The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What would you be thinking if you woke up in the woods at dawn, with the ground covered in white snow, the world all quiet and the air clean and clear?

It reminds me of a blank slate, a chance for a new beginning. It’s too bad we can’t just rain snow down on human memory and start all over.

Sometimes a new year holiday might provide a limited opportunity for such a thing. Then sometimes, a court ruling can provide an opportunity for a fresh start.

This week on Tuesday, the Chinese Lunar New Year offers a chance at a new beginning. We are leaving the Year of the Ox and entering the Year of the Tiger.

You may recall the worst year in recent memory: The Year of the Rat King: 2020.

Well 2022 is the Year of the Water Tiger, and in Fengshui this means it’s a year made for “bold action.” The Tiger is known for its power, daring and ability to do everything on a grand scale.

Maybe U.S. President Joe Biden should have waited until 2022 to put forward his Build Back Better bill, eh?

Biden was born on November 20, 1942, the Year of the Horse, and according to the interpretation of the stars, his luck this Tiger year should show an upward trend, which would be a welcome relief from the Year of the Ox.

This year will be “markedly different from 2021’s year of the Metal Ox,” the experts say, “which was all about hard work and pragmatism. Think about it: in 2021 the world had to plod through months of pandemic lockdowns and WFH isolation. It wasn’t glamorous or fun, but we plodded on because we knew it was necessary.”

Tiger years are times of change, even more so because 2022 is a year of the Water Tiger.

“Water is connected to being sensitive, creative and open to change. But water is also an extremely powerful natural force. It can conquer fire and go around any obstacle in its path and not lose its way.

“Tigers are also quick to take action, so be prepared in 2022 for situations to change quickly. On the down side, this can mean hot tempers and drama at home or at work. On the up side, a Tiger year can also bring unexpected good news and turn crazy dreams into glorious reality. Some horoscope signs can get burned, while others rise to glorious new heights. So get ready for a wild ride.”

We always see life as a wild ride, but there is no doubt the past six years have been the wildest of them all.

For the record here, since I was born in October, 1957, that makes me a Fire Rooster.

“The work of people born in 1957 year of the Rooster are predicted to be smooth in 2022 and they can handle pressures and difficulties properly. For those in management position, it is very likely for them to find the talented young people to assist them.”

That’s good because we need help.

“Their income from work is satisfying. For those having retired, their pension can cover their daily cost, too. It is possible for them to earn extra money from lottery or investment. But do not be greedy.”

“For their safety, they are not advised to get involved into quarrels and fights against others, which may cause injuries upon them. Pay more attention to daily diet in case of intestinal tract diseases. If possible, have a comprehensive physical examination just in case of some potential illnesses.”

“They may feel boring sometimes. Just go traveling with partners or friends to make the life interesting again.”

Sounds right.

The science of evolutionary biology is far more powerful than the pseudo-science of the stars. And it looks like while there is good news on the coronavirus pandemic front, with overall cases peaking and the trends in hospitalizations and deaths trending downward, there is a new variant on the horizon in addition to Omicron, which is behaving in unpredictable evolutionary ways.

To read more about how this biological evolution works, read this in The New York Times.

Omicron’s Radical Evolution: Thirteen of Omicron’s mutations should have hurt the variant’s chances of survival. Instead, they worked together to make it thrive.

On the climate change front, a federal judge has given the Biden Administration legal cover and a chance to reconsider massive amounts of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Related Coverage: Federal Judge Rules For Environmentalists, Canceling Oil and Gas Leases in Gulf of Mexico

A close reading of the ruling and the legal background reveals that the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management — the new agency created by President Barack Obama when it was revealed how corrupt the Minerals Management Service was back in the Bush years — failed to adequately account for the environmental consequences of offering up leases to oil companies on 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. And the court found that under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the federal agencies failed to adequately consult and inform the public of those consequences.

In defense of the Biden Administration, Biden promised to stop issuing new leases for drilling on public lands and in federal waters during his campaign for president in 2020. This planned lease sale was offered up in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump in his anti-science, anti-environment campaign to “drill, baby, drill.”

Shortly after taking office, Biden signed an executive order to pause the issuing of new leases. But another federal judge in Louisiana blocked that order after Republican attorneys general from 13 states sued, and he ruled that the administration must hold lease sales in the Gulf that had already been scheduled.

Biden administration officials said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland risked being held in contempt of court if the auction was not held.

Attorneys for environmental groups who sued in federal court argued that the administration had other options, including ordering a new environmental impact study to examine the impacts such a large lease sale would pose on the environment and the climate.

“BOEM had the ability to cancel Lease Sale 257 ‘on the ground that [it] would be too harmful to the environment,” making it ‘a legally relevant cause of the direct and indirect environmental effects … it approves,” U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote in his decision.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a public relations firm working on behalf of fossil fuel companies, was a party to the lawsuit advocating for drilling.

“Accepting API’s position would mean that all planned lease sales in a five-year program must take place even though the Five-Year Program was never subject to judicial review for NEPA compliance. Such a result would all but render NEPA toothless,” the judge wrote.

