Enjoying the Natural World in Luxury

My wife and I spent a few days out in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. As we hiked through canyons and along the alluvial fans, we marveled at the majestic vistas and appreciated the verdins, black-throated sparrows and other birds and wildlife that make their homes among the cholla and cactus. As with our visits to Yosemite, Olympic National Park, and other places that have been set aside for folks to enjoy the outdoors, my wife and I wanted a nature experience and we got it.

            The one odd thing about visiting desert parks is the conspicuousness of human intrusion with RVs. Here is an RV park outside Anza-Borrego:

I guess as long as you have RVs, and as long as you have parks, there are going to be people to drive their RVs to parks. That is what they are meant for. It seems ironic, however, that the most incongruous thing you’re going to find in a park that celebrates the wonders of nature is an RV. Some of these vehicles weigh in excess of 12 tons. To me, it is absurd that people need to move that much of anything in order to enjoy the outdoors. These RVs are small houses on wheels, with beds, sofas, and kitchen sinks.

It is always a paradox that we use industrial products like our cars and consume resources like gasoline to enjoy open spaces. It is a conundrum that I recognize, but for my wife, and me we do make an effort to keep the driving to a minimum and use our more fuel-efficient car when we can. Driving an RV, though, is taking this conundrum to a whole ‘nother level. It takes a lot of fuel to move them about, increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses being pumped into the atmosphere. I know some people like them, but are they necessary?

            

Have You Read the News?

Newspapers have always had sections. There’s always been the business section, a local section, and of course, the sports section. Before the Internet, when papers were the way to get the news, sections were a precursor to the hyperlink. You could find the section that interested you and read about how your stocks were doing, see who was getting married, or just read the comics without having to leaf through a lot of other news that may have been of lesser interest to you. Transitioning to the Internet, papers still have sections. Instead of being a separate bundle of paper, the sections are links displayed below the paper’s banner on their home page.

            Now here is something to ponder: Of the ten largest circulating U.S. papers in the U.S.[1] none of them have an environment section, a place devoted to covering advances in green technology, the impact of rising sea levels on coastal areas and islands, the listing of plants and animals as endangered or threatened, and other such stories.

            Looking elsewhere at newspapers in other English speaking countries, their papers devote sections to the environment. The Guardian and The Independent in England have sections on the environment. The Sydney Morning Herald has an environment section. Even the Irish Times devotes a section of its online paper to environmental matters.

Recent polls indicate that Europeans consider the problems of global warming to be of utmost importance, second only to the problem of poverty,[i] while Americans’ concern about global warming is waning.[ii] A majority of Americans think that the protecting the environment should take a back seat when doing so is at odds with extracting coal, oil, and natural gas.[iii]

I believe that the difference of priorities that Americans and Europeans place on the environment is, at least in part, due to the way they are covered in the news. American papers may argue that they are merely giving their readership what they want. They provide a travel section because they know that there are people who want to read about snorkeling in Belize and train travel in Canada, and it’s the same with the financial section and sports section.

This is true, but news sources also influence the way their readers perceive the news and the importance of the news. An easy example is warfare in Central America. During the eighties Americans were acutely aware of the Sandinistas and Contras in Nicaragua as their conflict raged and engulfed Oliver North and Ronald Reagan in an Iran-Contra scandal. There was also a bloody war in Guatemala at the same time, one in which the United States played a role, yet Americans were largely ignorant of the fighting in Guatemala.

Using the New York Times as an indicator of the general press coverage, the number of stories concerning Nicaragua jumped from 1,663 during the seventies to 11,477 during the eighties, while the number of stories about Guatemala went from 1,821 to 3,590 for the same time period. The number of stories about Guatemala did increase, but not to near to the extent that it did for Guatemala.[2]

Americans knew about Daniel Ortega and his baseball caps because the press told them, again and again, about the war in Nicaragua. It’s the same for the environment. Americans would know a great deal about mountaintop removal, and probably care about the plight of the land and people of Appalachia, if it received as much press as Newt Gingrich.

For an adequate democracy, a populace needs to be informed. Without the U.S. press responsibly reporting on the environment, we are left with inadequate knowledge to make the tough decisions we need to make while the planet warms, wetlands are stressed, water grows scarce, and the rest of the natural world is placed at risk.

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[1] The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, New York Daly News, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune – Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation

[2] I used Proquest to obtain these figures.

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[i] Europeans fear climate change more than financial turmoil, poll shows The Guardian 10/7/11 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/europeans-climate-change-poll

[ii] In U.S., Concerns About Global Warming Stable at Lower Levels Gallup 3/14/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146606/concerns-global-warming-stable-lower-levels.aspx

[iii] In U.S., Expanding Energy Output Still Trumps Green Concerns Gallup 3/16/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146651/expanding-energy-output-trumps-green-concerns.aspx

I Thought This Was Supposed To Be a Debate

This is what Newt Gingrich had to say about the Keystone pipeline in last night’s GOP debate. In this quote he is referring to the GOP affixing to a payroll tax cut wording that would expedite the construction of the Keystone pipeline. Referring to president Obama’s objection to inclusion of this language, Gingrich said, “It is utterly irrational to say ‘I’m now going to veto a middle class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians, and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal rational American’”

            I’ve written in this blog before about the rhetoric now used by politicians and others who want to roll back or do away with environmental protections or environmental regulation that may impede construction projects or energy projects such as the Keystone pipeline. But this performance in the video is a rhetorical neutron bomb, even for a rhetor such as Gingrich. He included the familiar term “left-wing environmental extremists,” as well as the geographic liberal Mecca that the GOP hates more than Mecca “San Francisco.” He also tied opposition the Keystone pipeline to the economy, American prosperity, and a supposed overseas threat from Iran.

