Comments FourLocks has made

  • Let's be a little objective, here

    There are way too many of us humans building nice warm structures and throwing out mega-tons of garbage so we have completely thrown the "balance of nature" out of whack, in the case of mice, crows, squirrels, raccoons, etc. who've learned to occupy our artificially created niche.  There's no ecological reason not to kill a mouse invading our home; they're certainly not an endangered species.  It's also nice to say we should "deny mice food or entrance to our homes" but mice have very flexible skeletons and can fit through a 1/4 inch opening so that strategy won't work.  Aside from a personal moral dilemma about killing in general, there's absolutely no reason not to kill a mouse that's, essentially, competing with us for our food and harborage while supporting disease-carrying parasites.  I choose to "relocate" rodents but in the full knowledge that I'm probably providing dinner for a local raptor; a least the mouse's nuitrients are recycled back into the environment, that way.

    Agonizing over the death of a mouse is as logical as worrying about the demise of the disease-carrying insects the mouse hosts.  Do the "holier-than-thou" people bemoaning our use of mouse traps feel the same about killing a flea, tick or mosquito?On Umbra on live trapping posted 2 years, 1 month ago 28 Responses

  • Typical Washington reaction

    Mr. Ellis should be praised, not chastised, for suggesting 67,000 Health & Human Services employees consider purchasing fuel efficient vehicles.  The Bush administration's knee-jerk reaction of reprimanding Mr. Ellis's for his sound advice in response to Detroit's whining once again shows where the republican administration's priorities lie.

    There is certainly a clear connection between environmental quality and public health.  Representative Stupak's decree that the Department of Health & Human Services has no right to consider the effects of automobile emissions on public health, but should instead focus on "providing health care for children," is the equivalent of saying we should stop focusing on preventive medicine and instead focus on  disease treatment.

    Considering Detroit's history of ignoring the need to create fuel efficient vehicles while churning out high-profit low-mileage SUV's, it's hard to feel sympathetic for them.  After all, it's not like the fuel cost issue or customer demand for fuel-efficient vehicles suddenly materialized in the past year...or past decade, for that matter.  It's a good thing Detroit hasn't developed its economy around leech farming or we'd have the Bush administration forcing us to choose blood letting over antibiotics.
    On Feds apologize for encouraging employees to buy fuel-efficient Japanese cars posted 2 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses

  • Legislation's faster than logic and pleading

    I work for a state environmental agency where I supervise programs that promotes the voluntary adoption of source reduction, reuse and recycling strategies by businesses, municipalities and the state's citizen population.  For the past 12 years, we have conducted numerous projects promoting the switch to non-mercury products and on the proper recycling of unwanted mercury-containing wastes as a way to reduce mercury emissions to the environment.  For example we typically spent a huge number of hours and resources over several years trying to convince dentists to install equipment to trap and recycle mercury-containing amalgam particles that get flushed down the drain.  The results were mediocre until  our legislators decided to pass a bill making the installation of amalgam separators a state statute.  Within a year, almost all dentists installed the proper equipment and mercury levels in wastewater plummeted.  

    Promoting behavioral changes among private citizens is even more discouraging yet as soon as a landfill disposal ban was made a law, citizens were suddenly concerned about how to recycle their unwanted lead-glass computer monitors.  I'm sorry, but I agree with Mr. Tidwell; habits and behaviors change very slowly while laws become effective almost immediately.  If you want to see only a few, environmentally-proactive people driving 50 mpg cars, try passionate speeches, web sites and brochures.  If you want to see everyone driving 50 mpg vehicles, pass a law.On Tidwell responds to scientists responding to Tidwell posted 2 years, 2 months ago 28 Responses

  • Grist's vegetarian humor

    Don't you dare cut back on the irony, sarcasm, puns, cynicism or humor in your articles!  If it weren't for Grist's irreverent yet accurate reporting, I would miss half the envirnmental news I need to know about.  If any one group can't take a joke then tough for them!  If we can't laugh at ourselves, we'll soon be crying.  Which would you prefer?On Vegetarians are ruining our bad headline posted 3 years, 4 months ago 33 Responses

  • Personal Air Vehicles

    Most of us Baby Boomers remember reading 60's articles in Popular Science about how, by the 1970's, every American would replace their car with a personal helicopter and commute to work by air.  Well, that prediction came about as true as the articles of that time about "Our Friend, the Atom" making energy "too cheap to meter."  We've been through personal helicopters, personal autogyros, personal hovercraft, personal ducted fan vehicles, etc. and none ever came true.  Who's kidding who, here?  Even if Mr. Dietreic could come up with a computer system to take care of the actual flying and get FAA approval (and who'll set up 3-dimensional traffic control?), what we have here is another toy for the rich, like the 2-wheeled Segway that was supposed to revolutionize personal ground transportation.  As Grist aluded to, a flying car would vastly accelerate urban sprawl, the bane of the environmental community, so let's not start, there.  How about someone invent a non-polluting, fast, efficient form of mass transit that the middle class and poor could use?On The flying car has arrived posted 3 years, 8 months ago 4 Responses

  • Root cause analysis

    I work in our State's enviromental protection department where, among many services, we perform a root cause analysis to find out why a business creates a particular waste or pollutant in the hopes that, by changing the root cause, we can eliminate the creation of the waste in the first place.  Think of preventive medicine for the environment.  We have long since agreed the ultimate root cause for all environmental (and most other) problems is simply that the carrying capacity of the planet has been exceeded by the number of organisms (aka humans) it has to support.  The answer: Make fewer babies.  Or don't make any! Not exactly a political position anyone wants to take on and promote.  In fact, has anyone ever noticed how many children the average politician has?On Umbra on having kids, revisited posted 4 years, 8 months ago 17 Responses