Complete list of press releases

Contact: Kathleen Goldstein, 202-572-3243                                                                                                                                                                          

WHAT:
Business leaders hold press conference to announce the recommendations of the North Carolina Climate Stewardship Task Force, which spent a year studying the impacts of global warming on the state.  The Task Force determined that North Carolina can tap huge economic opportunities if it prepares now for a lower carbon economy.  The Task Force believes its recommendations will serve as a valuable resource for North Carolina ‘s new Global Warming Commission, which was established by the recently passed NC Global Warming Act.

WHEN:
Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:30 PM EST

WHO:
Simon Rich, former CEO of Louis Dreyfus Holding Company and Task Force member, Edenton
Bob Perkowitz, president of Paradigm Management and Task Force member, Charlotte
Tim Toben, CEO of Carolina Green Energy Corporation, Chapel Hill
Rep. Pricey Taylor Harrison, N.C. House of Representatives, Greensboro
Michael Shore , Senior Air Policy Analyst, Environmental Defense

How:
Dial 1-800-374-1178 and enter conference code 919-881-2604 #.

CONTACT:
Georgette Shepherd, NC Communications Director, Environmental Defense, 919-881-2927

BACKGROUND:
Significant attention has been devoted to the threat of global warming, but little attention has been given to the opportunities presented by reducing carbon dioxide, the most prolific global warming pollutant.  In the summer of 2004, the North Carolina office of Environmental Defense convened the North Carolina Climate Stewardship Task Force — a bipartisan committee of scientists, business leaders, health care professionals and religious leaders — to study the impact of global warming.  The Task Force reviewed threats and opportunities for the state and reached a somewhat startling conclusion: addressing global warming presents a huge economic opportunity for North Carolina .  Key sectors of the North Carolina economy stand to earn billions of dollars and create tens of thousands of jobs.

The marketplace resulting from efforts to reduce carbon emissions is expected to develop into one of the world’s largest commodity markets.  The Task Force says North Carolina is well positioned to gain substantial economic benefit by taking a leadership position in this emerging carbon marketplace.  Its report — “Economic Opportunity in Addressing Global Warming: The silver lining for North Carolina in a lower carbon economy” — issues specific recommendations, such as setting a carbon reduction goal, developing an action plan to position the state to benefit economically, and increasing the state’s energy independence.

For a copy of the report, contact Georgette Shepherd, gshepherd@environmentaldefense.org, 919-881-2927.

Virginia has a unique opportunity to use High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes to provide traffic-weary commuters with less congestion and more mass transit options, according to a new report by the Breakthrough Technologies Institute and Environmental Defense.   But these benefits must be managed properly to offset the potential negative impacts of HOT Lanes, such as increased congestion on local roads, air pollution, sprawl and inequity.  The report is available at www.gobrt.org and www.environmentaldefense.org/go/dctraffic.

HOT Lanes promise to keep some high speed lanes uncongested by limiting them to buses and carpools, while allowing others to drive on them if they pay a toll, which is set higher in peak hours.  A portion of the toll revenues would be invested in new express bus or bus rapid transit (BRT) services, providing residents with an inexpensive alternative to driving. 

The new report focuses upon HOT lane proposals now being considered for the Capital Beltway and I-95/395 south of Washington, and subject to a September 21st public hearing in Woodbridge, Virginia. It found that a BRT system operating on HOT lanes in Northern Virginia could attract 23,000 new daily transit riders, with 80 percent of new transit commuters drawn from single occupant vehicles.  The report offers concepts for serving this market, including concepts for passenger stations, vehicles, and system operations.  The report also suggests ways that current proposal should be improved, such as providing guaranteed funding for new transit services and ensuring that land use planning is conducted in a way that supports this investment. 

“Combining HOT lanes with BRT can be a win-win,” said Bill Vincent with the Breakthrough Technologies Institute.  “We need to start serious planning now, before HOT lanes are approved without any public transportation component.”

“Used properly, HOT lanes can clean the air, speed commutes and protect open spaces from unwanted sprawl.  But Virginia may end up using them to finance bloated road expansion, more air pollution and sprawling new development,” said Michael Replogle, transportation director of Environmental Defense. “These HOT lanes should be used as a tool to limit congestion, cut traffic growth, and pay for attractive transit choices, including bus rapid transit.” 

