August 2005 Archives

by

Indur M. Goklany

Since hurricanes are in rage -- are they ever not! -- here are trends in deaths, death rates, and property losses due to hurricanes in the United States from 1900 to 2004.[1]

The first bar chart provides deaths per year and death rates per year for each decade starting in 1900. Note that the last period only covers 2000 through 2004.

This indicates that both deaths and death rates have declined quite significantly (and substantially over this period). The bars for the first period, 1900-1909, are much larger than subsequent ones because of the hurricane in 1900 that killed anywhere between 8,000 and 12,000 people in Galveston, Texas.

If I remove the first set of bars, the declining trends from 1910 to 2004 are still significant (and substantial), as your eyeballs will confirm.

The declines result from the fact that as a society we are more resilient than we used to be because we are wealthier and have the ability to obtain and implement more effective technologies to cope with adversity in general and extreme weather events in particular. Such resilience is more important than whether hurricanes have strengthened or whether there are more of them hitting the US. In other words, wealth, technology and human capital trump meteorology and climate, as has been noted elsewhere.[2]

The second bar chart provides trends from 1929-2004 for property losses from hurricanes in terms of the “wealth” in the 19 Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic states that have received at least one direct hit from a hurricane between 1850 and 2004.[3] I weighted each state’s “wealth” by the frequency with which hurricanes scored a direct hit on them over this period. This helps account for the fact that if a hurricane hits a rich state, one should expect damages to be higher. Also measuring property damage in terms of “wealth” allows for the fact that with time as society becomes richer, it probably has more assets at risk. In developing this figure, I use state income as a proxy for wealth, hence the quotes around “wealth”.[4] [This was done because although I could not locate data on wealth and/or fixed assets and consumer durables for each state, I did find data on each state’s income going back to 1929.]

The second bar chart shows that through 2004 at least, there has been no significant trend in property losses in terms of weighted wealth, although there should be an upward trend if one looks at losses in constant dollars.[5] These findings essentially re-affirm what other researchers have found.[6]

So here is a paradox: As we get wealthier, we are safer and healthier, but we also have more physical assets (homes and “stuff”) at risk. Also, I suspect, we become more cavalier about putting property at risk. Insurance — and Uncle Sam’s largesse — also help mould this mindset. But I’d rather be safer and healthier, even if that means I have more stuff at risk. All things considered, richer is indeed more resilient.[7]

It was only a matter of time, but RFK Jr. blames Republican opposition to the Kyoto Protocol for the destructiveness of Hurricane Katrina. Declaring that "the science is clear" Kennedy writes:

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

UPDATE: I should also have noted this NYT piece.

SECOND UPDATE: Some readers are curious about the recent article in Nature purporting to show an increase in hurricane intensity linked to ocean temperatures. This study is very controversial, as this report makes clear, and has not distrubed the reigning consensus on the question (at least not yet). Indeed, one prominent hurricane researcher commented ''It's a terrible paper, one of the worst I've ever looked at." As I understand it, Nature is already reviewing one or more critical commentaries on the recent study. While a hurricane-warming link may one day be shown, it is very misleading to suggest that any such thing has been scientifically established.

THIRD UPDATE: The author of the Nature study himself, Kerry Emanuel, told the press there is no connection between global warming and Hurricane Katrina: "I don't think you can put this down to global warming."

Peyton Knight, who joined The National Center for Public Policy Research's staff Monday as the new director of The National Center's John P. McGovern MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, is making a plea for eco-sanity on our military bases.

Our brave men and women in harm's way have enough burdens to shoulder these days - without being hamstrung by environmental ideologues.

According to the Associated Press:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Monday that procedures designed to protect the environment can sometimes jeopardize U.S. troops and should be balanced against military needs.

Yet over the weekend, the White House was busy "playing environmental matchmaker, encouraging odd couples such as the Nature Conservancy and the Pentagon as they team to save wild birds and military ranges," according to the AP.

The fact is, environmental organizations have been wreaking havoc on U.S. military preparedness, using the Endangered Species Act, for years.

