I’m pointing at this for two reasons:
- It’s cool.
- I’ve not got that blogging feeling.
Category Archives: Environment
The Great Lakes Water Wars
Water, fresh water, is, possibly, the most precious resource on earth. In some parts of the world the controversies and battles are obvious. In those areas with a seemingly endless supply, there are underlying tensions that most of the world doesn’t recognize.
Peter Annin’s The Great Lakes Water Wars
Once Annin brings us back to the Great Lakes, he starts with the Chicago Diversion. Back before modern waste treatment was available, the Chicago government saw fit to change the course of the Chicago River. The other states surrounding Lake Michigan were livid. Wisconsin brought this in front of the Supreme Court which handed down one of the most complicated mathematical decisions ever in U.S. history.
Chicago keeps adding new suburbs to this diversion due to their being grandfathered in under all the newer agreements. This is despite the fact that their water system is in much needed disrepair, and, unmentioned in the book, the diversion has become a major ecological threat. (The book does not go into anything other than diversions.)
The Chicago diversion caused a great deal of panic throughout the basin. Soon the states and provinces surrounding the Great Lakes pressured their federal governments to create the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty to help prevent major diversions. (Of course, during WWII there was the diversion into the Great Lakes at Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada.)
This set up a somewhat informal system where each state’s governor had to approve any given diversion – excepting the existing Chicago diversion. If it was under a certain amount, the Canadian provinces did not have to be involved, however, if a certain threshold was not met. If that threshold were met, both federal governments would have to approve the diversion as well.
Annin takes us through a variety of approved and denied diversions and addresses the weaknesses that they highlighted in the system. The basin governments set out to correct this with The Great Lakes Charter of 1986 – which went through many revisions and challenges until the adoption of the Compact.
Annin also goes through the very interesting use of a western water law expert by those involved in creating the Compact. There was a very real disagreement from those steeped in the traditions of eastern water law about his conclusions. Eastern water law holds water as a commons, while western law holds it as a “first come, first serve” resource. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but the best explanation I can contain in a book review.
The Great Lakes Water Wars
Congress Critter, Thy Name is Idjit (A Diatribe On the CPSIA)
Update: All the noise made by everyone has caused this idjit law to be delayed for a year. Hopefully, someone with sense will fix it. Honestly, I’m not holding my breath.
Now, there are many ways in which Congress Critters are idjits. (And, yes, I know the proper spelling is idiot, but idjit has such a nice sound.) Today, I want to talk to you about the wonders of good intentions gone bad – very bad.
No one will argue that product safety is a waste of time – especially when it comes to children’s products. But, and here is the kicker, Congress has made it impossible for libraries to provide books, small crafters to sell handmade toys – even if the individual materials are “safe”, and makes it impossible to allow the Salvation Army and others to receive children’s items that have not been tested.
We are in a depression. (I don’t really hold with anyone who calls this a “recession.” It has all the markers of a depression on a world-wide scale. So what does Congress do? They make sure those who can’t afford new stuff have to go into debt to get baby and children’s goods and clothes.
Now, one thing I have learned by working in the real world is that any law Congress passes is going to benefit large companies and their interests – especially if they are donors to the critter’s campaign fund. Let’s look at who really benefits from the law.
If a company can mass produce something, they can benefit from economies of scale and will already have a percentage of loss assigned to their production lots. Sending a single item of each size or type to a testing facility will not impact their bottom line in any real way.
If a company is one which has handmade items, the idea of testing each finished product is ridiculous since testing destroys the item. Looks like an attack on handmade producers to me. And, no, it is not conspiracy theory, it is a time honored tradition in predatory business practices.
The most insidious effects are to libraries. If children cannot develop a love of reading at a young age, they will never develop such a love if parents can’t afford to buy books. This will further stratify our society.
Speaking of stratification. Let’s make the poor who can barely survive financially even more dependent on rent-to-own and high interest debt by not allowing them to buy clothes, baby equipment, and toys from secondhand and charity stores. This looks like a war on the poor to me.
If you want to read the mess that is this law, you can find the text of the CPSIA here.
I would like to thank The Common Room for inspiring this post.
Nancy Pelosi is a Hypocritical Bitch
Yep. I said it. I mean it. Of course, since she is a politician, that is a given.
After pushing the Democrats to pass the banker bailout giving Hank Paulson a blank check to hand out to his buddies on Wall Street – she is demanding a detailed plan from the Autos?!?!
My response? The auto companies should hand her and her fellow hypocritical colleagues Paulson’s plan for the banks.