Virginia could build on successful experiments with HOT lanes in California, Texas, and Minnesota to help reduce congestion and manage air pollution problems while increasing public transportation options and mobility.  The keys to getting the best performance out of HOT lanes are:

-  Ensuring the Right Outcomes - State and local leaders should not approve new HOT lanes without requiring a robust public transportation element and dedicated funding to ensure that the project will meet system performance standards to curb traffic and pollution problems.

-  Managing Side Effects – HOT lanes and better transit should be designed and managed as a system to ensure that they don’t create congestion on local roads that connect to the highway.

-  Considering Alternatives- Instead of just adding new HOT lanes, officials should create BRT/HOT lane capacity at lower cost by adopting more Rush Hour Lanes – converting highway shoulders to managed travel lanes during peak hours - and converting existing general purpose lanes to toll managed lanes.

Based in Washington, DC, the Breakthrough Technologies Institute (BTI) is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), dedicated to promoting advanced energy and environmental technologies.  BTI receives no funding from any corporation or organization with a financial interest in developing or deploying BRT. 

Contact:  Michael Bean, Environmental Defense, 202-387-3500

This Wednesday (September 21), Congressman Richard Pombo will hold hearings on HR 3824 – The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005. The bill could be voted on as early as next week.

This bill would severely damage endangered species recovery efforts and undermine 30 years of progress under the Endangered Species Act.

The bill is available at: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/.

Environmental Defense opposes HR 3824 for three primary reasons:  (1) it will make the recovery of endangered species less likely, rather than more likely; (2) it will weaken, rather than strengthen, the quality of scientific decision-making under the Endangered Species Act (ESA); and (3) it will drain tax dollars away from already short-changed conservation efforts.

In short, this bill will tie endangered species recovery in an endless supply of bureaucratic red tape and starve it of the resources it needs to succeed.  Congressman Pombo has criticized the ESA for being a bureaucratic, oppressive and ineffective law.  His bill would make those claims true.

HR 3824 reduces the prospects for recovering species.
Representative Pombo has long criticized the Endangered Species Act because few species have recovered and been taken off the endangered list (though many others are clearly making progress toward that goal).  Ironically, the Pombo bill makes the recovery of species less likely rather than more.  This is virtually guaranteed by three provisions of the bill. 

The first allows environmentally harmful actions to proceed if the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service cannot evaluate them within a 90 day review period.  Already, the cash-strapped Services are unable to meet many of the deadlines imposed on them.  The new review deadline will exacerbate this problem for the Services, with the altogether new consequence that if the Services cannot review a proposed action within the deadline, the action can proceed – even if the result would make recovery unattainable. 

The second provision undercutting prospects for recovery includes changes to the provision of the law requiring regulations for “threatened” species.  Current law requires regulations that meet a highly protective standard (“necessary and advisable for the conservation” of the species).  The Pombo bill eliminates any requirement for regulations protecting threatened species at all.  If regulations are nevertheless promulgated, they no longer have to meet the existing protective standard. 

The third provision putting new obstacles in the path to recovery are changes that make it harder for federal agencies to cooperate in the implementation of recovery plans.  Currently, federal agencies often take on important tasks to implement recovery plans.  Under the Pombo bill, they would be prevented from doing so unless they first enter into a draft agreement outlining what they intend to do, publish that draft agreement for public comment, and then publish both a final agreement and responses to all public comments received. 

None of these bureaucratic obstacles to the voluntary implementation of recovery plans by federal agencies currently exists.  All will add red tape to interagency cooperation, making implementation more costly and ultimately less likely. .

HR 3824 will weaken the scientific foundation for decision-making.
The Pombo bill purports to strengthen the scientific basis for decision-making under the ESA, but its practical impact will be the opposite.  The Pombo bill does nothing to increase the capacity of the Services to generate or evaluate scientific information:  it offers no new resources and no new relief from already difficult-to-meet deadlines. Instead, the Pombo bill will saddle the agencies with a host of new procedural requirements that must be met within those same decision deadlines. 

HR 3824 will drain taxpayer dollars away from effective conservation efforts.
Although the federal endangered species program has never had enough resources to accomplish its aims, the Pombo bill will divert scarce resources away from effective conservation.  Particularly egregious is a new requirement that the federal government pay a businesses or other private interests whenever it identifies a proposed activity that would result in the taking of an endangered species.   The business or private interest does not need to have either the actual capacity to carry out the proposed activity, or the necessary approvals to do so (such as state or local permits).The claimant only needs to say he or she proposes to undertake the activity.  This provision will not only waste taxpayer dollars but will also dramatically undercut the utility of habitat conservation plans.  At present, those plans allow projects to go forward that result in the taking of endangered species, subject to mitigation requirements that can often be creatively designed to be more useful to conservation than simply foregoing the project.  The Pombo bill pulls the rug from under this sensible approach, replacing creative mitigation opportunities with a requirement that the government compensate the project proponent for foregoing the project.

