every week...

over the past few days there have been four articles in our local newspaper about the rising sea level. the article made one argument that i found compelling. it doesn't really matter why the seas are rising or why the climate is changing. what's most important to our (humanity--the Earth will be fine. freshwater marshes will become saltwater marshes but we'll starve) short term survival is that it IS changing. there aren't any policy changes we can make in the near term that will affect climate in the next 50 years or so (at least, i wouldn't think, i'm no expert), so why are we in such a bind over green taxes and fuel efficiency and the like? right now, it just doesn't matter. at the very least, the changes underfoot now are inevitable. we've missed the tipping point in terms of talking about reversing climate change or the rising seas. those things are happening and will run their full course--we should be talking now about how we're going to adapt to those changes.

the two biggest obstacles to our finding balance with the environment is population growth/movement and the exportation of pollution. i've talked about population as a social and economic issue before in an earlier post, but (as with all human activity) there is an environmental component as well. in countries that progressed through demographic transition, the populations are relatively stable. the birth rate and the death rate (barring significant social upheaval) are equal. now, take a country like mexico that seems to be stuck in a cycle of poverty and skyrocketing birth rates. not only does the mass exodus of mexican citizens to the north ameliorate a lot of social/economic problems, but also, mexico (or any 3rd world country with population mobility) as an entity will never have to face issues of inherent carrying capacity and population stability.

our half-assed policies with regard to pollution control will simply turn pollution into a commodity. any regional policy that attempts to control pollution will simply move that polluting process to a less regulated area. i mean...that seems pretty straightforward, right? how is it possible to have a pollution control policy that isn't world-wide? how can you turn down kyoto in favor of regional pollution credits and lukewarm tax incentives?...

i've been "working" on this entry for awhile now. i think that i'll go ahead and publish it--it's never going to be perfect. *chuckle*

...to be continued.

SUVs and the like...

i had THE most surreal...today, i saw a Lincoln Navigator (or one of them...they all look alike nowadays) with a bob marley sticker on the back with a quote from "redemption song." i almost fell out of the car. i mean...isn't that just the most incongruous...? i just thought that was weird, i thought i was back on the campus of warren wilson for a bit there. ooooo, burn!

anyway, that's not what i was thinking about. i was thinking earlier today that perhaps all of the folks who wanted to make the SUV the whipping boy of the "environmentalist" movement might have made a mistake. yes, i would agree that they are wasteful and generally unsightly. you sacrifice efficiency for safety (in some regards), but i've always thought that a little common sense and a german car were just as safe as tank-like SUV. *shrug* so, yeah. the SUV's were a logical choice to be the poster boy for all that is un-green. but, automobiles aren't the problem. they never really have been.

now, don't get me wrong. i'm an environmentalist. i recycle as naturally as breathing. i buy most everything i can from second-hand shops. i'm a bona fide, degree-holder from warren wilson. but, SUVs aren't the problem.

first, let me say that if you are an environmentalist they way i am an environmentalist then you know that the real problem is entire notion of free market capitalism and private property as first espoused by john locke in the second treatise of government. he postulated there that property is the combination of man's reason/work and nature. he goes further to argue that nature that is not combined with man's reason/work is utterly wasted. no major thinker in the western political discourse has placed a great deal of value on pristine nature. well, ok. that might be an overstatement of the truth, but you get what i mean. i only say this to point out that TRUE environmentalism is the last viable RADICAL critique of free market capitalism. radical in the sense that environmentalism is antithetical to free market capitalism. everything else has failed for one reason or another. at least, failed in the attempt capture the imagination of the western world and incorporate the civic traditions of the western world into it's machinations. we can list some of the more spectacular failures in world history - mercantilism, colonialism, national socialism, communism, fascism...the -ism's just keep coming and democracy keeps KNOCKING 'em out of the park. i tell ya what folks, you just can't beat democracy. which, ultimately, is fine by me. i understand that there are some things that democracy just won't be able to do. we will never see a time when we can, by logical argument, extend the notion of natural rights to the ecosystem in the same manner that they have been "extended" to animals. you are never going to convince the average blog reader that an ecosystem has the same natural rights you and i do - the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ok, i'm fine with that...i wouldn't want to write any of the essays to make that argument anyway. but, we can do some things to make the free market more tenable to the non-human tenants of this planet.

having said that, within the framework of the free market, the real problem is scale. well, a combination of scale and lifestyle (fueled by economies). here, scale = population. i would go so far as to say that population is truly the source of our environmental degradation.

it's getting late, so i'll write more on this topic later as thoughts develop...i apologize for any grammatical mistakes. i'm publishing WITHOUT PROOFREADING!!!! aiieeee!