Imagine that somebody invites you for an-all-expenses paid cruise of a lifetime. You come to the Pier Head in Liverpool and your host says to you "Just a couple of conditions; this is all on me but you are never to ask where we are going or when we are going to get there". "Sounds fine by me" you say. You board this ship and it's luxurious; you are shown to your suite on A deck and you cannot believe it. Within a few hours you are sailing the sun and you think "If there's a heaven, it must be like this!". After six weeks of sailing around on the ship you think to yourself "I wonder where we're going" but, after all, you've made a promise and being a British - stiff upper lip! - you keep the question to yourself and you carry on enjoying yourself. After six months you cannoy hold the question any longer. You grab your host one day and say "Listen, I don't want to appear ungrateful but please, could you just tell me where are we going and when are we going to get there?". He says "Is there a problem? Is the suite not comfortable? Is the food not your liking?". "No, no" you say "It's all wonderful. I'm having the time of my life but I just wondered where and when". He says dismissively "Eat, drink, be merry". So you do your best. After ten years around on this wretched ocean liner the dream has become a nightmare. You scream at him "Please, please tell me where and when". Ridiculous? No. We are on this planet like a ship cruising through space and every now and again the question pops into the mind of every single traveller at some stage - where and when? - These are questions of purpose and meaning. Imagine you recover your composure and you say to your host "Well tell me, how many on this ship?". He says to you "Guess", Well, you're not in the mood for guessing games and you say "Two hundred?". "Wrong - a thousand!". You say "A thousand people? You're kidding me; it feels like only two hundred". "Yes" he says "That is what it feels like to you because here on A deck there are only 200 people. But for the last ten years in the hold of this ship there have been 800 people and they are all on bread and water".

I think this is a powerful picture and well-taken one, but it is just a picture. The human condition, instead, can be better understood if you look at it like a movie. If you do so, the analogy is the following: While there are 200 people on the A deck and 800 in the hold, more and more people have moved from the hold to the A deck. At a certain point, somebody on the A deck begins a litanty: "Too many people are coming here on A deck. There is evidence that the more will come, and the more we will be loosing equilibrium, and our ship will eventually sink". So they started to campaign against people moving upwards, even though they had no proof that the loss of equilibrium was due to the people coming up; indeed there was little evidence even of a loss of equilibrium being in the process, in the first place. Yet they succeeded to convince many of those on A deck that things were going that way, and started to set barriers to prevent people from leaving the hold; and they also started to argue that the loss of equilibrium is not a future problem, but it is here and now, and so stopping the movement is not enough, people who have come on A deck should be sent back into the hold if we want to save the ship. And the most extremistic fring went even further and claimed that "You see, it's not just that we are too many on the A deck - it's that we are too many, so we should throw some people in the sea if we want to save the ship and our community". Now, once you have looked at things in such a more realistic and dynamic way, you know enough to answer the question: What should be done? While science and economics can provide useful insights, the answer eventually is about your most fundamental values. So, which is your answer? Will you take the responsibility of preventing people to come from the hold to A deck?

Although the SPM has some useful and apt things to say about the need for adaptation, it is flawed by the fact that it:
-- Overstates negative impacts and understates positive impacts of climate change
-- Overstates the level of confidence that should be attached to the impacts on both human systems as well as "natural" systems (because the latter are also affected by human actions)
-- Fails to examine the impacts of climate change in the wider context of other stresses affecting humanity and the rest of nature, which would allow us to gauge the importance of climate change relative to other stresses.
-- Fails to examine the relationship between climate change and sustainable economic development more fully, which could mislead policymakers into opting for policies that would divert scarce resources from dealing with today's urgent problems in favor of policies to pursue longer term, and more uncertain, problems.

Among the several problems regarding the SPM are the following:

The 10-billion milestone looks a lot less impressive when compared with the growing population of urban residents. It works out to just 42.7 trips per urban resident in 2006. (A trip, incidentally, is a transit boarding: if you get on a subway, then transfer to a bus, that is counted as two trips.)

While 42.7 trips per urbanite is more than were carried in 2005, it is not more than 2001, and it is less than in any year between 1907 (the first year for which transit data are available) and 1993.