For instance, due to its unique terrain and coastline, Camp Pendleton in Southern California is regarded as one of the best places to train U.S. Marines. Unfortunately for the military, it is also home to the California gnatcatcher, the San Diego fairy shrimp, the tidewater goby, and more than a dozen other species listed as "endangered" or "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

To comply with endangered species regulations, our men and women in uniform, when training at Camp Pendleton, must make pain to avoid treading in certain areas.

If they don't, they could find themselves subject to penalties and fines.

Considering that about 25 percent of all species listed under the ESA are found on military bases, the conflict between the ESA and military prepardness may only grow deeper.

Unfortunately, Congress missed its chance to exempt crucial military training exercises from the long arm of the ESA two years ago, when related legislation was derailed in the Senate. Perhaps now is the time to reenergize this effort.

Rather than play environmental matchmaker, Congress and the White House should promote eco-sanity on military bases. Considering the tremendous sacrifices our troops are make on a daily basis, it is not too much to ask that they be afforded the best training possible. After all, their lives are on line.

There's been a glitch with our blogroll, but it should be up and running again soon (we hope). In the meantime, the posts below have lots of links to lots of interesting stuff, so check them out.

Jon Christensen is blogging up a storm from the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation in St. Louis at his blog, The Uneasy Chair. I don't have time to summarize all the posts, but among the highlights are an interview with Lynn Scarlett and this post on the Walla Walla Way. I also really liked this post on how on-the-ground conservationists and free-market types are responding to the White House "cooperative conservation" initiatives (excerpted below).

Can we blame the severity of Hurricane Katrina on human-induced climate change? Don't bet on it. NR editor Rich Lowry summarizes the arguments here. He also responds to some reader e-mail here. This Pat Michaels piece is also worth a look.

There's also an interesting exchange between Grist's Dave Roberts and Roger Pielke Jr. on the subject. Roberts begins by posing these "tough questions":

In the end, greens concerned about global warming face a choice. Do they stick to scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy, with all the hedging and qualifying that entails, at the risk of being boring and losing an opportunity to galvanize action? Or do they fudge a bit, propagandize a bit, indulge in a little bit of theater and showmanship?

Roberts suggests that the question of fudging science is a tough one. Not for me. I'm pretty much all for scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy. Fudging science can certainly lead to some short term political gains, but in the end it is not good for science and certainly not good for democracy.

There's a controversy brewing over ads aimed at curbing Mexican men's appetites for turtle eggs, which reputedly have "natural" Viagra-like properties.

Here's an ad. Stories on the contoversies here . More ads here.

The ad strategy seems straightforward. To stop people eating turtle eggs you need to motivate people who eat turtle eggs. These people are seeking potency; undermine the link and cut turtle egg consumption. Similarly, the state of Texas launched one of the most successful anti-litter campaigns ever with the slogan "Don't Mess With Texas" - which appealed to the main littering demographic, young men. The choice is simple: PC sensibilities or turtles. Seems the turtles are coming up short on this one.

The FT published two letters today on the Segerfeldt article (and somehow, didn't manage to publish mine). (The letters are not on the FT website, as far as I can tell, although others are.)

One, by the Director of the "Water for All' campaign at Public Citizen, makes a poor analogy that deserves rebuttal:

"Private interests do not take better care of natural resources than public interests. Consider the extractive industries, such as mining, that have destroyed the land in order to extract as much of a given commodity as is possible. Now think about public parks. If private interests owned these priceless treasures, many of them would likely be covered with housing developments and unavailable to the public."

Let's break this down: (1) comparing mining to parks is like, well, comparing mining to parks. Let's look, instead, at how public and private entities manage similar land uses. As it turns out, there is an excellent body of literature on this, much available through the PERC website, that shows that private management of forest resources results in better land management than public management of those same types of resources. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that public management of parks is pretty shoddy in an alarming number of cases (remember the sewage problems in Yellowstone, the "crown jewel" of the national park system?) and that state owned mining entities have done plenty of destructive behavior.

