaminant in the heparin active ingredients used by Baxter, which came from Scientific Protein Laboratories LLC of Wisconsin and that company's China joint venture, Changzhou SPL. It is still unclear what the contaminant is and how it ended up in the heparin. It is also unclear whether the contaminant is the cause of patients' allergic reactions to Baxter's heparin.

Changzhou SPL registered itself in China as a chemical manufacturer rather than a drug company. As such, it doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of China's State Food and Drug Agency. The U.S. FDA, in an oversight, also failed to inspect the facility when it began making the active ingredient for the U.S. market.

The Journal reports on the extensive pharma production operations in China, and traces the problem back to the unregulated slaughterhouses from which key ingrediants flow:

The process of heparin production has a grisly start in workshops that extract crude heparin from the intestines of slaughtered pigs. These crude heparin producers operate with essentially no oversight by Chinese health authorities. Many are small, rudimentary operations in farming communities.

The output of these heparin producers is bought up by trading companies, and may change hands several times before it ends up with consolidators who sell it in bulk to drug companies.

For the heparin supplied to Baxter, Changzhou SPL says that it relied on two wholesalers who bought heparin from six to 12 smaller workshops. Scientific Protein says it can trace supplies back to the slaughterhouses where the workshops got their raw materials.

Chinese big pharma is about to meet the American tort bar, and this is one of those occasions where the plaintiffs' bar is going to actually do a lot of good.

This discovery is good news for the environment but bad news for this wolverine in particular.

If the wolverine's existence is verified and it’s found to be an endangered species here, which is being considered, that could upset the applecart of land-use decisions. Somebody might stand to lose a lot of money because of this critter, whose only natural predator is man.

It might not be just scientists who are trying to find the wolverine. Some other folks might be on its trail too … this time not with cameras but with traps, or even guns.