The CCP's use of internal-directed propaganda sounds like any successful corporation in the US. (that is a good thing.) Most US companies constantly role out initiatives, revise their mission and value statements, conduct constant surveillance and try to inspire workers with shared goals from the C-suit down to the entry level worker. Any organization that can achieve alignment will have higher morale and be more productive that one that cannot achieve this. There are a number of sacrifices necessary to live in a democratic state, but I think this essay points at one of the most important: the lack of inspiration.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Saturday, January 02, 2021
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Responses to Covid19
https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
https://granolashotgun.com/2020/03/10/your-weltschmerz-gives-me-schadenfreude/
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/03/09/plot-economics/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-links-speculation-open-thread/
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/emergent-ventures-prize-winners-for-coronavirus-work.html
https://granolashotgun.com/2020/03/10/your-weltschmerz-gives-me-schadenfreude/
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/03/09/plot-economics/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-links-speculation-open-thread/
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/emergent-ventures-prize-winners-for-coronavirus-work.html
Thursday, February 11, 2016
The Problem with Ecosystem Services
There is a controversy in the conservation community about monetary valuations. A recent podcast on Freakanomics looked at rational altruism using a Consequentialist cost/benefit analysis.
The example was between treating HIV and malaria. A person infected with HIV might cost $100,000, while a person dying of malaria might only cost $1,000 to cure. Since we can help 100 people with malaria for every one with HIV, shouldn't we focus first on malaria, and only turn to HIV once we've helped everyone we can with malaria?
The logic is sound, but try telling that to a doctor working on HIV (let alone a patient with HIV). But how else could we decide?
The big idea seems to be to add up the (monetary) costs of charities and look at some simple metric (like lives saved) to pick and choose the best charities.(link to bjorn lomberg's thinktank) But do we only care about a single metric, a single value? And how compare education to disease, senile dementia to juvenile delinquency?
The same problems bedevil conservation...
I think the simple answer is that there are no simple answers, and every approach has a place. If some government minister will only listen to economic arguments, use them... but others will listen to other values, and those also matter. Whether people care about the scariest diseases (terminal diarhea) or the cuddliest endangered animals (link to cockapo), these interests are meaningful.
There is a long tradition in decision science and economics of critiquing irrational human preoccupation with infrequent, but salient/scary crises (link to risk diagram disasters axis) as opposed to rational actors (link to behavioral economics discussion, maybe wikipedia) dispassionately evaluating statistics. I try to avoid news sources because of our (link) well-demonstrated cognitive biases, but I don't think we can (or should) "fix" every element of human thinking.
Yes, every decision is a choice to focus on one priority over another, and yes it is not rational to make that decision without comparing and ranking all choices. But pure rationality doesn't take account of the full richness of human life. We care about many values, not just The Most Important. Is it absurd to try to save endangered species when many people don't have adequate nutrition? (link to weird conservation stories, nature conservancy).
The example was between treating HIV and malaria. A person infected with HIV might cost $100,000, while a person dying of malaria might only cost $1,000 to cure. Since we can help 100 people with malaria for every one with HIV, shouldn't we focus first on malaria, and only turn to HIV once we've helped everyone we can with malaria?
The logic is sound, but try telling that to a doctor working on HIV (let alone a patient with HIV). But how else could we decide?
The big idea seems to be to add up the (monetary) costs of charities and look at some simple metric (like lives saved) to pick and choose the best charities.(link to bjorn lomberg's thinktank) But do we only care about a single metric, a single value? And how compare education to disease, senile dementia to juvenile delinquency?
The same problems bedevil conservation...
I think the simple answer is that there are no simple answers, and every approach has a place. If some government minister will only listen to economic arguments, use them... but others will listen to other values, and those also matter. Whether people care about the scariest diseases (terminal diarhea) or the cuddliest endangered animals (link to cockapo), these interests are meaningful.
There is a long tradition in decision science and economics of critiquing irrational human preoccupation with infrequent, but salient/scary crises (link to risk diagram disasters axis) as opposed to rational actors (link to behavioral economics discussion, maybe wikipedia) dispassionately evaluating statistics. I try to avoid news sources because of our (link) well-demonstrated cognitive biases, but I don't think we can (or should) "fix" every element of human thinking.
Yes, every decision is a choice to focus on one priority over another, and yes it is not rational to make that decision without comparing and ranking all choices. But pure rationality doesn't take account of the full richness of human life. We care about many values, not just The Most Important. Is it absurd to try to save endangered species when many people don't have adequate nutrition? (link to weird conservation stories, nature conservancy).