            That Gingrich could so deftly demonize the people of South Dakota, Nebraska, and other central states who have legitimate concerns about contamination of their groundwater, that he could so harshly excoriate the environmentalists who point out that the pipeline has environmental costs greater than other energy sources, that he could so easily defend the inclusion of legislation to expedite the construction of the pipeline (a poison pill rider) in a bill providing a tax cut to most workers in this country is astonishing.

            Rhetorically astonishing, yes. But to say this is a debate is laughable. It’s highfalutin name calling, and reduces the formation of policy to the level of street brawling. No wonder the crowd cheered.

Hey Ireland, Tell Me About Durban!

I just went to Google News, putting the words “Durban Climate Change Conference” in the search box. I thought that today being the last day of the conference there might be some news about the international meeting that has been going on for over a week now.

            The news stories that came up were from the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Irish Times, and other publications from other countries. There were two stories from American news sources, one from CNN and another from the AP, that covered events of the conference. A search of the online front pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times brought up no stories of the Durban conference.

            On the other hand, when I put “Newt Gingrich” in the search box of Google News, stories from the Los Angeles Times, CBS, ABC, Fox News, Washington Post, PBS, New York Times, and the New York Daily News came up.

            Why has the American press largely ignored the Durban climate conference? Perhaps they understood that meaningful results from the conference were about as likely as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich endorsing president Obama’s stimulus bill. Maybe they knew that the conference was a moot point and thus unworthy of being covered.

            But the American press covers a lot of stuff that is not news. Political conventions in which the nominee is already known are covered fawningly and faithfully. The same can be said of the dozen or so debates among the GOP candidates. Television networks have given air time to all of the debates—the substance of which could be summarized in seven to eight minutes of programming— with additional reporting and analysis of the proceedings taking up even more broadcast time.

            As these graphs show, the coverage in general about global warming has gone down in the US press.

Graphs from Maxwell Boykoff Center for Science and Technology Policy Research University of Colorado

October, 2011

Finding a successful agreement on CO2 emissions among dozens and dozens of countries, all of them with differing interests when it comes to fossil fuel use and global warming dangers, in unlikely. Nonetheless, one of the reasons for the failures of Kyoto and Durban is the unwillingness of the United States to take a leading position in efforts to mitigate global warming.

            And if the American press doesn’t cover the Durban conference and the coverage of other news of climate change drops as well, then it follows that Americans will not think of global warming as an important issue. And without an informed public that lets its elected officials hear about their concerns, Washington will not take the lead on climate change.

            The world is warming, and yet the US press is remiss in letting us know what we need to know. As well, Ireland is a small island country that may have much to loose in a warmed world. I guess that's where I get my news from today.

           

National Defense Authorization Act: One Step Beyond Kafka

Passed in the Senate today was the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains a provision that would give the government the legal authority to lock up in military custody people it suspects of terrorism. The detentions could be indefinite and without trial. All that is needed is the suspicion of terrorism. There is no exception for American citizens in the provision.

            This is, without a doubt, totalitarian. What makes this even scarier is the very loose manner in which terrorism is defined within the United States. Besides the carnage and violence of car bombs and other mass murder, the U.S. includes vandalism and other property crimes in its definition of terrorism. In the past decade the FBI has included such acts as the pouring of sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles and the releasing of thousands of minks from a farm as acts of terrorism.[i]

            Clearly, we must thwart Al Qaeda and any other terrorists, be they Timothy McVeigh or the Shoe Bomber. But a law that could take a vandal out of the criminal justice system and place him into indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay is nightmarish beyond the imagination of Kafka.

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[i] FBI website: Terrorism 2002-2005 http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005

I Found a Merchant of Doubt

I guess this is an example of what my last blog was about. In that blog I talked about Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, an exposé on the efforts of industries such as tobacco and oil to obfuscate information on the dangers and consequences of their products: in the case of tobacco, cancer, in that of oil, global warming.

Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/11/New-EPA-Inspector-General-Report-One-More-Reason-to-Reject-Climate-Change-Regulation#_edn12

If you click the above link, you’ll find a piece by Nicolas Loris on the Heritage Foundation web site in which he tries to cast doubt on the work of the EPA and the science of global warming. Giving some context to this link, the Supreme Court, in their ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA found that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are pollutants and as such the authority and the responsibility to regulate such pollutants fell to the EPA under its mandate under the Clean Air Act.

            In response to the ruling, the EPA produced a Technical Support Document (TSD), a report on the science of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the consequences that has for global warming, rising sea levels, and the acidification of the oceans.

            Loris’ critique of the TSD centers on a procedural review of the TSD from the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG). In doing the procedural review, the OIG reclassified the TSD from an Influential Scientific Assessment to a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment. These two kinds of assessments have differing processing procedures. The OIG found that the procedures for the TSD had not fully followed those of a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment under its reclassification.

