16.10.03

Goats versus fire

Goats Helping Cut Wildfire Risk While forest officials looked for a way to stave off devastating wildfires this spring, hundreds of goats on the Navajo Reservation weren't getting enough to eat. Thus a symbiotic relationship was born. The Prescott National Forest has been using about 650 goats to eat chaparral and other brush as part of a six-month pilot project to provide a fire buffer around forest area homes.

This reminds me of a theory proposed by Tim Flannery about Australian fire. He claimed that Aboriginal burning began in earnest after the extinction of the marsupial megafauna. Fire was essentially a replacement for the megafauna, consuming vegetation and excreting nourishing ash. I disagree with Flannery's theory about the extinction of the megafauna -- he supports the blitzkreig overhunting theory, which I don't buy because (among other things) I believe the Aborigines arrived thousands of years earlier than Flannery thinks they did, thus weakening the ability to swiftly hunt the megafauna out before the Aborigines learned to live appropriately with their new environment. So I'm suspicious of his other megafauna-related theories, though I don't know that extinction due to hunting is necessary to make the "replacement by fire" theory work. There does seem to have been a change in the interaction of fire with the landscape, leading to greater alterations by human burning, around the time that the last megafauna went extinct, so it's plausible that there's a link between faunal change and fire behavior. On the other hand, the megafauna were hardly the only significant herbivores, so it's an open question how much impact their extinction had (especially since other animals could move into their niche as easily as fire could).
Stentor Danielson, 22:50,

Comic and commentary from this week

This is sort of a second stab at the theme from the "God on the Dole" comic I did a couple weeks ago. I think this one turned out better, although I'm still not sure how best to make someone look scuffy and dirty (which I would have liked to do to the 3rd Century guy).

I wrote my commentary at the last minute to fill space, but it was something I'd had the idea for for a while : "Disillusioned With Howard Dean". It's got a hastily done cartoon as well. It took me a while to get the weasels to look like weasels.
Stentor Danielson, 21:05,

More environmental good news

House Republicans are drafting a proposal that would end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, while giving states greater say on whether they want energy development in their coastal waters, congressional sources say. ... The Bush administration has said it has no intention of tampering with the OCS moratoria that were first imposed by Congress on a yearly basis in the 1980s, and in 1990 were extended for 10 years by the first President Bush. In 1998, President Clinton extended them again to 2012.

Good onya, George (for now). I suspect that this may be a question of soliarity with Republican governors who oppose oil drilling. Bush's new buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger is opposed to oil drilling in California, and I recall hearing (I can't find a link) that the First Brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, feels similarly. Both those states depend on coastal tourism, which could be threatened by oil drilling. This is in contrast to a state like Texas (which is not affected by the moratorium) or Alaska, which already have well-developed and important oil industries.

On the other hand, the revision makes provision for some states to retain moratoria if they so choose. I wouldn't be surprised if George ultimately takes this federalist sort of view, figuring that Jeb and Arnold don't need the national government's help to shore up their resistance to oil drilling, while letting other states have their oil operations.
Stentor Danielson, 14:00,

15.10.03

Giving Bush the benefit of the doubt

I found this interesting article on George Bush's environmental record through the President's soulless campaign blog. The argument is that Democratic criticisms are way out of proportion, and that in fact Bush has been pretty good, environment-wise. The article points out some important things about the long-term trend of improving environmental quality in this country, as well as reminding us of a few unequivocally good environmental moves Bush has made, such as improved diesel and farm vehicle emissions standards. But Easterbrook (the author) goes too far in trying to give some of Bush's bad policies the benefit of the doubt. On the Healthy Forests Initiative, he says:

But hasn't the president imposed an evil new forest policy designed to encourage logging? First, it's not so clear that logging is a bad idea; it's one of the few endlessly sustainable industries. Also, Bush's new forest policy leaves most important decisions to local managers from the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Though they may abuse their new discretion, it's also possible they will use it wisely. For that reason the effect of Bush's forest policy is hard to project — but regardless, something had to be done to reduce the wildfires plaguing the West.

Logging as it's currently practiced is not necessarily endlessly sustainable -- it's possible to do long-term damage to an ecosystem through over-logging. Further, I'm always immediately suspicious of any "but we have to do something justification for any policy. Even if we set aside the non-fire-related impacts of Healthy Forests, it remains quite possible that Healthy Forests will be worse than doing nothing. Roads and logged areas are among the most susceptible areas to damaging fire. It's like shooting a person in a coma because we had to do something to try to revive them. I'm not willing to give Bush an "A" for effort.

