Comments Michael Boydston has made

WaPo needs to correct their article

It says: "The new report estimates that 20 to 30 of the world's species 'are likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction if global average temperature' rises between 2.4 and 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit."  Should be "20 to 30 percent," presumably (compare the BBC story, which says one-third).   On As expected, the news is mostly bad, and then worse, and then worse still posted 2 years, 8 months ago 23 Responses

straw men

Dave, a small correction.  You didn't say it was a "practical" loser at first, you said it was a "political" loser. JS was right: environment was missing from your original post.

There's no reason, of course, that you can't expand your catalogue on second thought to include practical loser, environmental loser, whatever.  In fact, I think you should, because your original post wlacked substance.  You set up a straw man: those who are opposed to all immigrants, be they legal or illegal, many or few.  The flip side would be those who think there should be no restrictions on immigration whatever.  Is that your view?

The most sensible analysis I have heard came from Jared Diamond.  He said (I'm paraphrasing from what I remember) that immigration and related population growth in the U.S. had major environmental impacts.  He also said that the flow of migrants into the U.S. will continue, regardless of measures to stop it, as long as the tremendous economic disparity between their homelands and the U.S. continues.On Immigration posted 3 years, 6 months ago 13 Responses

fight the real enemy

Well said, Callisto. Recognizing additional heroes like Lois Gibbs -- expanding the pantheon -- is a great idea.  But the article spends most of its time fomenting infighting among people who should be allies.  For Kringle and Taylor, environmentalists can't even oppose Wise Use and the Sagebrush Rebellion without being damned as feckless urban elitists.  Until the first couple of sentences in the very last paragraph, it seemed like the authors oppose the idea of national parks and wilderness altogether.  They imply (with a skill that the Blue Ribbon Coalition only wishes it had) that the protection of wildlife and wilderness tramples on the rights of everyday hardworking Americans who are struggling to get by.  

And they criticize "the slavish devotion to an unattainable wilderness ideal."  I'm not sure what they mean by this.  I don't see many environmentalists out there working to recreate a human-free world that never existed.  Instead, I see people working in service of the not-so-unattainable ideal that a few areas should be as free from mechanized development as we can possibly make them.  Here, for example, is the recent handiwork of a coalition of wilderness crusaders:

The Department of Interior's Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) has issued a stay halting a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decision allowing construction of a new road within the Congressionally-designated Mount Tipton Wilderness area. The road construction was requested by two California residents wishing to develop a 60-acre inholding (private land completely surrounded by federal or other non-private land) within the middle of the Wilderness into an upscale, private horse ranch. The IBLA's decision means that no construction will occur on the proposed road until the appeal is resolved on the merits.

infighting

It's strange to me that this discussion (and the index-card discussion before it) have become so Manichean.  I'd find it more valuable if there were fewer attacks on people's motives.  Don't shrink the environmentalist tent and succumb to the ancient bane of the left:  rejecting potential allies as insufficiently ideologically pure.   On A guest essay by Arthur Coulston posted 3 years, 9 months ago 26 Responses

slippery slope

I think Johnson makes a solid case for why those previous clauses, including the commerce clause, are illustrative and not exhaustive.  His conclusion: that "Clause 18 then gives the Congress the power to enact any legislation necessary and proper to the accomplishment of the common defense and general welfare."  

There are certainly reasons to be wary of broad federal authority, as you point out.  I'm not as concerned about them, for one thing because in areas of greatest potential abuse, such as national security, Johnson's reading wouldn't materially increase the power Congress already has.  On First big Clean Water Act case reaches the newly aligned Supreme Court posted 3 years, 9 months ago 4 Responses

Commerce Clause

Jeff -- Accepting for the sake of argument your point about the Commerce Clause, it still might not be necessary to amend the Constitution to make it clear that the federal government has the Constitutional authority to protect the environment.  Instead, all it would take is an interpretation of the general welfare and "necessary and proper" clauses consistent with the Founders' intent.  UT Law professor Calvin Johnson has filed an interesting amicus brief to that effect in support of the government in Rapanos (and has treated the subject at greater length in a new book.)  He argues that the "original intent of the Constitution was to create a powerful national government able to reign over and rein in the states," and that "Congress is constitutionally empowered to protect wetlands and clean water under the power given to provide for the general welfare."  In a way he would agree with you: "the frontiers of federal power are not here determined by the power to regulate commerce."

I think he makes a good case, but in the face of accumulated precedent putting all the weight on the Commerce Clause, I think Johnson's interpretation has little more chance of success than a constitutional amendment does.

