The Privatization Backlash→

Molly Ball, reporting for The Atlantic:

“In states and cities across the country, lawmakers are expressing new skepticism about privatization, imposing new conditions on government contracting, and demanding more oversight. Laws to rein in contractors have been introduced in 18 states this year, and three—Maryland, Oregon, and Nebraska—have passed legislation, according to In the Public Interest, a group that advocates what it calls “responsible contracting.”...

The vogue for privatizing government began in the Reagan years, experts say, when an ascendant conservative ideology painted the public sector as a callous and sluggish bureaucracy and the private sector as inherently more innovative and efficient. The trend accelerated in the ‘90s, and today, Cohen estimates that $1 trillion of America’s $6 trillion in annual federal, state, and local government spending goes to private companies.

Yet the public impression of privatization as a panacea for the inherent inefficiency of government has been tarnished in the intervening years. From Halliburton to Healthcare.gov to private prisons and welfare systems, contracting has often proved problematic.”

Reuters

Many of the apparent truths that we cling to depend on our point of view. Truly wonderful the mind is.

About 20% of China's Agricultural Land is Polluted→

Lily Kuo, writing in Quartz:

“Almost one-fifth of China’s farmland is polluted, according to a government report released this week. Officials have acknowledged the country’s problems with water and air pollution, but the extent of soil contamination has been a closely guarded “state secret,” for fear of incriminating certain provinces or companies.

About 19.4% of China’s farmland is polluted by cadmium, nickel and arsenic, according to the seven-year study that analyzed a little over half of China’s entire land area. One-fifth of China’s total arable land is about 26 million hectares (64 million acres), the same area as the United Kingdom, by the most recent estimates.”

Reuters

Blind we are, if the negative consequences of weak environmental regulations we could not see. Always two there are, no more, no less: greed and pollution.

Lake Whatcom's Pollution Puzzle→

Ralph Schwartz, reporting for the Bellingham Herald (WA):

“City officials have been working for years to reduce the amount of phosphorus draining into Lake Whatcom. This year, officials plan to clean up their own backyard by improving stormwater treatment at Bloedel Donovan Park, which has especially high levels of phosphorus in its soil.”

Vacant Lots as Green Infrastructure→

Dave Levitan, writing for Conservation Magazine:

“If lots could be engineered to actually hold excess water instead of discharging it into the system, that’s a big deal: In Cleveland alone, there are 28,000 vacant lots. Other cities have similar issues (see: Detroit), and there is an undeniable appeal in turning what most consider an eyesore, a problem to be solved, into a solution for an apparently unrelated problem.”

Shuster WD, Dadio S, Drohan P, et al (2014). Residential demolition and its impact on vacant lot hydrology: Implications for the management of stormwater and sewer system overflows, Landscape and Urban Planning, 125 (2014) 48-56.

Flickr/habeebee

Happens to every lot sometimes this does. Use them, we must.

When Nature Speaks, Who Are You Hearing?→

iStockphoto

Adam Frank, writing for NPR:

“I walked through the network of Olmsted-designed parks that thread through Rochester. It was raining lightly but that only made the world — now slowly waking up from winter — that much lovelier. I walked up some hills. I walked down some hills. I passed through a wooded ravine. I crossed over into a 150-year-old cemetery. Then, on the crest of a drumlin lined with Civil War era headstones, it happened: I met the sacred.

I am not a poet and can not come close to evoking the character of the experience in words. It was the mist and the rainfall and the birdsong and the scent of spring to be. It was all that and something more — much more — while also being fundamentally less — empty, poised, waiting.”

Adam captures nature experiences in poetic fashion. You too can live in awe of nature. Perhaps first you must unlearn what you have learned in your studies of a deity. 

Neither Growth nor Greed Is Good→

John R. Ehrenfeld, writing on his blog:

“One of the usual arguments I get after talking about Flourishing, is that economic growth is necessary for the health or a nation and of the businesses within it, and that my way to flourishing requiring an alternative to such growth is either flawed or simply impossible. Before attempting to clarify my reasoning, let me say, categorically, that I do not claim that growth is inherently bad. I argue that the state of the world is such that continuing growth is producing unintended consequences that outweigh whatever benefits accompany it. I am not attacking the neoclassical economic models that lead to the necessity of growth on ideological grounds although there are plenty of such grounds for this tack. My view springs from a non-ideological, pragmatic, systems framework.”

Children of Men

Greed is the path to the dark side. Greed leads to exploitation. Exploitation leads to destruction. Destruction leads to suffering.

Riparian restoration mitigates impacts of climate change→

Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle, writing for the Conservation Decisions Team:

“Freshwater habitats occupy less than one percent of the Earth’s surface, yet they contribute disproportionately to global biodiversity, supporting approximately ten percent of all known species, and one third of all vertebrates....