Friday, January 01, 2016
Top Conservation of Stories of 2015
Looking back on the year, I feel that victories and gained ground made good News: US Congress acting(!) to ban microbeads, Supreme court upheld Clean Power Plan to reduce emissions of mercury by 1,000 million tonnes and thereby save more than 1,200 lives/year. CO2 reduction plans from the 2015 Paris COP 16. Administrative action to create a new office of ecosystem service financing (read: more support for restoration) and to standardize and promote mitigation banking.
However, there were some problems. The gargantuan natural gas leak in S. Ca. highlighted the fact that natural gas leaks way too much to be a clean bridge fuel. We either need to clean up natural gas or resolve to skip over it altogether.
However, there were some problems. The gargantuan natural gas leak in S. Ca. highlighted the fact that natural gas leaks way too much to be a clean bridge fuel. We either need to clean up natural gas or resolve to skip over it altogether.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Ulrich Beck on Risk Society, Individualization, and the Future of Jobs
Ulrich Beck quotes:
Risk Society
Modern society presupposes side effects that are spatially, temporally, and socially bounded. Without that condition, it can't function. Only against this background, when it was assumed that the side effects of modernization would always somehow be compensated for, could faith in progress become popular and widespread.
In is a general, institutional principle: in any case where a clear chain of causality cannot be demonstrated, there is therefore no risk. When the affected people take their case to the scientists, they find themselves talking to a group whose most identity-defining belief is that the canons of causal evidence and inference must always be strictly adhered to. When these criteria can't be satisfied, scientists can be depended upon to explain away any new risk as a mere fantasy without giving it any further consideration.
Individualization
Class analysis has always been in part an attempt to conjure up class solidarity, to postulate the collective subject as a historical subject, and then to build a political program around it. But as a utopia, and as a political program, class leads to a picture of society that is exactly the opposite of individualized society, and to politics that are exactly the opposite of political individualism. If you ask what are the new ideas and political strategies that class analysis can generate for the present situation, all you get is antiquated answers or total hopelessness.
Class concepts, no matter how subtle, simply can't capture the existing complexity of radically unequal living situations, either within nationstate societies or between them. What they do instead is deceive us with a false simplicity. The frame of reference has changed. Our model of class struggle and class society presumes the nationstate. The old marxist argument that the worker knows no nation has today been turned on its head. It is capital's activists, those who have made globalization their profession, who don't have any fatherland, while the workers and their unions call on "their" governments for aid... Marxists use class analysis in part as a means of finessing their way around the central problem facing us, the question of what we can find that can successfully serve as the basis of long-term, progressive solidarity.
Labor
Labor is a means by which the structure of power is internalized through everyday routines, each of which involves the positing of meaning and the submission to control. When every desire to build a life, an identity, an existence, is forced to be mediated through the labor market, what results is one of the subtlest and most refined systems ever invented for getting people to conform to the societal structure of power. People adapt themselves. They fit in. This self-activated conformity to rule constitutes the core of labor society. It transforms the control of rulers into self-control. Individuals integrate themselves into the system of labor, they makes themselves functional. The net of exploitation that binds them is experienced as self-exploitation, as drive, as something to be proud of.
The voluntarily unemployed say: Screw That. We are using unemployment compensation as a foundation to explore new forms of existence. We are the pioneers of a post-labor society. We are searching out activities that interest us, that we enjoy. We want a life where we an switch from one activity to another, because variety and change in themselves make all activities more enjoyable. We don't need the control claims of labor society to organize ourselves.
Paid labor has a monopoly on meaning (that is, for work to be considered significant, it seems it has to be paid for) and it has a monopoly on the means of existence. But labor society and its totalizing claims are really a very recent phenomenon. For most of history there was a wealth of alternatives. There still are. But these other activities are always practiced in tandem with labor and are often more necessary, though less visible. They form its necessary background, without which society could not exist. Most of these activities seem to share two characteristics. They have a strong emphasis on self-initiative; and they are activities in which the ends and products are transparent to the people doing it.
This necessarily raises a question. If this system is beginning to dissolve, and if, in many ways, we want it to dissolve, then how can we create an alternative milieu in which individuals who have been fragmented and atomized can be socialized? Where they can experience something like society, and internalize the values of society?
Risk Society
Modern society presupposes side effects that are spatially, temporally, and socially bounded. Without that condition, it can't function. Only against this background, when it was assumed that the side effects of modernization would always somehow be compensated for, could faith in progress become popular and widespread.