(Johnson's argument aside, I'm not ready to concede that using the Commerce Clause is a stretch, but I don't think we need to argue it here.) On First big Clean Water Act case reaches the newly aligned Supreme Court posted 3 years, 9 months ago 4 Responses

good job

Noble effort, Dave.  I like most of it quite a bit.  I also like Tom Philpott's idea of putting a final product together and getting it into the public discourse.  Some thoughts on the list:

1.  Your ecological restoration point is broad enough to cover most wildlife/biodiversity/ecosystem health questions, but I think the crisis is dire enough that some of these have to be short-term priorities as well -- for instance, protecting species that are down to populations of dozens or hundreds.  Agreed, healing the earth will take a long time, but we have to act fast to stop the bleeding.

2.  MIA: public lands management, wilderness protection.  A green wants a society where everyone has a chance to experience nature.  Also, good government/effective regulation -- at a minimum including effective enforcement of good laws, and maybe also extending to campaign finance reform.  

3.  Ending poverty is a worthy goal, and if it's done by helping the world's poor end up in societies consistent with the rest of the manifesto, then it's also a green goal.  But I'm skeptical that it can be accomplished for less than a year's worth of U.S. defense spending.  My hasty research suggests that annual U.S. defense spending is around $440 billion and about three billion people live in poverty.  We can solve poverty for $147 per poor person?  Or did you mean we can solve it if we spend that much every year?

4.  A couple of framing thoughts.  First, I hope that it's only remnant John Birchers who equate environmentalists with communists, but maybe "manifesto" isn't the best tag for this thing.  Second, point taken about the military spending, but aren't you setting up a dynamic where opponents of green goals will be able to paint the whole exercise as in opposition to national defense?  Not a way to win over the American electorate.  

the word is out

No doubt AAPG's award to Crichton will be featured in this cover story.On And the award for truthiness goes to ... posted 3 years, 9 months ago 4 Responses

stop worrying and learn to love trace chemicals?

Concern about synthetic chemicals and human health is "the latest overblown fear"?  I don't really see a lot out there, in the MSM or in the regulatory agencies, to justify that assertion.  Unless you think that EPA's timid steps to reduce mercury emissions a bit over the next ten years or so are the leading edge of a tide of anti-chemical paranoia.

On risk: granted that we are poor at assessing it.  But Iwhats the point of the car crash comparison? Would you tell people not to be concerned about, say, airplane safety, on the grounds that hundreds of thousands more people die from tobacco than from plane crashes?  Plus, consent matters.  I'm no fan of a social and physical infrastructure that forces so many people to drive so much, but it's still true that everyone knows that by driving or riding in a car they are assuming a certain risk, one that is to some extent within their power to control.  Not so with the synthetic chemicals that have become part of the global background we all absorb to varying degrees.   Uncertainty about effects doesn't justify an uncontrolled experiment on subects who haven't consented.

Ultimately, nothing in the Kolata article gives any reason not to embrace the precautionary principle when we're dealing with chemicals of unproven safety.

Note: also critical of Gina Kolata's environmental reporting is Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly -- see, e.g., #'s 3/21/96, 4/2/96).

Further note: there are some excellent and interesting discussions in the comments on the Volokh post you cite.  Grist should invite this Freder Frederson in to post on the mill sometime.On Chemicals and cancer posted 3 years, 11 months ago 4 Responses

officials who do support it

State Assembly member Tim Leslie (who says that "[t]he first major national figure to urge restoration of Hetch Hetchy was another conservative Republican - Donald Hodel, President Reagan's secretary of the interior.")

And Assembly members Lois Wolk and Joe Canciamilla sound like they're on board.

Maybe Newsom will come around too.  On The greening of San Fran posted 4 years ago 4 Responses

call me obsessed, but

Dave, I think you're being too simplistic. The facts are out there? Sure, if you pay attention. But the facts are often heavily obscured, as frequently discussed in Grist, Chris Mooney's blog, and many other sources.   You can't say that the facts of these issues are before the public if they're lost in a welter of disinformation and irrelevance.

Specious "balance" taints coverage of global warming and other scientific issues, and many stories are ignored altogether. Consider these items from Project Censored's list of Top 25 under-covered stories for 2005:

#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

#8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy

#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies

#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming the World's Supermarket

#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN

#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs

not to mention

#10: Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy (2006 list)

I think that at least in part, people aren't motivated because the media aren't raising the issues.  Remember how, in the course of three Kerry-Bush debates and one Edwards-Cheney debate, the moderators asked exactly zero questions on environmental issues?  (An audience member, bless her, asked one.)  I was throwing things at my TV by the time Bob Schieffer asked Bush and Kerry what was the most important thing they had learned from their wives.  

