The Everyday Conservationist

I just wanted to share a brief article about being an "everyday conservationist." This piece is from a fun blog that I read often, The Outdoor Parent. I share this article as some entertainment and as some encouragement to think about our daily choices that can make a difference. As I have commented several times already, the choices discussed in the article seem small and maybe insignificant. But if each of us sharing these ideas encourages one or two friends or family members to do likewise, the impact of these small decisions will begin to grow exponentially.

Happy reading!

Refining Perspectives

"Now here comes another clown with a scheme for the utopian national park: . . . Your road is bad; pave it. Better yet, build a road to every corner of the park; better yet, pave the whole damned place so any damn fool can drive anything anywhere."

--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Maybe its getting older. Maybe its those necessary adjustments to life with an infant. Maybe its just those necessary adjustments to life with a family, dogs, a house, commitments, and expectations. At some point in all our lives, I think we all must confront conflict within ourselves - conflict between what we want to do and want we can do, between our ideal and our reality. This past weekend, I found myself knee deep in this realization.

The roots of the conflict sprouted nearly two decades ago when I joined the Boy Scouts. At the time, my troop leader was a guy who marched to his own drummer. And when he was in charge, he marched us right along to that same beat. Trails? Bah. Tents? Who needs them?! As long as we had a map, compass, sleeping bag and some good company, we could go damn near anywhere we wanted on foot. There were even a few stream crossings and wildlife encounters that, to a ten-year-old, seemed fairly harrowing.

Aside from a sense of adventure, these activities, rogue by park standards to say the least, instilled in many of us boys a purist and elitist attitude that would make ol' Ed Abbey beam. We did things our way, rules be damned. Our adventures were much more rewarding than strolling some defined trail. The camping experience was only real when you broke away from tent platforms and fire rings. And, related, why on earth would you drive to a campsite when you could find a much better one in a few miles on foot?

I have carried this attitude with me through the years, keeping it tucked away but nurturing it all the while. I will not claim to hold a purist or elitist candle to many things, but there are a few - music . . . beer . . . and outdoor activities. Over the years, I have found myself striving for quality over quantity, passing on some opportunities because they did not meet the bar I had set for my experiences. But life starts to chip away at attitude. That's not to say that I don't adhere to standards. However, when the ideal meets reality, choices must be made.

And that is where I found myself this past Sunday. Typically, if you gave me a late summer day in the mountains with flawless weather, I would choose a hike that from either distance or elevation gain would really get my heart pumping. But that priority did not readily reconcile with another high priority for the weekend - a relaxing day away with my wife and six-month-old. Instead, we chose a scenic drive along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. Stepping out of the car at overlooks and examining my colleagues for the day . . . well, let's just say that its not the RMNP crowd that my wife and I are accustomed to running with.

But neither our method of moving around the park nor our compatriots bothered me. Rather, I realized that what was important to me is sharing experiences with my family, whether or not the experiences meet the "standards" I've set for myself over the years. I also realized that establishing a positive base of family experiences will set the stage for those experiences to evolve with time. In a year or three years or five years, this day may look completely different. Instead of pulling the car up to a picnic table, maybe we hike in a mile or two to a more secluded dining spot. Soon after that, maybe we hike into a comfortable spot to cook dinner, roast marsh mellows and spend a night out together. What I do not want to change is the sharing of experiences and the chance to instill the same passions and values in my son as he grows.

Maybe I owe Edward Abbey an apology for validating his clown's suggestion to pave the park. Not long ago, I would feel like I owed myself an apology for spending a day driving around the mountains instead of hiking in or climbing them. Not this time, at least not for now. The experiences may be different for a while, but they are just as satisfying, if not more so. I look forward to more of these opportunities to refine and mature my personal perspectives.

A Soapbox Moment

Reading accounts of now former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's "Statement on the Current Health Care Debate," I am reminded of an issue that plagues the current political climate in the U.S. (and, personally, really really frustrates me). This post is not about the merits of health care reform, advocating for or against either side of the health care debate, or proving the validity of either side's claims.

Rather, this post is about honesty, integrity, ethics, responsibility. It is both an admonishment and a plea directed to our public figures in the media and in politics. We all, including yourselves, are granted a great freedom to speak our minds and publish our thoughts with little limit. However, that right must be exercised with integrity and responsibility. You must speak and write with a mind toward ethical responsibility and personal accountability. For politicians and legislators, it means carefully choosing words that express your opinions and accurately inform your constituency without misleading. For media persons, it means refusing to promote and encourage such behavior by latching onto firestorm lingo and exaggerated terminology. The public relies on each of you. We rely on you to formulate viable solutions. We rely on you to help educate us about the important debates engrossing our nation. Extreme behavior fulfills neither of these duties. Rather, such self-promoting conduct stands as a stubborn obstacle to any progress for the citizens of the United States.

In sum - Please debate. Please encourage honest and fruitful discussion of issues, great and small. Please listen. Please respond. But in doing all of these, please keep in mind the roles you occupy in our society and the members of that society that rely upon you. After all, you are here for our collective well being, not for your own ambitions.

