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Editorials are written by or
approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
August 31, 2018
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Opinion
Editorial Board
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O ur V iew
Environmentalists stop state from managing wolves
W
e fully understand the
role of the judicial
system in society and
how it provides all citizens with
access to justice. It’s in the U.S.
Constitution.
However, we missed the part
of the Constitution that allows
backbench environmental groups
to run to court to meddle in
wildlife management. Specifically,
we were disappointed that a
Thurston County, Wash., judge
found it necessary to intervene in
how the Washington Department
of Fish and Wildlife manages
wolves. The state agency
spent more than $1 million on
a mediator to help the Wolf
Advisory Group come up with
a way to handle wolves that
repeatedly kill livestock. Under
the agreed-upon criteria a wolf
would be culled after 4 cattle
were attacked over 10 months,
or 3 cattle were attacked in 30
days. The Togo pack in rural Ferry
County has attacked 6 cattle since
Nov. 2 and attacked 3 cattle from
Aug. 8 to 18.
The Wolf Advisory Group
includes representatives of
environmental groups in addition
to ranchers and other groups on
all sides of the wolf issue, and
the criteria were developed after
prolonged public discussions that
were part of a multi-year process.
The environmentalist litigants
in the latest lawsuit — Cascadia
Wildlands and the Center for
Biological Diversity — had ample
opportunity to participate.
The Wolf Advisory Group’s
hard work was apparently for
naught, because the environmental
groups worked out a side deal with
the department to get a one-day
notice on plans to cull wolves.
Their intent, of course, is to stop
the culling by running to court.
Thus the judge stopped state
wildlife managers from doing
their jobs by issuing a temporary
restraining order. A hearing later
will discuss the merits of the
groups’ arguments.
A few words about wolves
in Washington state: There are
plenty — at least 120 that have
been found, though they turn up
many parts of the state. And gray
wolves are not a rare species. In
fact, there are an estimated 10,000
wolves across the border in British
Columbia, and there are 5,500
wolves in Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, California, Montana,
Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin
and Michigan and probably other
states.
So the fact that a couple of
environmental groups want to
short-circuit how Washington state
manages wolves is like worrying
about stepping on an ant when
there is an ant hill with thousands
of ants nearby.
We don’t get paid for our
advice to the state Department of
Fish and Wildlife. The department
probably wouldn’t pay for it
anyway. But managers there would
do well to avoid side deals such as
O ur V iew
A year that will live
in infamy: It’s time
to act on climate
T
Reed Saxon/Associated Press File
A California jury has awarded $289 million to a man who says he got non-Hodgkin lymphoma because of glyphosate, the active ingredi-
ent in Roundup. The case is one of many blaming the weed killer for health problems, despite many studies that have found no direct link
to illnesses.
Glyphosate put on trial
A
California jury earlier this
month awarded $289 million
to a groundskeeper who
claimed Monsanto’s Roundup gave
him non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The state Superior Court jury
agreed that Roundup contributed
to Dewayne Johnson’s cancer and
Monsanto should have provided a
label warning of the potential health
hazard.
The jury’s finding is at odds with
what the Environmental Protection
Agency and other regulatory and
research agencies have concluded
about glyphosate, the active
ingredient in Roundup.
The European Union’s Glyphosate
Task Force said evaluations done
over the past 40 years consistently
confirmed glyphosate “poses no
unacceptable risk to humans, animals
or the environment.”
The European Food Safety
Agency and the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization
have each said glyphosate probably
doesn’t cause cancer. The German
Federal Institute of Risk Assessment
in 2014 declared glyphosate non-
carcinogenic.
Glyphosate has been reviewed by
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency many times since its
introduction in 1985. In December the
EPA released a draft risk assessment
that said glyphosate is not likely to
be carcinogenic to humans. And lest
anyone suggest the EPA is mouthing
Trump administration talking points,
the agency came to that conclusion
in 2016 while Barack Obama was
president.
The National Institute of Health
has been conducting an ongoing study
of farm health since 1993. In May the
NIH released an update of previous
studies of 54,251 licensed pesticide
applicators in North Carolina and
Iowa, 82 percent of which used
glyphosate.
“In this large, prospective cohort
study, no association was apparent
between glyphosate and any solid
tumors or lymphoid malignancies
overall, including non-Hodgkin
lymphoma and its subtypes,” it said.
The plaintiff’s lawyers introduced
studies that show a link. But the most
prominent is the classification of
glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic
to humans” by the World Health
Organization’s International Agency
for Research on Cancer in 2015.
IARC classifies substances on
a scale of 1 to 4. Glyphosate is
classified in Group 2(a), which
means “there is limited evidence
of carcinogenicity in humans and
sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity
that with the two environmental
groups. All they want is to stop
the department from doing its job,
which is managing wolves.
The two environmental groups
claim their interests would be
damaged if one Togo wolf was
killed. But it’s nothing compared
to the damage those two groups
and their lawsuit have done
to the Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s years of efforts to reach
a consensus on managing wolves.
Because of these two groups,
concern over the wolves has been
replaced by anger, and the words
of many others who doubted that
the Wolf Advisory Group could
avoid environmental lawsuits will
continue to echo across the state:
“We told you so.”
in experimental animals.”
