Between Science and Politics Lies the Environment.
Do you wonder what the future will hold? Maybe the keys to the future reside in the past. Hans Rosling is a Swedish medical doctor who spent 20 years helping poor Africans get healthy. You might think after seeing famine firsthand he would be pessimistic. Dr Rosling defines himself as neither an optimist nor a pessimist; he is a “possiblist.”
This is interesting, don’t you think? The U.S. is on track for its quietest wildfire year since 1998 (3.3 million acres), and firefighter deaths (7 firefighters) are the lowest on record, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. USA Today reports, “The USA is on track for its quietest wildfire year since 1998, and firefighter deaths are the lowest on record, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.”
According to NOAA, “The first eight months of 2010 tied the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record worldwide. Meanwhile, the June–August summer was the second warmest on record globally after 1998, and last month was the third warmest August on record. Separately, last month’s global average land surface temperature was the second warmest on record for August, while the global ocean surface temperature tied with 1997 as the sixth warmest for August.”
It’s interesting that 1998 and 2010 are labeled as the two hottest years on record, yet in the US will be lowest acres burned and lives lost.
As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a decision that many new or upgraded factories, power plants or other facilities will have to get a permit under the Clean Air Act to emit carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases (Source: NY Times), the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear the case of American Electric Power Co., Inc. v. Connecticut. The SCOTUS blog says at issue is “Whether federal law allows states and private parties to sue utilities for contributing to global warming.”
Wired.com says, “The case was filed before the Environmental Protection Agency’s right to regulate greenhouse gases was established, and represents an attempt by citizens to control greenhouse gases in the absence of federal mandates.” You might remember, the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, a process scheduled to begin early next year. But, Wired.com notes, “A New York court ruled against the states in 2005, saying the suit raised a “political question” beyond judicial scope. An appeals court reversed that decision last year, noting that the link between greenhouse gas pollution and climate change is not a political question. As justification, they even cited Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., an obscure Supreme Court decision in which the high court supported Georgia’s right to sue two copper companies responsible for crop-destroying pollution.” It’s the appeal that the SCOTUS will hear.
While the Chicago Carbon Exchange (CCX) has pretty much shut down with a ton of CO2 trading for a nickel, the NY Times reports the state of New York “made $16.9 million in the latest auction of carbon dioxide credits, held this week under the cap-and-trade system known as Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative…New York has so far collected $282 million from RGGI (pronounced “reggie”), the most of any of the 10 participating Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states.” The Times article notes, “Under the program, the 10 states agreed to cap carbon dioxide emissions from electric power plants and charge the plants for the emissions they produce. As an incentive for the plants to pollute less, the states allow those that cut their emissions below the cap level to sell or trade their excess carbon allowances through online auctions four times a year.”
Politico reports, “A year after U.N.-led talks all but collapsed in Copenhagen, delegates from countries large and small signed off on a package of low-hanging fruit that includes establishing a program to keep tropical rainforests standing, sharing low-carbon energy technologies and preparing a $100 billion fund to help the world’s most vulnerable cope with a changing climate…diplomats scarred by the chaos in Copenhagen accepted a deal that fails to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions anywhere close to scientific recommendations [and] fails to establish a firm date for negotiators to reach a conclusion on a new climate treaty.
The World Resources Institute jubilantly reported the Cancun climate talks concluded on 11 December 2010 with countries “agreeing by consensus to move ahead with an international agreement on climate change that includes “targets and actions, increased transparency, the creation of a climate fund, and other important mechanisms to support developing countries. Delegations also recognized the urgency of keeping global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, with the ability to strengthen the response in the coming years.”
Not everyone was quite so thrilled, Ronald Bailey at Reason.com said, “It would be cynical to call it a bribe, but the Cancun agreements were largely reached because the rich countries continued their vague promises to hand over $100 billion in climate aid annually to poor countries beginning in 2020. Basically the deal on emissions is that countries will agree to agree on cuts at the next climate change conference in Durban.” While Christopher Monckton wrote on the CFact blog, “The governing class in what was once proudly known as the Free World is silently, casually letting go of liberty, prosperity, and even democracy itself…The 33-page Note (FCCC/AWGLCA/2010/CRP.2) by the Chairman of the ‘Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Co-operative Action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’, entitled Possible elements of the outcome, reveals all. Or, rather, it reveals nothing, unless one understands what the complex, obscure jargon means…Western countries will jointly provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to an unnamed new UN Fund. To keep this sum up with GDP growth, the West may commit itself to pay 1.5% of GDP to the UN each year. That is more than twice the 0.7% of GDP that the UN has recommended the West to pay in foreign aid for the past half century. Several hundred of the provisions in the Chairman’s note will impose huge financial costs on the nations of the West…Hundreds of new interlocking bureaucracies answerable to the world-government Secretariat will vastly extend its power and reach.”
