Resource summit pans environmentalists

Environmental groups and environmental laws were panned by speakers at Friday’s Natural Resources Summit held at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds in Sonora.

 The ninth annual event was hosted, in part, by the Tuolumne County Alliance for Resources and Environment, a timber industry rights group based in Twain Harte.
 

Water rights, environmental laws and climate change were the main topics addressed at the event. Several city and county officials were among the crowd of a few hundred that packed the Sierra Building.

The speakers — politicians and members of nonprofit industrial rights groups — largely portrayed environmentalists as either naive or intentionally working against the economy.

Keynote speaker was Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., which bills itself as a public interest group dedicated to free enterprise and limited government.

Ebell said the dialog surrounding global warming is controlled by “large masses of urban and suburban people” who live in a “fantasy” and “have forgotten where stuff comes from.”

Ebell also challenged the role carbon dioxide has in global warming.

“If you want a green planet, you should want more CO2,” he said, referring to the fact that plants need the gas to grow.

Ebell called the computer models scientist use to illustrate the future effects of global warming “junk.”

“They make this stuff up,” he said.

Ebell, originally from Oregon, had bleak words for California, saying its once-mighty economy is sinking because of strict environmental laws that force industries like automakers to manufacture in other states with less-stringent standards.

“Now look at you,” he told the crowd. “It’s really sad.”

California-style regulation is on the brink of taking down the entire U.S. economy, namely through the cap-and-trade legislation being considered in Congress, he said.    

He predicted the measure, designed to greatly reduce the country’s emissions by 2020, would make electricity bills skyrocket and would “turn the U.S. into a second-rate economic power.”

Joe Day, another speaker and member of the Tuolumne Utilities District board, called such a goal “unrealistic,” saying it would take thousands of acres and a massive amount of material to build enough wind turbines to reach it.

Ebell’s appearance at the conference, in particular, elicited a strong response from John Buckley, head of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, also based in Twain Harte. Buckley submitted a written statement to The Union Democrat ahead of Ebell’s speech.

Buckley said Ebell is essentially a spokesman for industries that can profit “by deriding climate change legislation.”

“For TuCARE and Cogdill to make him the featured speaker at a natural resources summit shows just how extreme the local ‘wise-use’ interests have become,” Buckley wrote.

He pointed out that many scientists believe human-caused climate change, largely via CO2 pollution, is causing the Earth’s average temperature to rise, a phenomenon that, scientists say, could lead to coastal and island flooding, the degradation of various ecosystems, including those used to grow crops, and species extinction.

“From National Geographic to university scientists to world leaders, the evidence for climate change is overwhelming,” Buckley said.

Ebell wasn’t the only speaker wary of environmental groups.

Don Zea, of the Northern California Water Association, addressed proposed plans for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The majority of California’s water supply flows through the delta.

He said it’s unrealistic, after years of population growth and human development, to think the delta will be “pristine” once more.

State Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, the sole state elected official to speak at the event, also weighed in on the delta issue.

“Turn the Central Valley into another Owens Valley — why? It will destroy the economy,” Cogdill said.

Water that once fed the Owens Valley of Inyo County in eastern California was diverted to feed a growing Los Angeles population until recently, when the government moved to restore the damaged ecosystem.

“We are on equal plane with the smelt — or even lower forms of life,” Cogdill said, referring to the fish that environmentalists want to protect in the delta area.

Critics of protecting the fish say doing so will destroy the Central Valley’s farms, which feed much of the country.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, say the endangered fish, like amphibians, is an indicator species, meaning if it’s not healthy the delta isn’t healthy. Because the delta drains a large portion of the state, various toxins — from mercury associated with old mines to pesticides and nutrient runoff from farms — flow through it.