In the meantime, transit subsidies already average 64 cents per passenger mile, compared with less than 0.4 cents for subsidies to auto driving. Over the past decade, APTA's transit factbook says that the U.S. has "invested" more than $100 billion in public transit capital improvements, mostly for expensive rail transit projects. Many of the cities that have built rail transit lines have actually seen transit ridership drop because the high cost of rail has forced them to cut bus services.

As I explain in more detail in my Antiplanner blog, the real problem with the transit industry is too much money. Because transit agencies get the vast majority of their funds from taxpayers rather than transit riders, their incentives are to build expensive, glitsy urban monuments rather than provide economical transit services to those who need them. The solution is to stop subsidizing transit agencies and instead give vouchers to transit users, who can use them for buses, taxis, or any other public conveyance.

In an article in today's New York Times titled, "In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert," Lydia Pollgren notes how property rights to trees growing on farmers' land have contributed to both economic growth, agricultural productivity and conservation in Niger at virtually no cost. She notes that :

In this dust-choked region, long seen as an increasingly barren wasteland decaying into desert, millions of trees are flourishing, thanks in part to poor farmers whose simple methods cost little or nothing at all...
[D]etailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago.
These gains, moreover, have come at a time when the population of Niger has exploded, confounding the conventional wisdom that population growth leads to the loss of trees and accelerates land degradation, scientists studying Niger say...
"The general picture of the Sahel is much less bleak than we tend to assume," said Chris P. Reij, a soil conservationist who has been working in the region for more than 30 years ... "Niger was for us an enormous surprise."

What contributed to the success? Apparently greater rainfall and property rights! As the article elaborates:

In a recent column Ellen Goodman says, "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." See http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

In so doing, she reveals that she doesn't comprehend the issues. More important, she trivializes the Holocaust.

First, the Holocaust is a part of history and, notwithstanding Ahmadinejad, can be verified as a fact. Similarly whether the present is warmer than the recent past is also verifiable, and no one, including so-called 'deniers' like Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen, denies that today is not warmer than, say, 150 years ago. What they dispute is the amount of warming, the extent to which humanity is responsible for that warming, and the portion of the human-induced warming that can be ascribed to well-mixed greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane and nitrous oxides as opposed to other anthropogenic factors -- all critical questions if one wants to design effective policies to slow climate change, which presumably Ms. Goodman would also want. Regarding the globally-warmed future, its consequences can be modeled but not verified, except after the fact. The best that can be done is to hazard an educated guess about its impacts. We do this using "models", so-called because they are not reality. And where does Ellen Goodman get the notion that global warming will parallel the Holocaust? Will the toll from global warming rival that of the Holocaust? Is that written in the just-published IPCC summary for policy makers, which only addresses the science, but not the socioeconomic impacts of climate change?

Finally, lest we forget, remember that the Holocaust was enabled in part by the passive acquiescence of a population too cowed by authority to dissent from the orthodoxies of time and place. Perhaps more dissenting voices might have saved more lives from the Holocaust.

More power to the dissenters -- 'deniers' to Ellen Goodman -- of today, who refuse to march lock step with -- and dare dissent from -- today's orthodoxies.

Mallaby says: "While the White House was sorting out its message, the rest of Washington was busy. Over at the Reagan building, a conference on carbon trading sold 600 tickets at $595 a pop and turned away 150 executives hungry to study the intricacies of permit allocation."

Response: Hungry to study the green -- or to reap the green? People who understand the global warming debate more than superficially have long known there is a constituency among profit-seekers to impose cap and trade. There is money to be made, even though cap and trade would hurt the economy, and especially harm low-income individuals and families and small businesses operating at the margin. There's a reason Enron pushed so hard for Kyoto and other limits on carbon -- that reason is money. We now speak of Enron's green-fingered successors.

Mallaby says: "Meanwhile, multiple climate bills were floating around Congress, and the House leadership promised to create a special climate committee to force legislation past the auto lobby."