Isn't the president engaged in a sinister plan to allow drilling on public lands? New White House rules do make it easier to drill for oil and natural gas on public lands. But you can't demand no oil drilling and also demand no mileage restrictions on SUVs. Until American voters are willing to make a serious commitment to energy conservation — and there is no sign of this — it's hypocritical to insist that oil and gas must be produced out of sight, out of mind.

What environmentalists has Easterbrook been talking to who don't want to demand reductions in fossil fuel use? Indeed, it seems that a tightening of the gas supply due to putting some oil fields off limits would be a nice incentive for conservation. American voters also want low taxes and high levels of government services, and have to be forced into making a tough choice by fiscal realities. The gas market works the same way. Then again, the amount of oil that the US can produce domestically is tiny. Perhaps Americans agree that that small increase in oil isn't worth the environmental destruction.
Stentor Danielson, 23:10,

The church's moral leadership on gay rights

There's a bit of irony in the arguments against the Episcopal Church's acceptance of gays. On the one hand, the pro-gay stance is condemned as a capitulation to popular mores, sacrificing what's right for what's culturally convenient in an effort to reach out to religiously apathetic Americans. On the other hand, we're told that accepting homosexuality will hurt recruitment of Christians in conservative African countries, where people will reject the "gay religion" in favor of homophobic Islam. Apparently making doctrine by popular vote is only acceptable if the voters are from the Third World.

The critics are right that, while the church's style and language should be sensitive to cultural change in order to speak more effectively to people, its teachings should not be based on what worshippers want to hear. The church has a long tradition of providing moral leadership and telling people the tough truths they need, but don't want, to hear (as well as a shameful and perhaps longer tradition of doing the opposite). What they're wrong about is the idea that gay rights is a capitulation to popular culture. While I have high hopes that the mood of the country is changing, at present America is split evenly on the question of accepting gay relationships. Telling people that homosexuality should be treated no differently than heterosexuality is going to be a hard battle, especially among more religious people. Right or wrong (and since I'm not an Episcopalian, I won't venture a view about whether the Biblical justification for homosexuality is consistent with that church's exegetical principles), the liberal theologians who were recently victorious are attempting to lead their flock in a new direction and challenge the depth of their faith versus the depth of their commitment to a homophobic culture.

Opponents of Christian gay rights like to point out that the church thrives when it gives people clear philosophical principles and takes tough stands about right and wrong. The apparent capitulationism and wishy-washiness of some current Christian gay rights advocacy is an issue of style, not content (and it may even point out the difficulty of taking a pro-gay stance, since a weak style is often used to placate powerful enemies). As far as I'm concerned, a commitment to sexual equality is a clear principle that takes a tough stand about what's right. The conservatives just don't want their cultural comfort zone challenged.
Stentor Danielson, 20:02,

13.10.03

Columbus Day

Matthew Yglesias gets snippy about President Bush's Columbus Day announcement. Based on Bush's remarks, Columbus day is only minimally about a Genoese captain who thought he could sail to the East Indies but wound up in the Caribbean. Instead, it's Italian-American* Pride Day with a less-PC-corny name. I agree that the change sounds dumb, but I think that all in all it's a better direction for the holiday to go in. Columbus isn't a man I much fancy celebrating, given his poor treatment of the people he mistakenly called "Indians," as well as the additional abusers who followed him to this side of the Atlantic. It could perhaps go the way of St. Patrick's Day. In its American manifestation, St. Patrick's Day has barely anything to do with St. Patrick, and has instead become an Irish Pride day. This then raises the problem of having the government make one nationality's day a federal holiday, while the others aren't. The solution, I think, is to drop Columbus Day from the law (though the President may continue to issue statements wishing everyone a happy one, as he does on St. Patrick's Day).

Here's an interesting twist to the ethnic holidays thing: Based on a search of whitehouse.gov, St. Patrick's Day does not appear to have any Congressional force behind it in the way that Columbus Day does. But Leif Erikson day -- which celebrates Scandinavian heritage -- does. But we still don't get a day off for it, which makes the official stamp close to negligible in importance. Perhaps Leif Erikson Day is an explorer's day that people concerned about Native American dispossession could feel more comfortable about. After all, the "Skraelings" managed to drive the Vikings out of America, and they didn't come back until after Columbus.

* This confused me a bit at first, because I tend to think of Columbus as a Spaniard, since his voyage was financed by Spain. It took me a while to remember that he was originally from a city that would much later become part of Italy.
Stentor Danielson, 18:09,