March 2005 Archives

The United Nations' Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report has been published today. Copies of the report are available by registering at the MEA website.

Several news stories have covered the more extreme elements of the report, e.g. "The state of the world? It is on the brink of disaster"

Notably, the report contains an interesting discussion of the fact that markets often do not value resources or 'ecosystem services' (pp.40-41 of the PDF discuss 'Economics and incentives').

The "promising intervention" of eliminating harmful subsidies is something that we might all agree with [minus the beneficiaries - Archer Daniels Midland et al]. According to the report,

Government subsidies paid to the agricultural sectors of OECD countries between 2001 and 2003 averaged over $324 billion annually, or one-third the global value of agricultural products in 2000.

Astonishing!

An article from Wired.com discusses the potential benefits of global warming.

Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University, says that humanity has flourished in warmer periods.

But an activist takes issue with Peiser's claim, saying that a heat wave in 2003 killed thousands of people in Europe.

Dr. William Keatinge, an emeritus professor at Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry, cast doubt on that assertion in the British Medical Journal, saying that "few of these deaths are recognisable clinically as being due to heat." Simple interventions are the best way to prevent the deaths of vulnerable people, such as the elderly, in hot weather. Moreover, Keatinge points out elsewhere that deaths from cold far exceed those from heat.

Dick Taverne, a member of the House of Lords' science and technology committee, and Chairman of Sense about Science, has just published an eloquent new book which is to be thoroughly recommended- The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism (Oxford University Press, 17 March 2005).

A news story from the Sunday Telegraph about the book highlights Taverne's views about the biotechnology debate in the UK, suggesting that

Aid agencies and environmentalists have deceived the public over genetically modified crops by deliberately ignoring scientific evidence that supports the technology

British scientists have developed a new strain of Golden Rice which produces up to 23 times as much beta-carotene (compared to the first variety, announced in 2000), according to an article published in this week's Nature Biotechnology*.

Rice is one of the staple foods of the world's poorest countries, especially in Asia, and up to 500,000 children become blind every year because they lack Vitamin A. At least one-half of these children die within one year. Moreover, children who are Vitamin A deficient (VAD) suffer from compromised immune systems. Golden Rice is one potential way to complement traditional interventions: Beta-carotene is converted by the human body into Vitamin A. The new strain of rice offers even greater potential to alleviate VAD.

However, the rice has not yet been grown in field trials (whether in Asia or elsewhere) - despite being made available for free to the Humanitarian Rice Board by its developers (Syngenta).

Some environmental activists who are ideologically opposed to biotechnology have made the perfect the enemy of the good - saying that even the new strain of Golden Rice "only addresses a very small part of a very big problem".

Yet never have its developers claimed that this technology would solve the entire problem. Such criticisms reveal the true stripes of campaigners; let us hope that they will not be heeded by governments in poor countries.

* Paine et al. (2005) Nature Biotechnology - Improving the nutritional value of Golden Rice (PDF link - for subscribers only)

I worry when one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), offers thoughts on environmental issues because sometimes he accepts some green nostrums (that we're running out of oil, for example). On global warming, however, he's got a particularly eloquent analysis of Kyoto, the scientific issues, and some new theories about climate. A good read to pass along to those insufficiently skeptical of the Kyoto Protocol.

Our friends at Powerlineblog.com wrote several weeks back about how the unctuous Bill Moyers had slandered Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt by recycling the canard that "Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’"

Watt never said any such thing, and though this urban legend has been knocked down for more than 20 years, as the Moyers article shows it lives on. Moyers had to issue a public apology to Watt, as did the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where Moyers article appeared. (He also made the same charge in a speech at Harvard.) So, too, the environmental website Grist.org issued an apology and retraction (it had been Moyers’ source for the quote): "Grist has been unable to substantiate that Watt made this statement. We would like to extend our sincere apologies to Watt and to our readers for this error."

All of this is prologue for considering what is likely an equally spurious quotation, if not in fact a fabrication, that appears in the pages of Jared Diamond’s new best-seller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In a particularly frothy passage on page 462 attacking mining companies, Diamond writes: “Civilization as we know it would be impossible without oil, farm food, wood, or books, but oil executives, farmers, loggers, and book publishers nevertheless don’t cling to that quasi-religious fundamentalism of mine executives: ‘God put those metals there for the benefit of mankind, to be mined.’”

The “mine executive” who supposedly said this is not identified, nor the name of her company. (There are no footnotes or source notes for this quote, or any other in the book.) It is not clear from Diamond’s prose whether this is meant to be a verbatim quotation, or a stylized characterization, The doubt about the authenticity of this quote is deepened by the immediate sequel: "

The CEO and most officers of one of the major American mining companies are members of a church that teaches that God will soon arrive on Earth, hence if we can just postpone land reclamation for another 5 or 10 years it will then be irrelevant anyway."