By identifying the mechanisms behind predicted biodiversity loss, Mantyka-Pringle et al. (2014) were able to identify management strategies that can simultaneously tackle both climate change and land-use change. The good news story that came out of this study was that they identified riparian vegetation restoration as an important adaptation tool that can mitigate the negative effects of climate change and land-use change on freshwater biota. ”

Around the survivors a perimeter create.

Lake Champlain Cleanup Plan→

Beth Garbitelli, writing for the Associated Press:

Lynn Gardner

“Vermont officials posted online a hefty plan Tuesday to reduce pollution in Lake Champlain from stormwater runoff, and now await word on whether it goes far enough in addressing federal concerns.

Decades of runoff have contributed to dirtying Vermont’s signature lake and causing excessive algae growth. The pollution has turned the water murky, hurt tourism, depressed property values and increased water treatment costs.

Cleaning up the lake has been a longstanding state goal, but lawmakers and officials say the state is under more pressure now to meet federal targets. If the latest plan doesn’t measure up, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could impose expensive regulations on sewage plants in the state.”

Bring plan here. Question it we will. 

U.S. 'motorization' may be in permanent decline→

Ron Meador, reporting for MinnPost:

“A new report from the University of Michigan finds probably permanent reductions in Americans’ rates of vehicle ownership, fuel consumption and miles driven per year. Americans’ century-long love affair with the automobile is a many-sided and much-studied thing, and the research does not lack for complexity and contradiction. Lately, many of the trend lines have seemed to be going down, but the reasons for those shifts are much debated ...

Against that background, a new report released from the University of Michigan on Tuesday stands out quite sharply. It finds probably permanent reductions in Americans’ rates of vehicle ownership, fuel consumption and miles driven per year, the three components of what author Michael Sivak calls “motorization.” His analysis attributes our declining motorization to several factors, while insisting that economic conditions cannot be the primary force behind them.”

John Snape

Sivak's report

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

Completely Surreal Photos Of America’s Abandoned Malls→

Matt Stopera, writing for Buzzfeed:

“Dead malls are popping up all over the states, particularly in the Midwest, where economic decline has sped up the “going out of business” process. This map, put together by a Dead Malls Enthusiasts Facebook group, shows that well.

As Americans are faced with multiple shopping options and more stores are leaving malls, it should be interesting to see if malls and mall culture will survive. What you are about to see is what happens when malls are abandoned. It’s apocalyptic and really, really creepy.”

Decay is a natural part of systems. Rejoice for that which transforms into back to nature. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Video Summary:

IPCC Fifth Assessment Report - Working Group II - Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability

Michel Jarraud, the head of the World Meteorological Organization, at the press conference summarized the importance of the science behind this report said: “Thirty years ago, the previous generation maybe was damaging our atmosphere, [and] the Earth, out of ignorance. Now, ignorance is no longer a good excuse. We know—therefore, we have the information to make decisions and to act upon this information.”

Report -- Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability

Production of Ignorance and Confusion

This Is a Generic Brand Video is a generic brand video of "This Is a Generic Brand Video," written by Kendra Eash for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. No surprise, it's made entirely with stock footage. All video clips used are from dissolve.com. See and license them here: http://www.dissolve.com/generic The original piece is published on McSweeney's: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/this-is-a-generic-brand-video Narrated by Dallas McClain.

Blind we are, if creation of corporate ignorance we could not see. Not if anything to say about it I have.

Cultural Production of Ignorance

Michael Hiltzik, writing for the L.A. Times:

“Robert Proctor doesn’t think ignorance is bliss. He thinks that what you don’t know can hurt you. And that there’s more ignorance around than there used to be, and that its purveyors have gotten much better at filling our heads with nonsense.

Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, is one of the world’s leading experts in agnotology, a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance. It’s a rich field, especially today when whole industries devote themselves to sowing public misinformation and doubt about their products and activities.

The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson’s files, “Doubt is our product.” Big Tobacco’s method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo’s author wrote, but to establish a “controversy.””

Others are now using the old tobacco playbook. The powerful then exploit our ignorance. The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

The Fight for Wisconsin’s Soul→

Dan Kaufman, writing for the New York Times:

“WISCONSIN has been an environmental leader since 1910, when the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment promoting forest and water conservation. Decades later, pioneering local environmentalists like Aldo Leopold and Senator Gaylord Nelson, who founded Earth Day in 1970, helped forge the nation’s ecological conscience.

But now, after the recent passage of a bill that would allow for the construction of what could be the world’s largest open-pit iron ore mine, Wisconsin’s admirable history of environmental stewardship is under attack.”