In is a general, institutional principle: in any case where a clear chain of causality cannot be demonstrated, there is therefore no risk. When the affected people take their case to the scientists, they find themselves talking to a group whose most identity-defining belief is that the canons of causal evidence and inference must always be strictly adhered to. When these criteria can't be satisfied, scientists can be depended upon to explain away any new risk as a mere fantasy without giving it any further consideration.
Individualization
Class analysis has always been in part an attempt to conjure up class solidarity, to postulate the collective subject as a historical subject, and then to build a political program around it. But as a utopia, and as a political program, class leads to a picture of society that is exactly the opposite of individualized society, and to politics that are exactly the opposite of political individualism. If you ask what are the new ideas and political strategies that class analysis can generate for the present situation, all you get is antiquated answers or total hopelessness.
Class concepts, no matter how subtle, simply can't capture the existing complexity of radically unequal living situations, either within nationstate societies or between them. What they do instead is deceive us with a false simplicity. The frame of reference has changed. Our model of class struggle and class society presumes the nationstate. The old marxist argument that the worker knows no nation has today been turned on its head. It is capital's activists, those who have made globalization their profession, who don't have any fatherland, while the workers and their unions call on "their" governments for aid... Marxists use class analysis in part as a means of finessing their way around the central problem facing us, the question of what we can find that can successfully serve as the basis of long-term, progressive solidarity.
Labor
Labor is a means by which the structure of power is internalized through everyday routines, each of which involves the positing of meaning and the submission to control. When every desire to build a life, an identity, an existence, is forced to be mediated through the labor market, what results is one of the subtlest and most refined systems ever invented for getting people to conform to the societal structure of power. People adapt themselves. They fit in. This self-activated conformity to rule constitutes the core of labor society. It transforms the control of rulers into self-control. Individuals integrate themselves into the system of labor, they makes themselves functional. The net of exploitation that binds them is experienced as self-exploitation, as drive, as something to be proud of.
The voluntarily unemployed say: Screw That. We are using unemployment compensation as a foundation to explore new forms of existence. We are the pioneers of a post-labor society. We are searching out activities that interest us, that we enjoy. We want a life where we an switch from one activity to another, because variety and change in themselves make all activities more enjoyable. We don't need the control claims of labor society to organize ourselves.
Paid labor has a monopoly on meaning (that is, for work to be considered significant, it seems it has to be paid for) and it has a monopoly on the means of existence. But labor society and its totalizing claims are really a very recent phenomenon. For most of history there was a wealth of alternatives. There still are. But these other activities are always practiced in tandem with labor and are often more necessary, though less visible. They form its necessary background, without which society could not exist. Most of these activities seem to share two characteristics. They have a strong emphasis on self-initiative; and they are activities in which the ends and products are transparent to the people doing it.
This necessarily raises a question. If this system is beginning to dissolve, and if, in many ways, we want it to dissolve, then how can we create an alternative milieu in which individuals who have been fragmented and atomized can be socialized? Where they can experience something like society, and internalize the values of society?
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Do We All Have an Equal Chance for Health?
Unnatural Causes, a PBS documentary, asks the pointed question "Is Inequality Making Us Sick" and answers strongly affirmative. According to information presented in the video series, poverty is correlated with disease, more so than any other socioeconomic variable. This correlation is more than the obvious fact that (in the US at least) you have to have money to see a doctor. The series argues convincingly that there may be a causative factor in poverty that predisposes people to illness, weakened immune systems, increased heart disease, and cancer: increased stress. While our society often thinks of 9-5 businessmen as stressed out, the cortisol levels of the on-call janitors, cooks, and welfare recipients tests out as significantly higher.
Cortisol has been shown by numerous scientific studies to lead to disease. However, the ability to manage and control our circumstances may be the actual barometer of cortisol levels in humans. If that is true, then it will take more than just increased wealth and decreased stress to bring healthier outcomes to the majority of Americans. They will have to have a feeling of control over their lives, too. Furthermore, correlation does not prove causation: poverty need not necessarily be stressful, so poverty need not necessarily lead to poor health. However, the sociologists interviewed in the series may not be concerned with such nit-picking as long as the overwhelming correlation holds.
Friday, November 26, 2010
"Brawling Over Mammography"
An interesting debate about the problem of false-positives in medical testing. Obviously, everyone wants to be tested "just in case", but a sensible policy would favor plausibility testing; everyone is not equally likely to have every disease. This article from the February 19, 2010 issue of Science, details the situation surrounding the release of a report by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that ran afoul of political accusations of "medical rationing". For women age 40-49 years with no other risk factors, the odds that a positive mammogram is actually due to cancer, rather than a false-positive test, is only about 2%. In other words, for every one breast cancer detection, 50 women are told that they have tested positive on their mammogram.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Intensive farming may ease climate change
"Land saved from cultivation offsets carbon emissions" Nature 465, 853 (2010)
This Nature News item reviews a paper published by Burney et al in PNAS entitled "Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification." The article shows that agriculture today is more land-efficient than in 1960. Yet it has been interpreted to say that modern intensive industrial agriculture is better than organic. The authors should write a statement clarifying their work but they may not. The reason? The study, as written, is trivial, and only with the added implication is it interesting. But the implication is not true.