Response: It appears Mr. Mallaby is implying that the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is synonymous with "the auto lobby." Since mere months ago the enviromentalist slur against said committee was that it supposedly was controlled by the oil industry, one looks to see what might have changed. Oh, yes, the new Chairman, Rep. John Dingell, is married to an auto industry lobbyist. I guess Mallaby believes Mrs. Dingell wears the pants in the family. Do you think Mallaby would be willing to say that to Mr. Dingell's face?

That amusing picture aside, Mallaby apparently is unfamilar with Pelosi's proposal. The new global warming committee is to have have no powers to move legislation. Score one for the UAW.

Mallaby says: "Team Bush appears to believe that a cap-and-trade system would burden business, but business leaders are saying they want cap-and-trade enacted."

Response: #1: See profit motive, above. #2: It is dishonest writing to say "business leaders" when it is just a few business leaders. #3: Wasn't Mallaby's propaganda rant against the Dingell family based on Mallaby's belief that the auto industry opposes draconian global warming measures? Mallaby has business leaders cast as both the heroes and the villians of his piece. (Pick a theme, sir!)

Mallaby says: "Chortling climate-deniers, expecting an easy propaganda victory over the man whose energy-tax proposal they killed in 1993, greeted Gore's movie with glee."

Response: Citation, please. I don't recall any glee. I have to think I'm a member of what Mallaby calls the "climate-denier" club, so I think I'd know, although the phrase "climate-denier" is unusually ludicrous, even for the anti-skeptic "all-we-will-ever-know-about-climate-science-we-know-already-but-send-your-research-grant-money-now-please" crowd. Who denies we have a climate? (I ask again: Does the Washington Post edit its "edit"orial pages?)

Mallaby says: "A House Republican hearing ridiculed a graph that features prominently in Gore's movie showing the world's temperature puttering along in a steady state before shooting upward like the handle of a hockey stick."

Response: Two full hearings of House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, not a single rump "show trial" hearing featuring only Republicans, as Mallaby implies, heard from expert witnesses who demonstrated significant, fatal weaknesses in the so-called 'hockey stick' graph. In fact, the hockey stick was badly broken -- most notably at the first hearing by the eminent statistician, Dr. Edward Wegman, who has described himself as a Gore voter, and by a Canadian, Steve McIntyre, neither of whom were likely to have been motivated by a zeal to aid the Republican Party. More than the hockey stick broke: In unmasking "peer review" as cronyism, the hearing dealt what appears to be a significant blow to the reputation of the science community generally, at least for folks who get their news from a broader series of sources than does the Washington Post, and who like their science journal writing to be more reliable than, say, a Bob Woodward deathbed report about Bill Casey.

One should be unsurprised to find ignorance about the hockey stick hearings among Post personnel, as the Post declined to cover the hearings as they took place. The Post deems the hockey stick hearings important enough to warrant multiple critical editorial pieces while simultaneously too insignificant to cover as news.

But credit should be given where credit is due. Sebastian Mallaby is correct in noting that Al Gore, like other climate alarmists and associated government-grant receivers, has used the discredited hockey stick graph as a proof of his theories.

In fact, Portlanders recently learned that their much-praised transportation plans were really nothing more than a scheme by what local reporters call the "light-rail mafia" to separate taxpayers from their money and enrich themselves. Far from relieving congestion or getting people to stop driving, Portlanders are so angry at the congestion and other problems resulting from the plans that they have repeatedly voted against light rail and other projects.

Worst of all, the high cost of these plans has led to a decline in urban services throughout the Portland area. This was illustrated with Dickensian irony in September when a leading member of the light-rail mafia calmly ate dinner at an outdoor restaurant a few feet away from police who were kicking a schizophrenic man to death. The budgets for police and mental health services that could have saved this man's life had been cut by the city council that continued to subsidize rail transit and high-density developments that enriched the light-rail mafia.

Now, cities such as Albuquerque and Madison are rushing to follow Portland's example of rebuilding downtown streetcar lines. Yet, despite claims of Portland's advocates, the streetcar did not get anyone out of their cars or stimulate economic development.

The first issue of the EJSD will be published July 2007. Volume 1, Issue 1 will explore “The nature of sustainable development.” Submission guidelines can be found at www.ejsd.org The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2006.