Beyond the media: in Congress and the executive branch, measures weakening major environmental protections and giving away public resources have been tucked into appropriations bills or enacted as agency policy changes without benefit of public notice and comment.  When there is public notice, it can be deeply flawed, as with Richard Pombo's task force seeking to gut the National Environmental Policy Act -- it's conducting poorly-advertised show trials in out-of-the-way spots in order to collect anti-NEPA testimony.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, "beauty strips" still mask clearcuts from passing motorists, factory farms are in rural areas where relatively few people see and smell them, and extractive industries are working their way across public lands out of sight of almost everyone.

All of this ignorance-by-design has to be having an impact.  Robert Kennedy forcefully made the get-the-facts-out case in an interview on E&E TV:

[T]he problem is that the public doesn't know what President Bush is doing to the environment. I always say that 80 percent of Republicans are Democrats who don't know what's going on. I don't believe that there's a big, philosophical gap between the red states and the blue states, because I speak in the red states all the time, and I think the values are the same. And all the data shows that the values are the same among Americans. . . . The problem is that the information of Bush's stealth attack on the environment is not getting through to the people who live in the red states, because they're getting their news from FOXNews, from talk radio. And then the corporate broadcasts, those are not publishing the news anymore. . . . And people in this country know more about Laci Peterson today, than they do about the mercury that is in their fish, and in the bodies of one out of every six American women, and the wombs of one out of every six American women, at levels so high they're endangering their children. People don't know that in this country, and they don't know the connection between the mercury in our fish, the mercury in our women's bodies and our children's brains. And the policies of this president, who took $100 million from mercury polluters, and got rid of the laws that . . . were meant to discourage them from putting mercury in our environment. . . . The problem is not that the American people are not interested in this issue. All the polling shows that 81 percent of Republicans want stronger environmental laws and want them strictly enforced. But if you ask those same Republicans . . . what do you think Bush is doing on this issue, they all think he's doing fine, because the press has let down the American people through negligence and indolence. The American press has devolved over the past 20 years, since the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine. So they're no longer giving us the news we need to make rational choices in a democracy.

So we have to do both.  On Poll: everyone supports us but no one really cares posted 4 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

responsible tourism has to work

Why?  Because people in those tropical paradises need to eat, and tourism is a big part of the economy at most of them.  Because if the locals don't see any economic value in preserving biodiversity, it's less likely that the biodiversity will survive.  

Tourism shouldn't be the only answer, and of course as currently practiced almost everywhere it's far from ideal environmentally.  So I agree with biodiversivist that eco-tourism is sometimes just greenwashing; I agree with Storm Dragon that we should be far less destructive and intrusive in wild places.  But I emphatically don't think that the answer is to "stay the hell out" of these places.  When I read Dave's post, I too thought of Edward Abbey:

It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in and head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe-deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.

more than one way to be environmental

Jdhlax, as I understand it your vision of the ideal world doesn't include cities.  Kind of takes you out of discussions of urban planning, doesn't it?  I mean, by all means tell us about biocentrism.  But an environmental discussion can also legitimately include questions of green design, even of large office buildings.  Personally, I think a huge edifice on the site would be a mistake.  Smaller works geared toward respecting the site and making New York a liveable city would be better.  But even if the city decides on a gigantic building, there are bad ways and well, less bad ways to go about it.On WTC as a case study in urban development posted 4 years, 5 months ago 9 Responses

not quite

Here's how I'd have put your first sentence:

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals partially upheld and partially rejected a suite of 2002 EPA changes in regulations implementing the Clean Air Act's New Source Review progam.

[EPA's new rules for] how future emissions are to be calculated; how operators of power plants and other industrial sources of pollution should calculate a baseline for their prior emissions; and the EPA´s adoption of the new Plantwide Applicability Limitations program.

On the other hand, the court rejected some major pieces of the Bush EPA's NSR "reforms":

EPA erred in promulgating the Clean Unit applicability test, which measures emissions increases by looking to whether "emissions limitations" have changed. . . . EPA also erred in exempting from NSR certain Pollution Control Projects ("PCPs") that decrease emissions of some pollutants but cause collateral increases of others. . . . EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in determining that sources making changes need not keep records of their emissions if they see no reasonable possibility that these changes constitute modifications for NSR purposes.