A gorilla census in the 180 sq mi Virunga Massif of Rwanda reveals a 26.3 percent increase of the mountain gorilla over the last seven years. (source: allafrica.com) A story in the New York Times notes that increased economic standards in the area had led to a decrease in poaching. “Many of these communities now keep bees to make honey or make handicrafts for tourists — they don’t need to poach,” Martha Robbins, a primatologist with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told the BBC.
“With great fanfare, NASA announced last week that it had discovered a new form of microbial life that can live on arsenic in a lake in California. Even if the discovery left some underwhelmed, it was generally greeted as a breakthrough, a paradigm shift in how we should think about life itself.” (Source: The Week) RRResearch, A research blog run by Rosie Redfield has received lots of play for her criticism of the paper, “Bottom line: Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information. The mass spec measurements may be very well done (I lack expertise here), but their value is severely compromised by the poor quality of the inputs. If this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting, I’d send them back to the bench to do more cleanup and controls.” Slate.com asks, “But how could the bacteria be using phosphate when they weren’t getting any in the lab? That was the point of the experiment, after all. It turns out the NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts which they freely admit were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate. It’s possible, the critics argue, that the bacteria eked out a living on that scarce supply. As [one researcher questioned by slate] notes, the Sargasso Sea supports plenty of microbes while containing 300 times less phosphate than was present in the lab cultures.”
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has great plans for LA to make 40% of its power from renewable resources by 2020. The LA Times reports that Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power (DWP) has begun groundwork to dial that figure back.
Villaraigosa set the 40% renewable target during his second-term inaugural address, part of his bid to make Los Angeles “the greenest big city in America.” But [First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner] has dismissed that figure as “arbitrary,” and the DWP, faced with resistance to the higher electricity rates needed to obtain cleaner power, is looking to scale back the target, according to a draft plan being circulated by the utility.
An eleven-acre grove of oaks and sycamores in the city of Arcadia is the planned site to dump silt dredged from Santa Anita reservoir in the San Gabriel mountains. The LA Times reports, if an agreement with conservationists cannot be reached, a contractor in January will begin clearing the grove at the bottom of a wash abutting the handsome foothill subdivisions. “This is not something we take lightly,” said Bob Spencer, spokesman for the county Public Works Department. The county, he said, will sit down with residents and environmental groups to explore alternatives.
Federal wildlife biologists have confirmed sightings of two more Sierra Nevada red foxes that once were thought to be extinct. Scientists say DNA samples show enough diversity in the Sierra Nevada red foxes to suggest a “fairly strong population” of the animals may secretly be doing quite well in the rugged mountains about 90 miles south of Reno. The first confirmed sighting of the subspecies in two decades came in August. (Source: CBS News)
Supreme Court will hear climate change case.
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(Cancun, Mexico) Few things divide rich from poor like access to affordable energy. Today, it’s estimated that 1 out of 5 people have never flicked a light switch while nearly half the world cooks with solid fuel, such as wood or dung. On Wednesday, December 8, CFACT transported COP16 delegates, press and observers to the Mexican village of La Libertad, where people cook, heat and live without electricity. La Libertad presents a compelling picture of the plight of the energy poor.
“As COP16 considers the future of the world’s energy policy, it is vital that the voices of those suffering energy poverty are heard,” said CFACT President David Rothbard.
“Today’s visit was both sobering and inspiring,” Rothbard said. “We and our guests saw the harsh realities of what life is like without basic necessities, such as electricity, which we take for granted. Yet among the people of La Libertad we saw remarkable joyfulness and hope in the midst of poverty – especially among the many school children – this humbled us. CFACT believes these children deserve every opportunity that our children enjoy, including affordable, abundant electricity and all the benefits that brings. We must not set energy policy in a vacuum and create obstacles to the progress of countless communities like La Libertad.”
Access to affordable energy has led to a cleaner, greener environment and a rebound of natural habitats and wildlife throughout the developed world. Efficient agriculture and distribution, both of which require abundant energy, permit developed nations to devote less land to food production, while minimizing the need to forage for wood for cooking and heating.
Billions know a different reality. Energy poverty means a life without the nutrition, health care, refrigeration, jobs, information and education the rest of us take for granted. Without electricity, foraging for food and fuel leads to deforestation and pressures wildlife, while an estimated 1-2 million people die every year from respiratory diseases linked to the burning of wood, charcoal, dung and other solid fuels.