The EJSD is a co-publication of International Policy Network (www.policynetwork.net) and the University of Buckingham (www.buckingham.ac.uk). Based in London, IPN is an independent, non-profit think tank which educates the public about markets and their underlying institutions in the context of global policy issues relating to trade, health, technology, development and the environment. The University of Buckingham is the only independent university in the UK.

For more information, visit www.ejsd.org or email editor =AT.= ejsd.org.

Also on the subject of cliamte change, I've rounded up some of the critiques of the Stren Review on Volokh as well. These posts (and a related post by Jim Lindgren) can be found here.

The latest edition of San Francisco magazine has a feature article, "In Search of a Nice Gaia," in which ecosexuality is the theme. It includes such horselaugh-worthy gems as:

But one morning they went out for breakfast and Mr. Right ordered an all-meat meal and doused his coffee with several packets of Equal. "I was dumbstruck," says Pearson. "I think I ate my entire meal in silence. Pork plus Nutrasweet? That was definitely our last date." I'm guessing for the fellow the silence at that breakfast must have been golden.

There's more great stuff like this. Another couple who couldn't work out their conflicting greenery summed it up thus: "I shopped at Rainbow; she shopped at Safeway," is how Monte Gores, a 33-year-old stock-trader turned-acupuncturist summed up his differences with a woman he once dated. "One night she told me she’d just eaten half a chocolate cake for dinner," he says. Not exactly a "mindful" way to eat. "If you're thinking about a long-term relationship, that's a red flag." They broke up within two months.

This one quote gets it all in a single sentence: "It wasn't just the compost," Claudia says, "but it raised some control issues that we couldn't resolve." Glad that composting is something that you might be able to work through.

Unfortunately the article is not available online, or I'd say Read the Whole Thing. All I can say is, if Evelyn Waugh or P.G. Wodehouse were still alive, they'd have to collect unemployment to get by. (I filed this under "extinction." No wonder birth rates in the Bay Area are so low.)

UPDATE: The full story is online, here. (Hat tip: Dave Roberts/Grist.com)

In this guest post, Paul Driessen argues that we owe it to ourselves, our children and grandchildren, and especially people in poor developing countries, to challenge obstructionist groups and ensure that medical progress continues.

Paul Driessen

In sub-Saharan Africa and poor areas of Asia and Latin America, diarrhea isn't just a source of mild discomfort and juvenile bathroom humor. Because of unsanitary conditions, contaminated water and food infected by bacteria in feces used for fertilizer, people in those regions endure 4 billion episodes of severe diarrhea a year. Up to 2 million die annually.

Among children in the United States, acute diarrhea accounts for more than1.5 million outpatient visits, 200,000 hospitalizations, and 300 deaths a year. It imposes a multi-billion dollar burden on the US healthcare system.

But miracles of modern medical and agricultural science offer hope.

For years, glucose-based rehydration solutions (similar to Pedialyte) were used to treat diarrhea. They saved countless lives, by replacing lost salts, sugars and bodily fluids. However, even with the successful health outcomes, these solutions did not reduce the incidence or severity of childhood diarrhea.

Now Ventria Bioscience has developed an advanced solution that augments standard rehydration solutions, by adding protective human proteins (lactoferrin and lysozyme) found in all human saliva and breast milk.

A recent child health study demonstrated that the proteins cut the average duration of children's diarrhea by 30 percent (1.5 days), and patients were half as likely to get diarrhea again during the next twelve months. Equally important, Ventria produces the proteins in a special variety of rice, which makes its rehydration solution affordable, even for people in poor countries.

Ventria achieved its remarkable breakthrough by altering rice DNA and using rice plants as factories that utilize the sun, soil and water as raw materials to produce the proteins. The company extracts the proteins and adds them to rehydration solutions. Its success could convert one of the world's most essential foods into a valuable life saver.

In another achievement, SemBioSys Genetics created genetically engineered safflowers that produce insulin at commercial levels: an acre of safflower can produce a kilogram of insulin, enough for 2,500 patients. Fewer than 16,000 acres - about 0.2% of what Iowa farmers devote to corn (maize) - would cover projected 2010 world demand for insulin. With diabetes on the rise in India and elsewhere, this advance could be vital.