Again, Diamond identifies neither the mining company nor the denomination in question here. These things matter. Precisely because Diamond is a bestselling author of considerable reputation, his distortion or invention of ridiculous quotations threatens to inject them into wider circulation. In fact, it has already started.

Reviewing Collapse in Science magazine, Tim Flannery writes of “the CEO of an American mining company who believes that ‘God will soon arrive on Earth, hence if we can just postpone land reclamation for another 5 or 10 years it will then be irrelevant anyway.’” Suddenly we’ve gone from executives who attend an unidentified congregation that believes this to an unnamed CEO who “believes” this. The next short step will be directly attributing this non-quotation to the unnamed CEO.

It is beyond doubtful that any denomination believes as a matter of doctrine the ridiculous views Diamond describes. To paraphrase Orwell, only a university professor could believe such nonsense. Diamond owes it to his readers, and the mining company executives in question, to come clean with specifics about who supposedly said this and what denomination holds these views, so other journalists can verify the story. Either Diamond was had by some woolly faculty room chatter, or he fabricated another shameful slander reminiscent of the Watt remark.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton has named Matthew J. Hogan as acting director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The animal rights crowd is none to pleased. Hogan is a former lobbyist for Safari Club International, a pro-trophy hunting group. Yet what is bad news for the animal rights folk could be good news for endangered wildlife. As a veteran of SCI, Hogan might understand the value of conservation-through-commerce and the use component of sustainableuse.

THe New Hampshire legislature is considering tighter mercury emission standards for power plants than those proposed by the EPA. The legislation is motivated by local concern about potential hot spots and a desire for a more protective standard. This is how it should be. Where states have particularl environmental concerns, or environmental preferences, they should be free to adopt more protective standards. While I think it would be a mistake for New Hampshire to ban the trading of mercury emission credits altogether, New Hampshire retains the ability to do so within our federal system.

Speaking of mercury, Sandy Szwarc and Henry Miller seek to clear the air on mercury risks here.

Well, the proliferation of such drugs might dampen the demand for aphrodesiacs and sexual enhancement remedies derived from endangered species. That is the suggestion of this article on Grist.

According to the UN, is March 22 is the "World Day for Water."

States were invited to devote the Day, as appropriate in the national context, to concrete activities such as the promotion of public awareness through the publication and diffusion of documentaries and the organization of conferences, round tables, seminars and expositions related to the conservation and development of water resources and the implementation of the recommendations of Agenda 21.

I will be speaking at two environmental federalism events later this week.

On Thursday is "How to Protect Environmental Protections," at the Center for American Progress, co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute and the American Constitution Society. I will be commenting on presentations by Professor Robin Kundis Craig and Douglas Kendall of Community Rights Counsel. I suspect each will suggest that the Supreme Court's federalism jurisprudence gravely threatens environmental protection. I will suggest the contrary.

On Friday is the NYU Environmental Law Journal symposium on "State Roles in U.S. Environmental Law and Policy." I will be a presenter on the third panel on "Federalism Dynamics," along with Professors William Buzbee and Robert Fischman.

An interesting story in the NYT.

In the RFK Jr NYT letter that Steve notes below, I love how Kennedy admits "no doubt some use hyperbole" within the environmental movement. Given his own record of exaggeration, this is quite an understatement!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr weighs in today with a letter to the editor of the New York Times about last Saturday's Nick Kristof column, showing his flair for comic writing. The best line is this:

"The leaders and professionals with whom I work, at groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists, are more often conservative to a fault in their scientific and economic pronouncements."

One of the main criticisms that has been circulating of the EPA's new mercury rule is that of the Government Accountability Office finding that EPA failed to "quantify the human health benefits of decreased exposure to mercury, such as reduced incidence of developmental delays, learning disabilities, and neurological disorders."

No-one has ever done this, until now. In a study from the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, Ted Gayer and Bob Hahn quantify the health benefits of increased intelligence from decreased methylmercury consumption. The benefits are not great when compared with the cost of emissions reduction: a maximum present value benefit from the proposed rule of $150 million compared to a cost of $5.5 billion. The alternative proposal, favored by the environmental groups, actually produces fewer benefits ($140 million) at a far greater cost ($20.7 billion).

The authors conclude:

As a society, we are in real danger of focusing on de minimis risks if they become salient political issues. The regulation of mercury emissions from power plants is one such example. We are likely to spend billions of dollars on reducing mercury emissions from power plants and get very modest, if any, improvements in IQ scores in return.

The Bush Administration is proceeding with plans to adopt a tradable emission credit scheme for mercury. Here's the coverage in the NYT and WaPo.

Izaak Walton League executive director Paul Hansen thinks that environmentalists are as much to blame for the polarization of environmental policy and failure to adopt real environmental solutions as President Bush and Republicans:

While President Bush and many of today's Republican leaders seem to be out of step with the American public and much of their own party when it comes to environmental conservation, the tactics of some environmentalists also play a significant role in creating the political polarization and stalemate that have caused gridlock for more than a decade on environmental policy.