Oh, that’s right, they didn’t have a plan.
I am sick and tired of hearing Coasters – both East and West Coasters spout lies and myths about the auto companies. The Detroit Free Press wrote a piece explaining the myths being spouted. I suggest you click over there and read it if you believe the US auto companies make junk. They don’t.
No, Americans are busy blaming the US auto companies for their focus on larger, gas consuming vehicles when what did the American public buy? Trucks and SUVs. So it isn’t just Pelosi and her congressional colleagues that are hypocrites. It is every single one of you who bought a truck, SUV, Lincoln, Cadillac, etc. and now are bitching about how the US companies didn’t build more gas efficient vehicles.
Oh, wait, you say that those vehicles are safer because they are bigger? Well, only the people in those vehicles, everyone around them was less safe. Most of the people driving SUVs don’t realize they are driving a truck and it is not a car.
You also had to have your gadgets including video players, onboard navigation, and a variety of unnecessary amenities before considering gas mileage.
Next, I hear the moaning about the death of the electric car. The electric car is not green. It costs more in pollution and energy to run an electric car than it does a gas guzzler. Don’t believe me? Go take a look at DOE data on where the energy from the grid comes from!
**Graph from http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
As you can plainly see from the DOE’s own data, coal, the most polluting energy source is the biggest source of energy in the USA. But, all those electric car worshippers seem to think they are green. They aren’t. Technically, even diesel fuel is cleaner.
But, of course, it is the auto companies who are the big bad villains when they want to do the right thing and not renege on their pension obligations.
Much of the opposition I have read online has talked about how the unions demanded good wages and a safety net. The hatefulness of these posts cannot be underestimated. The guys who founded unions in coal mining, the railroads, and the auto companies did not get there by being nice guys. Just because you have been too cowardly to stand up to the greedy oligarchs that have taken over every other industry to ensure slave wages for the masses and massive rewards for the leeches at the top you shouldn’t blame those who stood up for themselves – you should, instead, be inspired.
The focus on the auto execs showing up in private jets is another red herring. Here is the thing, I honestly don’t think any of them are very good executives. They have their issues. But, by far, their usage of executive perks pales in comparison to anything done by any executive in New York or California. If you want to talk about hedonism talk about banking – and I’m not talking of the local bank manager!
The autos have continuously cut and cut in every possible area.
It takes 4 years – minimum – to develop a new vehicle and bring it to the line. That’s from design to testing to tooling to getting it on the lot.
They have outsourced much of their engineering – not just support staff.
Manufacturing a car is a big, complex process, especially with regulatory obligations.
Japanese, Korean, and German car companies are underwritten by their own governments through a variety of public policies ranging from publicly funded medical care to low interest – and even no interest – business giveaways. Let’s not forget requirements that a percentage of any company manufacturing in those countries must be owned by their own nationals. For that matter, look at what percentage of Daimler is owned by the German government.
No, the autos are victims of the bankers, so-called free trade, and government meddling.
So, yep, Nancy Pelosi and Congress, the American Public, and all the interests bitching about the autos are just hypocritical little bitches.
City Slickers Keeping Chickens… Support Local Small Farmers Instead
Recently, there has been a rash of posts about the wonders of keeping backyard chickens, on Blogher (http://www.blogher.com/chicken-egg-and-children, for example). I had to send this link to my dad.
Why did I have to send the link to my dad? Well, because, as a child he was the one in charge of the “free range” kitchen coop in both childhood homes – Kentucky and Ohio. Due to this, he will not eat chicken – or even turkey – to this day. (Interestingly, my husband’s grandfather is the same way for the similar reasons.)
As someone who grew up spending time in both the suburbia and rural areas, I actually once – and only once – helped clean out a chicken coop at my uncle’s small farm. There is nothing more disgusting than chickenshit. Have you ever been covered in it? And the cold water of the hose is not quite getting it all off? Well, welcome to the real fowl world!
Trust me, 6 to 12 chickens will create more manure than you will ever use in the average suburban garden. Doesn’t matter if it is a vegetable or flower garden. Chickens don’t stop creating manure just because you have lost the need for that much fertilizer.
Of course, there is little mention of the fact that even chickens – sans rooster – are somewhat loud at times. Many domesticated chicken breeds are, well, stupid. There are smart chickens, but they don’t tend to be the best layers. From what I can tell, most of the folks wanting to have chickens are wanting them for egg laying. I wonder how many realize that a hen’s egg laying career is limited and would usually be slaughtered at the end of it for a soup stock chicken? (A hen that old is too tough to eat as a roaster or fryer!)