In addition to commiting the unforgivable sin of reasoning based on historical counterfactuals, the article presents a myopic and simplistic either-or argument rather than a systematic analysis of factors contributing to agricultural land use. The fact that 50% of all food produced is wasted strikes me as one area where adding efficiency could reduce the overall footprint of agriculture. Certainly the choice of which land to pave over (usually the most fertile agricultural land) and which land to convert to agriculture (eg primeval Amazonian rainforest) has been especially perverse and unnecessary. Furthermore, our society's choice of food is also not a given "quality of life" as the article assumes; rather, it is a socially constructed and contigent demand on land use. If Americans consumed more primary production (plants) and less secondary production (animals) we could vastly decrease our agricultural footprint.
Other issues could be raised, but these points show some of the many analytical failings of this article. Despite, or perhaps because of its unsupported thesis, it has also been extensively commented upon; the authoritative review of responses in here.
This Nature News item reviews a paper published by Burney et al in PNAS entitled "Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification." The article shows that agriculture today is more land-efficient than in 1960. Yet it has been interpreted to say that modern intensive industrial agriculture is better than organic. The authors should write a statement clarifying their work but they may not. The reason? The study, as written, is trivial, and only with the added implication is it interesting. But the implication is not true.
In addition to commiting the unforgivable sin of reasoning based on historical counterfactuals, the article presents a myopic and simplistic either-or argument rather than a systematic analysis of factors contributing to agricultural land use. The fact that 50% of all food produced is wasted strikes me as one area where adding efficiency could reduce the overall footprint of agriculture. Certainly the choice of which land to pave over (usually the most fertile agricultural land) and which land to convert to agriculture (eg primeval Amazonian rainforest) has been especially perverse and unnecessary. Furthermore, our society's choice of food is also not a given "quality of life" as the article assumes; rather, it is a socially constructed and contigent demand on land use. If Americans consumed more primary production (plants) and less secondary production (animals) we could vastly decrease our agricultural footprint.
Other issues could be raised, but these points show some of the many analytical failings of this article. Despite, or perhaps because of its unsupported thesis, it has also been extensively commented upon; the authoritative review of responses in here.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Environmental Causes of Cancer
from: Environmental Health News and World Wire News
The President's Cancer Panel reported that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated" and strongly urged action to reduce people's widespread exposure to carcinogens.
The panel advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."
The 240-page report by the President's Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year.
Environmental exposures "do not represent a new front in the ongoing war on cancer. However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program," the panel said in its letter to Obama that precedes the report. "The American people --even before they are born-- are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures."
The panel, appointed by President Bush, told President Obama that the federal government is missing the chance to protect people from cancer by reducing their exposure to carcinogens. In its letter, the panel singled out bisphenol A, a chemical used in polycarbonate plastic and can linings that is unregulated in the United States, as well as radon, formaldehyde and benzene.
"The increasing number of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compels us to action, even though we may currently lack irrefutable proof of harm." - Dr. LaSalle D. Lefall, Jr., chair of the President's Cancer PanelEnvironmental health scientists were pleased by the findings, saying it embraces everything that they have been saying for years.
Richard Clapp, a professor of environmental health at Boston University's School of Public Health and one of the nation's leading cancer epidemiologists, called the report "a call to action."
Environmental and occupational exposures contribute to "tens of thousands of cancer cases a year," Clapp said. "If we had any calamity that produced tens of thousands of deaths or serious diseases, that’s a national emergency in my view.”
