Editorial Fiction at the Wall Street Journal

2008-06-20T22:25:33Z

If the Supreme Court decides to review the case of high intensity Navy sonar, as the Wall Street Journal yesterday urged, it will do well to ignore the Journal’s error-riddled editorial (“Judge Ahab and the Whales,” June 19). There is nothing “speculative” about the serious harm caused by sonar, as the Navy itself concedes. Though the harm that can be reduced by training with common sense safeguards, the Navy has refused, even in the face of overwhelming evidence linking mass whale mortalities to sonar exposure – a link characterized as “completely convincing” by the Navy’s own consultants.

Nor is there anything “activist” in the decisions of every federal court that has considered the Navy’s sonar training practices, concluding without exception that the Navy is not above the law and that, when it tests and trains with sonar, it can and must do so in an environmentally responsible manner. In the case up for review, the trial and appellate courts found that the Navy has repeatedly violated the law, that its own limited mitigation is “woefully inadequate,” and that the Navy can do a better job of protecting the health of our oceans without in any way compromising the Navy’s sonar training.

There is no question that sonar can injure and kill whales and dolphins. In fact, according to the Navy’s own conservative estimate, sonar exercises now underway in Southern California waters will significantly disturb or injure an estimated 170,000 marine mammals, including causing permanent injury to more than 450 whales and temporary hearing impairment in at least 8,000 whales – an injury that increases the risks of attack by predators. Again, those aren’t wild accusations by sandal-clad environmentalists – those are the estimates of the U.S. Navy in its official “Environmental Assessment” of the exercise.

Yet when they talk to the press, Navy officials still try to obscure the issue, casting doubt on whether sonar actually harms marine mammals. Take this recent statement by Capt. Scott Gureck, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet: “There’s no scientific proof that sonar by itself has ever directly killed or injured whales or other marine mammals.”

That’s right: water and ships also were involved, and the direct cause of death was internal bleeding.

Any hope that we could put aside the tortured semantics and focus on a solution went out the window in January when the Navy ran to President Bush for help. As many know by now, the Bush Administration issued two “emergency” waivers, one signed by the President himself, purporting to exempt the Navy from basic environmental laws in the interests of national security.

The irony is that if any emergency exists, it was created by the Navy itself, which month after month stubbornly failed to comply with environmental laws as it planned the sonar training exercises in question. Since when does failure to comply a law excuse one from complying with the law? That just doesn’t make sense. Nor does the President’s attempt to cast this controversy as an issue of national security.

Does the Navy need to train with sonar? We have never argued otherwise because the Navy has determined that mid-frequency active sonar is a critical tool for defending our ships, sailors and marines from underwater threats.

That doesn’t mean national security is jeopardized when a court orders the Navy to train in an environmentally responsible manner. The Army doesn’t train riflemen on crowded city streets, and the Air Force doesn’t practice bombing sorties over national parks. Why shouldn’t the Navy take common sense precautions when training with sonar in rich marine mammal habitat?

To be fair, the Navy has in the past adopted a number of procedures (albeit under legal pressure from conservationists) to reduce harm to whales. But the Navy has inexplicably abandoned those procedures for its southern California training exercises. After being ordered by a federal court to do more, the Navy asked the White House to excuse it from those common sense requirements -- for example, the requirement that it avoid areas where large numbers of marine mammal are known to be, and temporarily shut down active sonar when marine mammals are detected within 2000 meters of a sonar source.

The alternative, of course, is to knowingly assault these sound-sensitive creatures at close range with ear-splitting, hemorrhage-inducing noise. Whales shouldn’t have to suffer and die for the sake of convenience, and when it comes down to it, that’s really what we’re talking about.

Is reducing sonar harm to whales and dolphins an inconvenience? Perhaps. But the courts have repeatedly ruled that environmental planning to reduce the avoidable infliction of harm to marine life is required by our most basic environmental laws – laws that reflect our collective moral sense that the natural world warrants our respect and stewardship.

It is, after all, our world, too.

California’s State Parks under Attack

2008-03-27T23:07:36Z

Last week, conservationists in California lost two of their strongest allies for our state parks. Gov. Schwarzenegger removed Clint Eastwood and Bobby Shriver from their leadership posts on the California State Park and Recreation Commission after their vocal and effective opposition to a proposal to use the state park at San Onofre as right-of-way for a massive toll road – a proposal supported by the Governor. It is pretty easy to read these dismissals as a warning shot by the Governor to all his appointees who have refused to support that terrible project.

The proposed toll road would pave a six-lane highway through the park from top to bottom, requiring, according to California State Parks, that up to 60 percent of the park be closed. This isn’t really a road through a state park; it’s a road instead of a state park. And it wouldn’t even solve the traffic problem it is designed to address. The Governor claims “the road has to go somewhere” and this is “progress,” but the truth is, this isn’t progress, and it doesn’t have to go through a state park, and that’s precisely what Shriver and Eastwood said.

The toll road project has been rejected overwhelmingly by the California Coastal Commission as illegal, but the road builders have appealed that rejection to the Bush Administration and asked that it be overturned. We’re fighting that appeal and are committed, whichever way it comes out, to continue doing whatever is necessary to defeat this toll road and save San Onofre. This is necessary not only to prevent the devastation of a state park visited by 2.5 million visitors each year, but because its destruction would create a terrible precedent state-wide, at a time when our parks system is under attack by budget cuts, park closures, and no less than 113 proposals for development across 73 of our state parks. If this road can be built through San Onofre, similar projects are inevitable in state parks all across California.

Under Schwarzenegger’s administration, California has become the proving ground for the clean energy economy. He’s been willing to go to bat against the EPA to win California’s right to enact the strictest emission standards across the country, setting the bar for 17 other states to follow. Many of his state initiatives serve as models for other states when it comes to renewable energy use and pollution reduction. As a native Californian, I’m proud of that progress, but that doesn’t give him a free pass to run highways through our cherished parks.

Unfortunately, we can’t get Shriver or Eastwood their well deserved jobs back as chair and vice chair of the parks commission, respectively. Instead, we’re trying to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. We’ve asked the state senate to hold oversight hearings concerning the range of threats to our state park system, including the dismissal of Shriver and Eastwood.

Schwarzenegger’s environmental record will speak for itself when his term has ended, but in the meantime, we need to ensure our state parks still have a voice to be heard.

Switchboard, from NRDC › Joel Reynolds's Blog

Editorial Fiction at the Wall Street Journal

California’s State Parks under Attack