Posted on 04/10/2002 4:59:39 PM PDT by WhiteyAppleseed
I was curious before the purchase. The situation in California, as described in Developing Hostility does seem to be a kind of deliberate act on the part of the various players.
Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, (Houghton,Keweenaw Counties) the land is in the hands of a large company. International Paper. While Lower Michigan has an abundance of 10-acre residential-lot-Ponderosas (the result of zoning and land division acts), the majority of the land here has remained in large blocks, many 640-acre blocks. The tax situation is also interesting in comparison. Here we have "Commercial Forest Reserve," a situation where a landowner receives the benefits of a greatly reduced property tax in exchange for enrolling property (forest) in CFR, writing a plan for eventual harvest, and permitting access for hunting and fishing(although anything goes.) There was a forboding of things to come for this area on page 111 of the book: The key to flushing out the owners has been laws governing septic systems. North of here, locals were opposed to development of a ski hill. Sewage, and what to do with it, is a big issue. The people demanding attention from regulators for the ski hill's system are living with systems that were designed for seasonal use, now accomodating year-round residents. Much of it lakeshore property....the plot thickens.
It is a very intriguing idea, but I can't help but think that what would sustain it is the very regulatory mechanisms that have plagued us..........? If nothing else, maybe it would create flexibility? (Good thing the snow is gone--I can find some wintergreen leaves to chew on.)
It surely starts there, but over time it diverges as more land uses and regulatory functions are privatized. There could well be some ugly legal battles along the way. There is no alternative but to try else we face the historic truism that the accrual of civic power is irreversible without the price of blood.
I don't know how it'll strike you, but I see it as a way to suck all the wind out of governmental regulation enforcement machinery entirely and provide the "flexibilty" and motivation without all the contentiousness we're all dying for an end to... finally!!! Warning: It's not for "shallow" thinkers!
In fact, you'll want to review it several times, then refer to it as you become an engaging, intriguing, iconoclastic conversationalist. (as well as a conservationist)(grin)
I must stop now, lest I hyperventilate and oversell.
Red at night... Sailors delight! Right?
What'd ya do, read all nite? I have to admit that I was on the same wave length you were on about ESA and the need to reform a "good law, gone bad," until I learned about that dang treaty!!!
With that and the imagery of the isolated Earthrise over the dead moonscape in 1970... sure enough, we immediately got "Earth Day," "Earth Island Institute" "Space Ship Earth," etc., etc., etc. That was the half way point in time from the treaty ratification and now!
I'll say one thing for the Born Again Pagans... they sure are patient!!! Even the Devil moves faster than that, knowing he hath but a short time!!!
Great work! Anyone who hasn't, contact your Congress-person and ask them to save the Tree of Liberty and to start saving the only Tree that matters by sponsoring and supporting HR2829.
A point you make in your book suggests that we should indeed, try to change the ESA by hollering from the rooftops for our Congress-persons to support HR2829. Earlier, you said that though you saw some positive things in HR2829, you didn't think it was the answer. Your belief is that HR2829 would make it more difficult to implement InsCerts.
One problem with enforcement of the ESA has been the lack of science in listings, and everthing related to listings. In your book, you said,
I wanted to show the all-too-often down-trodden scientist in civil service the promise of a new career working with people who love their land, to spend their time actually doing science to help the land they love instead of writing grants to nameless benefactors who place bizarre demands upon the output. I wanted to show the financial elite that they have made a horrible mistake.page 400.Natural Process: That Environmental Laws May Serve the Laws of Nature, Mark Edward Vande Pol, Wildergarten Press, Redwood Estates, CA, 2001
This seems at odds with what you call the universities: paraphrased: Genetic facilitators of the government for more regulatory control of private property.
There are other instances within the book that suggest more peer control, better science, is one way to get the government from shaking the Tree of Liberty to dislodge anyone attempting the ridiculous idea of finding life liberty and the pursuit of happiness there.