Syngenta is working on plant-based antibodies that fight infections and skin disease. Other scientists are enhancing plants to produce vaccines, hormones and enzymes that can treat HIV, cancer, heart and kidney disease, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, hepatitis, anthrax, West Nile virus and arthritis.

It costs around $1,000 to produce 1 gram (0.035 ounce) of protein from animal cells, making many such vaccines prohibitively costly for even the wealthiest countries, and completely out of reach for destitute countries. Producing the same amount from gene-altered plants would cost less than $20 - and that means pharmaceutical companies will be able to put a higher priority on finding cures for rare and “orphan” diseases across the globe.

But amazingly, instead of applauding these life-saving innovations, critics are attacking them. Luddite radicals like the Center for Food Safety, Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace assert that this "Frankenstein" technology tampers with nature and could "contaminate" other crops. These groups are well funded by organic food interests and others who profit by attempting to scare the public. The European Union and organic food industries demand stringent, costly, unnecessary regulations that impose unconscionable delays and result in death for some of the world's most needy children.

Breeders have been improving plants for millennia, using a variety of genetic technologies. Plant biotechnology is simply a refinement of the earlier, cruder techniques. Today’s researchers employ genetic technologies that are far more careful and precise - and management practices that maintain closed production systems and virtually eliminate any risks of accidental cross-pollination and gene migration.

But none of these facts are persuasive to "anti-humanists who put unfounded fear-mongering ahead of the world’s children," says Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Healthy, well-fed, safe from diseases that kill millions in other countries, with access to abundant clean water and electricity - they obsess about purely speculative risks from technologies that could improve and save countless lives.

In so doing, they prolong disease risks for countless human beings. They throw roadblocks in the path of scientific and technological progress that so far has eluded the world’s poor, even as it improved our own health, nutrition, living standards and life spans.

My personal experience with polio (luckily after receiving two Salk inoculations) made me eternally grateful that these "ethicists" weren’t around 50 years ago to stymie research and field trials of that vaccine. My generation can also count its blessings for treatments, antibiotics and other vaccines that have saved many of us and our children.

It is now the responsibility of our generation to protect children, the poor and future generations from mean-spirited Luddite groups that are paid to undermine our technological progress and humanity. It is time for legislators, regulators, judges and people of conscience to say "enough."

The world needs these miraculous technologies - today. And those who support radical anti-biotech organizations need to understand that, by blocking healthcare innovations, they are perpetuating misery, disease and premature death in countries the world over. That is simply immoral.

___________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (www.Eco-Imperialism.com).

The story then goes on to say that "the agency recently thwarted recommendations from a science advisory panel that called for the health standard to be strengthened." This creates the appearance that EPA didn't tighten the PM2.5 standard. In reality, EPA tightened the standard enough to increase the number of metropolitan areas violating the standard by 80% (from 15% of metro areas up to 27%).

Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch is quoted as calling the EPA report "breathtaking hypocrisy." Presumably he objects to EPA pointing out that air pollution has declined while asthma has gone up. You see, we all know air pollution causes asthma, so any evidence that it doesn't is hypocrisy. And we all know George Bush has rolled back the Clean Air Act, so any evidence that air pollution has declined must be hypocrisy also.

The news story closes by saying "While the [EPA] report notes the pollution can be a contributing factor to asthma and other health conditions in children, 'other factors may be more important, such as family history, nutrition, and socioeconomic factors.'" Why would the reporter quote EPA for the statement that "other factors may be more important" in causing asthma, rather than merely stating it as a fact. It is a fact. Actually, the real fact is that "other factors" not only "may" but actually do account for almost all asthma incidence and exacerbations, while air pollution accounts for virtually none. But by quoting EPA for the statement about non-pollution causes of asthma, the reporter creates the impression that this is just what EPA says in order to deflect attention from the real cause of asthma, which we all know is air pollution.

Do I sound dejected? Where's that bottle of bourbon...

"But Barton's likely replacement would be John Dingell, D-Mich., a fierce advocate for the U.S. automobile industry. In other cases, the effect of the change is easier to extrapolate. Pombo's likely replacement as chairman of the House Resources Committee would be Nick Rahall, D-W.Va. Can you say 'coal,' boys and girls?"