CFACT has worked for years with impoverished people around the world including Valle Verde and other villages in the Yucatan peninsula and witnessed the consequences of energy poverty first hand.
“Global warming campaigners are here in Cancun proposing treaty provisions that would frustrate recovery for developed economies while doing nothing to alter the climate,” said Craig Rucker, CFACT’s Executive Director. “It is vital we also turn our attention to those in the developing world whom too many are callously willing to trap in energy poverty permanently. Wealthy activists advocating policies that hold the poor down makes for a sorry spectacle indeed. Payoffs to developing countries to do without efficient energy will benefit elites in those countries while leaving the needy behind. This is a disaster for both the energy poor and the working people who pay the bills.”
International aid should focus on helping developing nations construct an efficient energy infrastructure including electricity generation and transmission. Rucker said, “For villages like La Libertad if there is energy, there is hope.”
As we know equivocally from the website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the cabaret in Cancún, Mexico (29 November to 10 December 2010),
encompasses the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA. To discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). In Copenhagen, at its fifth session, the CMP requested the AWG-KP to deliver the results of its work for adoption by CMP 6 in Cancun.
Christopher Monckton writes this about the work occurring at the “sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA. To discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP).”:
A multitude of long, inspissate, obfuscatory, obnubilating, obscurantist draft agreements are circulated, always a day or two late for delegates to find out what they have actually agreed to. The daily timetables for the various “working” sessions of the conference are never available until breakfast-time on the day, allowing no scope for planning the day. By these means, most delegates are kept permanently and completely in the dark.Here is a typical paragraph from one of these leaden documents:
“The SBSTA welcomed the report (FCCC/SBSTA/2010/INF.10) on the second workshop of the work programme on revising the “Guidelines for the preparation of national communications by Parties included in Annex I to the Convention Part I: UNFCCC reporting guidelines on annual inventories” (hereinafter referred to as the UNFCCC Annex I reporting guidelines), held in Bonn, Germany, from 3 to 4 November 2010, which was organized by the secretariat as requested by the SBSTA at its thirtieth session.”
Try to read several hundred pages of this stuff. It simply isn’t possible. And that, of course, is the idea. This is the Mushroom-Growers’ Management Method writ large: keep them in the dark and feed them plenty of sh*t.
He concludes that the purpose of such sessions is job creation–for bureaucrats, “No one has yet managed to discover just how much these hundreds of new supranational climate-change bureaucracies are costing us. That is an international state secret – until Wikileaks gets hold of the figures, of course.”
In the video below, delegates unwind after day of “long, inspissate, obfuscatory, obnubilating, obscurantist draft agreements”:
Back in April, in Happy 40th Earth Day Everyone! I noted the progress we had made worldwide. Specifically, I wrote that the percentage of the world population living on less than $1 a day (in PPP-adjusted 2000 dollars) had dropped [as in, didn’t go up] from 26.80% to 5.40%
One commenter, Hapa, did not see why we should acknowledge the drop:
“poverty”
$1.25/day was adopted by world bank as absolute extreme poverty indicator in 2008. obviously extreme poverty has gone down in real terms, although not real fast in terms of absolute population, and it’s good and i don’t debate it.but you don’t stop there. you use the wrong measure, the most extreme measure, and you shout victory for a relative improvement when the real number of people living in sick mud hasn’t gone down anywhere near how it could have.
some people, dishonest people, would blame the slow progress on environmentalist backstabbing, when it’s mostly caused by corruption in rich (for wage arbitrage) and poor (for politics) countries alike. what do YOU say.
I agreed that corruption (though not by richer countries) in the poor countries probably held them back. Now, with United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDG) deadline approaching, comes an analysis by two economists. They say,
[I]t is still widely believed that this growth is primarily driven by oil and natural resource prices, and that it is confined to well-connected elites in geographically advantaged countries. The popular image is that the poor majority in all African nations and many African nations as a whole are stuck in “poverty traps” created by unfortunate geography and calamitous history. For example, the prospects of meeting first Millennium Development Goal of “halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people earning an income less than $1 a day” seem to appear bleak for Africa; the UN writes in its latest Millennium Development Report that “little progress was made in reducing extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa” (UNDP 2008)…[Yet, their analysis shows, the] speed at which Africa has reduced poverty since 1995 puts it on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty relative to 1990 by 2015 on time or, at worst, a couple of years late.
Below is the analysis by Maxim Pinkovskiy Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Voxeu.org.