These include:
* Malignant melanoma of the skin in adults has increased by 168 percent due to the use of sunscreens in childhood that fail to block long wave ultraviolet light;
* Thyroid cancer has increased by 124 percent due in large part to ionizing radiation;
* Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has increased 76 percent due mostly to phenoxy herbicides; and phenylenediamine hair dyes;
* Testicular cancer has increased by 49 percent due to pesticides; hormonal ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products; and estrogen residues in meat;
* Childhood leukemia has increased by 55 percent due to ionizing radiation; domestic pesticides; nitrite preservatives in meats, particularly hot dogs; and parental exposures to occupational carcinogens;
* Ovary cancer (mortality) for women over the age of 65 has increased by 47 percent in African American women and 13 percent in Caucasian women due to genital use of talc powder;
* Breast cancer has increased 17 percent due to a wide range of factors. These include: birth control pills; estrogen replacement therapy; toxic hormonal ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products; diagnostic radiation; and routine premenopausal mammography, with a cumulative breast dose exposure of up to about five rads over ten years.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Consensus, Controversy, and Deviance
The national press, despite its power and occasional hobbyhorses, sees its role as “witnessing,” as serving up a “daily diary of debate,” as offering “a platform for independent inquiry and investigation” — but not as setting the terms of public discussion.
But, is it really possible for the media to be objective?
"A long-term focus on shifting the Overton window allows a think tank to follow its ideals and perform a genuinely positive public service, instead of being constrained to merely advocating those policies that are currently possible. When the window of political possibilities is moved along the political spectrum, the impossible becomes desirable and the simply desirable becomes imperative. This is the true influence of a think tank — shaping the political climate of future legislative and legal debates by researching, educating, involving and inspiring."
Ideas and topics can shift up and down the scale of acceptability:
But, is it really possible for the media to be objective?
"A long-term focus on shifting the Overton window allows a think tank to follow its ideals and perform a genuinely positive public service, instead of being constrained to merely advocating those policies that are currently possible. When the window of political possibilities is moved along the political spectrum, the impossible becomes desirable and the simply desirable becomes imperative. This is the true influence of a think tank — shaping the political climate of future legislative and legal debates by researching, educating, involving and inspiring."
Ideas and topics can shift up and down the scale of acceptability:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
Friday, April 16, 2010
Why aren’t more economists backing win-win climate solutions?
David Roberts at Grist.com points out that climate change legislation would reduce the federal deficit while boosting production. Yet mainstream economists, and hence politicians, are stuck in the old paradigm wherein the economy and the environment are inherently opposed: you can't have one without sacrificing the other. Isn't it time we realized how absurd that is?
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Radical, Idealist, or Realist?
The environmental movement is made up of radicals, idealists, and realists. Let's briefly examine each type:
Radicals seek fundamental change of the system. They believe environmental goals cannot be realized without deep socio-economic-political changes, and thus tend to be anti-corporate. Winning individual short-term battles is less important to them than changing the world in the long term. Many feel that the ends justify the means. The best radicals suppress emotion to implement their strategy.
Idealists are usually altruistic. They view the world from a very moral and/or ethical perspective, with individual responsibility and example paramount. They are emotionally involved and believe the ends never justify the means.
Realists view the world as a poker game--the cards are dealt and you do the best you can with your hand. Their actions focus on the short term. Although they believe the ends can often justify the means, they prefer to work within the system. They can live with trade-offs and do not seek radical change, if for no other reason than they see it as unobtainable.
Some examples may help to clarify these categories. Earth First! was founded by radicals and is now dominated by idealists. The Sierra Club has a membership of idealists and a staff of realists. Greenpeace is idealistic with some radical tendencies but not to the extent of the Sea Shepherd Society.
To stretch the “boat-rocking” analogy, realists want to help steer the boat, however small the change of course; idealists would rather the boat not move at all if it doesn't turn far enough in the right direction; and radicals would just as soon capsize the boat."
From Andy Kerr
See also a more in-depth analysis of activist types.
Radicals seek fundamental change of the system. They believe environmental goals cannot be realized without deep socio-economic-political changes, and thus tend to be anti-corporate. Winning individual short-term battles is less important to them than changing the world in the long term. Many feel that the ends justify the means. The best radicals suppress emotion to implement their strategy.
Idealists are usually altruistic. They view the world from a very moral and/or ethical perspective, with individual responsibility and example paramount. They are emotionally involved and believe the ends never justify the means.
Realists view the world as a poker game--the cards are dealt and you do the best you can with your hand. Their actions focus on the short term. Although they believe the ends can often justify the means, they prefer to work within the system. They can live with trade-offs and do not seek radical change, if for no other reason than they see it as unobtainable.
Some examples may help to clarify these categories. Earth First! was founded by radicals and is now dominated by idealists. The Sierra Club has a membership of idealists and a staff of realists. Greenpeace is idealistic with some radical tendencies but not to the extent of the Sea Shepherd Society.
To stretch the “boat-rocking” analogy, realists want to help steer the boat, however small the change of course; idealists would rather the boat not move at all if it doesn't turn far enough in the right direction; and radicals would just as soon capsize the boat."