            Please bear with me a while longer. I know this is complicated. It is meant to be. And that is part of the problem.

            The reason this process is so complicated is because big business and industry lobbyists back in the beginning of the George W. Bush administration were able to attach a rider on a spending bill that imposed burdensome regulations and red tape on the EPA and other government agencies that rely on science for their work. This rider, The Data Quality Act, is intended to generate reports upon reports, like the review by the OIG, and lead to analysis paralysis.

Loris says that the procedural review “should bring to light the problems with the EPA’s approach to greenhouse gas regulation: The EPA refuses to seriously consider broad dissenting science on the causes of climate change.” The procedural review found that certain procedures for a certain type of assessment were not fully followed. The procedural review did not find anything wrong with the science used in the TSD, nor did it find that the TSD lacked the requirements for rulemaking. By performing a mental bait and switch, changing the topic from procedures to science, Loris would have you believe otherwise.

            At another point he claims that the people at the EPA “bypass the legislative process” in regulating greenhouse gasses. In Massachusetts v. EPA the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gasses under the authority granted the agency under the Clean Air Act, a law passed by Congress. No legislative process bypassed here.

            Loris would lead you to believe that the EPA is remiss in its responsibilities by heading one section of his critique EPA: Ignoring Dissenting Science. Yet, reading the substance of the section you find that a couple of the “dissenters” don’t disagree with the scientific conclusion that CO2 is warming our planet. They merely disagree as to the extent of the warming that will take place. Most importantly, Loris offers no science that has been performed that shows that the plant is warming for other reasons besides the increased presence of CO2 in our atmosphere. That’s right. No dissenting science. Zero. Zip. Nada.

            I can see how this writing of Loris could, at first glance, sway some folks. But a good look at it, and understanding the context in which a procedural review was generated for an Environmental Protection Agency TSD, reveals it to be laughable.

Ref:

Technical Support Document for Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act  December 7, 2009: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/Endangerment%20TSD.pdf

Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes Report No: 11-P-0702 September 26, 2011: http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2011/20110926-11-P-0702.pdf

Merchants of Doubt: Why It's So Easy For the Science Deniers

I’m just finishing Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Though I found the book to drag at times, getting bogged down in details, these two authors make a significant case against the climate change denying industry. Starting with the tobacco industry in the 1950s, they catalogue a history of industry hired scientists, and very often the same scientists again and again, obfuscating the truth about scientific findings that hurt the bottom line of their industry sponsors, whether that industry is selling cigarettes or oil.

            I’ve watched the global warming denying phenomenon for about as long as anyone. And what no one can deny is the amount of success that the science deniers have had in bringing doubt into many people’s minds over issues in which the science is greatly indicative or settled. The science deniers have a lot of things working in their favor and have helped them to forestall smoking restrictions or the development of a climate policy in this country.

            First of all, science is hard to understand. Most folks are unable to determine if a scientific study or experiment is rigorous or poorly designed or executed. People aren’t to be blamed for this, but it is very easy to exploit. The average guy or gal doesn’t have the time to double check the cherry picked figures cited by the Heritage Foundation. And using the catchphrase of almost every scientist “more research needs to be done,” gives the deniers an aura of knowingness as they help politicians and policymakers to coddle the industries that finance their campaigns and kick the environmental can down the road for a while.

            In the past 30 years or so there has also developed a suspicion of all expertise. People without credentials and experience are valued as more authentic than those who have paid their dues through schooling or work. These “authentic” individuals’ gut level reactions and thinking are thought to be uncluttered by theory, book learning, or university level high falutiness. In the eyes of many, Barack Obama’s education at Columbia University and Harvard Law School made him less authentic, and therefore less trustworthy, than Sarah Palin, who as a student hopscotched from college to college before earning a degree in journalism. (OK, George W. Bush is a Harvard Business School graduate. But he never acts like a man with a Harvard background, so he at least seems more authentic to a lot of folks.)

Perhaps it is a particularly American characteristic to favor the cracker barrel philosopher over the intellectual. After all, in the halls of the Capitol Congress chose to install a statue of Will Rogers and not one of Emerson. As scientists are men and women who almost uniformly have advanced degrees, they fit into this society of experts: intellectuals and elites who say they know better than you. Americans don’t like them.

            Going back to recent decades, Americans no longer had to worry about cholera, malaria, and typhoid thanks to science. And the researcher Jonas Salk conquered polio. But just as we could now rest assured that our drinking water was safe and our children would not be crippled by an insidious virus, the atom bomb scared the collective bejesus out of us. Though we are no longer gripped by the existential fear that The Bomb created, cloning, genetic engineering, and other scientific finagling leave many of us unsettled and suspicious of science.

            Oreskes and Conway devote a chapter to the current attacks on Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. It may very well have been this suspicion of science—the invention and use of DDT and other synthetic pesticides, which were the main targets of Carson’s critique—that helped Silent Spring gain ground with the American Public and our political leaders when it did. Ironically, it is now the deniers to exploit this suspicion to attack Carson, her work, and the banning on DDT.

            With Merchants of Doubt Oreskes and Conway make a persuasive argument. Their book may help end this charade of creating public doubt over settled science. I was just hoping in this blog to add to the context in which this important book may help in our understanding of science and our efforts to curb global warming.

