Author Archives: Mark

About Mark

Stroke in 10/2021 and still figuring it out.

Have you noticed that it is almost always hazy?

I was at a star gazing party in southern Utah recently and met a businessman my age as he showed me around his telescope setup.  As we got to know each other it turned out this guy, who seemed otherwise a lot like me, was a climate change denier.  He told me his reasons and I listened.  He was pretty sure of himself.  The only notion that seemed to set him back was the observation that the air around Capitol Reef National Park, air that used to be so clear there were view point signs touting it (150 miles visibility used to be), is now almost always hazy.  He had noticed that too.  Here, William Anderson, chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes in southeastern Nevada, talks about the external cost of air pollution and benefits of clean air, that is the externalities that don’t show up on a balance sheet or income statement but are real none the less, in this concise entry from Writers on the Range. . .more>>

Value of wilderness debate: Wilderness wins 9:1

I found this debate in The Economist to be a terrific, brainy way to get a review of how we got to where we are today on our sense of the value of wilderness.  The best points I thought were made by “featured guest” contributors that centered on the relatively poor results environmentalists achieve when they take a no compromise position.    Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus make the lucid point that,

Ignoring those questions (of how to manage development), and engaging in romantic visions that such a world can be sustained through small-is-beautiful projects, imperils the effort to produce a beautiful and healthy planet more than any corporation or government.

It is surprising to me that readers of  The Economist would be so profoundly in favor of the notion that:

This house believes that untouched wildernesses have a value beyond the resources and other utility that can be extracted from them.

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Rob Bishop is flunking economics.

Utah Representative Rob Bishop has brought out Southern Utah University professor Ryan Yonk, to give testimony to the Public Lands Subcommittee about his recently issued paper, a paper without peer review, asserting wilderness and protective designations for federal lands have a negative economic impact on local communities.  No wonder right wing climate change deniers like Bishop feel like academia can be bought.  Just as when Bishop towed Escalante Mayor Jerry Taylor before Congress to testify against national monuments and Taylor received serious backlash from his own chamber of commerce when he got back to Escalante, Yonk is getting backlash.  Headwater Economics and  Republican Jim DiPeso of thedailygreen.com and the policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection reply.  . . . more>>

Mike Noel embarasses himself all the way to the U.K.

Speaking of cronyism, I can’t resist posting this one. Rick Perry’s campaign is caught censoring scientific climate in this report from The Guardian in Britain. And, as they note,

In Utah, meanwhile, Mike Noel, a Republican member of the Utah state legislature called on the state university to sack a physicist who had criticised climate science doubters.  The university rejected Noel’s demand, but the physicist, Robert Davies said such actions had had a chilling effect on the state of climate science. “We do have very accomplished scientists in this state who are quite fearful of retribution from lawmakers, and who consequently refuse to speak up on this very important topic. And the loser is the public,” Davies said in an email.  “By employing these intimidation tactics, these policymakers are, in fact, successful in censoring the message coming from the very institutions whose expertise we need.”. . . more>>

The Third Industrial Revolution

The ever increasing extent of industrial/political cronyism in the U.S. economy is a serious concern.  Seeking Alpha is a website from my old investment world which looks for trends and places to earn increased returns.  Hazel Henderson reviews Jeremy Rifkin’s new book there, The Third Industrial Revolution.  In an alarming statement Henderson says, “My colleague Dr. James Fletcher on the Technology Assessment Advisory Board to the US Congress told us at a meeting in the 1970s that if the US had subsidized solar-based energies to the same extent it subsidized oil, coal, gas and nuclear energy, that our country would already be run on solar and renewables. Fletcher went on to become Administrator of NASA, the US space program. . . . However, as I found in the 1980s, the barriers were the incumbent fossil and nuclear industries whose influence over Congress kept their huge subsidies and forced renewables to climb a steeply-tilted playing field.”  Rifkin has solutions.  Let me know if you read the book.  . . . more>>

The Wisdom of Wilderness

According to The Christian Science Monitor in a reader recommendation, psychiatrist, contemplative theologian, counselor, teacher, writer, and Shalem Institute fellow Gerald G. May wrote his last book, The Wisdom of Wilderness, as he was dying. We journey with him into the wilderness, which he says is “not just a place; [but] also a state of being.” He guides us to what is natural and wild in our own lives – and to the healing grace of nature. Sounds good, I haven’t read it yet, if anyone does, please let us know your thoughts.

More bear stories . . .terror and triumph.

This according to The Spokesman-Review: Grizzlies are high profile this year. A lingering winter and late berry crop kept bears in proximity to humans longer than normal, perhaps contributing to a stream of headlines about grizzlies killing people and people killing grizzlies. Meanwhile, a young lady on a big horse charged out of the pack of grizzly stories near Glacier National Park. In a cloud of dust, the 25-year-old wrangler likely saved a boy’s life while demonstrating that skill, quick-thinking and guts sometimes are the best weapons against a head-on charging grizzly.  . . . more>>

It is not Disneyland out there, but how about a warning?

This one seems like a tricky call to me.  The natural outdoors is not Disneyland and we all need to look out for ourselves.  But in this case would it have been so hard for the Division of Wildlife Resources or the Forest Service to put up signs that warned campers of the threat?  Some judges say yes, some say no.  Who is right?  . . . more>>

Naomi Klein on standing up to cronyism.

Yesterday on AlterNet, Naomi Klein was interviewed by Rebecca Tarbotton about taking on powerful, connected special-interests.  She recommends to environmentalists:

Expanding the movement beyond traditional environmentalists, and tapping into the broader public outrage at corporate greed and economic recklessness. If you are targeting Bank of America because it’s lending money to coal companies, you need to be in coalition with all the other groups out there that are pissed at Bank of America for other reasons, first and foremost home foreclosures. The same logic that has trashed the economy is trashing the planet and we need to make those connections incessantly . . .

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More Republican assault on our wild land heritage.

The right-wing notion that the environment is the enemy has come around blindingly fast.  The notion doesn’t make enough sense to stand on its own.  Rather, it is being PR packaged by big industry special interest in a form of pernicious cronyism.  Here, the Grand Canyon Trust reports that a group of  Republican lawmakers, including Senator McCain, is introducing legislation to stop the Obama administration from blocking new mining claims around the Grand Canyon.  There won’t be many Americans who think that the Grand Canyon is a good place to mine.  What are these cowboys thinking? . . . more>>