Oil prices and Arctic drilling

With oil prices steadily increasing amazingly short sighted politicians continue to call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to help "solve" the crisis. What next, allow clearcutting in Redwood National Park and development in Yosemite National Park to offset the housing problem in California? Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not a solution to tight oil supplies, but maybe a rallying cry for politicians who count on an uninformed electorate. Oil from the ANWR would not be available for 7-10 years, and even then would only lower the price of gas at the pump by 1 cent a gallon, a fraction of what we could accomplish by decreasing demand by implementing real fuel efficiency requirements on vehicles in this country. Unfortunately we have largely ourselves to blame for rapidly increasing oil prices with no end in sight.

Letter to a Georgia senator regardng the Endangered Species Act

Dear Senator,

Thank you for your recent response to my letter regarding the Endangered Species Act. Although I agree that in its current form the Endangered Species Act is imperfect and could be improved in some ways, that is not where I see current alternatives headed. We are at a time of crisis for much of the biodiversity in this country that God has blessed us with, and alternatives to the current protection of species such as that proposed by Richard Pombo are untenable as being an improvement to the current Act. A good improvement might be to give tax breaks to landowners affected by the ESA, but to require the nation to pay a person not to destroy the last bit of habitat for one of the creations God has given us to pass down to future generations sounds like blackmail to me. It is not a failed law. The peregrine falcon and bald eagle, our nation's symbol, attest to that, as do many other species making a comeback from the brink of extinction due to the ESA. The many species which are candidates for ESA status but have gone extinct or nearly so due to lack of protection also attest to its effectiveness. If you are working to change the ESA, please work to improve and not weaken it.

Thank you

A speech to the Richland County, SC Council about a land use plan

Hello,

I’m here to ask you to support the county land use rules. My family and I moved here from California 5 years ago. We were happy with what we found, a nice, smallish town surrounded by beautiful forests and agricultural areas. However, we soon noticed that much of what we found beautiful around us was disappearing quickly to haphazard development, haphazard in terms of type as well as location.

I left the place I was born and raised largely because rapid and poorly planned growth destroyed the quality of life I had known, and I was hopeful that I would find someplace better for my family. I now worry that the mistakes that were made there are being repeated here, that the voices of a few well-moneyed, influential people are drowning out those of the majority of us who just want a nice place to raise our children and grandchildren, and maybe have it remain nice enough for them to want to raise their families here someday.

I just want to finish by saying that you don’t remodel your house without careful planning, you don’t relandscape your yard without planning, so why on earth would we want to redesign God’s work in our entire county, for all future generations, without at least as much planning and forethought.

Thank you

Soulless suburbia - Rape and scrape development

Does anyone believe that in 50 years or so someone will look at one of the countless tic-tac housing developments going up across the nation and say, "Oh what a beautiful place to grow up this must have been." ?
More likely they will ask, "How did you find your house?"
This is the result of the rape and scrape development that has become the norm across the country. In this age of machines that can move mountains with ease, there is no need for a developer who buys a piece of land to pay much attention to its form, and he or she may not even look at it except for on paper. Most often they will care only about how many identical rectangles they can fit on whatever shaped polygon the property may be. They draw it out on paper, rip out any pesky trees or rocks or anything else that may be in the way, then bring in the giant earthmovers to scrape it flat and even and easy to work on. The same blank canvas from coast to coast. This is why our modern subdivisions are identical from Florida to California, and why they lack any character or soul. Developers argue that leaving some landscape intact would add to housing cost, however I have seen several fine developments where this has been done without significant additional cost, and people are willing to pay the relatively small increase in order to live in these much more aesthetically and ecologically appealing communities. This one really is up to us consumers. We must demand more from home builders.

Any concerned hunters out there?

It amazes me that more hunters don't consider themselves environmentalists. Hunters and environmentalists basically have one major concern in common, protecting enough habitat to support a population of animals. Most all of the project sites I look at here in the southeast over 5 or 10 acres have at least one deer stand in them, and larger sites often have many. In fact, quite a few of the sites I have looked at recently are hunt club lands that have been sold for development. Simple supply and demand rules would suggest that the conversion of all these more accessible lands for hunting to suburbs must be squeezing the availability of relatively accessible land for deer, and therefore for hunters. The same is true for other outdoor land uses as well, such as horseback riding trails.