Obstacles to Expanding Public Transit in the U.S.

In a recent L.A. Times piece, David Lazarus discusses some of the obstacles currently inhibiting the expansion and creating of a "world-class" transit system in the United States. Read his article; he is much more eloquent than I. But I will make a few brief observations about some of these obstacles as I see them.

Transit expansion was one of the most touted pieces of the Obama administration's stimulus plans. However, the money for transit projects is focusing on new build projects while ignoring the fact that many local and regional transit systems are struggling to fund daily operation of their existing routes and services. (See "A Seat on the Bus?", The Nation, July 22, 2009.) As Lazarus indicates, transit must be affordable, reliable, and pleasant - characteristics which are hard to reach or maintain when funds are insufficient. Yes, expansion of transit necessitates new construction, but building support and enthusiasm for transit requires focus on customer service and efficiency.

While the stimulus funds grab headlines, local funding issues should not be ignored. Lazarus points out the difficulty in raising sales tax revenues for Measure R in L.A. County. In Denver, the Regional Transit District (RTD) and its FasTracks program are suffering a similar fate in efforts to add new light rail lines in the Denver metro area, including a much-needed connection to outlying Denver International Airport.

Incentivizing transit means discouraging car use for everyday commuting purposes. Parking fees, inhospitable urban driving (traffic), gas prices - all of these could contribute. However, the American attachment to the personal automobile is ingrained in most of us, and taking commuters out of the driver's seat will not be an easy task.

Land use and development (or redevelopment) must conform to, encourage, and permit (on a practical level) public transportation. Cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago have established transit systems that were in place early in each city's life. Development conforms to the transit routes there like it conforms to highways and roads in other cities. The difficulty that some big cities are facing now is retrofitting a transit system to a land use pattern built for automobile commuting. In Denver, finding locations for tracks, stations, and rail yards has involved contentious and controversial use of eminent domain. Even if these problems are solved, many station locations require an automobile to access them. Many potential riders simply opt to stay in their car for convenience's sake, even if it means spending more money on gas and parking. This is not an easy problem to solve and will continue to be a spur in the side of transit proponents seeking to build or expand intra-urban transit systems.

Those are a few thoughts. This is a topic that is likely to come up again here. If you have particular thoughts or questions you would like to discuss, please leave a comment on the site.

Living With the Land: An Experiment Worth Watching

A new town is being developed outside Portland, Oregon, the goal of which is to chip away at the established boundary dividing urban and rural. This boundary is particularly pronounced in Oregon, where legally mandated urban growth boundaries (UGBs) set firm limits on the expanse of urban development into surrounding farmland and green space. If all goes according to plan in Damascus, the town will maintain active commercial farming in productive soils while less-productive tracts will sprout housing and other structures necessary in the town. There remain some questions as to whether the town will be able to legally accomplish its aims under Oregon's statewide land use regime. Proponents intend to be creative with the regulatory tools available to them, and, thus far, state regulators seem willing to at least entertain those ideas. Read more about Damascus in this article from OregonLive.com.

Aside from the legal and regulatory issues that I find interesting, the thing I want to applaud in the Damascus experiment is the idea of centering a community on the land where it exists - farmland - and fostering a lifestyle that incorporates what the land has to offer rather than subduing and altering the land to fit a lifestyle. Proponents in Damascas have visions of farmers' markets selling local produce, restuarants featuring those products, and education centers where residents can learn to cook with, use, and preserve the local items readily available to them. It would be a perfect model of the slow food movement here in the U.S., a movement that has quickly gained popularity in Oregon.

There are so many overlapping concepts embodied in the proposed development of Damascus that they are hard to segregate and pinpoint. Let me try to sum up my feelings with a few statements. Many of us spend a lifetime fighting against the land we inhabit and the habitat in which we exist. We want to grow green lawns in the desert. We want to raise crops suited to climates of far away regions. We want to do what we want where we want to do it, often without regard to the basic practicality of doing so, much less the myriad of potential consequences of that action. To an extent, the people of Damascus, Oregon, will be bucking those trends. Farming, already the predominant economic engine of the region, will continue to fill role because that is the use to which the land is suited. The products raised locally in accordance with local practices and climates will nourish the residents. As envisioned, Damascus would become a pocket of localization in a continually globalizing world. In doing so, that town would express to the world its commitment to community, to the environment, and to the general wellbeing that these concepts promote individually and in concert.

I will certainly be tracking the progress of the Damascus experiment.

Be sure to check out the OregonLive.com article, as it provides more details than I have in this post. "Bluring the Urban-Rural Line in Damascus," OregonLive.com, August 8, 2009.

