OPINION/COMMENTARY

Dense Forests Are A Fire Waiting to Happen

California’s forests are thicker than they were 100 years ago, putting wildlife populations at risk and increasing the chance of catastrophic fires, says author George E. Gruell.

Among the risks, say Gruell:

---Thick trees block out sunlight and inhibit the growth of non-tree herbs and shrubs, which wildlife populations depend on for food; so highly dense forests means that smaller plants are less available.
---Intense wildfires created by overgrown forests lead to devastating impacts on the environment -- increased erosion, air pollution, damage to watersheds, and the destruction of protected wildlife habitat.

The Forest Service expects to reduce the percentage of forest lost to fires to 30 percent over the next 50 years. Part of the plan includes harvesting less than one percent of “medium” trees (those with trunks between 20 and 30 inches in diameter), but environmental activists oppose cutting even a small number of trees.

But thinning forests may be the only solution to preserving them. It could also save lives, enhance critical wildlife habitat and improve other resource values, says Gruell.

Source: George E. Gruell, “Other View: The Real Picture of Sierra Nevada Forests,” The Sacramento Bee, July 2, 2004

For text: http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/forum/story/9858779p-10781071c.html

The Economic Hardship Act

Not that there isn't credible evidence for warming of about 1 deg. F over the last 100 years or so. What isn't so certain is how much of this warming is man-made, or how much there will be in the future, and most of all, whether any significant amount of future warming can be forestalled without driving mankind back to the stone age. McCain admitted that the Climate Stewardship Act is just a very small first step. Much more will be needed in the way of GHG reductions in the future in order to have much effect at all on warming. This is true, no matter what you believe that future warming to be.

What worries me is that the Act represents a government mandated brake on economic growth. This feels to me like one of those slippery slopes you keep hearing about. Affordable energy is the lifeblood of economies, and we are now going to limit it by punishing the use of energy. The United States is already very efficient at energy use per unit of GDP, and that efficiency is getting better every year. Free markets naturally lead to increased efficiency because it reduces cost and improves productivity. But through the Climate Stewardship Act, our government will require sharply higher efficiencies to be realized, or else we'll just have to stop producing....

Admission Fees: An Efficient Way to Fund Nation's Parks

In 1996, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of fees by public land managers in select areas to provide supplemental funding -- a pilot program that is set to expire in October 2004. According to J. Bishop Grewell, a researcher with the Property & Environment Research Center (PERC), the new fees effectively raise money to maintain the nation’s parks without hurting low-income earners:

---In 2002, the program allowed the National Park Service to complete 136 deferred maintenance projects.
---That same year, admission fees funded the repairs of 47 mile of trails in Washington State’s Olympic National Forest, after maintenance of the trails had been deferred for eight years.
---Recreational fees have helped reduce vandalism, litter, and crime on public lands.

Fees also have the potential to reduce congestion problems by offering lower rates on weekdays and during off-peak recreational periods. Nevertheless, some have criticized the new fees on the grounds of fairness, justice and morality. Grewell dismisses such concerns:

---By far the greatest hurdle to low-income visitors is the cost associated with traveling to a site and buying the goods necessary for recreation, not small admission fees.
---If concerns persist, recreation vouchers could be offered to the poor as well as providing a limited number of free admission tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis.
---Worries about commercialization through park fees ignore the fact that public lands already are commercial -- one noteworthy example is Yellowstone National Park.
---Fees increase accountability of land managers to park visitors, while reliance on federal funding tends to promote more “congressionally identified” initiatives rather than projects recommended by on-the-ground park personnel.

Source: J. Bishop Grewell, “Recreation Fees -- Four Philosophical Questions,” Property & Environment Research Center, PERC Policy Series No. PS-31, June 2004.

What Ernst Mayr Teaches Us

Ernst Mayr, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, at Harvard just turned 100 years old. He reaches this honorable age as one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. With his uncommonly lucid descriptive power, Mayr also writes graciously of modern biological sciences for the educated layperson.

Mayr clears away the mysticism protecting a speculation in biology, called Gaia, so that it can be cast as a testable, falsifiable scientific hypothesis.

The Gaia hypothesis, laid out in the mid-1960s primarily by scientist James Lovelock, tries to explain the observed, complex interaction between life and its environment in a global context....

Cleaner Air Brings Dirtier Tricks

How strange! The cleaner our air gets, the sicker we become. At this rate, when the air becomes absolutely pure over L.A. we'll all keel right over. Or so you might believe from a downloadable new report of a group called Clear the Air, "Dirty Power, Dirty Air."

The prettily-decorated document attempts to persuade readers to support one of two Democratic bills introduced in the Senate over a Republican one, although all three would "tighten the lid" on allowable air emissions from power plants. Not incidentally it chooses the legislation that is by far the most expensive. By its own reckoning, in the year 2020 it will cost $34 billion versus $9.3 for the alternative Democratic bill and $6.2 for what it labels the "Bush bill."....

PETA Briefs

Americans accustomed to hearing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) describe vegetarianism as a moral imperative are sometimes shocked to learn about the group's less-than-moral "black eyes" -- advocating arson and funding domestic terrorists, for example. Now add an Education Manager (Jacqueline Domac, the employee tasked with outreach to children) who engaged in a long-term tryst with a 16-year-old high-school actor while she was his tutor....