Posted on 06/25/2002 8:29:35 AM PDT by Lance Romance
Sierra Club Targets Republicans
Tue Jun 25, 8:39 AM ET
By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Sierra Club ( news - web sites) is targeting several Republicans in competitive Senate races for their votes on a series of environmental issues and supporting several Democrats for their environmental voting record.
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The ads also will praise the environmental records of Democratic Sens. Paul Wellstone in Minnesota and Jean Carnahan in Missouri. Republican Sen. Susan Collins ( news, bio, voting record) of Maine also gets a positive ad from the Sierra Club. The TV ads will run on broadcast stations in those states' major markets, many starting Wednesday and running through July 3.
The ads have a patriotic Fourth of July theme and use natural images to create red, white and blue themes.
"We want to show who is protecting the environment," said Margaret Conway, political director of the Sierra Club. "We need to hold elected officials accountable."
Dan Allen of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said: "A lot of these groups are very much out of step with the states they're running ads in." He said they were in states where Democratic candidates were weak.
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The ad wars are heating up again in the Senate race in South Dakota three months after the two sides failed to negotiate an end to outside advertising by third parties.
The GOP's Senate committee said it is airing a television ad, starting Monday for about a week, discussing Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson ( news, bio, voting record)'s record of supporting tax increases. The NRSC's Allen said he considers the buy significant but wouldn't disclose details.
The ad accuses Johnson of favoring all types of taxes. "He even says `I do' to the marriage tax," it says. Johnson's campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, said the GOP ad is not factual, specifying Johnson's support for eliminating the marriage penalty.
"It's no surprise that John Thune's Republican party is running a continuation of their negative campaign against Tim Johnson," he said.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee put up a TV ad Monday that talks about Johnson's voting for Bush's tax cut, which lowered income taxes including the marriage penalty on many two-earner families. It also says he voted to end permanently the estate tax for every South Dakota farmer, rancher and every small-business owner, said Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for the committee.
Thune was recently targeted by the League of Conservation Voters with an ad accusing him of voting to allow more arsenic in drinking water. Thune, a Republican member of the House, responded with his own ad that said East Coast environmentalists are running "false, negative attacks" against him.
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Democrats have gained the edge in the congressional matchup in a new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released Monday, a shift driven entirely by increased support among women voters.
The poll gave Democrats an 8-point edge among registered voters, 50 percent to 42 percent. While Republicans had a slight lead among men, just as they had in late May, Democrats have moved from running about even among women in late May to a 55 percent-35 percent lead in mid-June. The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll of 1,020 adults was taken Friday through Sunday and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points, larger for subgroups.
An Ipsos-Reid poll done for the Cook Report in June also found that independent women have been shifting toward Democrats.
Very interesting considering Daschle and Gephardt were blaming the economic downturn on Bush's tax cut just last month.
Isn't that the same state who's Gov. commented: "The whole state is in flames!"
Humph! Go figure!
The above is direct from Johnson's voting record.
Sierra Club/demonrat lies and distortion, as per usual.
Ya just caint win!
Wassup wid dat?
My guess would be that the number is far more than any logging, thinning and related road building would ever begin to disturb.
After all folks, if the forests would have been thinned, underbrush removed and roads constructed to accomplish this, the fires now raging would be a mere fraction as destructive as they presently are. Don't forget. we're only in the beginning of what could be a long hot summer.
I hope the Sierra Club burns for this!!!!
June 24, 2002 -- Green movement pioneer disagrees with mission now
By EDMOND JACOBY Staff writer
SACRAMENTO -- Environmental organizations like Greenpeace, which Patrick Moore helped create three decades ago, have become so adept at using emotion-laden slogans instead of reasoned arguments in the fight over forest management practices that they have effectively trumped science in the public discussion, with dire consequences to come, Moore said at a California Forestry Association luncheon in Sacramento Thursday.
Moore parted company with much of the environmental movement after watching it gain control over the direction of public policy in the waning 20th century, only to steer the developed world in the direction of some very difficult choices in years to come, he said.
Harvesting trees, for example, is a key to reducing the proliferation of greenhouse gasses, he said. Greenhouse gasses, principally carbon dioxide, are blamed by most environmental scientists for global warming, which may or may not be occurring depending on who interprets available data.
But there are economic consequences as well. In California, despite increased rates of population growth over the past decade, the timber harvest has declined by about half in just five years. According to reports from the California Forest Products Association, almost 83 percent of all the wood consumed in California is imported. Much of it comes from parts of the world where environmental controls are lax at best, Moore said.
The 2001 timber harvest in California was just 1.6 million board feet, while the state's forests boast some 340 million board feet of available timber. The harvest was less than one-half of one percent of the total.
In a book titled Green Spirit: Trees are the Answer, Moore argues that "perhaps the most dangerous myth that has been created in the war of words over the environment is that human activity is somehow 'unnatural,' that we are not really part of nature but apart from it."