Meanwhile, look at the spate of NSR enforcement actions that have resulted in real reductions in pollution at real, identifiable power plants and other industrial facilities.  Unfortunately, the Bush EPA's efforts to revise the NSR rules have harmed these enforcement efforts.  Says who?   Crazy leftists like Christie Whitman, Bush's first EPA Administrator, and J.P. Suarez, her head of enforcement at EPA.

I'd skip The Commons, unless you want to get a libertarian greenwashing pitch without much depth of analysis. (Note, for example, that their "global warming" link goes to a goofy skeptic site, "a project of the Cooler Heads Coalition.")  If you really want the straight presentation of the industry perspective on NSR, go to the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council.  For the perspective of the groups opposing the Bush Administration's changes to the program, try the New York AG's office, or Earthjustice, among others.

It's worth remembering what J.P. Suarez had to say about the Bush NSR reforms.  From Grist:

"[W]e were so inflamed, and overheated about the reform, we ended up with a reform package that doesn't pass the laugh test," he said. He confirmed what environmentalists have long charged -- that the NSR changes were designed to relieve polluters from costly lawsuits. "It ... became clear to me, during my tenure at EPA, that the goal of NSR reform was to prevent any enforcement case from going forward," he said.

paralysis?

"With the exception of killing for food, if you don't want it done to you, you should oppose it being done to the land, air, water, plants, or other animals."

Do you really mean that?  

Land: I don't want to have a house built on me, but I'm nonetheless okay with building houses at least some parts of the Earth.  Say, dense-development multifamily composting coops.  Do you oppose any non-transient use of land by people anywhere?

Water: no use of water for anything beyond drinking?  No irrigation?  No water used in, for instance, the factories that make the microchips that, somewhere, are supporting this blog?

Plants: I don't want to be turned into clothing,  but I'm willing to inflict that fate on cotton.   If you oppose any use of anything except for eating, what do you wear?

It's good to have purists to remind us of the importance of principles, but this seems like a hard way to live.  I know from your previous posts that you're a serious uncompromising deep ecologist, but do you really oppose -- in toto -- agriculture, industry, and urbanization of any kind?  If so, what do you recommend we do instead? On An extraordinary diary on DailyKos about the coal industry. posted 4 years, 7 months ago 7 Responses

you and Dave make some good points

But dismissing hunger as the product of distribution, politics, and governance problems ignores the probability that population pressures are often part of the cause of the distribution/politics/governance problems that in turn are part of the cause of hunger and starvation.  

And from what I can tell, hunger and starvation are still going on.  From the UN World Food Programme: "Today, one in eight people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life hunger, making hunger and malnutrition the number one risk to health worldwide -- greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined."  http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/introduction/hunger_what.asp?section=1&sub_section=1On An open letter to Nicholas Kristof posted 4 years, 8 months ago 19 Responses

well said

As you imply in your closing paragraph, for a supposed liberal who professes to love the outdoors and share the goals of environmentalists, Nicholas Kristof burns a lot of column inches trashing liberals and environmentalists.  Even in a column describing Bush's environmental policies as "rooted in rapine," Kristof couldn't pass up the chance to invent a caricature of the green movement, saying that "the environmental movement is wrong to emphasize preservation for the sake of the wolves and the moose alone."  (I blogged about that one.)

And to respond (well, to cite to others' responses) to a couple of the myths Kristof is pushing this time around:

On global cooling, see RealClimate.

On DDT, see this letter from Dr. Alan Lymbery, and for good measure read The DDT Ban Myth on Jim Norton's invaluable anti-environmental myths site.

And I'm not going to get into the numbers on the population/hunger argument, but is Kristof seriously contending that huge numbers of people aren't starving to death every year? On An open letter to Nicholas Kristof posted 4 years, 8 months ago 19 Responses

real scientists vs. Michael Crichton

I agree, realclimate.org looks great -- thanks for letting us know about it.  I hope they take on Michael Crichton, who's used the cover of Parade Magazine and what will no doubt be his latest bestseller to argue that global warming is a pernicious myth cooked up by environmentalists.  From the Slate review:

State of Fear is a 600-page tirade about global warming. Crichton thinks environmentalists have become overheated about the threat and have substituted demagoguery for hard science. So he unleashes a cabal of ruthless greens, who build weather machines to punish their SUV-drivin', carbon-dioxide-emittin' neighbors with a plague of hurricanes and tsunamis.