 Credit: Azael Meza

Once you start down the dark path of discounting environmental standards, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

Big data: are we making a big mistake?→

Tim Harford, writing for FT Magazine:

“Cheerleaders for big data have made four exciting claims, each one reflected in the success of Google Flu Trends: that data analysis produces uncannily accurate results; that every single data point can be captured, making old statistical sampling techniques obsolete; that it is passé to fret about what causes what, because statistical correlation tells us what we need to know; and that scientific or statistical models aren’t needed because, to quote “The End of Theory”, a provocative essay published in Wired in 2008, “with enough data, the numbers speak for themselves”.

Unfortunately, these four articles of faith are at best optimistic oversimplifications. At worst, according to David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge university, they can be “complete bollocks. Absolute nonsense.””

Infocux Technologies

Reliable knowledge generally requires randomization. When systematic bias you have, work as good, it will not.

Rebuilding the Natural World: A Shift in Ecological Restoration→

Richard Conniff, writing for Yale Environment 360:

“Restoring degraded ecosystems — or creating new ones — has become a huge global business. China, for instance, is planting 90 million acres of forest in a swath across its northern provinces. And in North America, just in the past two decades, restoration projects costing $70 billion have attempted to restore or re-create 7.4 million acres of marsh, peatland, floodplain, mangrove, and other wetlands.

This patchwork movement to rebuild the natural world ought to be good news. Such projects are, moreover, likely to become far more common as the world rapidly urbanizes and as cities, new and old, turn to green infrastructure to address problems like climate change, flood control, and pollution of nearby waterways. But hardly anyone does a proper job of measuring the results, and when they do, it generally turns out that ecological restorations seldom function as intended. ”

Morento-Mateos et al. 2012. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001247

We need to work on bigger wetland restoration projects (>250 acres). Bigger is better.

Structural and Functional Loss in Restored Wetland Ecosystems

State of Europe's Seas→

Nature's News Blog:

“The report notes that the levels of various pollutants — such as nutrients causing algal blooms and subsequent oxygen depletion in the Baltic and Black seas — are above acceptable limits; that fish stocks are over-exploited; and that the seas are full of litter. Gaps in data are also a huge problem, and very few member states have put forward a strategy to close these gaps, the Commission complains.

Another report on the same subject — released today by the European Environment Agency — notes that between 2001 and 2006, conservation status was inadequate or bad for 50% of the marine habitats assessed in the EU, with only 3% of marine species deemed to be in a “favourable” state and 70% being of unknown status.”

Monitoring is the first step in attempting to find solutions -- assess, adapt management, repeat.

Water or sulfide mining: Which is more valuable?→

Clint Jurgens and Mary Ann Jurgens, writing for MinnPost:

“When evaluating the impact of the proposed copper-nickel mines like PolyMet and Twin Metals on the natural resources of Minnesota, regulators, political leaders, and the public should consider the value of water as a natural, replenished resource.

The target of copper-nickel mining companies is an ore formation called the Duluth Complex, which lies in the middle of some of most beautiful and enjoyable lakes, streams and forests in the world. The problem with the proposed mining is that these ores are embedded in sulfide rocks. Unfortunately, the process of mining and recovering metals from sulfide ore has a long and sordid history of water pollution.”

Brian Hoffman

From ore to oil, get it now and use it up as quick as you can. Why is it that is seems like our species lives for the moment without regard to future generations?

Authorities Investigate Pollution in China's Iconic Erhai Lake→

Gao Shan, reporting for RFA's Mandarin Service (translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie):

“An iconic lake at the heart of a popular beauty spot in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan has turned milky-white with pollution from nearby companies, local residents and officials said.

Local residents began posting photos online in recent days of the now turbid and white waters of Erhai Lake in the tourist region of Dali, historically famed for its crystal-clear waters.

”The government and the companies are all in it together.””

Erhai Lake, April 6, 2011.

Greed transcends economic or political systems. Capitalism and communism both treat the environment as an externality. Ponzi scheme you are in, consume you it will.

Is white--or green--the new black in cities?→

Cheryl Dybas, writing for NSF Discoveries:

“How well some of these adaptation technologies, including so-called “cool roofs”—white roofs, green (or garden-planted) roofs and hybrids—work, and how they perform in various locations “has been a big unknown,” says Georgescu.

No one-size-fits-all

The scientists suggest that planning and design choices—and where they will be implemented—should be considered in efforts to mitigate climate change and cities’ growth. Counteracting “urban climate change,” Georgescu says, “depends on specific geographic factors that need to be considered.”

lbl.gov

Place matters.

Animals see power lines as glowing, flashing bands→

Damian Carrington, reporting for The Guardian:

“Study suggests pylons and wires that stretch across many landscapes are having a worldwide impact on wildlife.

Scientists knew many creatures avoid power lines but the reason why was mysterious as they are not impassable physical barriers. Now, a new understanding of just how many species can see the ultraviolet light – which is invisible to humans – has revealed the major visual impact of the power lines.”

Joseph Younis

Sometimes we don't understand because we can relate to how others see the world.