IARC says “limited evidence”
means a positive association has been
observed, but other explanations have
not been ruled out.”
Thousands of lawsuits have been
filed against Monsanto since the
IARC’s decision. Law firms are
eagerly soliciting additional plaintiffs.
In June, U.S. District Judge
Vince Chhabria allowed hundreds
of cases to proceed in federal court
after finding a reasonable jury could
conclude a connection between
glyphosate and cancer.
Chhabria all but conceded the
difficulty jurors and judges will have
sorting out the claims.
“I have a difficult time
understanding how an epidemiologist
could conclude … that glyphosate
is in fact causing non-Hodgkin
lymphoma in human beings,” he
said. “But I also question whether
anyone could legitimately conclude
that glyphosate is not causing non-
Hodgkin lymphoma in human
beings.”
We hope jurors will put the
facts on trial, not Monsanto. Now a
subsidiary of Bayer, Monsanto is not
a sympathetic defendant.
Farmers who depend on
glyphosate will be following these
trials with interest.
hose of us who
understand the exis-
tential threat posed
by climate change have
been waiting for the “Pearl
Harbor moment” that galva-
nizes people and politicians
alike into taking action to
minimize that threat. 2018
is turning out to be a “Pearl
Harbor year,” where a ma-
jority of Americans support
taking action, and we’re
ready for Congress to press
forward.
We thought the wake-
up call on climate change
occurred in 2005 when Hur-
ricane Katrina slammed and
devastated New Orleans, a
disaster that left 1,836 peo-
ple dead and displaced tens
of thousands more. Four
years later, when legisla-
tion to price carbon made a
run in Congress, any sense
of urgency to deal with
climate change was lost
amid partisan squabbling
and pushback from special
interests.
The next opportunity for
action came in 2012 when
Superstorm Sandy roared
up the East Coast with a
storm surge that put much
of New York City under wa-
ter. The cover of Bloomberg
Businessweek proclaimed,
“It’s Global Warming,
Stupid.” But again, nothing
happened. Likewise, last
year’s back-to-back-to-back
storms — Harvey, Irma and
Maria — left a swath of
destruction from Houston to
Puerto Rico totaling some
$300 billion in damage.
This, too, was not enough to
spur action.
Fortunately, more and
more Americans are con-
necting the dots between
extreme weather disasters
and climate change. That
increasing awareness of the
impact climate change ex-
erts on our lives is reflected
in the latest polling from the
Yale Program on Climate
Change Communication.
The Yale study found
that 77 percent of U.S.
adults support regulating
carbon dioxide as a pol-
lutant and that 68 percent
support taxing fossil fuel
companies while equally
reducing other taxes. That
support extends to all geo-
graphical areas of America,
with majorities in all 50
states and all 435 congres-
sional districts saying they
favor a revenue-neutral
carbon tax.
The Yale poll should
come as no surprise, given
that 2018 is turning out to
be a Pearl Harbor year, not
just a moment:
• Triple-digit tempera-
tures in California have
created conditions for the
worst wildfires the state
has ever experienced. In
Redding, Calif., those
conditions produced a fire
tornado with wind speeds
Mark
Reynolds
For the
Capital Press
up to 165 mph and tempera-
tures that likely exceeded
2,700 degrees.
• Smoke from western
wildfires is drifting east,
creating hazardous breath-
ing conditions in cities
along the way.
• A combination of
warmer water and nitro-
gen runoff from farms has
produced the worst “red
tide” ever seen in Florida.
Manatees, sea turtles and
millions of pounds of dead
fish have washed up on
beaches and affected the
tourism industry.
• Hundreds of deaths
around the world have been
attributed to record-setting
heat waves in places like
Japan, where 119 people
died and thousands were
hospitalized.
Of all the trends related
to climate change, the most
encouraging is the growing
movement to depoliticize
the issue and get Republi-
cans and Democrats talking
to each other about solving
the problem. There are
now 86 members in the
bipartisan Climate Solu-
tions Caucus in the U.S.
House of Representatives,
half Republican and half
Democrat. In late July, the
co-leader of the caucus,
Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla.
— joined by Rep. Brian
Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Rep.
Francis Rooney, R-Fla. —
introduced the first Repub-
lican-sponsored bill to price
carbon in nearly a decade.
Curbelo’s bill is a major
crack in the dam holding
back effective climate
legislation, and that dam is
likely to burst in the months
to come.
As Congress returns
from August recess and
members make their final
re-election push, my hope
is that climate change
becomes a bridge issue
rather than the wedge issue
it’s been for so many years.
Throughout our history,
Americans have set aside
our differences and come
together in times of crisis
to turn back a common foe.
We can and must do that
now with climate change.
The terrifying vortex
of fire that swept through
Redding, Calif., is the latest
Pearl Harbor moment for
climate change in a year
filled with such moments.
Let us hope this year of
infamy, together with the
growing desire for action,
will finally set the wheels
in motion for Congress to
enact meaningful solutions.
Mark Reynolds is execu-
tive director of the Citizens’
Climate Lobby.