Super Committee to the Rescue!

As their due date for coming up with a budget deal looms in the coming days, the congressional super committee is once again in the news. If these six Democrats and six members of the GOP fail to hammer out $1.5 trillion in budget cuts and increased revenue, there will be automatic cuts, big cuts, to government budgets.

            For the sake of argument, let’s assume that setting up this super committee was the way to go, the answer to our deficit problem. There are other matters in which this Congress has proven itself incapable of making any progress. Perhaps it is time to set up other super committees. I offer a few suggestions on issues that deserve this sort of added attention.

            With global warming presenting itself as our greatest crisis, and Congress incapable of acting on this problem, we should have a climate change super committee: a dozen lawmakers tasked with reducing the CO2 output of the United States to pre1990 levels. If these lawmakers fail in their task, tax loopholes for the oil industry would automatically close and a carbon tax would be established. With this revenue billions would be used to create green and carbon neutral industries.

            We’ve had too many people out of work for too long. What about an employment super committee? These six Democrats and six members of the Grand Old Party would reduce our unemployment to under five percent. If this group of lawmakers failed in their duty, a jobs program to employ hundreds of thousands, financed by a tax on our wealthiest citizens, would automatically go into effect.

            I imagine that there could be an entire Justice League of America of Super Committees to come to the rescue for additional conundrums this country has that that are going unresolved, a Get Us Out of Iraq Super Committee, a super committee to stop mountaintop removal, maybe even a super committee to get big money out of politics.

            Though these things need to be done, Washington will not set up special task force committees to take care of these problems. Super committee or no super committee, the reason these things are not getting done in Washington is because there is no political will to get them done and much money and lobbying guaranteeing that they don’t get done.

            The super committee is a charade. It was not set up because of the deficit. It was set up because there is money and lobbying that wants to do away with many governmental programs and benefits. And there are members of the Grand Old Party who have always wanted to do away with beneficial governmental programs. Through legislative muscling and intimidation they may very well achieve their goal of returning America to the 1920s, poor houses and orphanages included.

Sense and Census in Mississippi

Next week in the state of Mississippi the electorate will vote on Proposition 26, which would confer personhood on a human fertilized egg. Les Riley, who has worked on getting the proposition on the ballot and passes, says that the purpose of the law is to “help stop abortion in our state.” The logic behind this antiabortion is pretty straightforward. If a fetus is, by law, a person, then aborting that fetus amounts to murder. There would be no abortions in Mississippi, as folks like Riley want.

            Now I don’t want to wade into the abortion debate here. For me, both sides can make convincing arguments and present examples that can sway my opinion. But if Mississippi passes Prop 26, besides jeopardizing some forms of birth control that keep fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, they are opening up a big can of worms.

            After Prop 26 passes, how will Mississippi conduct a census? Traditionally a pregnant woman counts as one person. Once the woman gives birth, there are two persons. This is how it has been done throughout history. In the bible Joseph searches Bethlehem for a place to stay for him and Mary, a very pregnant Mary, but it is clear in the Gospel of Luke that there is just Mary and Joseph—two and only two persons. Mary gives birth, the angels sing, shepherds make their visit, and the Holy Family is now three. It is the process of birth that adds a person to the human total.

            As the law only requires that there be a fertilized egg within a woman’s body, with the passage of Prop 26 every female of childbearing age in Mississippi is possibly a plural of persons. Unless a woman is locked away in solitary confinement, there is no way to tell if she has a fertilized egg floating around inside her. She might be one person. She might be more than one person. How do you count that?

This is not that far fetched. Before the Civil War, Mississippi, as well as the rest of the slave holding states, wanted the best of all possible worlds: slave holders having power over their slaves as property and federal political power as an expression of their population. So they finagled with how much a person could be counted. The equation came out as a slave being equal to three fifths of a person. Silly? Well, the Founding Fathers signed off on it, so there must have been a great deal of wisdom in the equation. Maybe Jefferson did the arithmetic.

            So how is the Magnolia State to count its citizens? Women who know that they are pregnant would have to be counted more than once. Carrying twins? Triplets? These women would be counted multiple times. A pregnant Octomom would count as much as a baseball team. As many fertilized eggs don’t get implanted in uteri, a Mississippi female could be one person, then two, then one again without even knowing that she had been a plural for a few days. Traffic cops have no way of knowing if a driver has a fertilized egg inside her. Will Prop 26 open the door for women, without any other apparent passengers in their cars, to drive in carpool lanes?

            As I said before, I don’t want to get into the abortion debate. But when any person or political cause ventures into the absurd, you get absurd results.

Hey, Seven Billion Folks, Look, Behind That Fence, Some Nature!

I heard on the radio this morning that there will be, as of today, seven billion of us living on this planet; that is over four billion more people on this planet than when I was born in the fifties.

            A lot of the talk surrounding this milestone concerns the effect our ever increasing population will have on the environment, more people using more resources, more land, more water, etc. I am curious as to how our increasing numbers are changing the environment, but I’m also wondering how we are changing our relationship with the natural world as well.