================================================================================================================================Continue reading “African poverty is falling…much faster than you think”
International and National:
Monsanto appeals judge’s order to uproot genetically modified sugar beets; Obama administration reverses offshore oil-exploration plans; 4200 sq miles reclosed in gulf of Mexico following find of oil tainted shrimp; Walking to stores ‘damages planet more than going by car’; Waste-pickers demand first dibs on rubbish; When life gives you hydrocarbons, make energy, Kyoto CO2 limits not to be extended this year.
California News:
HSU professor scales redwoods for clues to global warming; Kettleman City toxic waste facility fined for violations; Jerry Brown’s Hobson’s choice; new study criticizes high-speed rail effort.
Monsanto has appealed Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White, in San Francisco to rip out 256 acres of genetically modified sugar beets in Oregon and Arizona. The sugar beets had been be used for the 2012 crop seed production. The planting of sugar beet seedlings, or stecklings, that was authorized in September under permits issued by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
“With due respect, we believe the court’s action overlooked the factual evidence presented that no harm would be caused by these plantings, and is plainly inconsistent with the established law as recently announced by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said David Snively, general counsel for Monsanto. “We intend to seek an immediate stay of this ruling and appeal to the Court of Appeals.”
Roundup Ready sugar beets have been planted in North America for the past four years. After careful review, USDA issued permits for this additional seed production in accordance with the June, 2010 Supreme Court ruling that clearly authorizes such actions. The District Court’s decision would impose unnecessary costs on the seed producers when there has been no demonstrated harm to plaintiffs or risk to the environment associated with the seed production in the multiple years that the crop has been successfully planted and harvested.
More than 1 million acres of Roundup Ready sugar beet varieties have been planted in 10 U.S. states and in two Canadian provinces. In North America, roughly 95 percent of the 2010 sugar beet acreage was safely planted with Roundup Ready varieties. Sugar beet growers have confirmed that Roundup Ready sugar beets reduce impacts on the environment and make their operations more efficient and productive. Alternative technologies require more applications of pesticides, with greater impacts on the environment and lower productivity on farms.
Using herbicide resistant crops reduces tillage, which reduces soil erosion and nutrient erosion.
Citing the lessons of the BP oil spill, the Obama administration has decided not to allow oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of their next five-year drilling plan.
“We are adjusting our strategy in areas where there are no active leases,” the Washington Post quotes Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar as telling reporters in a phone call, adding that the administration has decided “not expand to new areas at this time” and instead “focus and expand our critical resources on areas that are currently active” when it comes to oil and gas drilling.
The Obama Administration had already walked back some of the GW Bush Administration’s oil and gas exploration plans, as explained in this backgrounder.
Citing an “abundance of caution,” federal officials shut down more than 4,213 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to royal red shrimpingafter a commercial shrimper, having hauled in his catch of the deep water shrimp, discovered tar balls in his net. Fishing for royal red shrimp is conducted by pulling fishing nets across the bottom of the ocean floor. The tar balls found in the catch may have been entrained in the net as it was dragged along the seafloor.
“We are taking this situation seriously. This fishery is the only trawl fishery that operates at the deep depths where the tar balls were found and we have not received reports of any other gear or fishery interactions with tar balls.” said Roy Crabtree, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. “Our primary concerns are public safety and ensuring the integrity of the Gulf’s seafood supply.
Other fishing at shallower depths in this area has not turned up any tar balls and is thus not impacted by this closure. The fisherman who reported this catch had trawled for brown shrimp in shallow waters in a different portion of the area to be closed earlier in the day without seeing tar balls.
What will Ed Begley Jr. make of this one? The man bites dog aspect of the story comes from the greater amount of fuel needed to grow our food today. Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, did the math and says “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere. If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.” Mr Goodall is no Chicago school economist; he is a Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon.
Yes! Finally, mathematical proof that being a couch potato is good for the environment.
We humans dump more than 2,100,000,000 metric tons of unwanted waste each year. Once dumped, the options of what to do with it are limited; it can be: burned, buried, or reclaimed through recycling or reuse.
Many throughout the world make their livelihoods reclaiming trash. Some trash-gleaners went to climate change summit in Cancún to lobby for priority over burning waste. John Vidal at Britain’s Guardian newspaper said trash-pickers from ten countries unfurled banners near the press area that read, ‘¡Paran la incineration!’ (Stop incineration!). Shouting (in Spanish) “‘If you mess with me, you mess with all of us.’ They accused incinerator companies of wasting energy, destroying millions of jobs around the world, increasing emissions, undermining recycling and causing the death and injury of workers.”
