by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel A couple years ago, I criticized the Bureau of Reclamation for draining Blue Mesa Reservoir without bothering to warn anyone. I got a little pushback for saying that while the bureau owned the dam, it did not own the water. A close friend and [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel The 1998 final report of independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation of President Clinton led to the first impeachment since 1868. But today the report is better remembered for Clinton’s response, buried in footnote 1128, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Over 70,000 people are in Belém, Brazil, for the annual UN climate change party, called COP30 because it is the 30th annual “Conference of the Parties.” This year there are 56,118 delegates, appointed by governments who are parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel After the 2020 George Floyd murder, the Sierra Club called for defunding police and reparations for slavery. It touched off an internal battle that tore the organization apart, leading to the ouster of two consecutive executive directors, employee layoffs, office closings, loss of members, [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Theodore Roosevelt and Sitting Bull both thought the great American buffalo were extinct. Roosevelt called it “a veritable tragedy of the animal world,” and Sitting Bull said, “a cold wind blew on the prairie the day the last buffalo fell.” They didn’t know there [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel A decade ago, three giant companies took advantage of federal incentives to build the world’s largest solar power plant in the Mojave Desert, known as Ivanpah. It was “the wave of the future,” a new technology that focuses 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors to reflect solar [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Last week, the Senate passed three Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning BLM resource management plans. What would have been called an earth-shattering precedent not so long ago was this time hardly noticed except by those who closely follow Interior and energy issues. The Biden-era [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Near the end of the Reagan-Bush era, in 1991, the Gallup poll showed more than three-fourths of all Americans — 78% — identified themselves as environmentalists. Nearly 40% called themselves “strong environmentalists.” But 30 years later, Gallup says those numbers had fallen to just [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel When Congress authorized nearly $400 billion in climate subsidies, the bill was called the “Inflation Reduction Act,” though it had nothing to do with inflation. The 2001 “Patriot Act” was about expanding government surveillance powers, not patriotism. The massive new federal health insurance program [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Washington Evening Star humorist Philander Chase Johnson created a great character named Senator Sorghum. A 1902 piece called “A Delicate Distinction” had one character saying, “That friend of yours seems to have a clear conscience.” Senator Sorghum answered, “No, not a clear conscience; merely [...]