(2) Would private ownership mean parks were converted to housing developments? There is no reason to think this would happen. Private land ownership of environmentally valuable resources might produce less public access, particularly if reducing public access enhanced the environmental amenities - consider the Turner ranches in Montana. Turner reduced public access (you pay to hunt now) but greatly enhanced the environmental amenities produced by his property, investing enormous amounts of money in restoring meadows and the like.

The other letter, from the "Campaigns Policy Officer" of the "World Development Movement" argues that "The private sector admits that it simply cannot deliver the investment required to enable the world's poorest communities to access clean water and adequate sanitation. Extending access to water for the poor can only happen through the public sector." The proof? A water company CEO who says "substantial grants and soft loans are unavoidable to meet required investment levels."

Again, let's unpack this. (1) water systems require more investment than the private sector - with access to billions in capital through the world's financial markets - can muster yet somehow governments are going to find this money and we know this (2) because a water company CEO lobbied for subsidies. Might we be just the slightest bit skeptical that governments have access to untapped pools of capital and that companies lobbying for subsidies might cry poverty?

Clever. Or, as Glenn Reynolds might say, heh.

Excellent column in the 8/25 Financial Times by Fredrik Segerfeldt on "The Private Sector cn get water flowing to the poor." Full text for subscribers only, unfortunately.

Segerfeldt, author of a Cato book on water rights, makes a strong case that private companies deliver clean, safe water to more people, and so improve the lives of the poor who are more likely to be without water, and also lower the cost of water to the poor, who now buy clean water at high prices from small vendors in small quantities.

As a result, even if water prices for existing customers rise (a frequent charge of privatization opponents), water prices for the poor fall under privatization.

I did get a little worried at the end when he began to talk about the need for more requlatory oversight of the contracts with the private firms (this was ever so successful with regulated utilities in other areas....). I have some more comments on the ethical issues raised by the column here.

The book is Water for Sale: How Businesses and the Market Can Resolve the World's Water Crisis (Cato Institute).

If you are going to read about water markets, you also need to read Terry Anderson and Pam Snyder's Priming the Invisible Pump.

Paul Summers, the state AG in Tennessee seems to have time on his hands - he's after country singer Gretchen Wilson for her new song "Skoal Ring". Summers says that Wilson's removal of a can of Skoal from her pants pocket during performances of the song may violate the 1998 settlement between the states and tobacco companies. See the account here.

Without having seen the video of Wilson's performance or recently read the settlment (although I read it several years ago), I find this claim an implausible regulatory overreach - Ms. Wilson is not a party to the agreement and if she wants to wave Skoal cans at her concerts, that's just too bad for Mr. Summers.

The larger problem (and its relevance to The Commons) is that state AGs are becoming increasingly problemmatic regulators, threatening litigation to force through regulatory changes they could not otherwise obtain. (For an account of this at the federal level, you can read an early version of my paper, coauthored with Bruce Yandle and Andrew Dorchak on Choosing How to Regulate here. The final version appeared in the Harvard Environmental Law Review.)

Does the fall of Easter Island provide a cautionary tale for modern industrial societies about the perils of environmental destruction? Jared Diamond thinks so. In em>Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Diamond argues that the civilizationon Easter Island collapsed due to the destruction of the island's ecology. Benny Peiser takes issue with this account in a paper published in Energy & Environment. (Link via NRO's The Corner). The Peiser paper is here; and abstract is below.

I recently re-read the Economist's take on markets and the environment, "Economic Man, Cleaner Planet." In the article, I'm quoted disparaging "market mechanisms" as "faux market environmetnalism." As I recall, the author of the article was particularly intrigued with a book review I wrote with that title, available here. There I argued that replacing command-and-control regulations with taxes and tradable quotas is not much of an advance. It takes more than economic incentives to create a market. What's required are 3-D property rights -- that is, property rights that are definable, defendable, and divestible.

The BBC reports that Iraq's marshlands have been rapidly improving since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. As I discussed a few years back, Iraqq's dictator sought to eradicate the Marsh Arabs by destroying the ecosystems upon which they depended. At the time, the Hussein government was likely the "only extant regime that deliberately use[d] environmental destruction, as such, as a tool of government policy." Now that Hussein is gone, it's nice to see that Iraq's environment is recovering.