Editor & Publisher reports that San Jose Mercury News editor David Yarnold is leaving to join Environmental Defense. David Hogberg suggests this is evidence of pro-environmentalist bias in the news media, particularly given how critical groups like ED were of President Bush's reelection effort. For myself, I am not familiar enough with the SJMN's coverage of environmental issues to say whether it has had a green tint.

The greens are going to feel pretty blue today then they read Nicholas Kristof dumping all over them in the New York Times. Some samples:

"The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they’ve lost credibility with the public. . ."

" I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement’s broad aims, but I’m now skeptical of the movement’s "I Have a Nightmare" speeches. . ."

"This record [of badly mistaken predictions] should teach environmentalists some humility. . . Jared Diamond argues that if we accept false alarms for fires, then why not for the health of our planet? But environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise. . ."

"There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field. . . So it’s critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I’m afraid we don’t have one.

Read the whole thing.

Roger Pielke Jr (who runs the Prometheus blog), has written a review of Nature's Experts: Science, Politics and the Environment by Stephen Bocking, in this week's edition of Nature (unfortunately, the Nature link only works for subscribers).

From the first paragraph:

In this excellent book on environmental science and politics, Stephen Bocking grapples with a problem that he characterizes as a riddle: "How can science be part of the political process yet separate?" Or more specifically: "How can we ensure that scientific research provides the information we need to pursue our environmental values and priorities (whether these relate to exploitation or to protection) without science itself becoming subject to the conflicts and controversies of environmental politics?"...

Clear Skies failed to make it out of the Senate Environment Committee today. Several of the senators chose to portray the legislation as a failure to address climate change, most notably Republican-in-name Lincoln Chafee. While not what the legislation is supposed to be about in the first place, it seems fairly clear that Clear Skies could only help with climate change. For commentary on the benefits of Clear Skies, see this recent post over at the Volokh Conspiracy and my earlier post here at The Commons.

Hope remains alive, however, as the forthcoming EPA rules are supposed to closely mirror Clear Skies.

The Carolina Journal reports on how North Carolina's air quality legislation might have been designed to help local utilities escape federal enforcement actions. It's an interesting story.

The great marshes of Iraq are slowly beginning to recover from Saddam Hussein's rule, reports the New York Times. Hussein's environmental record was nearly as bad as his record on human rights. Indeed, Hussein may have been the first dictator to use ecological destruction as a deliberate tool of oppression -- if not genocide. He ordered the destruction of Iraq's marsh ecosystems to punish and oppress the marsh arabs who opposed his rule. Now that Hussein is gone, these ecosystems are starting to come back.

For more on Hussein's ecological reign of terror, see here.

Last week, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down land-use regulations designed to curb development in Loudon County, Virginia. This was not a sweeping victory for property rights, however, as the ruling was largely based on procedural grounds. The rules in question had been adopted without adequate public notice. Nonetheless, the folks at Gristmill are none too happy.

Here's a recent column I wrote for our local paper inspired, in part, by an article (may require subscription) by Pielke and Daniel Sarewitz in the January 17 New Republic.

The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. Two questions pop up: How will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices?

When we consider these issues we confront three vexing realities. First, fossil fuels (i.e., oil and coal) are our cheapest, most available sources of energy. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world’s reserves, double those of the next largest source, China.

Second, billions of the earth's poorest are just climbing out of desperate poverty. Affordable energy is essential to their successful escape...and they know it.

Third, burning fossil fuels causes air pollution and contributes to climate change.

Here is the story on the nomination from the Environmental News Service.

Bush has named a career EPA employee named Stephen Johnson to be the new administrator. I've never heard of him. Does this mean that we have finally come to the point where no sane person wants to run the place?

Roger Pielke demonstrates again why the Prometheus blog is must reading for those interested in the intersection of science and public policy. I don't always agree with Pielke, but he's very thoughtful, insightful and provocative. Here's an excerpt from his latest post:

efforts to justify greenhouse gas mitigation policies on preventing human impacts run up against the reality that if it is human lives that you really care about, then there are obvious, straightforward and comparatively inexpensive ways to reduce human death and suffering that do not involve first reordering the global energy system. . . .

. . . adaptation to climate change by focusing on reducing societal vulnerability to climate-related impacts deserves a much more prominent role in discussion of climate change. At the same time, advocates of climate mitigation should think carefully about the use of human death and suffering as a justification for adoption of greenhouse gas emissions -- the numbers don’t make a strong case.

I recently received notice of a paper on integrated river basin management that sounds quite interesting. It discusses the Fraser Basin Council, "a nongovernmental, multi-stakeholder, consensus-based approach to river basin management in the Fraser River basin in Canada." The full paper is available on SSRN. The abstract follows.