No Net Loss of Wetlands?

That was the goal of the Law that President Bush Senior signed in 1989, and although it has decreased the rate of wetland acreage lost in this country annually, it is only as good as its enforcement and its enforcers. The Army Corps of Engineers, ultimately charged with enforcing this law, does not have the manpower in many parts of the country to physically go to the sites for most of the development plans that come across its desk, so it relies on accurate assessments from honest and capable environmental consultants, for the most part. It then relies on the developers to stick to the plans that it presents to the Corps. That's a lot of trust. It also assumes that development plans affecting wetlands even make it to the Corp's office. Local governments which review new development have much of the responsibility for making sure the federal wetland laws are followed. However, the ability and alacrity with which they do varies greatly from county to county within some states. Often, it comes down to individual citizens to report violations of this very important law that affects an ecosystem that is so important to so many species, including our own.

http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/reg_authority_pr.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/

The Environmental Evils Of The Riding Lawn Mower

I was going to write this as a metaphor but it got a little convoluted. It started something like this:

Imagine spending lots of money to poison land, water, and air to grow something essentially useless to human and animal that required constant attention to maintain its sterile, commonplace appearance....

Then I wanted to go on about the waste of oil and gas, contribution to global warming, depriving of the health benefits of a push mower. That's where the convolution starts.

I think I'm realistic and not unreasonable about landscaping. I understand the joy and utility of a small lawn to play ball on with the kids, but what I don't understand is the huge, golfcourse like yards that many maintain with the aid of these machines. They seem to me to be another symptom of the increasing homogeneity and lack of originality in our country. Everyone shops at WalMart. Everyone has the huge, uniform lawn, entirely lacking in personality. The cost of this to the environment is manifold, including pollution from pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers which all make there way to the nearest waterways, as well as pollution to air from the machines we use to maintain them. Another big cost is to the ecology of a landscape. Uniform manicured lawns are relatively sterile ecologically, and especially when compared with the forests and natural areas from which we are carving so many of our new subdivisions. Here is an opportunity to act locally and individually for the betterment of our environment. Demand more from our homebuilders. Ask them to respect the already beatifully landscaped land from which they are making their living. Tear up some of that boring oversized lawn and plant native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Get rid of the riding lawn mower. If your lawn is big enough to need one, it's too big.

I want to support a Republican administration, but...

Why does Republican and environmentalist have to seem mutually exclusive. They don't as far as I can see, but for some reason the administration has waged a war on the environment almost on par with the war on terror. Here are some of the present administration's jewels:
Gale Norton
Unapologetic sneaky attempts to allow oil drilling in Alaska wildlife refuges, a slippery slope to what, condos and golf courses in Yosemite Valley??
Selling off National Forest land to pay for a budget deficit gone wild.
An attempt to basically eliminate the Endangered Species Act
A claim that we are gaining wetlands, when in fact we are losing wetlands and gaining relatively unproductive and less biodiverse ponds

I would like to vote Republican, but how can any self respecting environmentalist do so with leadership like this?

Do we really need more evidence for global warming?

On the heels of recent scientific studies showing unprecedented rates of ice melt in Antarctica and Greenland comes a new study showing that high Caribbean Sea temperatures that would have been equivalent to every city in the U.S. having a record high temperature for several months are causing die offs of coral reefs there. Some of these reefs are hundreds of years old so you can't chalk it up to normal cyclical sea temperature fluctuations like El Nino in the Pacific. Is it coincidental that we had some of the strongest hurricanes on record spin up in the Carribean last summer? Seems unlikely to me.

Global issue - South Korea wetlands example

Here's a good example of the challenges to the environment internationally. Can you believe that in this day and age where we know so much about the ecological, water quality, and other benefits of wetlands that governments, including our own would fund and tout the benefits of a project as environmentally destructive as this one:
http://www.siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf020415.htm
They even have the nerve to name it intelligent city and spin wetland destruction as "land reclamation".
Saner minds in South Korea see how arrogant and insipid these projects are, but they are helpless against governments not held accountable:
http://www.surfbirds.com/mb/trips/saemankeum-0902.html
http://www.waddensea-secretariat.org/news/publications/Wsnl/Wsnl99-1/articles/04-moores.pdf