The economic impact of the reduced timber harvest on California is stark: Lost jobs, lost income for companies, higher prices for lumber and building materials, and higher prices for products that heavily depend on wood, such as homes.
According to Moore, the impact of reduced reliance on wood for building projects leads to other economic consequences as well.
For example, he said, the use of steel and concrete, where formerly wood was the building material of choice, leads to an increase in the consumption of fossil fuels to manufacture them. That, in turn, raises prices unnecessarily. But more than just raising prices, he said, the burning of fossil fuels feeds the greenhouse gas problem and contributes to air and water pollution.
"And it doesn't make sense from a policy point of view," Moore said.
"Public policy now encourages the use of wood alternatives that require fossil fuels to produce, yet government policy also is to reduce the use of fossil fuels," he said.
"You can't do both," he noted.
Besides, he said, there is no logical reason to want to reduce the cutting of forest areas.
"The environmentalists keep telling us how the forests are disappearing at an alarming rate," Moore said.
"But that just isn't so. In the U.S. alone, the timber in our forests has increased from 17 to 23.5 billion cubic meters since 1953," he said.
Moore said that environmentalists take as gospel the assertion that old growth forests should be considered sacrosanct, when in fact some old growth forests actually need cutting.
"Biodiversity is the principal issue in the argument about old growth versus new growth harvesting," he said.
Forests are a repository for atmospheric carbon dioxide, which means that forest growth is a mechanism for reducing the putative cause of global warming, Moore asserted.
But forest carbon balance isn't just a matter of how much carbon is locked up in the forests. Carbon dioxide is a building block of trees, as it is of all living plants. They breathe carbon dioxide the way people breathe oxygen, and young, growing trees, while not holding as much carbon within them, consume more carbon dioxide than old trees do, Moore said.
"Old growth forests represent a high carbon account balance," Moore said.
"The young growth forests have high carbon flow rates," he said.
Nor is the old bugaboo, clearcutting, the evil beast environmentalists claim it is, Moore said.
"It's not logging or clearcutting per se that causes damage to the environment," he said, "but how, when and where trees are cut."
Protecting soil, enhancing salmon streams and increasing wildlife habitat actually requires a much wider view of forestry than merely the question of whether to permit clearcutting.
And he differs with most environmentalists on the question of whether forest harvests might lead to species becoming extinct.
"The environmentalists keep telling us that species are going extinct at an alarming rate," Moore said.
"One-half to two-thirds of the species of animals on the earth will disappear by the year 2100, they tell us," he said.
"In fact, the rate of species extinction has been going down since the 1930s," he said.
"And think about this: If you follow the environmentalists' logic you have to accept the idea that the least irreplaceable species is us," he said.
Moore said he thinks it strange that the very people who support zero-harvest forestry also support a return to so-called organic farming, which, because it does not rely on man-made high-nitrogen fertilizers, reduces crop yields. With an anticipated growth of world population from the current 6 billion to as many as 9 billion in 2050, reduced agricultural productivity will mean the choice people must make is whether to cut down all the world's forests and convert forest lands to crop lands, or let starvation spread on a massive scale.
"Those same environmentalists say they are in favor of renewable energy," Moore said.
"It's funny, but they're not in favor of the two main forms of renewable energy, wood and hydroelectric power," he said.
"Why isn't there a Manhattan Project for hydrogen fuels and other no-pollution energy sources?" he asked.
Although many environmental lobbies do, in fact, press for the complete elimination of forestry harvests, Greenpeace is not one of them. The organization Moore helped found does favor a policy that prevents harvesting of trees in old growth forests.
Greenpeace describes itself as the "leading independent campaigning organization that uses non-violent direct action and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future."
Rush Limbaughs Undeniable Truth of Life (second edition) #8:
The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down.
Maybe they better had save their money to pay off the class-action law suits that are coming their way from the residents of Showlow, Heber, Overgaard, McNary, etc. Arizona. The eviral whacko policies of not allowing logging and grazing to clean up the forests in the west is the main reason the fires here are such monsters that they can't be controlled.
I I have hiked and packed thousands of miles all over the country and am a strong advocate of rational national policy for protection of natural places, but I perceive the Seirra club as having been co opted by the leftists to use what was once a fine organization to achieve radical objectives.
Whenever possible I am vocal to critize the leftist direction the Sierra Club has taken. I am especially vocal to misguided urban women who must be an advocate for some cause. They constantly carp about things they know nothing about except for the party line.
I just saw the first of one of these ads for Widder Carnahan, called her office number listed in the ad and spoke to the answering machine thus:
"I just saw your Sierra Club paid advertisement and you should have voted for ANWR to free us from dependence on foreign oil. We'll see you in November at the polls"
I encourage ALL freepers to call and let the politicians know what you think of them for aligning themselves with the Sierra Club.
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