From Andy Kerr
See also a more in-depth analysis of activist types.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Alien Invaders in Tucson, Arizona
Don't Panic, but the mayor and other elected officials are unanimous: this is an urgent threat to our home and way of life: if something isn't done soon, our fair city may be "unrecoverable".
high resolution
high resolution
Friday, June 13, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Trusted Conservtion Organizations
NRDC
EarthJustice
Community Watershed Alliance
Sagebrush Sea Campaign
National Public Lands Grazing Campaign
Nature Conservancy
Wildlands CPR
Local Southwest:
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Quivira Coalition
Arizona Conservation Science (Nature Conservancy)
Sonoran Institute
Sky Islands Alliance
Arizona Wilderness Coalition
EarthJustice
Community Watershed Alliance
Sagebrush Sea Campaign
National Public Lands Grazing Campaign
Nature Conservancy
Wildlands CPR
Local Southwest:
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Quivira Coalition
Arizona Conservation Science (Nature Conservancy)
Sonoran Institute
Sky Islands Alliance
Arizona Wilderness Coalition
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Rio Puerco: the Poster Child of Eroded Watersheds
[NOTICE - This Road Not Maintained by New Mexico State Highway Department]* Frederick Jacson Turner, father of modern American history, wrote persuasively that the frontier (where less than 3 people lived per square mile) defined American life, but that it closed in the 1890's as the country filled up with emigrants and settlers. But the land is emptying out again, as chronicled in Richard Manning's Grassland. The old world ecology and thinking brought by the Anglo settlers is failing in the drylands of the American West and the people are leaving, the roads abandoned. Despite massive government subsidies, the remaining ranchers and farmers have less and less to stand on every year. Populations in most rural counties peaked in the early 1900's and have declined ever since. The exodus that started with the dust bowl has continued unabated, as has the soil erosion and ecological damage.
[Could this be restored to its original ecology of cottonwood/willow bosque and gallery forest?]Now, The Good News: "This is a search for the unknown...Now the sun is here, and he simply watches the land year by year to see what happens, waiting for the next clues as to what the nature of this place might be...It's like a ratchet in that we take the first turn, then back off and let nature take a turn, as we listen and watch as closely as possible, knowing that we are not so much rebuilding nature in these places as nature is rebuilding us. With each turn of this ratchet, nature reveals a bit more of itself to our science."
[SUN]"In some real ways, the effort to re-find the landscape, which is the same as the effort to re-attach our lives to the land, is a religious quest, and it makes sense to consider it that way.
[Erosion (so bad it took 2 photos to fit): The bridge on the left used to span the river chanel. This is why the road is closed. Nature fights back. ]"...it is difficult to imagine what we have learned. Annual topsoil loss to erosion here in some years totals one hundred tons per acre, or an inch of topsoil removed every 1.6 years...the topsoil the grass had built was thought to be so deep as to be inexhaustible..." p.165 from Grassland, Richard Manning.
[Dead willow, killed incidentally with herbicide "friendly fire"]Mutilated and mutated willows, the taste of heavy metals on the tongue: this place has been sprayed. "Many in federal agencies ignore the connection between livestock grazing and weed invasions. Since they deny the role of livestock grazing, they seldom reduce the number of livestock allowed to graze public lands, even in areas where weeds are a major problem. Agency personnel prefer using herbicides and biocontrol agents to eradicate the weeds rather than trying to prevent the invasion of weeds in the first place." From "Comrades in Harm: Livestock and Exotic Weeds in the Intermountain West", Joy Belsky and Jonathan L Gelbard. in Welfare Ranching, Earth Island Press
[Rio Puerco Watershed: this area could be a State]John Wesley Powell recommended that states and counties' boundaries in the American West be demarcated based on watersheds, since water is the natural form that power takes on the land...today, as witnesses of the modern West's "Water Wars" can attest, more and more political boundaries are being created or determined by water rights.
The Rio Puerco is oft mentioned as an example par excelance of some of the worst erosion in the United States. Once the "Breadbasket of New Mexico", the Rio Puerco watershed is now given as a common example of the degradation that can befall such formerly productive areas through mismanagement and ecological ignorance. Enhanced rates of erosion on the "dirty river" are the cause and effect of downcutting in the soft alluvium that formerly supported such bountiful harvests. Unstoppable headcuts and devegetated banks, combined with a climate shift that creates more "flashy" events (which, of course, are also caused by devegated uplands that lack competence and capacity to absorb rainfall, leading to sheetflow and immediate runoff that feed back to cause even more erosion...