What if you have a rooster too? Please don’t be stupid enough to keep more than one rooster if you have only one coop! I actually met a woman whose husband – a New York City native – wanted chickens when he got a job at an agricultural university. He bought a rooster and hen of 20 varieties of chickens. Roosters fight – and kill – one another in competition for those hens. Roosters are always loud because they are announcing their primacy in keeping their hens from other roosters. Even the small ones like Bantams like to put up a good front in a fight – and that means they will fight loudly at any time. Your neighbors will not like you much.
Normally, farmers kill young roosters as eating chickens. The rooster’s crown is considered a delicacy by many cuisines, including both Appalachian and Chinese. If you have eggs hatched, and a rooster or three appear, are you prepared to slaughter them? You have to catch it, break it’s neck, slice it open and let the blood drain as you pluck the feathers. I will never forget the first time I saw my uncle kill and pluck a chicken. Of course, in some states, you are not allowed to prep your own chickens, you have to get a licensed butcher to do it. (Usually the same states that require deer to be dressed by a licensed butcher.) Rather expensive, yes?
Did I mention chickens eat everything and anything? Including small snakes? Those Ripley’s Believe It Or Not stories about finding copperheads in the stomachs of chickens are true – it happened to my paternal grandmother. If you can butcher your own chicken, are you prepared to deal with that?
Now, I am not immune to the desire to keep small game. I have food allergies, so have been tempted to keep my own fowl – with the double benefit of the pest control. In my case, it was from reading an article in Mother Earth News – a great resource for simple living. I wanted Guinea Hens. They are much more effective at staying away from predators than chickens are. My husband believed the idea of keeping guinea hens was bad. Of course, I had been teasing him with keeping long-haired goats or alpacas – but that’s because he is a true city boy and it is just fun to get him riled up.
I came to my senses. Though, I admit, I am spoiled by the great Farmer’s Market Oakland County has, as well as all the small farms to buy from. There are only few tropical fruits that I can’t get within a 2 hour drive of my home – and most of those someone is selling either at the local Co-Op or the Farmer’s Market. And, well, every Michigan grocery store takes pride in announcing that they have local produce, or even chicken, beef, etc. Even in my childhood I can remember those. It is the legacy of a really great governor, Milliken, who knew farming was the backbone of survival, but I digress.
I spoke of predators. Most suburban dogs and cats don’t know to not go after chickens. “Free Range” chickens are particularly susceptible. Of course, most dog owners are a bit guilty of the “get the squirrel” game – which most suburban dogs are going to believe gives them permission to go after all small game animals – rabbit, cat (depending on cat, this may include huge veterinary bill), skunk (tomato juice is your friend), opossum, or, even, your precious chickens. Many wouldn’t have the sense to kill the chicken, but the noise will disturb the entire neighborhood.
Then there are the outdoor and feral cats that abound in all neighborhoods – rural, city, suburban. These cats, as a British study found, are very effective in hunting almost anything. Are you prepared to lose a chicken or two to the local cat population?
Oh yeah, did I mention that rats love chicken coops as homes? Rats, after all, will kill and eat chickens. So, if you want to keep chickens, and you don’t want to use D-Con, I suggest you get a big cat – think Maine Coon – and a terrier who can take down a rat. Rats are just one disease vector you are introducing when you introduce a chicken coop.
Chickens are also a very effective disease vector. Almost all of the major flu epidemics started in birds – particularly chickens – which were kept in close proximity to populations. As in backyard chicken keeping in cities. The limited land does not act as a good buffer to prevent the spread of the disease from chicken to songbird to chicken to person. Pneumonias are also known to spread in this manner. So many of the people who want to keep chickens are saying they want to prevent over medication of these animals. Well, sometimes, the medication is the only thing between us and a pandemic. I, for one, do not want to see a return of the 1918 flu epidemic – which, interestingly, is when a number of the restrictive livestock keeping laws went into place.
Now, I believe there are legitimate reasons to keep chickens – even as pets – but from a lot of the things I have read, I don’t really think the majority of people who are romanticizing farming (or even gardening) realize how back breaking even a small flock of 4 to 6 hens would be to manage. Farm work is a lot harder than most of us city slickers would believe – there are no vacations when you keep livestock.
- That coop is not going to clean itself.
- Chickens need food and clean water (water changed more than once a day).
- Rats and other pests must be kept out.
- Predators (other than rats) must be kept away.