Another prominent scientist has resigned from an important governmental panel looking at climate change, charging politicization of climate science. Roger Pielke Sr., Colorado state climatologist and professor at Colorado State University Fort Collins, last Saturday resigned from the U.S. government’s Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), where he was a lead author of a chapter of the program's synthesis and assessment product committee. This event has been fairly widely publicized and is described in more detail at Pielke's website and with commentary at the CRC's GreenWatch.
What is also interesting is the following quote from today's NY Times in an article regarding religion and science.
"...these scientists also embrace science as it has been defined for centuries. That is, they look to the natural world for explanations of what happens in the natural world and they recognize that scientific ideas must be provisional - capable of being overturned by evidence from experimentation and observation. "
So, Pielke is the one, in this case who remains true to what science is about--NOT the CSPP. Perhaps CCSP needs to change their name.

Susan Dudley of the Mercatus Center and I have a new paper on silica regulation. We use the example to discuss the problem of how regulators define what it is they are regulating (turns out there's lots of kinds of silica). You can get the paper here.

A Texas jury has found the pharmaceutical company Merck liable for the death of a man who took the painkiller Vioxx. The man's widow has been awarded $253.5 million in damages. Actually she will get some 10% of that amount because of a Texas's cap on punitive damage.

While that may have little or nothing to do with environmental issues, it has a lot to do with the principles upon which environmental regulation rests. In particular, the court's ruling stems from an extremistic application of the precautionary principle - its purpose is to "send a message" in the first place - and may have a dramatic impact on the incentives to innovate for both drug and other companies.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a fairly litigious environmental group, has taken to shaming ranchers for harming federal grazing lands by posting photos of degraded lands. Professor Bainbridge has an interesting post on what happened when a rancher fought back and won a substantial defamation judgment against CBD. Moreover, it turns out that government scientists investigating the rancher for potential environmental violations were giving money at the same time. While I'm not convinced this was a legal conflict of interest, it certainly explains why the rancher did not believe federal officials would neutrally evaluate any claims against him.

A 400-foot waterfall was just found in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. All I want to know is, where did they hide it?

Over at ScienceGate, Chris Mooney has sparked a debate on the politicization of science. In short, Mooney thinks that the greatest threats to science today come from the political right, largely in the form of attacks on evolution and political manipulation of scientific research. Roger Pielke Jr., among others, thinks Mooney's take is one-sided, and implicitly associates an appreciation of science with liberal political views. I've added my two cents to the debate (reproduced below). One item I forgot to add is the Democrats' attack on CHEERS during the Stephen Johnson confirmation fight, which I discussed here.

biologists or economists? John Whitehead makes the case for economists here. To add my own two cents: In my experience economists have an additional edge because they have a greater understanding of the incentives that drive over-exploitation of fish stocks. But the greatest conservationists of all are the fishermen them selves if -- and this is a mighty big if -- they have property rights that tie their economic well-being to the health of the resource and reward their stewardship. And the stronger the property rights, the stronger the conservation incentives. In New Zealand, for example, it's not uncommon for the fishermen themselves to push for lower catch limits than government biologists would authorize (something that reinforces Whitehead's point). Also, as I've chronicled at length here, where such arrangements are allowed, fishermen have powerful incentives to organize so as to reduce harvesting pressures on the fishery upon which they depend.

CEI's John Berlau reviewed David Schoenbrod's new book Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People in yesterday's WSJ. This is a very important book. Schoenbrod was among the original attorneys at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Among other things, he helped lead NRDC's litigation to remove lead from gasoline. Saving Our Environment chronicles Schoenbrod's gradual disillusionment with today's centralized regulatory regime and the delegation of broad regulatory authority to unelected regulatory bureaucracies. Schoenbrod does not endorse free market environmental policies, as such, but his book has many important lessons for pro-FME and conventional environmentalists alike. My own review of the book will appear next spring in The Independent Review.