For instance, on page 395 of Natural Process, you say the the key is to fight back against the regulators who come knocking on your door, to be ready for them with accumulated data. But until there is a civil alternative, we should try to change the ESA. Better science seems to be a temporary key to fight the regulators. As you said:
Although the activist NGOs and bureaucrats will protest, is is lack of faith in their case and their own system that will drive them to resist objective environmental review. They will not subjugat themselves to scientific scrutiny because of their beliefs (and their need for a paycheck) is so strong that they believe that any technical rationale that can challenge that faith must be flawed. page 395Natural Process
There are other quotes from NP that I will supply in a future post.
I don't understand how HR2829 would make it more difficult to implement what you advocate, an idea that deserves a much wider audience.
Wouldn't required peer review be one way for enterprising businesses to open the regulatory door to free enterprise?
The federal agency wants to shut down a property owners land for whatever reason. They have circled their own peer review wagons and are about to transport that Conglomerate lock stock and barrel to the private property of an individual.
Don't businesses already exist (consulting firms) that make top dollar by using science.........lost the train of thought but I'll leave what I wrote here. Maybe it will come back.
Another instance within Natural Process where evidence exists that peer review would be a good thing is on page 366:
Research for this book encountered technical papers whose conclusions were diametrically at odds with supporting data!
So would required peer review, emprical evidence, field data work to take some of the unconstitutionality out of the ESA? On the same page, you said: In its essence, peer review is a wonderful thing.
Unless and until the Federal and State governments are no longer the financial supporters of nearly all university spending, when those supposedly-independent consultants no longer get their pretty paychecks supplying paperwork for civic compliance (and therefore make more money by advocating increasingly arduous regulatory compliance (which they routinely do in those lovely collaborative decisionmaking processes)), when academics are paid by those who own and profit by the success of their habitat management enterprises, then I would want peer review... pursuant to the decision by the certifier whether the risk attendent to a particular operation warrants it. Some jobs are no-brainers. With validated processes, a review can be totally unnecessary.
The delay required for a review might be very destructive. Even a week can cost a pest to get loose. If it is an insect, minutes can be critical. Never thought of that, did you? It wouldn't be the reviewer's butt if the pest got loose and became a bigger problem, would it? That's why we don't want political decision-making.
You see, there is no motive in what you advocate to improve the performance of the system in absolute terms, much less its cost effectiveness of the system, indeed, quite the contrary. The worse it gets, the more they make.
With all that has gone on in the name of science and enforcement of the ESA, you would think that the soil is fertile for independent certification companies, companies that would have the capability of saying, "The science you used to justify all of those $30,000 septic systems is woefully inadequate." After learning more about the injustices done in the name of science and the enforcement of the ESA, I don't see how a requirement for better science could fail. In Ron Arnold's book, Undue Influence, work was halted by the anonymous activist's information that an endangered species lived there. No science involved, simply a foundation-fed activist being used by some guilt-ridden fatcat in New England. I agree that peer review would be unnessary with validated processes. Perhaps some foundation oozing money could be interested in taking up the cause for private certification? Many of them claim to be after what is good. And there certainly are disillusioned environmentalists around, aren't there?
The delay required for a review might be very destructive.
Look at the destruction caused now, with the lack of reviews. Farmers committing suicide in the Klamath.
There is even a well-orchestrated effort to convert much of the northeast to federal land.
You see, there is no motive in what you advocate to improve the performance of the system in absolute terms, much less its cost effectiveness of the system, indeed, quite the contrary. The worse it gets, the more they make.
So the soil is profoundly rich and ready for private certification! The motive is held by those whose property stands in the balance! We need to yell it from the rooftops because the average American has no idea how bad the situation really is. It will get worse if we don't take action soon. The amount of foundation money behind the movement is a big stinky jackass in the room that too many are trying to ignore. Then there is the majority that aren't aware of the big stinky jackass.
