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The Good Earth

Just to continue a thread I brought up before I started my travels, I wanted to expand on some thoughts about the environment and environmental concerns.

I took some time during the trip to sit and watch (for me, a vacation is a great time to catch up on media like films I may have missed) the documentary Cool It, about Bjorn Lomborg, a self described "environmental skeptic." I'd seen trailers for the film, and intended to see it in theaters, but it came and went too quickly for me to actually follow through.

Having seen it, I've decided that Lomborg - a Danish professor - gives the kind of summary about the environment and what we can do about it that really dovetails with my own sense of things. Rarely have I heard anyone sum up the concerns I have about the environment while reflecting the doubts I share that a lot of what the "progressive" left proposes to do about it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Lomborg spends much of the film taking apart, and thoroughly criticizing the kind of environmental alarmist mentality of films like An Inconvenient Truth. The idea of worldwide floods that are just disasters waiting to happen, hurricanes and other disasters that supposedly show how terrible things have become... these are scientific issues that Lomborg, with substantial help from some very knowledgeable scientists, takes apart and generally debunks. He also makes a convincing case that much of the "personal change" approach to environmentalism - where we all drive Priuses or use those new lightbulbs - won't make much of a dent in energy consumption, or reducing global temperature.

More pointedly, the film lays out a strong case that "cap and trade" - the system of taxing carbon emissions and allowing companies to trade pollution credits - is a dicey scheme that probably won't work. Just as pointedly, Lomborg points out that some 20 years of worldwide meetings on climate change and discussions to substantially reduce carbon emissions have led to absurd proposals that no one will follow and are probably wildly unrealistic, counterproductive, and again, unlikely to make much of a difference in reducing global temperature.

As I said, rarely have I seen a film that so thoroughly confirms, with actual scientific backup, much of the kind of views I've come to about environmental issues. Like Lomborg, I think global warming is a real, serious problem... but I just don't think much of what's proposed to address it makes much sense, seems awfully expensive, and unlikely to work. Meanwhile, other, simpler solutions (like providing more targeted funds to research and development in solar, wind and other technologies), are ignored or barely addressed.

It's easy to blame a lot of this on corporate interests and lobbying influence... but the film does a nice job of breaking down the related idea that scaring people - particularly people who live comfortable lives in developed countries - is a generally effective way to put an issue into public discourse and that much of the scare mongering is also probably a well meaning, but misguided attempt to get people to pay attention to an issue that matters, in many ways, to us all.

Sine I started writing this blog, I've become far more sensitized to the reality that scaremongering and fear driven decision making explains a lot about American politics and so much of why we can't seem to find sensible, practical solutions to the problems we actually face. It's easier, really, for both sides to name call and paint ugly pictures about how terrible the other side is; already that dynamic is beginning to take shape as a driving force as we head towards 2012. Though I didn't spend a lot of time following the news (far less than usual), I saw the birth certificate silliness unfold, and all the backlashes, finger pointing, and recriminations. I still stand for the proposition that we need more voices trying to ratchet down the language of fear and distrust, and look more towards generating ideas and positive discussions about how to approach the problems we face. If that seems pollyanna-ish, or compromising, or "centrist", so be it. IU'm more interested in figuring out the ways we can positively change people's lives, than spending time feiguring out just who is awful, how much, and how often.

At the very least, take a minute and watch Cool it. And consider the kind of environmental discussion we could have if we stopped screaming about imminent floods and telling people to use eco-friendly lightbulbs. That's the kind of environmentalist I'd like to be, and for now, it's the one I am.

Las Palmas

I've been prearranging my posts this week for my actual vacation - as you read this, Mom and I are cruising in the Caribbean - and we started out, as we do, in Miami, to catch the cruise.

Don't get me wrong, we've had a lovely dat and half here... but every trip to Miami reminds me of just how stage managed the American landscape can be... and puts a much finer point on the environmental problems we face.