The folks over at Gristmill have been pondering why conservationists have not been more active in the fight against poverty (see also here). One thread in the discussion focuses on the extent to which good institutions are necessary for both environmental protection and economic development. The relationship between good institutions -- in particular transferable property rights and the rule of law -- and economic growth is clear, but what about conservation?

Available research suggests that conservationists should be as concerned with basic economic institutions as anti-poverty activists. Research by economist Seth Norton, for instance, has shown that economic freedom and the rule of law greatly improve both the economic and environmental conditions associated with poverty in developing nations.

Here's nother new environmental economics blog: Environmental and Urban Economics.

G. Tracy Mehan discusses conservative and market-oriented approaches to environmental philanthropy here.

Richard Tren and Marion Tupy write about the EU's threat to blackmail Uganda (should it decide to use DDT in its malaria control programme) in today's Washington Times, a subject covered recently at The Commons.

If any EU bureaucrat stumbles upon our blogs at The Commons, please do feel free to post a comment to explain this perverse position...

I recommend reading an article - 'Forgive us our debts' - written by Jon Christensen of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy (at Stanford University) for grist.org.

He argues that, to their detriment, environmental groups have been slow to jump on the anti-poverty bandwagon . Specifically, he recommends, by focusing on governance issues they might be more likely to both help people and the environment :

Good governance -- which starts with free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and property rights -- needs to be pushed further to embrace conservation of ecosystem services and biodiversity through good laws, adequate administration, and practical incentives that work for people on the land.

This month, Alaska's crab fisheries switch to individual fishing quotas (IFQs). This is great news! Out will be the open derbies, where as many as 250 boats race each other at sea for a share of the overall catch. In will be a system in which fishermen will know exactly how much they can catch going to sea.

Crabbers will no longer feel compelled to fish in bad weather, or continue through sleepless nights or extreme fatigue, to catch the lucrative shellfish before other boats grab them. Each fisherman will have an exclusive percentage of the available crab to catch at his leisure.

The program has one unwelcome side condition. In addition to IFQs for fishermen, only buyers with individual processors quotas (IPQs) will be allowed to buy the crab directly from fishermen. This is an unnecessary restriction on commerce. Even the Justice Department has suggested it would not stand up under antitrust law. Nevertheless, the powerful senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pushed it through as an appropriations rider.

Even so, the advent of IFQs for crabs is an important milestone. For detailed treatment of IFQs and rights-based fishing generally, see "Fencing the Fishery" by Donald R. Leal. For recent news about IFQs, see the IFQs Web site.

Over at Bench Memos, Mathew Franck takes after Arthur Schlesinger for saying in the New York Times that the Federalist Society doesn't understand history because the historical Federalist party was for strong central government and thus the Federalist Society should be called the Anti-Federalist Society.

Franck's response makes good points, but he doesn't point out the best rebuttal to Schlesinger. The Federalist Party of Adams and Hamilton coopted the phrase federalist themselves. Before they took it over, federal generally meant those opposed to strong central government. The popular strategy of coopting your opponents' catchphrases and twisting the meaning to your own to undermine your opposition and steal any of the positive associations with the term that were created by your opponent's investment in 'branding' is not new. The central-government folks stole the federalist term, which had previously been associated with decentralized government to reduce hostility towards their pro-central government goals by both creating confusion and giving the impression that they weren't extreme in how much central government they wanted, because "Hey, we're all federalists and believe in limited government."

Professor Isaac Kramnick briefly discusses this cooption in his introduction to the Federalist Papers for the Penguin Books version found here at Amazon.

On page 37 of his introduction, Kramnick writes:

A second tactical move by the advocates of the Constitution was their appropriation of the name Federalists. For some time a believer in federal principles was one who stressed the distinct sovereingty of the states and who opposed any consolidating tendency, any inclination to establish a powerful national government that would undercut the states. Those who sought a strong national government in the 1780s were usually called "nationalists." In the course of the ratifying debates, however, the name Federalist was adopted...by men in favor of the new national or federal government proposed in the Constitution. These federal men or Federalists in turn referred to the opponents of the Constitution as Anti-Federalists.

