EISs? EIS's? EISes? EISen?

Our friends at the NRDC, along with several other environmental groups, have filed a lawsuit against the BLM alleging that its use of a 2006 Environmental Impact Statement to approve several new gas and oil drilling projects in Colorado were illegal. The groups are asserting that the BLM failed to take into account the effects the oil and gas drilling will have on the air quality around the Roan Plateau. Now, I know that an EIS is supposed to take a look at the effects a project will have on an area in a certain place and time, but their needs to be at least a little leeway here. EIS’s are expensive and time-consuming to put together. There is no reason the BLM shouldn’t be able to do one every ten years or so and use it unless something drastically changes in the area. These groups are once again using the legal system to stall projects they don’t like and costing this agency money it could be using to do some real good. Although I guess I shouldn’t complain, since as soon as hippies stop suing people for trying to be productive my future job prospects will be practically nil.

Watch Your Language

I just finished reading an article entitled Tea Party Republicans in the House Resume Assault on the Environment. The blog article was written by Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The article referred to “anti-environmental” policy riders that were attached to the Congressional budget earlier this year, and repeatedly called efforts by Republican law makers to change how the EPA, USDA, and FDA conduct their business “dirty measures.”

I’m not writing to defend those moves made by Republicans, though I’m sure I agree with most of them. I’m writing to ask that both sides clean up their language. In this case, Ms. Beinecke is implying that Republicans are intentionally assaulting the environment. She seems to believe that the Republicans know that what they’re doing will harm the environment more than it will benefit the American people, and instead of stopping themselves they laugh maniacally and continue to club baby seals using baby penguins. More than that, she seems to think that Republicans are trying to harm the environment. And for that, I feel sorry for her. I would hate to live in a world where I believed that people who didn’t agree with me were so loathsome and evil that they were actively trying to pollute the air, wipe out endangered species, and poison the country’s drinking water.

Both sides are guilty of this demonization of the other side. It is far easier to see someone’s disagreement as a character flaw than as an intellectually valid position equal to your own.