I'd been thinking, for a few weeks, about writing a darkly cyincial (and rehashed) point about the failure of the "green" movement to really make effective inroads in the American psyche, but being here kind of stopped me cold (or, er, warm). I am sitting in a hotel overlooking carefully manicured palm tree lined vistas surrounding man-made lakes. And it's not the artificiality, but the sense of the sheer amount of labor involved to manufacture this that has me flabbergasted.

Up in New York, I live in and around the woods. And some of it, clearly is artificial creations - we have resevoirs and dams and carefully manicured estates galore in Westchester. And yet, in a way, it all feels kind of organic. Many of the lakes were already there. The woods already existed. We've moved some things, built some walls, planted some trees... but much of it came that way.

Miami is swampland. Sea level property and mud flats that have been carefully filled in and paved over and dug up and dressed up to look like a tropical paradise. The sense of waste is palpable. The reality that it's unsustainable strikes me as obvious. And that's before we talk about the tornadoes and the hurricanes.

Lying by the pool yesterday (on Earth Day!), nar the artifical waterfall, facing those palm trees and fake lake, I was at once comfortable, staisfied... and unnerved. I don't like the idea that we have to change so much of our American culture to get things more envronmentally correct. But on the other hand, there's something just kind of twisted and sad about the lengths you would go to make an office park where every building fronts a lake. And I can't say I'm opposed to stopping that.

I've long thought that the environmental movement is a failure both because it tends to have the goal of making us all feel worse about ourselves and it proposes unrealistic things that don't really solve our problems. I'm not especially impressed with anything I've read about carbon emission taxes. I don't feel like there's enough focus on ending sprawl and scaling back suburbs. We need better urban planning because we really could do more with less; re-centralize our cities, make them more walkable and approachable, reduce the need to drive and our lust for excessively artificial spaces. Or we can live in the actual woods. But this thing about living surrounded by palm trees and fake lakes... it's creeping me out, man. Seriously.

Lord, We Don't Need Another Mountain

It was yesterday, while shoveling the driveway, that it officially happened: we started running out of places to put the snow.

We've been building a mountain by the driveway - on the side where there isn't a giant bush in the way - and yesterday it just got too big. Most of the snow wouldn't go over it; and on the near side, the incline just drove the snow down the hill, back into the driveway.

It's been snowing about twice a week in our neck of the woods, every week since the day after Christmas. One storm is kinda light - that's the snow we're having today, too - and one is pretty heavy, anywhere from 6 to 12 inches or so. Twice a week. The heavy snow is usually Tuesday, or Wednesday.

The snow has tested us, up here in the land that's near snow country, but usually isn't like living down the road from a ski resort. We were pretty sure we knew how to drive in snow. We don't wonder anymore. We used to just shut down... that's not really possible twice a week. Errands must be run, groceries bought, there's work to be done.

But we're worn down. This isn't funny anymore. And it's well beyond annoying. It's kind of the dull resignation of "oh well, here it comes again."

In the end, I stepped back and devised a solution to our mountain problem: I dug a trench through the snow in the yard, and lowered the mountain from the opposite side. And a very kind gentleman pulled up and cleared the final section from our driveway to the street with his snow blower. For free. That's what it's come to: the kindness of strangers, the aid of technology, and the creativity to think differently about an age old problem.

I don't spend a lot of time fretting about global warming. As much as I accept that the problems we're having are man made... I don't really believe that they can just be undone. We can make efforts to not make global warming worse - that's the point of reducing consumption, carbon emissions and the rest - but reversing the effects? I don't see it.

What I see, out my window... is more snow. And a series of weather systems that are nothing like anything I've expereinced in winter anywhere on the East Coast. Unlike many, the snow hasn't beaten me down, convinced me it's time to move to Arizona (Florida? Seriously?), made me love winter less, or long for the change of seasons. If anything, the repeated snowfalls have reminded me that winter, in its crisp whites, is a beautiful, awesome thing.

But I got to tell ya... we're running out of places to put it.