- Veterinary bills from the visiting vet – a coop keeper is not able to take his or her flock to the vet. Did I mention that very few vets are farm animal vets anymore – that’s a post for another day?
- Manure – no one can use that much manure.
- The majority of chickens are, well, stupid – not all – but the majority.
- If you have a rooster, and the eggs hatch, what are you gonna do about the young roosters?
- Costs of butchering your young, excess chickens – or your old non-layers.
- Costs of making sure your flock does not become a disease vector – and losing that flock if it is deemed infected.
Yep, I have barely scratched the surface, and people accuse me of romanticizing farming. Personally, I think those who want to keep chickens would be better served by finding local farms that keep chickens and patronizing them. And, maybe encouraging other farms to diversify by telling their congress critters to stop subsidizing corn, soy, etc. and start subsidizing the biodiverse farms. Real farmers – even serious hobby farmers – are much better suited to keeping chickens as layers than suburbanites.
The Auto Industry Matters More Than The Banks
The rest of the country is very ignorant of how important the automotive industry is to the very base of every other business in the USA. For every 1 job at an actual auto company, there are 6 jobs that support that job – from secondary vendors to waitresses to construction workers. No industry has invested more in the USA than the auto industry. None.
Silly Valley (aka Silicon Valley), can thank the advances in industrial robots that occurred in the 1970s for much of the basic research that has enabled portable computing and networking. Oh yes, as bizarre as it sounds, both Ford and GM have what are known as SciLabs that do some of the most cutting edge research anywhere. Much of that has been incorporated in other industries – from pharmaceuticals to computers to manufacturing. Lasers? Much of the most advanced work was to do tooling and die in the auto plants!
It is very easy for the rest of America to blame the auto industry for pollution, high prices, etc. without wondering why this is – or even the American public’s culpability in this. For every safety feature demanded, you get to lose fuel efficiency and affordability. Yep, you can’t have both in the environment that has been created by the regulations and laws imposed upon the auto industry.
Despite all the belly aching of the American public, they still buy foreign cars. They have bought foreign cars until there are, in reality, no American-made cars. There are American assembled cars. But, the parts are made from all over the world – some in the USA, most elsewhere.
What about the unwillingness of Americans to pay for health care as a society? The automotive companies pay for more people’s health care than any group other than Medicare (government). Yet, you expect they should be able to sell at the same price as the Japanese and Germans who have no need to cover this for the vast majority of their employees? This is the single biggest expense the auto companies have! Prices would be reduced on most of their product if this expense was not there.
I am highly annoyed with Congress and the American public. They are balking at helping GM in acquiring the dying Chrysler Automotive Group. Chrysler is not going to survive without a real auto manager taking over. Cerberus Group showed complete incompetence in their first 6 months when they endangered the supply line for all 3 manufacturers (and some domestic Japanese manufacturing) by withholding from a major Tier 1 supplier without warning the others they were going to do that. To cut costs, the supply line in manufacturing is razor thin. The auto company execs, unlike Wall Street execs, are not outrageously paid. (They don’t have that kind of money!)
The auto industry, unlike the banking industry, has a history of actually paying back loans from the government. Wow!
By the way, the only parts of GM and Ford that are in trouble are the North American companies. The international divisions – which are kept separate – are in very good health and are actually hiring in some sectors. So, the only parts that are hurting are the ones in the strangle hold of ridiculous levels of obligation and regulation. There are always scuttlings of how Ford or GM is going under. Maybe the North American divisions, but there will be a Ford and a GM, but it may no longer be anywhere in the USA. Hell, it would behoove them to move to Windsor, Ontario, Canada with the way the US government and people have been treating them since Reagan!
By destroying the auto industry through systemic bad regulation and an ever-increasingly onerous health care burden, you have destroyed the manufacturing base that is what makes real wealth in a country.
Real wealth is not from interest compounding on the backs of those who create real goods and services. Real wealth comes from making things people need and want.
Are the auto companies perfect? Hell no! But, they are a damn sight more moral than any banker will ever be.
I have worked in banking, telecommunications, automotive, IT, academia, government, and retail. Each have strengths and weaknesses. The smartest people are in telecommunications and IT, with telecommunications edging that out because, well, if you can play with at telephony switch, that beats a simple server. The most conniving, in banking. (Conniving isn’t necessarily evil.) The most imaginative in academia – though, there was rarely any bearing on reality. The most patient were in retail. The most resourceful and practical? Automotive.
