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