Arnold mentioned Island Press and a 1997 book they put out, Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems Arnold said it "made a no-brainer point: 'Free of charge, natural ecosystems provide a multitude of valuable services for people and the human economy.'.....The Pew Foundation supported the book, conceived after dinner at a Pew Fellows meeting when:
"One brilliant soul, Gretchen Daily, a Standford University professor of biological science, noted to her fellow Fellows that the failure to price natural events was a major hindrance to the formulation and implementation of policy. These policy-minded scientists needed a book on what every farmer knows:nature does stuff free that keeps us all alive. If they could put a price on that stuff, they could blame humans for hurting it in dollars and cents and drive policy against industrial civilization. Undue Influence, Ron Arnold,Free Enterprise Press, 1999, page 105
Considering the Pew Foundation association and their goal of rural genocide, "pricing natural events" so that they can blame humans for hurting it has frightening connotations when one considers the proposals in Natural Process along those same kind of lines--putting a price on nature.....
Better not take a Spanish pause while the foundation-fed enviro-sharks begin to use natural event pricing to harm resource users.......
I am waiting for our beloved scientists to take evolution to its logical conclusion and continue said theory into infinity to where there is a kind of spiritual evolution that they are too willing to deny because they like to party too much on the weekend. When they wake up in the morning in the Holy of Holies, they bump their head getting out of bed and there is no one there to hear them cry out.
Ironic, isn't it, that science denies the spirit, the evolution of the body to a drawing nearer to God? While creationists are quick to argue against the jawbone of Africanus as the scientist beats them over the head with it?
My faith is in God, and fortunately for me I know that he didn't send his Son into the world to condemn the world (though too many are greedily willing to do that), but to save the world through Him.
But it's still difficult not to roll over and let the bastards beat me.
"Nature provides for free." How? Where do those coastal nutrients originate? Who released them and how? How is that release balanced with other uses, both locally and at a distance? How are other assets in between in the riparian system effected?
Sir, my system is fully capable of dealing with it all, with the goal that the balance be optimized between natural and extractive. In fact, I want the oceans privatized. Perhaps there should even be nations there. Did you really read Part IV, Chapter 4?
Yes, I read it. One section I underlined several sentences:
Local corporations can integrate competing interests among fisheries, domestic water, urban land use, erosion, silt, flood control, all using risk-based pricing.Natural Process Mark Edward Vande Pol, Wildergarten Press,1999, page 278
On the same page, you wrote critically of the Army Corps of Engineers wisdom, as County workers removed logjams, barriers to fish--previous logjams had been swept downriver and lodged against bridge pilings causing floods.
You asked: Did they subject their ideas to peer review?
As an aside, it is amazing the barriers in a river that steelhead can get past. With the spring spawning run on here, it is common to see steelhead miles upstream past numerous beaver dams.
One point of the above is the obvious referrence to "peer review" and your opinion that in that case, it likely would have prevented problems.
In Ron Arnold's book, Undue Influence, on page 105 again:
Blurbs for Nature's Services say about the authrors: Their findings clearly demostrate that these services--providing clean wate, pollination, pest control, climate regulation, flood control, and fisheries, to mention only a few--are not only valuable, they are irreplaceable. While insufficient information was available to calculate the economic value of all--or even more--ecosystem services, those which could be quantified measured, at a minimum, many trillion dollars annually."
You make the generic claim that Ron Arnold has a hidden agenda. That's funny. That's the same thing the foundation-fed enviro sharks are saying. He does seem to be positing one idea you share with him: the property owner must take the Moral High Ground of Environmentalism back from government and activist lawyers. NP, p. 373 Though Arnold suggests taking it from the environmentalists.
From Natural Process I read that you are suggesting property owners begin the necessary data collection on their property to be able to fight back against the government, to be aware of the cost of events on their property that currently have no price on them, but have been collectively bagged into a commons. Judging by what the enviros say about Nature's Services the road to certifying those events on private property will he a tug-of-war between two opposing factions.
So tell me if I'm closer in your opinion to having read the book.
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