Friday Evening Flora-and-Fauna-lude

jinb
 

Spills, Gulfs, Chasms... And The Mary Landrieu Effect, Part 2

As critical as I am about various aspects of the Obama Presidency, I think this moment where he's getting slammed is just a bit unbelievable. From the "I don't like his response to the oil spill" to the "he should be doing more/getting angrier" to the "why couldn't they have done more to prevent this", I just can't see the logic behind the criticism.

Of course... I wasn't that impressed to begin with, so I think my disappointment gauge is set to a different level than many.

So, on one level, I'll agree: the perceptions of mistakes and missteps and how bad all of this is have everything to do with the Obama team's initial setup of a false expectation. He was sold as too much to too many with too few specific benchmarks, and he's paying, in no small measure, for unrealistic standards he helped to create. And a good bit of the unrealistic expectations he helped create are damaging fantasies that Americans need to have confronted if anything, really, is to be changed or improved in the short run.

Also, in the short run... nothing will change if, well, nothing changes.

More than anything, what mystifies me about the supposed genius of Obama and his team is their resistance, even defiance, in the face of missteps. With each setback, each negative response... they seem determined to retreat further into the insular circle. This is one reason I've thought lately, and really all along, that the real overselling of Barack Obama wasn't the vague descrption of hope and change everyone could glom onto... but selling a two year Senator with little real world business experience as a capable executive able to adapt quickly and intelligently to ever changing circumstance. More than anything, when Obama talked about "what it takes to be President," I'd think, that man is talking through his hat. It sounds good... but it doesn't have the weight of actual knowing what it's like when bad things are unfolding and hard choices have to be made.

I don't feel let down, as a Democrat or an Americna generally, by President Obama. I do think he's not doing things as well as he could, or solving problems as creatively as I'd like, but I'm not sure it's fair to expect more on that. What I find disappointing though is that an Administration which seemed to have some sense of PR and advertising and messaging seems incapable of changing its own.

And that's why, yet again, I find myself saying... is anybody watching Mary Landrieu?

If You Love This Planet... You're Still Helpless To Save It

I haven't been writing about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of main reasons: I'm generally on the sidelines when it comes to environmental issues, and frankly, I have no idea what to do about oil spilling out of a giant hole in the ground. And I don't like to write a lot about what I don't know.

That latter point, though, is apparently no reason not to write something: since the spill "I don't know anything about how to deal with a giant hole under the sea where oil is spilling out" appears to be the main qualification many writers and TV personalities share when discussing it.

There's a profound sense of helplessness watching the oil spill disaster unfold; though I don't necessarily agree with Rachel Maddow's high dudgeon on the subject, I do agree with the point she made last night: there just isn't much known about dealing with the risks posed by oil spills, and we've made a bad compromise worse by "improving" drilling technology so it can be done in deeper, more risky areas.

I share the frustration of many, if not most, people watching the horror unfold: this is a spectacular disaster, one cannot avoid feeling helpless in the face of it, and I wish, heartily, that something could be done to stop the leak and catch the oil before it does serious damage. I do also wish we didn't engage in wildly risky exploration for oil... but I'm also realist enough to say they'll stop drilling when we stop needing it.

And if we really loved this planet... we'd be trying harder to end the addiction to oil. All of us.

So yesterday, into last night, was for me the last straw. Being tired of listening to a rondelay of similar complaints, I just have to point out a few of the things that are just not worth saying and repeating as this mess unfolds... becaiuse someone should. These are my faves:

• "We need to know just how much oil is spilling into the Gulf" - this was Anderson Cooper's refrain all last night, Cooper having positioned himself, yet again, in a warm climate with a tight tee-shirt, to play the impassioned truth teller in the face of sure disaster. He's still my secret boyfriend (it's the t-shirt, and that hair...)... but the sanctimony is starting to grate. So here's the thing: knowing how much oil has been spilling out would be a "nice to know" but it isn't really a "need to know." It's not as if there's some "70,000 Barrel A Day" piece of equipment they'd pull out as opposed to a "5000 barrel a day" alternative" The bottom line is... there's a lot of oil out there. "A lot" covers most of what we need to know, and gives a good indication of the problems we face mopping it up.
• "BP is failing to stop the leak, and the government should step in and take over"... because the Coast Guard knows how to drill for oil? This fairly ludicrous argument, in many forms, suggests that there's some mysterious "expert" person or company who, if we only just brought them in, would magically stop the leak, right now, and make it all better. Talk about Deus Ex Machina! (Yeah, I went to college... I love throwing that in. Best thing I ever learned. Ever.) I've been trying, very hard, to keep my discussions of what the experts think to actually watching experts - which is not easy, these days, when reporters like to do a lot of interviewing each other - and the experts do seem to agree: the people who know about oil drilling and plugging leaks are working on this... and they don't have a lot of good answers. Because... there aren't a lot of good answers.
• "The cleanup is badly managed and going too slowly!" Granting, for a moment, that a massive operation stretching from the Louisiana coastline all the way to Florida (and possibly affecting the entire Florida panhandle at that) is bound to have logistical nightmares... we should remember something more obvious: it's really hard to a) stop oil that's floating in water, and b) clean up oil that hits land. The "let's stop the oil before it makes land" plan amounts to this: wrap the sea in a giant baggie, and either pick up, or disperse it. "We don't have a baggie big enough" only begins to cover it. Second, cleaning up the spill as it hits the coast just won't be pretty. That's especially true in Lousiana's marshland, where the local officials are screaming - literally - that nothing's being done. And perhaps more could be done... I'm not entirely convinced... but there is a reason we call that terrain a "swamp", and it's because the buildup of mud and crud is hard to prevent, and hard to remove... without, well, draining said swamp. And this, really, does back to remembering that Louisiana's problem - aside from being really dependent on, you know, the oil industry - is about what happens when you build a civilization based on living and working in below sea level swampland. There's only so much that can be saved, or fixed.
• "The dispersents are dangerous chemicals! Where's the EPA?" I have to admit, I'm concerned about using the huge amounts of disperents on the oil that they've used... but it does seem pretty clear that pretty much all chemical dispersents are, well, dangerous. So it seems like the choice is... trying to decide which of the dangerous petrochemical treatements is less bad, or don't use them and have more oil issues... or use them, and see what develops. Isn't science interesting?
• "They won't let us build a giant sandbar to protect the coast!" Louisiana officials seem to have two ideas when it comes to public projects: complain, often quite emotionally, about feeling abandoned and mistreated... and propose enormous boondoggle projects to solve their problems. They have been abetted in this, a lot, by having the largest office of the Army Corps of Engineers in their state, mostly because of the (er, somewhat boondoggle-ish) projects of levee building that never seem to end. Last year, they were all about chasing down enormous sums of money to build a new hospital downtown, which they claimed was a way to address the closing of Charity Hospital after Katrina (and which community activitists insisted could be solved by renovating Charity; both ideas being problematic). Now, the President of Plaquemines Parish says he just wants billions of dollars and thousands of man hours to build... islands to protect the... er, islands that are meant to protect the marshes that are not sufficiently protected from oil that's already hittting the coast. Never mind that there probably isn't enough sand for it. Never mind that no one actually knows if it will work. Never mind that it's just the sort of, well, enormous boondoggle that Louisianans seem to know best: lots of federal dollars thrown at dubious solutions which involve enormous amounts of labor and earth moving. Again... you built your lifves and livelihoods around swampland. I'm not saying you should suffer because of it... but there are limits to what's feasible to fix that.

None of this, even the sly sarcasm, is meant to suggest that I think people should suffer, that our fisheries along the Gulf Coast should be destroyed, or anything like the idea that I don't care, deeply, about the terrible events that are unfolding. But what's unfolding there is defined most, and best, by the reality that it is, enormously, out of our control. The problem with oil drilling - and coal mining, and foresting and all the other detsructive things we do to have our way with he planet's natural resources - is that we are fairly helpless in the face of the consequences of our acts. Mines collapse. Forests burn. Oil wells leak. Gas explodes. If we loved this planet... well, we'd love it more and molest it less. But we don't, and we do... and no matter how much some of us want to love the planet more or better... we are, collectively, kind of helpless in the face of enormous natural disaster.s we can't control. The illusion, really, is that we'd like to think we have more control than we actually do. It's no use, really, crying overspilt oil, wailing that someone, somehow should have a way to clean this up. We just don't have that level of control. Realizing we don't, and figuring out how to live with that... much harder.