[Landslide]The Rio Puerco Management Committee lists several causes of erosion, such as (over) grazing and the placement of the new highway. As you can see from this photo essay, the war between the road and the river is not over yet. However, much of the battle has already been lost, and the country abandoned without roads. The downstream is reachable only by unimproved dirt roads and crosses some of the remotest parts of the state.
[Fenceline showing effects of grazing, on the right, where thickets of sagebrush dominate]
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Jobsite Santa Fe River at San Ysidro Crossing
Aqua Fria park is on a well-chosen site on a hill at the edge of town, the (dry) Santa Fe river flows along one edge. The park is also dry in both the literal and metaphorical sense. There is not a lot of creative energy here, besides the wind. It could be beautiful, but it is deserted, devoid of people and trees.
Could a cottonwood bosque bloom here? Our site is bordered on the north (upstream) by San Ysidro road and on the south by Caja del Oro Grant road. Between these two overpasses the Santa Fe is "natural".
In this case "natural" means "hammered shitless". You know when you've been beat so hard you can't even shit afterward? That's shitless. The "river" has been farmed and irrigated away, grazed to stubble and weeds, mined for gravel and concrete powder, littered and poisoned and polluted with septic runoff. The "river" is now dry, as many in the Southwest are.
So they called in the stream team, in collaboration again with Bill Zedyk and Steve Carson.
Zedyk and Carson had installed post or rock vanes and we worked to further stabilized these erosion control structures with plantings.
The riverbed/floodplane is too wide and continues to erode its banks, so most of the work is focused on narrowing and stabilizing, as opposed to inducing meanders.
Thanks to all of the volunteers. See you at the Puerco!
Could a cottonwood bosque bloom here? Our site is bordered on the north (upstream) by San Ysidro road and on the south by Caja del Oro Grant road. Between these two overpasses the Santa Fe is "natural".
In this case "natural" means "hammered shitless". You know when you've been beat so hard you can't even shit afterward? That's shitless. The "river" has been farmed and irrigated away, grazed to stubble and weeds, mined for gravel and concrete powder, littered and poisoned and polluted with septic runoff. The "river" is now dry, as many in the Southwest are.
So they called in the stream team, in collaboration again with Bill Zedyk and Steve Carson.
Zedyk and Carson had installed post or rock vanes and we worked to further stabilized these erosion control structures with plantings.
The riverbed/floodplane is too wide and continues to erode its banks, so most of the work is focused on narrowing and stabilizing, as opposed to inducing meanders.
Thanks to all of the volunteers. See you at the Puerco!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
My Life in the Newspapers
High Country News, a biweekly newspaper "for people who care about the west" seems to be covering my life. No less than four front-page articles over the past five months have reported on major activities in my life in the Southwest.
I'd like to comment on some of these articles, grouping them into three major subjects: the "toilet-to-tap" furor in Tucson, fighting invasive species, and tracking Jaguars.
I'd like to comment on some of these articles, grouping them into three major subjects: the "toilet-to-tap" furor in Tucson, fighting invasive species, and tracking Jaguars.
Friday, February 15, 2008
I. Toilet to Tap
comment on Facing the yuck factor. How has the west embraced water recycling? Very (gulp) cautiously. Peter Friederici. HCN p.10 September 17, 2007
Americans are different from most people on the planet. We have indoor plumbing and can turn on fresh, drinkable water any time we want. But the combination of the two may be our undoing. We don't pay a quarter of our salaries and spend hours waiting in line to get potable water, and maybe because of that we have abused our privilege. Now that the rivers are drying up in the West, cities are looking to new sources of fresh water. But where?
Ironically, "San Diego has both a water-supply and a water-disposal problem." Why not use the water in need of disposal as a new supply? Maybe because the slogan is "Toilet to tap"?? Sustainability advocates in Tucson (myself included), recently tried to pass a ballot initiative (Prop.200) with just such a slogan. Our reasoning: if Tucson doesn't want "toilet-to-tap" we had better start limiting growth now, before that's our only option. The opponents of the measure (ie proponents of growth such as developers) argued that Tucson would never need to divert wastewater into drinking water. But, just weeks after Prop.200 went down in flames (after mafia-style threats from the developers), amid reports of more drought, the Tucson papers began suggesting that perhaps Tucson really does need to start looking into the idea, after all.
Of course, all water is recycled eventually. Tucson is currently "recharging" its aquifer with wastewater. As the wastewater seeps through hundreds of feet of sand the hydrologists claim it will be cleaned enough to draw back up a well for drinking water. Las Vegas uses an even more direct filtration approach: "Los Vegas alone discharges roughly 60 billion gallons of wastewater a year some miles upstream of its own water intake -- a feat of urban engineering that would seem to prove that most of what happens in Vegas really does stay there."
