OPINION/COMMENTARY

Damn Those Humans!

Don't you just hate it when people live where they want to live? I mean, who do they think they are? The Washington Post, in its Wednesday morning story on the wildfires sweeping Southern California, barely veils its wonderment, if not contempt, for people who persist in making free choices about the location of their homes. The writers, Karl Vick and Sonya Geis, can't seem to resist making the unfolding disaster a socio-environmental "teaching moment." The epic blazes, we learn in the article's lead, are "stoked" not merely by wind, heat and dryness, but by "the human impulse to live just a little farther out." Yes, it seems that people are still choosing to leave the more densely populated city cores to find cheaper housing and, dare we say it, more room out on - as the Post calls it, "the suburban frontier." Then, to tie it all together, the Post article quotes someone named Ray Rasker of Headwaters Economics, who is involved with "a study showing that 50 to 95 percent of (U.S.) Forest Service firefighting costs went to protect private property" (emphasis added). Private property! Who knew? Doesn't that just encourage those damn humans? Think of it. They dream of living somewhere "farther out" and somehow they presume in their dreams that some reasonable effort may be made to protect their private property. Why, if this keeps up, people who live on the edge of Washington, D.C.'s sprawling Rock Creek Park will expect firemen to try and save their apartments and houses if a fire breaks out in those lovely woods....

A Better Way to Go Green

Next month, the world will get a chance to enjoy some brazen hypocrisy. Former Vice President Al Gore will speak in Oslo as he accepts his Nobel Peace Prize. No doubt he’ll offer plenty of hot rhetoric about the dangers of global warming, and warn listeners they need to act -- right now -- to save our fragile planet. But how will Gore get to Norway? Maybe he’ll take a wind-powered Clipper ship and then climb aboard a dogsled to go the rest of the way. But if that’s the case, he’d better leave immediately. No, it’s far more likely he’ll fly in, bringing a sizable entourage of family, friends, security officers and so forth. Gore, you see, leaves a large “carbon footprint” wherever he goes, even when he stays home. According to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, his Nashville house uses more electricity in a month than the average American home uses in a year. Still, Gore would be doing all of us a favor if, instead of jetting off to Europe, he’d stay home and read Bjorn Lomborg’s new book “Cool It,” the skeptical environmentalist’s guide to global warming. Lomborg systematically dismantles Gore’s argument that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the biggest threat facing mankind, and that humanity must focus all our attention on fighting it....

Congress Continues to Feed Overstuffed Park Service

On Wednesday, members of the House Natural Resources Committee will vote on the "America's Historical and Natural Legacy Study Act" (H.R. 3998), a massive bill that would direct the National Park Service to "study" the prospects of adding multiple new properties to its already expansive fiefdom. Included in the bill is the "Mississippi River Study Act" which would set the wheels in motion for creating a new national trail along the entire Mississippi River. Last year, I had the honor of testifying before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands on behalf of The National Center for Public Policy Research. Below is an excerpt: The Mississippi River Trail Study Act… carries significant, negative property rights implications for landowners in the path and vicinity of the proposed trail - whether the trail be the river itself or an adjacent, land-based trail. Its timing is bad because it would drain resources from an agency that is already stretched well beyond its capacity. It also comes at a time when Americans across the nation are demanding that government use of eminent domain power be strictly curtailed. A national scenic or historic trail the entire length of the Mississippi River would bring a new threat of eminent domain to property owners in as many as ten states. In addition to laying the groundwork for a national trail along the Mississippi River, H.R. 3998 would direct the Park Service to consider expanding two existing national historic sites, one existing national trail, and a huge national recreation area dubbed "the Rim of the Valley Corridor" in California. Also included in the bill are four, yet-to-be-classified, new Park Service units and another national trail that would wind through Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California....

Green Around the Gills

"We have turned out the lights in the studio," NBC's Bob Costas told viewers of Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game, "to kick off a week that will include more than 150 hours of programming designed to raise awareness about environmental issues." Discerning viewers with eyes keen enough to pierce the sanctimonious glare of Costas' candlelit silhouette may have noticed that the stadium's klieg lights still shone brightly. On a typical game day, a large football stadium burns about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The cars driving to the game spew about 200 metric tons of CO2 (and that assumes nobody's driving SUVs or RVs, which is like assuming tailgaters are eating only sushi). There's also the electricity used to broadcast the game and to watch it. But thank goodness Costas turned off the studio lights for a minute or two. NBC's "Green Week" continued apace (well after this writing). Morbidly obese contestants on "The Biggest Loser" lugged piles of recyclable cans up ramps and into enormous collection bins. Of course, the cans were delivered to the stunt by diesel truck. So a lot of energy - and sweat! - that could have been used toward fermenting homebrew tofu, or whatever energy is supposed to be used for, was wasted on viewer schadenfreude. The winners of the challenge each received a hybrid SUV. Alas, one of the winners didn't own a car to begin with, so the net result was one more car on the road and a little more CO2 in the air. On "Days of Our Lives," a fictional couple had a fictionally "green" wedding....