There were lots of issues raised in the case, including the impact of such large scale drilling on the endangered population of Rice’s whales in the area and the impact of fracking.

But the key legal error cited by the judge was a flaw in the way the federal agencies account for the environmental impact of domestic oil and gas drilling compared to the importation of foreign oil.

“Perhaps most importantly, BOEM actually did quantify the effect of the proposed lease sales on foreign consumption. The relevant section of the Wolvovsky and Anderson Report states that ‘for the global oil market, MarketSim substitutions under the No Action Alternative show a reduction in foreign oil consumption of approximately 1, 4, and 6 billion barrels of oil for the low-, mid-, and high-price scenarios respectively over the duration of the 2017–2022 Program.’

“But despite that recognition that the change in foreign consumption was both foreseeable and quantifiable in terms of barrels of oil, the very next sentence goes on to state that this effect was nevertheless excluded from the total quantitative emissions calculation. In doing so, BOEM ‘entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem’ that it had just identified the sentence before, a classically arbitrary action.”

The judge also pointed out that the twin aims of NEPA are to force the agency to take a ‘hard look’ at the environmental consequences of an action, to “ensure that these environmental consequences, and the agency’s consideration of them, are disclosed to the public.”

“Publication of an EIS . . . gives the public the assurance that the agency has indeed considered environmental concerns in its decision making process, and, perhaps more significantly, provides a springboard for public comment. The overarching question is whether an EIS’s deficiencies are significant enough to undermine informed public comment and informed decision making.”

The judge said the plaintiffs suing to stop the lease sale “compiled a list of new information that they contend was significant enough that the Bureau was required to prepare a supplemental EIS. Although Plaintiffs assemble a compelling litany of information, they have not shown that this new information is ‘sufficient to show that the remaining action will affect the quality of the human environment . . . to a significant extent not already considered.

“Those documents included an extensive discussion of climate change and were unflinching in their recognition of the threat climate change presents to humanity,” the judge wrote. Yet “NEPA merely prohibits uninformed — rather than unwise — agency action.”

Ultimately, the judge said the court was doubtful that the agencies could remedy the legal misstep on remand, “especially given the multiple opportunities at which BOEM could have remedied this error and did not.”

“Although Lease Sale 257 took place in November 2021, none of the leases from that sale have yet been awarded or become effective, according to the government’s most recent submission,” the judge wrote. “Here … BOEM would not need to unravel anything. It would simply not award or execute the leases that it has not to this point awarded or executed.”

“Overall, API, Louisiana, and Chevron’s other broad assertions of large-scale economic disruptions remain largely speculative,” the judge said. “On balance, the disruptive consequences … do not outweigh the seriousness of the NEPA error in this case and the need for the agency to get it right.”

The judge admitted that the plaintiffs failed to establish the four key factors for him to declare injunctive relief: “irreparable injury, inadequacy of remedies at law to compensate for that injury, the balance of hardships, and the public interest.”

But he ruled that there was nothing to be “enjoined” in this case either.

“The leases have not become effective and no activity on them is taking place. Instead … remand of the Record of Decision to hold Lease Sale 257 will do exactly what is implied: vacate Lease Sale 257 and allow the agency an opportunity to remedy its NEPA error as it so chooses in the first instance. The Court does not specify how BOEM must do so, on what timeline, or what ultimate conclusion it must reach, leaving those issues to the sound discretion of the agency.

“The court holds that there is insufficient reason to depart from the standard remedy … in this case and no reason to consider an injunction at this time. Accordingly, it will vacate the Record of Decision for Lease Sale 257, and the action taken based on that Record of Decision, including Lease Sale 257, and remand to the agency for further proceedings.

“The Court VACATES and REMANDS the Record of Decision for Lease Sale 257 to the Department of the Interior.”

In other words, the ground is covered in snow, the world is quiet and the air is clean and clear.

Starting anew under the Biden administration’s policy of less energy from fossil fuels and more energy from renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the Gulf of Mexico may finally get some relief

As I wrote in our breaking news story on this ruling, the Gulf of Mexico, the scene of the largest and most devastating environmental disaster in U.S. history in 2010 with the BP oil spill, has long been seen by environmentalists as a dumping ground for pollution and open for business by polluting fossil fuels companies in a region often without the political will to fight back.

I’ve covered these issues in the South for many years, often watching as the big corporate interests bowled over the interests of the little people.

It took honorable federal judges to stop lynching and other injustices in the Deep South. And it’s going to take honorable federal judges to stop the environmental injustices of dumping the worst pollution on the poor, politically under-represented people in the Gulf region. This case is a major step in the right direction in that endeavor.

Now if only a majority of the people in the region would recognize the wisdom in this, progress might be made as well on the national and international fronts. Our dependence on burning fossil fuels for energy is literally threatening our future survival as a species. We must act now to have any hope of reversing course.

If it takes a federal judge to have the courage and the wisdom to see this, so be it.

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