Um... What Were We Talking About Again?

In the wake of Tuesday's primary results, and a slew of political developments in the past few days (I do, as well, plan to talk about, um, ...Rand Paul? Is that his name?... in a separate post), I've been struck by the resumption of a familiar aspect of the recent deep partisan divides: that there are multiple conversations happening, each largely ignoring the others.

As a lefty, I notice it especially in the right's determined silence, and fleeing from, most discussions of Rand Paul, and more specifically, refusing to touch the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I mean - Christ - even Jeff Sessions (that's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions) came out to say the Civil Rights Act was basically a good thing and Paul was wrong about the regulation of private business. And that's more than most people on the right did.

The relative silence on Paul and his fairly pure approach to libertarian ideals (I even slogged my way through multiple pages of the usually nutty Redstate bloggers to be sure), seems to be a tacit admission that initial cheering for Paul's solidifying Tea Party power was premature. Cooler heads that long predicted Paul was a disaster waiting to happen turned out - sooner than I think anyone expected - to be more than a little accurate.

When Up From The Ground Comes... The Cost Of Doing Business Without A Plan B

Watching the oil spill unfold has been like moving through glue - or like oil following the move of the tides - everything moving in some odd, slow motion, the actual contours and dimensions of disaster only just beginning to come clear.

If nothing else, Barack Obama somehow looks like a genius of timing in announcing his plans to expand drilling last month; after carefully constructing an offshore drilling compromise that pleased basically no one, but managed to look like "doing something" on energy policy, the Administration now gets to put all those plans on hold in the name of environmental safety, and returns the oil industry to "evil, bad polluter" status.

And all it took was the largest oil spill in US history.

Like the volcanic ash moment across Europe, the oil spill probably best reflects how feeble our best efforts can be in the face of nature. The "moving through glue" quality of the response of to the spreading oil slick headed for the Gulf Coast has everything to do with not having, really, anything more than "try to surround it with big plastic barriers" as much of a solution. There's an inevitability to all of it that both amazes and awes.

I've been kind of ambivalent about energy policy; I think a lot of the energy vs. environment argument on the left is more than a little naive and surely unrealistic in a world that seems determined to consumer resources at enormous, even alarming rates. You can't stop progress, and if that progress needs fuel for... well, fuel, then people will be to make a lot of compromises for the desired result; whether we feel bad for the trees and the water and the animals, or not.

"Deep Water Drilling" has always struck me as an accident waiting to happen. It's getting oil from very far away, reaching into places we can't otherwise necessarily reach, a hole in the ground with a really long pipe. Breaking, leaking, the explosion of volatile material in the pipe... that all seemed likely. Stopping it, never quite so clear.

But the question of not doing the drilling strikes me as answered: we will keep drilling, for a long time. All the pushing for "green energy" - faith that wind and solar can deliver prodigious results - won't change that. And the other alternatives - nuclear and coal, essentially - are accidents also waiting to happen. Two mine disasters in two weeks underlines the coal dilemma, and living near Indian Point always reminds me that brave talk about massive nuclear plant expansion will always meet hurdles about risks and safety, with safety tending to prevail.

Environmental policy is where the cynicism in my liberalism wins out - all the talk of green things and conservation and Honor the Earth make lovely bumper stickers, but aren't likely to win political arguments. If environmentalism was winning, I think the Green Party would havemore to show for it, just for starters. And in the end we have this compromise, which we pretend to be fine with: the drilling happens, mostly without us looking... and God forbid anything happens to go wrong. That seems pretty close to the definition of "wing and a prayer". And for it, we get oil, lots of it, spreading out in all directions on top of the Gulf of Mexico. Just the cost of doing business... when you don't really have a Plan B.