            Back in 1800, when only one billion humans populated the world, there were still great expanses where humans had little or no effect on the forests, streams, or open land. Ecosystems functioned as they had for thousands of years; even in the United States there were forests that had not been felled by the ax. If you look at paintings of Thomas Cole or other American painters of this time, the presence of humans is pastoral with little effect on the natural landscape. Nature was depicted as powerful and magnificent.

The Oxbow Thomas Cole 1830s

Today an artist who might set up his easel at the same vantage points that Cole used would have more houses and roads to paint. There may be housing developments and factories as well. With more people, paving over more land and using more land for crops and livestock, there is less and less area for forests, wetlands, and other wild areas.

Open spaces exist, but increasingly they are being fenced off into preserves. The birds still nest and flowers still bloom, but they do so in enclosed areas. If Thomas Cole were to depict our relationship with nature today, the wilderness would be behind a fence and the power magnificence would be absent from his canvasses.

Californians, Even Those Environmentalists, Love Those Weeds!

I just ran across this environmentally friendly life-style magazine from the San Francisco Bay area. Here is its link: http://www.eucalyptusmagazine.com/

I haven’t read much of it, but what I have seen I like. What gives me pause, but also leaves me unsurprised, is that the magazine is called Eucalyptus. As the magazine says in its “About Us” section “This magazine is named Eucalyptus because we admire the tree’s healing properties. Its leaves and bark have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. We also appreciate its adaptability and hardiness, as evidenced by its ability to thrive despite being transplanted far across the globe from its native home of Australia.”

            Eucalyptus are certainly amazing. In San Diego’s Balboa Park, just south of where I live, Eucalyptus trees loom like giants over the park’s historic buildings. A block from my house one grows over a hundred feet tall, and the trunk at its base must be more than five feet in diameter.

            These wonderful trees, however, are not eco-friendly for California. They are invasive, pushing out and replacing our native flora.[i] There are open canyons in San Diego that have been taken over by eucalyptus. Beneath their canopy nothing grows except other nonnative plants. I work with local organizations; part of our conservation work is removing these trees from parkland and open spaces.

            It is unsettling, but unsurprising that when folks wanted a symbol for their health oriented and eco-friendly magazine, they chose the eucalyptus instead of a plant or animal native to the Golden State. As the climate here is mild, we Californians are outdoorsy folks, and we feel ourselves to be in touch with nature. But when we landscape or try to beautify our yards or parks, almost invariably we pick and choose plants from elsewhere. We intersperse eucalyptus with Canary Island date palms and stands of bird of paradise, pretending that we live in a Pacific Island/Australian/South African wonderland—anywhere but southern California.

In suburban landscapes, many of our parks, and along our highways native flora are the exception rather than the rule. Where I live it’s about a five or six block walk to the grocery store from my house. Along the street palms grow, Mexican fan palms and black palms. There are also pepper trees and eucalyptus. Shrubs and other greenery line the lawns along my way. Farther along I walk over a footbridge that passes over an open space about the size of two or three football fields. Looking down to the open space, except for a couple laurel sumac bushes, which are native, the entire open space is overrun with iceplant, eucalyptus, and other nonnative weeds. In my entire walk there are only three or four plants native to San Diego.

            Among the 48 contiguous states California shares with Florida the distinction of hosting the greatest number of nonnative and invasive plants. Of the approximately 7500 plants in California, 1500 of them are nonnatives.[ii] We have entire hillsides that have been taken over with nonnative and invasive plants.

            So you see that we Californians have remade the world around us. And we are out of touch with our natural surroundings to such a degree that even people who may think of themselves as environmentalists embrace an invasive plant as a symbol for their magazine.

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[i] California Invasive Plant Council: http://www.cal-ipc.org/ip/management/plant_profiles/Eucalyptus_globulus.php

[ii] Zedler, P.H., Gautier, C.R., McMaster, G.S., 1983. Vegetation change in response to

extreme events: the effects of a short interval between fires in California

chaparral and coastal scrub. Ecology 64, 809–818.

Occupy San Diego: Get Out the Middle-Aged White Women

“THINGS MUST BE REALLY BAD WHEN MIDDLE-AGED WHITE WOMEN MARCH” That was one of the signs I saw at the Occupy San Diego, and I think that to a large extent that one sign sums up a lot of the flavor of the demonstration. I’ve been to other rallies and demonstrations. You tend to see the same folks there, the ones you run into at the organic grocery store. They can usually be broken down into age groups: Lots of college aged kids and the ones with lots of grey in their hair now, the baby boomer Woodstock generation who are old hands at the demonstration thing.

This crowd was different. There were the college kids and the aging hippies, and even the obligatory drum circle and a guy sort of singing and sort of playing a guitar, but the majority of folks there were the one in the middle, in their thirties and forties, giving a normal curve of adult ages. As I said, the sign about the middle-aged white women sort of summed up the crowd. Also, San Diego has a most varied ethnic mix, yet it can remain quite segregated. Rabble rousing rallies are normally populated by white students and those white aging hippies, but this time around I saw a slightly more diverse crowd, more black, Mexican, Filipino folks.

I was there as a participant, believing that big moneyed interests control too much of our politics and that the divide between the wealthy and the rest of us, the 99% figure that has become a buzz word of this campaign, is sinfully widening and is exacerbated by a tax system that taxes them at a rate far lower than the rest of us.

