SMOGTOWN

On the same day that California unveiled details of its proposed West Coast cap-and-trade to attack greenhouse gases, two House Republicans vehemently opposed to President Obama’s national greenhouse-gas cap-and-trade announced they convinced the U.S. Department of Justice to unseal many of the documents in the enigmatic case of former-hotshot pollution broker Anne Sholtz. Barton and Walden had been pressing for answers about the case from the Justice Department for months now, igniting a whole bunch of behind the scenes activity and rather long-winded and vague regulatory defenses from the regional South Coast Air Quality Management District, which oversees the RECLAIM cap-and-trade for oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the district’s progress against smog. RECLAIM, short for the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, began in 1993 as the planet’s first of its kind.

In those letters, which I’ll dig up later, the AQMD insists its systems are essentially scam-proof and the agency does seem to have a good regulatory track record if not for the Sholtz case and the rampant speculation that nearly detonated the market with spiking prices during California’s 2000 and 20001 electricity blackouts — the ones that exposed the likes of Enron’s. Curiously, the AQMD board is still waiting to fully hear an explanation of what occurred, so I’m told. Do the individual members even know about Sholtz’s alleged (but uncharged) misappropriation in mid-1998 of some 500,000 RECLAIM credits from Chevron, Exxon and Aera Corp. that she later sold to Southern California Edison? And how she poured the proceeds form that un-noticed transaction into a daring, alarming and apparently unsuccessful effort — code named “Operation Bald Headed Eagle” — to extract millions of dollars worth of cash, gold, and bonds of former U.S. aid to the Philippines using a cache of CIA and military Special Ops personnel, with supposed diplmomatic immunity no less?

The EPA, meantime, says it’s on top of RECLAIM and that, as of this summer, had no active investigations into any emissions markets anywhere in the country.

All in all it’s a complex, provocative story, one fraught with policy implications and headscratching human behavior, with spy-book sidelines and institutional hubris, and the charge in D.C. to get the lowdown on this now-closed criminal fraud case, in our opinion, is pretty nakedly political.

But wouldn’t it be something if Rep. Joe Barton of Texas (picture above) and Greg Walden of Oregon proved us wrong with a sincere, nonpartisan investigation into:

* how Sholtz TWICE gamed the system she helped concoct?

* why the AQMD and EPA failed to stop her sooner, and nobody at either agency seems very accountable?

* why the Justice Dept. has acted so secretly and oddly in this matter, apparently never following up on Sholtz’s explosive whistleblower tips once she was in custody?

* and how widespread the supposed-CIA and national security types Sholtz worked with in one cap-and-trade-financed “venture” have penetrated situations like this, and why there seems so little interest in probing whether we have a mini-Iran-Contra playing out while we all figured that was so 1980s of the Oliver North dimension?

I know. Click your heels three times and you’ll land in Kansas faster than the answers come here.

Here’s the link to Barton and Walden’s announcement. At the bottom are links to the motion and background documents, which I encourage the interested to read carefully. This was not some flimsy legal effort. It was surgical and well-researched.

If you want a more colorful and detailed look at the Anne Sholtz caper, please read my story, which ran in August in three different publications (before a bunch of blogs snatched ‘em). Here’s the definitive link to “Air of Deceit.”‘

The Hill, which covers the Capitol, has this brief story about the Barton-Walden initiative to get these secret records released.

“Senior Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are looking to a closed federal wire fraud conviction in California to bolster their argument against climate legislation.

Rep. Joe Barton (Texas), the senior Republican on the committee, and Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.), the top Republican on the committee’s oversight panel, have asked a federal court to unseal documents in the 2005 conviction surrounding a California pollution credit trading program. Barton calls the case a cautionary tale about setting up a massive nationwide carbon emissions trading market.