If I had something I needed done in no time whatsoever and someone told me it was impossible? I would call anyone who had run an automotive plant or had to get anything done in automotive. Would it be perfect? No. But, the amazing thing is that these folks don’t just walk away. They will continue to fix the problems.
I have traveled over most of the USA. The auto worker of the American Great Lakes Region and Midwest is the real salt of the earth. This is the person who takes off the first day of deer season. This is the guy who helps his neighbor who is now out of work. They may call one another all kinds of names – even swearing at one another – but they leave it back on the plant floor at the end of the day.
Perhaps it is the very saltiness of the auto worker that alienates so much of the East and West Coast. This saltiness filters all the way through to the Congress Critters we send from Michigan. Even our top executives are not all that refined. They come through the ranks – every successful one, at least.
As much as you may detest the auto industry, it is only a reflection of your dislike of what America is. America is made up of the auto worker and his compatriots more than it is made up of any other group – more than banker stereotype (I am not including day-to-day workers like tellers as “bankers”); more than entertainment stereotype; more than the Silicon Valley stereotype; more than the Washington, D.C. stereotype; because, the majority of people in any industry are just like the guy on the line. Just trying to make it to the end of the day. And, unlike the other industries, the auto companies are trying to keep their promises to their older workers – even if they did eat their young.
One last thing, Michigan, the home of the auto industry, was a leader in environmentalism throughout the 1960s and 1970s. We still have a majority of family farms because of some of these initiatives, does your state?
Two Worthy Causes – Remembering Pregnancy and Infant Loss and the Environment
Today is both Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day and Environmental Awareness Day. In a way, it is appropriate.
Millions of men and women cannot conceive or sustain a pregnancy. Millions more have suffered from miscarriage or stillbirth. Often as a direct result of environmental conditions they have had no control over. Yes, infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss have been constants in human life since time began – and I doubt this will ever change. The thing we can do, however, is minimize the chance of this happening.
Did you know that the book Children of Men was originally inspired by the author reading an article showing that sperm counts continued to fall, and researchers are becoming concerned? That overall fertility among teenagers is falling as well? This cannot point to either men or women, it is just a general statistic the Scandinavian populations have noted in longitudinal studies.
Young girls are having their menarche at lower and lower ages. There is a very strong correlation between the use of hormones in cow’s milk and early onset of puberty. There is even some *new* evidence that early menarche is contributing to a condition known as diminished ovarian reserve. Diminished ovarian reserve, DOR, is a condition where a woman’s healthy egg supply is much lower than would be expected in a woman of her age. (This is a highly unscientific explanation.) Of course, the studies involved are quite preliminary.
Young men and women are presenting with infertility at an alarming rate. It isn’t just the late 30s crowd. Today 1 in 6 couples who are trying to conceive cannot for a multitude of reasons. How many of those reasons are due to environmental exposures to reproductive toxins? How many miscarriages are from pollutants that the mother has no idea she is being exposed to?
Normally, I would blog about the environmental pollutants and allergies. Contamination by genetically modified plants into our food supply that have seen a correlated increase in allergic reactions would be number one on my list. But, today I have to wonder could that same thing contribute to making us, as a species less fertile? Less able to reproduce by introducing unknown elements into the equation?
It worries me.
Are we slowly destroying ourselves without even realizing it through the use of all of the various chemicals in our day-to-day life? Ever try to buy chemical free anything?
We are surrounded by silicone, plastic, and a variety of known endocrine disruptors. Did you know that corn – the ingredient in everything – is an endocrine disruptor in rats? Or that soy is another agent that trends animals towards feminisation? How do we know that it isn’t causing irreparable harm to our own reproductive systems. (The reproductive system is an endocrine system.)
Shouldn’t we be seeking balance instead of control? I’m talking to you ADM and Monsanto. They are the monsters destroying our earth and our future through mono culture in agriculture. Everything should be made of corn, soybeans, and wheat. Let’s not even go into the hormone-laced milk they push upon an unknowing public. Read the Codex Alimentarius if you want to be scared – the list of things that do not have to be listed, ever, on a list of ingredients. You have no idea what you are truly ingesting and what it is doing to your body.
So, what do we do next? They refuse to give us the information we need to be informed consumers protecting our health, fertility, and our planet. We are patted on the head and told that they mean us no harm. But harm can be done unknowingly. Harm is something that does not need intent to happen.
Myself? I try to eat fresh fruits and vegetables that are grown by local farmers – no wax. I try to eat organic and cook from scratch. Of course, I don’t have the same choices many others do due to my allergies, but how many people can do the footwork to get the information needed to avoid every hazard? Not too many.