But I am at heart an observer. So I walked up to a lot of folks and asked them why they were there. College age folks universally said that affording school was a big issue with them. The responses I got from older folks centered around corporate greed and its effects on our government. Two folks quoted Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

I didn’t do a head count, but figure the crowd was about 2000, pretty large considering that this is San Diego and the event was held during work hours.

Is this a growing viable movement? I hope so. It has a big uphill battle, though. The T party gets candidates elected to offices and is able to stymie legislation. That is because they have the financial backing of the Koch brothers and support from the Fox network. They also get a lot of support from talk radio.

            The Occupy movement will get none of that. But it may succeed because it is, as for the little that I saw of it in San Diego, broad based and diverse. Like they say, we are the 99%.

I Put My Laundry On Line

I grab four or five clothespins in my left hand as I bend down to pick a shirt out of the laundry bucket. After a few months, I’ve gotten used to this routine. Holding a few extra pins keeps me from having to reach into the clothespin bag every time I hang a shirt or pair of pants, speeding the process along. This is part of my routine two or three times a week now, hanging our laundry out to dry on a clothesline.

Growing concerned about global warming and my contribution with my car, refrigerator, computer, and any other modern device that plugs in, moves, or shakes, I put up a clothesline a couple years ago outside the house that my wife and I live in. There are 80 million clothes dryers in the United States, and it’s estimated that each one throws from 1500 to 2000 pounds of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere every year. Of course that estimate is just that, an estimate. A dryer owned and used by a single person, particularly a frugal one, will not produce the CO2 that is produced by a dryer used by a family of four, but the overall numbers can give an idea of how much we’re warming the planet due to our reliance on dryers.

At the most, we are throwing 80 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere with the clothes dryers. It’s a fraction of the 314 million tons of CO2 that our cars and trucks produce in the same year and another fraction of the CO2 produced from industrial production. It is nonetheless a lot of carbon thrown in the air that would not be there otherwise. Also, those statistics are just the United States. There are plenty of clothes dryers in Argentina, Ukraine, and anywhere else that you have people, a power source, and laundry.

When I first started hanging our clothes out, I thought that this would be a sacrifice, that I would dislike the extra labor involved or the change of routine. I was wrong. It’s a chore that forces you to take your time, like almost all the chores that sustained our ancestors for millennia – milking goats or cows, planting crops – the chores that became part of our DNA as human beings, the work that brings quietude and a feeling of well-being.

Some of my earliest and most pleasant memories are of being in the backyard with my mother as she hung laundry out to dry. I remember when she washed our bed sheets and put them on the line. I would run between the brilliant white billowing walls. It seemed magical to me how, in summer, the air seemed so cool as I raced the length between the clothesline poles.

            I hang up a pair of my pants. I’ve learned that it’s best to hang pants legs down. They dry quicker this way. I haven’t read up on this, but I suppose it has something to do with the way water flows from around the waist and pockets and the way water flows through the clothing as it dries. If I hang pants ankles up, it can take a real long time for the waist and pockets to dry. Long sleeved shirts dry best upside down, with the sleeves dangling.

The wind picks up a little from the east. This is good. Easterly winds come in from the desert. The humidity will be low, and these shirts and pants will dry quickly. I’ve always been as aware of the weather as the next person, bundling up when it’s cold and carrying an umbrella for rainy days. But since I’ve started hanging our clothes out, I’m a bit more aware of what is going on in my environment. Is it humid today? Windy? The weather can make all the difference between getting one or two loads done in a day.

            Dry lined clothes enforce a routine on doing laundry. Before I put up the clothesline, I’d throw laundry in the washer any time of day, morning, afternoon, evening. Now, on a laundry day, I know exactly what I’m going to do after breakfast. The clothes go in the washer, and within the hour I have the line and clothespins all set to go. I get the laundry up by a little after nine or ten.

            There are some disadvantages, chief among them the added ironing that I wind up doing from time to time. I have dress shirts that are “iron free.” When they get tossed in the dryer, they come out looking crisp and rarely need a touch up with an iron. It’s a different story when they’re put on a line. They can wind up as wrinkled as a prune.

            On the other hand, I save some money. I’m not spending a dime on electricity or gas to power my dryer. I don’t have any direct proof of this, but my clothes are supposed to last longer when they’re dried outside. It makes sense. Every time they’re dried on a line they are not being par boiled while they tumble against each other. Best of all our clothes smell fresh and clean now. The freshness stays with the shirts, sock, and bed sheets, so that our closets smell fresher.

            I’ve remarked that I’ve installed a wind powered clothes dryer at my house, and it’s interesting to note that older folks, the ones like me who remember their mothers and grandmothers in the backyard with their laundry baskets, are the ones to get the joke. Some of the younger folks get a vague look in their eyes when they hear me say “wind powered clothes dryer.” Perhaps they imagine that I went online and bought a contraption with a windmill and a generator that I hammered to the roof of my house and connected all of its wires to a sleek looking machine in my laundry room.

            There probably is a company that makes such a dingus. And it is probably marketed as a green product. I would guess that such a device would be a good move, and it would lead to less CO2 in the air. There is nonetheless the question of all the metals used in making the generator and motor, not to mention all the wires needed to move all the electricity around.