A pair of Ugandan men collect trash, including plastic bags, and turn it into fuel for those needing cheap gas. “Fred Kyagulanyi and James Sendikwanawa used to get up in the dark to dump bags of rubbish in Kampala‘s suburbs,” says the story in Britain’s Guardian. The two friends, have “honed a technique to produce what Kyagulanyi calls ‘non-fossil fuel,’ made from refuse such as plastic bottles, polythene bags and organic waste…’We use all types of waste from plants, plastic bottles, shoe soles and all different types of organic waste,’ Kyagulanyi says. ‘We use all that waste to make fuel that runs petrol engines,’ adds Sendikwanawa, who is known as ‘engineer’ in Ndegye Township due to his day job: fixing biogas digesters on pit latrines.”
Guardian, Ugandans turn Kampala’s uncollected garbage into versatile fuel
The United Nations envoy leading climate talks ruled out extending greenhouse gas limits in the Kyoto Protocol this year, leaving in place doubts about the future of a $2.7 billion a year part of the carbon market.
Professor of Forestry at Humboldt State University, Stephen Sillett wants to learn the affects of global warming on redwoods. And, he climbs the giant to find out. To begin getting answers on how redwoods react to changing conditions, scientists are carefully measuring and implanting hundreds of high-tech sensors among coast redwoods at 16 sites ranging from Jedediah Smith State Park northeast of Crescent City to the Sierras to Big Sur. The research project is funded by Save the Redwoods, a San Francisco-based conservation group founded in 1918, with support from Ken Fisher, a billionaire money manager and redwoods advocate who graduated from Humboldt State University.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency levied a $302,100 fine Tuesday against Chemical Waste Management Inc., whichoperates a toxic waste dump near a Central California farming community beset by unexplained birth defects, saying the company failed to properly manage carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. EPA tests at the landfill showed PCB concentrations of 440 parts per million, nearly nine times the level allowed under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.
“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”
Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.
“We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new — building parts of itself out of arsenic,” said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team’s lead scientist. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”
The team chose to explore Mono Lake because of its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic. This chemistry is in part a result of Mono Lake’s isolation from its sources of fresh water for 50 years.
The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth’s evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.
This week, as the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) was approving the first segment for construction near Fresno – and receiving more criticism from advocates of other regions – it was also being hammered by a “peer review group” of transportation experts.
The ad hoc group of experts, organized by the Legislature and headed by Will Kempton, the former state director of transportation, said in a report that the project needs “a thorough reassessment of a number of critical engineering, financial, economic and managerial issues.”
No wonder says Tim Cavanaugh at Reason.com, “The California High Speed Rail Authority is committed to breaking ground on a leg of the train that will serve passengers between the unincorporated town of Borden and the half-incarcerated town of Corcoran.
“Whether you call it the train from nowhere or the train to nowhere, nobody will be riding it even when it’s done. That’s not libertarian cant: The actual plan for the $4.15 billion leg is that upon completion it will sit idle until other sections of track are completed.”
It gets worse Cavanaugh points out, “Geography buffs are invited to try and make any sense out of the CHSRA’s proposed alignment. Not only does the authority plan to incur all the financial and public relations costs of driving a 150-mph train down the heavily populated and extremely wealthy San Francisco-to-San Jose corridor; but it then plans to sacrifice the only goal that could possibly make that trouble worthwhile:” a direct San Francisco to Los Angeles run.
Governor-elect Jerry Brown campaigned on new investments in solar and wind power. The Los Angeles Times story said Brown envisions, “building large-scale power plants that run on renewable resources and placing solar panels on parking-lot roofs, school buildings and along the banks of state highways. Although advocates of renewable energy tout the long-term savings of going green, billions of dollars would be required to reach the governor-elect’s green-energy goals.
“Nobody knows if the program would produce the ‘more than half a million green jobs’ Brown promised during the campaign, but many experts agree that it could lead to sharply higher utility rates.”
“Staff at the commission, which regulates Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and a handful of smaller utilities and sets rates for most Californians, estimates the cost of the plan at roughly $60 billion over the next decade. That is more than state taxpayers will spend on the University of California and California State University systems combined over the same period.”
Lands owned by state and federal government lands contribute little to California’s wood supply (see the graphic below). Private landowners (the green area) now carry nearly all burden for California’s timber harvesting and its wood demand.
(Source: California Forestry Association CA Timber Harvest Statistics 1978-2009.)
As previously noted on this site:
Our California forests have the capacity to produce all the wood we need and export some as well, yet we import 75% of our wood. You can bet the wood we import wasn’t harvested under restrictions as comprehensive as those within California’s Forest Practices Act. Did any of the harvests have a Timber Harvesting Plan that took water and wildlife into consideration?
Nullius in Verba 