Congressman Pombo’s effort to overhaul the ESA is based on faulty assumptions
A peer-reviewed analysis by Environmental Defense concluded that more than 50% of U.S. species listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act before 2000, and almost two-thirds of species listed for 13 years or more, have stabilized or are improving.  Further, species whose recovery efforts received significant funding are more likely to be improving.

The article can be downloaded here in PDF format [http://www.backfromthebrink.org/inthespotlight.cfm?subnav=story&ContentID=4716]

The study combined 14 years of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data on species’ status to get a single measure of each species’ recovery progress.  This approach also allowed an examination of which variables might explain differences in recovery status.  A key variable was government funding per species. 

This study followed two other Environmental Defense analyses that directly counter Congressman Pombo’s and other ESA critics’ faulty assumptions about the Act’s effectiveness.  Click here to download PDF reports [http://www.backfromthebrink.org/inthespotlight.cfm?subnav=story&ContentID=4467].

For further information, contact: 
Michael J. Bean
Chairman, Wildlife Program
Environmental Defense
202-387-3500 ext. 3312
mbean@environmentaldefense.org

Statement from Michael Shore , senior air policy analyst with Environmental Defense, on today’s votes by the NC General Assembly that passed a final  NC Global Warming Act:

North Carolina has scored again to protect the environment and public health, becoming the first state in the Southeast to address global warming in a meaningful way. 

There are huge economic opportunities that come with addressing climate change.  Passage of this bill puts North Carolina on the map.

With the General Assembly nearly adjourned for the year, the House and Senate resolved their differences and overwhelmingly passed the landmark bill.  While the federal government is just now recognizing the impacts of global warming, the state of North Carolina is already taking action to address the threat. 

CONTACT: Michael Shore (828) 582-3141

###

(August 11, 2005 – Washington) A peer-reviewed analysis, posted online this week by the scientific journal Ecology Letters, concludes that more than 50% of U.S. species listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) before 2000 and almost two-thirds of species listed for 13 or more years have stabilized or are improving.  Further, species whose recovery efforts received significant funding are more likely to be improving.

Food service giant Compass Group North America today announced with partners Environmental Defense and Smithfield Foods, Inc. a first-of-its-kind purchasing policy to curb antibiotic use in pork production.

The policy, which applies to Compass Group’s U.S. operations, prohibits the purchase of pork in which antibiotics that belong to classes of compounds approved for use in human medicine have been used for growth promotion purposes.  It also requires suppliers to report and reduce antibiotic usage over time.  Similar requirements will apply to the company’s purchase of chicken.  The policy applies to all animals that are raised by suppliers for the duration of their lives.

“As a food service company, the quality and safety of our food supply and customer satisfaction is of paramount importance.  We are pleased to be able to use our market position to introduce these improvements in our supply chain.  This policy makes business sense for us, and we urge other companies to make the same commitment,” said Cheryl Queen, Vice President, Corporate Communication, Compass Group.

“We are pleased to work with Compass Group and Environmental Defense on this important initiative,” said Dennis Treacy, Vice President, Environmental, Community and Government Affairs for Smithfield Foods, Inc. “We have and will continue to focus our antibiotics use on ensuring the well-being of our animals.”

“We recognize that the effectiveness of human antibiotics has been compromised and we applaud Compass and Smithfield for being the first in the conventional pork industry to take steps to address antibiotic use in pork,” said Gwen Ruta, Director of Corporate Partnerships, Environmental Defense.  “This unique collaboration demonstrates that it is both feasible and affordable to reduce the use of antibiotics today in order to help preserve their effectiveness for tomorrow.”

The overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture and in human medicine can cause the drugs to become less effective.  Estimates of antibiotic use in livestock production vary, but there is general agreement that reducing overall use of antibiotics will prolong the effectiveness of these important medicines.

Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer and the main pork supplier to Compass Group, through its hog production subsidiary Murphy-Brown LLC, began several years ago to limit antibiotic use through enhanced management practices and now reports the amount of feed-grade antibiotics that are purchased per pound of product sold.  Because of these actions, Smithfield is now able to supply pork that meets the needs of Compass North America.