The two Republicans, who filed a motion Monday in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, want the pleadings unsealed in the case of Anne Masters Sholtz, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to one count of wire fraud following a six-count federal indictment for trying to game a Los Angeles-area pollution abatement initiative …”

In other news:

A somewhat predictable shift in American public opinion about global warming. Washington Post story

President Obama is not going to Copenhagen empty handed. He’s vowing to push for U.S. reductions in a bid to persuade the world, particularly India and China, to get serious as well. From the L.A. Times story

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Let’s remember what’s important when we return from the break. It’s called sincerity.

* From the L.A. Times story:

“A solar energy project proposed for development on public land in the Mojave Desert would create jobs mostly for Las Vegas and electricity for San Francisco at the expense of the relatively pristine area of east San Bernardino County where it would be built, San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said …

‘Obviously, there is a lot of political pressure to get this project expedited and under construction,” Mitzelfelt said. “But its impacts in San Bernardino County and sensitive and scenic Mojave Desert environment are not worth the benefits.’ … ”

* Hmm, does this sound familiar – a green Ponzi scheme that slipped past the regulatory watchdogs? Not that many honest politicians want to discuss this. From the New York Times post

“Federal regulators have accused four people and two companies of using bogus claims about “green initiatives” to entice more than 300 investors into what was really a $30 million Ponzi scheme.”

* Power to … ummm, the windmills. Sorry, that’s politically incorrect green jabber. Power to the windturbines, micro or massive, whether they spin horizontally or merry-go-round style. Interesting story about this in the L.A. Times (link). Stay tuned on this subject.

* In a scene straight from our book, Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, comes this latest effort to beat back global warming with “geo-engineering.” Anyone have an air pollution sewer blueprint ready to roll. What I find interesting isn’t the scientific bravado and ingenuity that some might otherwise tab hubris but a discussion of the unintended consequences of messing with Mother Nature.

From the L.A. Times piece:

“If there were some kind of panic button to stop global warming, what would it look like?

How about billions of tiny mirrors, launched into orbit to deflect solar rays away from Earth? Or big, fluffy clouds, artificially whitened so they reflect more sunlight back into space? Or maybe mechanical trees, ugly but effective at sucking carbon dioxide from the air along busy highways?

Outlandish as some of these proposals may seem, scientists and engineers are paying increasing attention to such ideas amid mounting evidence that human-caused climate change is wreaking havoc in some parts of the world.

The proposals belong to a field known as geo-engineering, or manipulation of the environment on a grand scale …”

* Think we’re too cynical here. Read on about what’s happened in China here.

* If that doesn’t depress you about what’s happening in Asia, you always have super-duper dirty L.A. Break out the bubbly – we’re the 7th most toxic city in America (depending on how you calculate that.) Link.

From the L.A. Daily News piece

“Jane Goodall, the champion of chimpanzees, knelt Monday over a newly planted sticky monkey flower and kissed its leaves for good luck.

She had come to Calabasas to tour a restoration project at the headwaters of the Los Angeles River. But as luck would have it, the sticky monkey flower had yet to be planted.

So the world-renowned primatologist and conservationist knelt, grabbed a handful of soil and sunk the plant into the earth.

While she travels all over the world to talk about the importance of conservation and environmental responsibility, Goodall said it all comes down to a very simple message: One flower planted on a hillside can evolve into a global movement.

“I’ve visited these types of restoration projects all over the world, and it always amazes me how Mother Nature restores herself,” Goodall said …”

Global warming:

* The latest on President Obama’s energy bill, and the politics of cap and trade. It’s about the mighty benjamin. Washington Post story.

* A still frightening Washington Post story about how fast temperatures may rise this century.

* Aspens dying off from global warming. Sounds pretty familiar to Ponderosa Pines and smog. This time we’re smarter, right? Story link from the L.A. Times.

* EPA cracking down on coal-fired power plants. Story.

Odds and ends, green-style:

* Terrifiic piece of enviro. investigative reporting. Gosh, what a connect. From a New York Times piece of late.

* Reactive air pollutants: story