All of which just points up the rationale San Diego used in its (failed) attempt to utilize wastewater: "We can have a lot more monitoring and control if we oversee our own reclamation than if we're relying on a river with a billion gallons of recharge [in the Colorado River] from other sources every day." Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper. Just as no place is truly a wilderness "untrammeled by man" anymore, so too no source of "clear mountain springwater" is truly without some contamination, e.g. some "clear mountain streams" high in Colorado have enough man-made chemical estrogen mimics to feminize fish.
Friederici, a journalism professor, has written a great article that touches on some very deep issues in the interplay of science, technology, and society; E.g. the trust ordinary citizens place in their own biased perceptions versus the scientific analysis of professionals. The article suggests that that "perceptual shortfalls" in ordinary citizens might in fact be a reasonable, precautionary reaction to the belated discovery of the harms of rGBH in milk and endocrine disruptors in plastics. Without the ability to "see" contaminants that affect them ordinary people may have to rely on the history (story, narrative) of their water to determine quality rather than the quantitation (appeal to authority) of scientists.
-
A simple solution the article overlooked: *abandoning our water-treatment infrastructure* and giving in to the bottled water craze. This water crisis is caused by the average American household sending 150 gallons of fresh, drinkable water down the drain every day. If we could use untreated or sub-potable treated water for most domestic needs and bottled water for drinking and eating we would eliminate the source of the dilemma: overconsumption. However, if, in the end, the punishment for being spoiled Americans is drinking our own toilet water, perhaps there is some justice in this crazy universe after all.
Americans are different from most people on the planet. We have indoor plumbing and can turn on fresh, drinkable water any time we want. But the combination of the two may be our undoing. We don't pay a quarter of our salaries and spend hours waiting in line to get potable water, and maybe because of that we have abused our privilege. Now that the rivers are drying up in the West, cities are looking to new sources of fresh water. But where?
Ironically, "San Diego has both a water-supply and a water-disposal problem." Why not use the water in need of disposal as a new supply? Maybe because the slogan is "Toilet to tap"?? Sustainability advocates in Tucson (myself included), recently tried to pass a ballot initiative (Prop.200) with just such a slogan. Our reasoning: if Tucson doesn't want "toilet-to-tap" we had better start limiting growth now, before that's our only option. The opponents of the measure (ie proponents of growth such as developers) argued that Tucson would never need to divert wastewater into drinking water. But, just weeks after Prop.200 went down in flames (after mafia-style threats from the developers), amid reports of more drought, the Tucson papers began suggesting that perhaps Tucson really does need to start looking into the idea, after all.
Of course, all water is recycled eventually. Tucson is currently "recharging" its aquifer with wastewater. As the wastewater seeps through hundreds of feet of sand the hydrologists claim it will be cleaned enough to draw back up a well for drinking water. Las Vegas uses an even more direct filtration approach: "Los Vegas alone discharges roughly 60 billion gallons of wastewater a year some miles upstream of its own water intake -- a feat of urban engineering that would seem to prove that most of what happens in Vegas really does stay there."
All of which just points up the rationale San Diego used in its (failed) attempt to utilize wastewater: "We can have a lot more monitoring and control if we oversee our own reclamation than if we're relying on a river with a billion gallons of recharge [in the Colorado River] from other sources every day." Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper. Just as no place is truly a wilderness "untrammeled by man" anymore, so too no source of "clear mountain springwater" is truly without some contamination, e.g. some "clear mountain streams" high in Colorado have enough man-made chemical estrogen mimics to feminize fish.
Friederici, a journalism professor, has written a great article that touches on some very deep issues in the interplay of science, technology, and society; E.g. the trust ordinary citizens place in their own biased perceptions versus the scientific analysis of professionals. The article suggests that that "perceptual shortfalls" in ordinary citizens might in fact be a reasonable, precautionary reaction to the belated discovery of the harms of rGBH in milk and endocrine disruptors in plastics. Without the ability to "see" contaminants that affect them ordinary people may have to rely on the history (story, narrative) of their water to determine quality rather than the quantitation (appeal to authority) of scientists.
-
A simple solution the article overlooked: *abandoning our water-treatment infrastructure* and giving in to the bottled water craze. This water crisis is caused by the average American household sending 150 gallons of fresh, drinkable water down the drain every day. If we could use untreated or sub-potable treated water for most domestic needs and bottled water for drinking and eating we would eliminate the source of the dilemma: overconsumption. However, if, in the end, the punishment for being spoiled Americans is drinking our own toilet water, perhaps there is some justice in this crazy universe after all.
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