Charlotte-based Compass Group, The Americas Division is the largest contract foodservice company with $6.7 billion in revenues and more than 152,000 associates throughout the US, Canada and Latin America. Its parent company, UK-based Compass Group PLC was ranked the 12th largest employer by Fortune magazine in 2005. It has worldwide revenues of $21 billion with over 400,000 associates working in more than 90 countries. For more information about Compass Group, The Americas Division, visit www.cgnad.com.

Smithfield Foods has delivered a 26 percent average annual compounded rate of return to investors since 1975. With annualized sales of $11 billion, Smithfield is the leading processor and marketer of fresh pork and processed meats in the United States, as well as the largest producer of hogs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.

(8 May 2003 — Washington, D.C.) The Interior Department today took an important step toward creating incentives for private landowners to conserve endangered species by releasing formal guidance governing the use of “conservation banks” to support endangered species conservation efforts. The guidance will ensure greater consistency in developing this rather new, but increasingly popular, conservation tool.
Conservation banks are properties dedicated to conservation of endangered species or their habitats in order to compensate for future losses of those same species or habitats. The owners of such properties receive “credits” for their conservation commitments, proportionate to the extent of those commitments. Those credits can then be used or sold to third parties to mitigate the impact of future development projects elsewhere.

“Conservation banking can turn endangered species into assets rather than liabilities, encouraging private investment for conservation,” said Robert Bonnie, an Environmental Defense economist who has helped establish conservation banks in the Southeast. “This guidance will make the process clearer, more consistent, and more attractive, to potential participants.”

Conservation banks have been used for endangered species conservation since the mid-1990s, primarily in California, where nearly 50 such banks are located today. In recent years, they have been used more widely outside of California. Among recent conservation bankers are: private ranchers in Texas and Arizona, whose ranchland provides habitat for rare cacti and songbirds; state highway departments in Colorado and North Carolina that foresaw that future road projects would require endangered species mitigation; a forest products company that is restoring endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers to some of its land; and a municipal sewer and water commission in Alabama that is managing habitat for the threatened gopher tortoise on buffer land around a drinking water reservoir.

Despite the growing number of conservation banks, Interior had no uniform guidance governing how such banks were to be established and operated until today. Now landowners interested in conservation banking can go forward with a clearer understanding of the rules, and the Interior Department can avoid inconsistency in its responses to banking proposals.

“Not only does the new guidance ensure greater consistency,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Michael Bean, “but in several respects it imposes requirements that earlier banks have not always been made to meet.”

Environmental Defense today applauded the introduction by Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Tom Daschle (D-SD) of the International Carbon Sequestration Incentive Act, which recognizes the problem of global warming and offers incentives to start addressing the problem, through forest preservation and other land management based options. Carbon is stored in trees, plants, soil and fossil fuels. When trees, plants or fossil fuels are burned, carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, is released. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions through reducing fossil fuel emissions and forest destruction are two major ways of reducing the global warming threat.

Eight of the ten hottest years of the 20th century occurred during the ’90s, and virtually every month of 1998 set a record for being the hottest respective month on record. Most recently, the period from January through April 2000 was the hottest such period on record.

“In a world facing rapid, unchecked climate change, many existing problems - economic, social and environmental - will only be made worse and harder to solve,” said Elizabeth Thompson, Environmental Defense legislative director. “By recognizing the link between forest conservation and climate change, this bill focuses on a creative, and environmentally beneficial way to address one aspect of the problem of global warming.”

The bill would provide incentives for both carbon conservation in forests and carbon sequestration by forests. In addition to the critical carbon benefits they provide, forests themselves are crucial ecosystems. “If successful, this legislation could contribute to two basic ways of managing global warming gases in the atmosphere. Forest preservation functions as an emissions reduction strategy since it prevents carbon from being released into the atmosphere,” said Dr. Janine Bloomfield, an Environmental Defense scientist. “At the same time, growing forests can draw carbon from the atmosphere and store it on a long-term basis, removing polluting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.”

Carbon sequestration and conservation projects only work if they meet strict environmental safeguards, which can be challenging to design and implement. This bill addresses the complexities of conferring its benefits on only truly effective sequestration and conservation projects by including safeguards against incentives for conversions of native ecosystems and protection of indigenous people’s land tenure. In addition, it establishes a relatively transparent project approval process which allows for participation by non-governmental organizations.

Also covered under the bill are agricultural practices that allow farmers to improve the quality of their land and enhance water quality, while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon storage. Agricultural practices such as manure management and no-till cultivation systems reduce emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Crop rotation, conservation buffers, fertilizer management and other techniques increase carbon storage in the soil.