Tag Archives: Environmentalism

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Massachusetts man facing multiple charges for shooting a bear on his property

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From the libertarian Reason magazine (with links to news media stories).

Excerpt:

Richard Ahlstrand, of Auburn, Massachusetts, faces criminal charges after encountering a bear in his back yard and shooting the damned thing to avoid being mauled or eaten. Specifically, as noted at Reason 24/7, he’s charged with “illegally killing a bear, illegally baiting a bear, illegal possession of a firearm and failure to secure a firearm.” All of these charges, once translated from Massachusetts to American, seem to stack up to outrage that Ahlstrand didn’t make his yard completely inhospitable to animals that are rarely seen in the area, and then investigated a suspicious noise with a weapon in hand rather than cower under the bed. Worst of all, he actually defended himself when he encountered danger.

[…]In both the Telegram and CBS articles, “authorities” are quoted as saying they don’t think the bear was a threat to people. I suppose it’s possible that the black bears in Massachusetts are a kinder, gentler breed than the one that mauled a man near Payson, Arizona, last June. Or the one that tore up a woman in the same area in May. And then there was the bear that did a job on a woman near Pinetop …

When I see stories like this, the first thing that I think is that my role as a protector has been criminalized by the state. Suppose that I owned property and had a family and a bear wandered onto my property and threatened my family. The environmentally-friendly authorities think that I should let the bear eat my family, or at least sit still and hope that he doesn’t. Is it reasonable to have a family if you can’t protect them? What kind of incentive are these tree-hugging leftists offering men to get married when men know perfectly well that the state prefers them to watch their family be mauled by a bear rather allow that man to shoot that bear?

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State Department report finds that Keystone XL pipeline is safe for the environment

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The Heritage Foundation reports.

Excerpt: (links removed)

In Washington, a presidential Administration releases news it doesn’t like at 5 p.m. on Fridays. So it pays to pay attention when everyone is leaving work for the weekend.

Late last Friday, the State Department released a positive environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama has been delaying this pipeline—which would carry oil from Canada to refineries in Texas—for more than three years.

The delay has meant that America is still waiting on an additional 700,000 to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from a close ally, not to mention 179,000 American jobs.

Why has this taken so long, when all environmental reports thus far have been positive? Heritage’s Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow, explains:

Given the need for jobs and more oil on the global market to offset high prices, the permit application had been moving along positively with bipartisan support without much attention until environmental activists made blocking the Keystone XL pipeline their issue to rally around for 2011. Although President Obama and the Department of State (DOS) said they’d make a decision at the end of 2011, they ultimately catered to a narrow set of special interests, punting the decision until after the 2012 elections.

The State Department, which is overseeing the pipeline because it crosses a U.S. border, has “already conducted a thorough, three-year environmental review with multiple comment periods,” Loris reported last year.

The review has been comprehensive:

DOS studied and addressed risk to soil, wetlands, water resources, vegetation, fish, wildlife, and endangered species. They concluded that the construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk. Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by DOS and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

This confirms the previous assessment done by the Nebraska government, which concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline was safe for Nebraska’s environment as well.

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Democrat senator Barbara Boxer introduces carbon tax legislation

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced a bill to levy a carbon tax. But, back on Nov. 15 of last year, Pres. Obama’s press secretary promised the administration would “never” do so.

According to Reuters, the new tax law “would set a $20 tax for each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent a polluter would emit beyond a set limit, which would rise 5.6 percent annually over a 10-year period.”

Last November, however, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that would never happen:

“We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one.  The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation.  And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.”

“A carbon tax will skyrocket [the] price of everything,” a statement from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, warned today:

“It’s not just energy prices that would skyrocket from a carbon tax, the cost of nearly everything built in America would go up.”

The cost of everything is already going up because of inflation. This carbon tax is just going to make it worse, especially for the poor.