Publish... Or Perish

The relative silence of blogs in discussing Amy Bishop is almost as odd as the collections of incidents leading up to her arrest.

Bishop - the University of Alabama professor who shot up the Biology Department faculty meeting - puts an interesting wrinkle on both workplace shootings and on mass events at schools. And all of it complicates the usual left/right divides on gun incidents, school politics and the mindsets of shooters.

For me the case has felt unusually intimate: my Mother was Chair of her department for pretty much all of my youth, and ran an undergraduate program until she retired. The ins and outs of tenure process, the dynamics and politics of faculty relations and the occasionally unpleasant employment dilemmas... all of these were part of my growing up experience, and inform a lot of views on higher education as well as my approach to interpersonal dynamics. The idea of a disgruntled faculty member resorting to violence never seemed to me to be an especially farfetched possibility.

And when Amy Bishop's arrest was announced - before anyone knew who the exact victims were - I said to my Mom, "she shot the Chair of the Department. And the head of her tenure committee." And she did.

Southern Storms, And The Pet Theories We Keep On A Leash

It's very odd living north of a blizzard.

Across NYC and the suburbs, we were promised, at the very least, a glancing blow: at least a few inches of snow as the massive storm passed by, relieved to miss a direct hit. Instead, come Saturday morning, it was clear we were to be denied: not even a flurry, or a flake, never mind a light dusting. There was, I'd say, a pretty collective disgust at having been promised a snowstorm, and getting nothing.

I wonder if this is how Buffalo feels when New York City gets the brunt of an East Coast storm.

The nearly three feet of snow in Baltimore brought me back to my childhood and the blizzard of 1978, when a friend of my mom's came for dinner on the night of the big storm... and stayed for a week. We didn't have school for two - which wrecked the school calendar - and for the first few days "playing in the snow" amounted to put on snow clothes, venturing out the front door, wading about 4 feet out into the yard in waist deep snow, and coming back for cocoa. Good times.

Around here, today, life goes on pretty much uninterrupted; the snowed in Mid-Atlantic makes an interesting case to observe, to remind ourselves that up here in North Country we know how to handle our snowfall, a weather anomaly to prove whatever pet theory we carry around about global warming.

It snowed, a lot. That must mean... something, right?

Anomalous is probably a lousy barometer of climate issues; I mean, it does matter that we've been getting bad hurricanes, mudslides in southern California, blizzards more likely to snow in DC than Boston... but nature is unpredictable. Sometimes it snows in April. You can't necessarily draw a lot of conclusions from isolated incidents, and that, really, is the whole point of scientific study.

Conservatives, as they do in winter months, have taken this week's storm as another way to question reports of global warming, restoring, if nothing else, faith in their absolute scientific illiteracy. Who cares what science says? Look at that snow!

The trouble with our global warming conversation, I think, is that the left has a similar, opposite struggle, taking these anomalous events and pointing to their anomalousness as proof warming exists: it snowed in DC! it didn't snow in Boston! We're all doomed! Look at that snow!

We have a global warming problem, it should be noted, because we have science for it (and that, despite the efforts over the past few months to try and debunk the research with a cache of stolen e-mails which reveal far less than many suggest): global temperatures that appear to be rising, and global effects that demonstrate concerning changes over time.  It's not a snowstorm. It's not a melting glacier. It's not a hurricane in October. It's everything.

I don't know what to do about global warming. I'm not sure a lot of people do, and I'm not convinced liberals do a great job of staking out environmental policy built around debatable notions of what "stops" global warming: science is not quite as conclusive as our policy proposals suggest. But all of that doesn't negate the obvious: global warming is clearly happening, and is just as clearly a problem. Snowstorm or no, three feet in Baltimore or clear streets in New York... that doesn't really change. It's not the deepest thought on a snowy day, but it might help keep those pet theories in perspective.