            Winston Churchill once said “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Along with buildings, Churchill could well have included ballpoint pens, space shuttles, clothes dryers, and everything else that we manufacture. Not only our buildings, but all the things that we shape and form into being also shape and form us as well. In a hunter-gatherer society everyone thinks like a hunter-gatherer. In an industrial society we all think industrially. And so for us, if there is a problem, there has to be something that engineers can figure out an answer to, a new dingus or product that does things better, faster, and more efficiently, that will be the answer. Global warming? Introducing the new wind powered Dryomatic, with computer controlled thingamabobs!

            We environmentalists see ourselves in opposition to industrialists and developers. They would pave over the wetlands we see as essential and wreck even more havoc on the mountaintops of West Virginia. We need to recognize, however, that on a very fundamental level we think as they do. We can’t help it. It’s in our DNA. Inside every tree hugging environmental activist beats the heart of a techno-frenzied consumerist eager for the next eco friendly device. Look at any environmental magazine. There will be ads and product reviews for dozens of newfangled compost enhancers, hybrid cars, solar panels, and anything else that gives us a warm, environmental fuzzy.

            Please don’t get me wrong. Our lights should be a low-watt and our cars should not be gas-guzzlers. But we should realize that we are still part of the social machinery of our industrial society, and we are still nonetheless switching on lights and driving cars. Driving a hybrid is greener than driving any SUV, yet you’re still driving something—using resources and putting CO2 in the air—when you zip down the interstate in your Prius. “Green technology” may not be a full bore oxymoron, but it does have a twinge of doublethink to it.

            We need technological advances to better our situation. But there are other solutions as well—when the lights, though they are low watt, are not turned on, when the car, despite its being a hybrid, is not driven, when the high efficiency clothes dryer is not turned on and the clothes go up on the line instead—that require us to consider things differently, nontechnically, nonindustrially. What I’m suggesting is we need to think outside the Prius.

            My clothesline, I’ve reduced my carbon footprint by putting it up and using it. It has also opened up a new area of life for me. Besides the benefits of saving money and fresher smelling clothes, it has given me an unhurried quiet time of day when I am more attuned to my surroundings, a nontechnical and nonindustrial experience that would be unavailable to me had I put up an all new, green, wind powered Dryomatic clothes dryer. 

Those Dangerous Environmentalists!

I think of myself as an old fashioned blogger, someone who puts up a few thoughts from time to time without a whole bunch of bells and whistles. But I’ve been intrigued by this video clip for the last few weeks, so I stuck it in this blog. You may have seen it. It was apparently broadcast on the TV news and later made something of a splash on the Internet. It shows President Obama in one of his town hall meetings–an event expected to be attended by supporters–when this couple, identified as members of the T Party, confront him over statements that Vice President Biden was accused of saying. Biden was accused of comparing the T Party to terrorists.

            There is no record of Biden making such a statement, and he has denied comparing members of the T Party to terrorists.[i] The gist of the video is hence a moot point. I want to talk about something else in the video. It concerns what the young lady said about 40 seconds into the video clip. Continuing the confrontation with the president, she says, “You do realize that 90 percent of the domestic terrorist attacks are done by left-wing environmental radicals and not people like me.”

            Well, OK. I have to agree that she doesn’t seem to have the disposition of being a terrorist of any sort. But 90 percent of domestic terrorist attacks performed by left-wing environmental radicals? Where does that come from?

This young lady, since identified by the press as Stacey Rogers, is confused, but it’s not all her fault. There are many things that make the whole subject of terrorism confusing. Often it is the result of sloppy thinking, at other times, as I’ve pointed out in this blog before, there are people who are trying to obfuscate the issue for political ends.

Before we get to the subject of terrorism, we should clear up one thing: why would she call terrorism identified as environmental as left wing? I’ve written about this in other blogs, Environmental concerns and regulation have traditionally come from conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats. Painting environmentalists into a political corner is a recent phenomenon.[ii] Right-wing folks have been pushing this idea, this misunderstanding, for decades. Rogers seems young. So on the one hand, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt on this; on the other hand, when you’re talking to the President of the United States and leader of the free world, you should at least have some idea of what you’re saying.

            OK, on to terrorism. The reason this young lady is confused is because terrorism has different definitions. Not only do different people and organizations define it differently, terrorism will have different definitions from the same organization. The FBI says of international terrorism:

 International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state (italics mine).[iii]

While the for domestic terrorism:

Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.[iv]

Note that the phrase “dangerous to human life” does not appear in the definition of domestic terrorism. What we think of as terrorism–car bombs, suicide bombers blowing up cafés and busses–is not needed for an act to be considered terrorist by the FBI if that act is committed within the borders of the United States. So the FBI considers two incidents, men with bombs killing 35 people in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and members of the Earth Liberation Front pouring sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles, to be defined and reported as acts of terror.[v]

            Now let’s think a moment, no one in his right mind could equate, on any level, a deadly bombing and vandalism of a car. That is, nonetheless, what is happening here. There is something wrong at the FBI that they would do such a thing leading to such confusion. This needs to be corrected. In the meantime people like Rogers get confused.

Furthering the confusion is that the government counts the perpetration of acts it describes as terrorism, and each act is counted equally. Protesters trampled a crop of genetically engineered corn in July of 2000 = one act of terrorism. Mohamed Atta and his cohort fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September of the next year = one act of terrorism.