UPDATE CORRECTION: My initial post confused the introduction's author with another version of the Federalist Papers. This post has been properly corrected.

DISCLOSURE: I have been a dues paying member of the Federalist Society for two years and involved at the student level at Northwestern Law.

From my prespective, with so much pork it might as well be considered a farm bill, especially given all the sops to ethanol. Lynne Keisling addresses this question from an economic perspective (and with a bit more seriousness) here.

In yesterday's edition of The Times, economics reporter Gabriel Rozenberg provides a great critique of the British government's land use planning system and the 'Green Belt' surrounding London and other British cities (which apparently celebrates its 50th anniversary this month).

Members of British public, and particularly the elite, are horrified at the mere mention of scrapping the planning system -- yet as Rozenberg notes, chaos does not reign in other parts of the economy when prices are allowed to govern demand and supply for scarce resources. In the case of land use, 'Prices allow a much more sophisticated level of co-ordination, in which demand for houses, offices and open spaces are all stirred into the mix.'

He continues:

Planning a town, working out how to mix homes, infrastructure and open spaces, is difficult, but not impossible. The problem is that there is only ever one planner — the Government. To scrap state planning would bring about a renaissance in a forgotten world from a century ago, when private corporations bought land speculatively and created garden cities and suburbs, many with restrictive covenants to keep them from decline. Competition between planners — something the current system lacks — drove up standards of design.

In what appears to be intentional amnesia, the California Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger appear committed to mandating yet another round of subsidies for and required use of solar energy. The legislation, SB 1, appears unstoppable, and in one supportive yet typical editorial is described here. What seems to always be forgotten or miscast are a) renewables already receive HIGHER levels of subsidies compared to traditional energy sources, when measured on an output basis b) solar energy has benefited from over thirty years of similar programs yet can never quite grow up—every mandate and subsidy program has said it would wean solar from the need for government support -- in California alone support has totaled several billions of dollars from taxpayers and ratepayers and c) paying for almost half of the cost of systems using taxpayer dollars has not and cannot drive the price down in a mandatory-use program. Of course the fact that the equipment for such systems is imported from foreign countries is always forgotten as well.

Apparently, claims by some environmental groups in Britain about the environmental hazards posed by airport expansion have not been influential enough to convince regional governments to veto such plans.

Seemingly, one of the most basic tenets of the economic discipline - the role of specialization - has not influenced Friends of the Earth. Last week, some British news outlets reported on a claim by Friends of the Earth that expansion of airports creates an economic deficit in the UK because it encourages people to spend money outside the UK:

Friends of the Earth said visitors flying in spent £11b in the UK in 2004, while UK residents flying out spent £26bn abroad - a £15bn deficit.

The folks over at The Globalization Institute have explained the lunacy of this idea. An excerpt:

Why Friends of the Earth are happy for money to be spent in the UK but not abroad is curious. We do not worry about the trade balances between Manchester and Sheffield. Why then does it become an issue when one of the parties is foreign?

Moreover, such logic might also lead us to ask why we need competing charities whose purpose is to fend for the environment -- wouldn't it be more efficient to have just one?

John Tierney ponders polar bears and the arctic climate.

(Reminds me of a an old joke: "So the baby polar bear comes home and asks "Mommy, am I a real polar bear? . . . . ")

Professor Bainbridge ponders whether to buy a hybrid car.

Last spring I presented a paper at the NYU Environmental Law Journal Symposium on State Roles in U.S. Environmental Law and Policy. I argued that current environmental protection efforts are plagued by "jurisdictional mismatch." The federal government focuses disproportionately on matters properly left in state or local hands, while neglecting areas in which the federal government has a comparative advantage. As a result, states reduce their efforts on state and local matters and increasingly involve themselves in matters of federal concern. This mismatch undermines effective environmental protection of all types -- whether one advocates traditional regulation, market instruments, or property-based strategies. A draft of the paper is now posted on SSRN and the abstract is below.

Noted environmental scholar RJ Smith has a few words to say about astronaut Eileen Collins' comments on the environmental degradation she sees from space:

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world," Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used," said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag and holding a colorful fan.