OK, let’s see further how we muddle the pot when we think about terrorism. Arson committed by ELF is defined as terrorism.[vi] Yet other acts of arson, ones with a clear political message or the intent to cause fear or intimidation are not described as terrorism. In August a federal grand jury indicted Cody Crawford with a hate crime and arson for firebombing a mosque. Nowhere in the FBI’s description of this incident do they call it an act of terrorism.[vii] Last year a father and his son, Dwight Lincoln Hammond, Jr. and Steven Dwight Hammond, both ranchers, were charged with arson and assault for setting fire to BLM land, but their crime was not counted as a terrorist act.[viii]

Please don’t think that I’m condoning vandalism or other property crimes. But to effectively deal with crime or terrorism the severity of the act and intent need to be part of our judgment. That is part of the bedrock of our criminal justice system. Murderers and rapists get longer sentences than petty criminals; repeat offenders get more jail time, too. And if we are truly to make ourselves safer against terrorism, we need to properly understand it. Thinking of vandalism, the destruction of genetically engineered crops or spray painting construction equipment, as the equivalence of pipe bombings and mass killings increases fear and clouds our judgment. It seems obvious that there are politics and involved in how these definitions of terrorism are applied and misapplied. No wonder people like Rogers get confused.

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[i] Obama’s denial that Biden called tea party activists ‘terrorists’ Glenn Kessler Washington Post 8/17/2011  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-denial-that-biden-called-tea-party-activists-terrorists/2011/08/16/gIQAr1g3JJ_blog.html

[ii] http://environmentcontext.blogspot.com/2011/07/can-bird-fly-with-only-left-wing.html

[iii] FBI website: Terrorism 2002-2005 http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005

[iv] ibid

[v] ibid

[vi] ibid

[vii] Oregon Man Charged with Hate Crime for Arson at Mosque. FBI press release. http://www.fbi.gov/portland/press-releases/2011/oregon-man-charged-with-hate-crime-for-arson-at-mosque

[viii] Ranchers Commit Arson, But Not Terrorism. Doris Lin. About.com June 25, 2010 http://animalrights.about.com/b/2010/06/25/ranchers-commit-arson-but-not-terrorism.htm

Hire Me. I Promise I Won't Do a Good Job!

I interviewed recently for a job at one of San Diego’s largest employers. A company that produces products with electronic components, they had a position open that would make their products less harmful to the environment.

            Anymore, just about every electronic device that is slightly more sophisticated than a two-slice toaster has complicated electronic components with integrated circuit boards. These boards work with ever so tiny chips, processors, and resistors. Some of the soldering holding these components onto the boards can contain lead. And part of what allows these items to be ever so tiny is their use of metals like cadmium and mercury. These metals are toxic. Lead is well known to cause nerve and kidney damage. Cadmium and mercury can damage the kidneys and other organs. Sometimes exposure leads to death.

            For these reasons there has been a push to restrict the use of these metals in electronic components. Europe, Korea, China, and California all have RoHS standards (pronounced row hoss), which stands for Restriction of Hazardous Substances. By the RoHS laws of these governing bodies electronic devices are to have reductions or eliminations of these harmful metals.

I had a phone interview with this manufacturer for a position that would help them achieve RoHS compliance. While I was on the line with my potential new boss, I emphasized the knowledge I had of these metals, how they can enter the water supply and make people sick, how they can persist in soils. I also emphasized that through my own initiative I had started the RoHS program at my previous employer and how I believed that the RoHS program will lead to better health and safety. I thought that I had made the case that I had the knowledge and experience for this job. I thought that I had shown that I had the enthusiasm to do the work that would make me practically a shoo-in for this company that touts its green credentials.

            Then there was a silence on the end of the line. I knew that I had said something wrong. Did I say something that did not quite agree with what was on my resume? Did I get some of the facts wrong about the RoHS program?

“We’re only doing this because we have to,” my interviewer said. My enthusiasm was unwanted.

So I didn’t have the job. I kept the gal on the line a little while longer. She admitted that she didn’t like her job and that the company overworked its employees. I thanked her for her time and said goodbye.

It is not painting with too broad a brush to assume that the attitude of my interviewer – that mitigating our assault on the environment is not a worthwhile endeavor and only to be undertaken under the duress of legislation – is the dominant attitude of the corporate world. I had thought that, like any other job, they would be hiring somebody who had some enthusiasm for his work, who wanted to do his job well. I was wrong. As I said before, this company touts its green credentials, but the person who heads up this company’s environmental program has no training or background in environmentalism. I imagine that they consider their environmental program to be part of their PR campaign, making them look good to the folks who buy their products.

I should be unsurprised. From the time that I started a paper recycling program when I worked for a bank to the RoHS program at the last manufacturer I worked for, management and upper management were unhelpful and sometimes outright hostile to the efforts I made.

What does this mean? Companies will continue to pollute and ravage the environment. The only thing restricting them from causing more harm are good environmental laws and the enforcement of those laws. They will not comply otherwise. It also means that folks like me, people who have a great concern and are willing to work for the environment, are persona non grata to large employers. There will be no change from within in the corporate world. Environmentalists do not have a place at their table. And we should be justifiably wary any time a company burnishes its green credentials.