The Future of Atlanta's Water Supply

The future of Atlanta's water supply just got a bit more tenuous. On top of drought, a recent decision by a federal arbiter is giving the state of Georgia three years to develop a workable solution with Alabama and Florida regarding water from the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier. (See "3-Year Countdown Begins for Atlanta's Water Future") Much of Atlanta's municipal water is currently being drawn from Lake Lanier, but those withdrawals are impacting the rights held by downstream users to the flows of the Chattahoochee. The arbiter's decision essentially agreed to maintain the status quo for three years while the three states either negotiate a mutually acceptable compromise or lobby the U.S. Congress for a solution - i.e., a change in the use profile of Lake Lanier. (The reservoir was originally constructed to provide hydroelectricity and limited municipal use to nearby towns; the large-scale municipal withdrawals for Atlanta are not part of the reservoir's purpose.)

At least as our legal system controls it, water is a deceptively finite resource. Water rights in most states are dictated by some sort of appropriation scheme, with a seniority system of use rights determining who is entitled to what amount of water. The appropriation controls not only the water in rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs but accounts for all water present in a particular basin. Atlanta's problem is that it is withdrawing water from Lake Lanier to the point that downstream right holders are not receiving their allotted flows in the Chattahoochee. Even if a compromise is reached that permits Atlanta to continue drawing its municipal water from Lake Lanier, it is unlikely they will be permitted to take water at the rate at which they are currently doing so or at a rate that can support the current population of Atlanta and its water use habits. Thus, the city and the state are left with a few options, and the solution probably lies somewhere among all of them.

Pray: Georgia's Gov. Sonny Perdue received press for his pray-for-rain service on the steps of state capitol. At this point, its pretty obvious that all of Georgia should be praying for some divine intervention at all levels of this issue. But even the Good Book says that "even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead . . . ." (James 2:17, KJV)

Find new sources: I cannot claim to be an expert on water issues in the Southeastern U.S. But knowing generally the status of water resources in this country, I can say with some confidence that finding a new source of water - particularly one that could replace all of what Atlanta currently draws from Lake Lanier - will be difficult if not damn near impossible. At this point in the development of an area like the burgeoning Southeast, most of the available water sources are probably accounted for in the various state appropriation systems. Thus, "finding new water sources" means buying existing use rights from other holders. Without even doing any math, its obvious that Atlanta and Georgia do not possess a lot of bargaining power right now. Prices of any available rights will be steep.

Conservation: That's right, every one reading this piece that has read of my other posts on this blog knew this one was coming. In past posts, I have emphasized the collective power of individual action and responsibility. Water conservation is no different, and many of the solutions are fairly simple - shorter showers, efficient fixtures and appliances, turn off the water while brushing teeth and shaving, etc., etc. Others are more creative (putting a juice bottle full of water in your toilet tank to reduce water needed to fill), extreme (another toilet flushing idea), and unpleasant (dry shaving). Some jurisdictions permit residential collection of rainwater for nonpotable uses like watering lawns and gardens. The point here is that individual steps to water conservation can be as simple and cheap or as complicated and costly as one desires. But every little bit helps.

Government entities' roles should not be ignored here. These roles can take two forms. On one hand are incentive programs - tax rebates for installing efficient fixtures or appliances or other incentives for reduced water use. While these are effective at an individual household level, they may even be more effective if offered to developers and builders. If feasible, programs could extend free fixture upgrades to households who demonstrate a desire to upgrade but a financial inability to do so.

In dire situations though, more draconian measures may be necessary. A government can make any regulatory scheme effective by targeting one thing - bank accounts. Water agencies could essentially mandate conservation without threatening to turn off anyone's tap. One idea is a water tax. This tax may be on all water use, basically a way to discourage use through cost without arbitrarily just raising the fees. Plus, the segregated tax revenues could be used to fund the aforementioned government programs encouraging conservation. The tax could also be formulated to begin accuring once a water use exceeds a predetermined, per cycle limit. Such limits must be reasonable based on factors such as size of household and type of home or structure. Once the user exceeds that reasonable cap, all additional use in that cycle is taxed at the given rate. The rate must also be reasonable but significant enough that it deters use beyond the set limit.

Obviously such heavy-handed measures are not the ideal. Maintaining conservation as an individual choice with the prodding of incentive programs is more likely to foster a community spirit and enthusiam around conservation. Once conservation is required or practically required, as in the case of increased fees or taxes, it becomes another chore or inconvenience. The goal is long-term change in consumptive habits. While thoughtful regulatory measures will be effective in the short term, few such programs seem to survive administration changes unscathed. Even the "common-sense" ones. So the message today, taken from Atlanta's example, is encouraging smart water planning by governments and encouraging smart water use by citizens and water users. Hopefully, a combination of these will prevent future dire straights in the Southeast and other water-scarce parts of our country.

More Defensive Medicine

In two earlier posts, "Approaches to Reducing Healthcare Costs" and a response to comments on that post, I ruminated on the issue of defensive medicine and how this ubiquitous practice contributes to the inflating healthcare costs in the United States. I wanted to share an editorial by Philip K. Howard published in the Washington Post a few days ago concerning this issue. Mr. Howard is an attorney and chairman of Common Good, a non-profit legal reform group.

In his piece, Howard calls for an end to the "erratic, expensive and time-consuming jury-by-jury malpractice system." His solution would be to replace traditional malpractice litigation with cases handled by a specialized court handling healthcare matters exclusively. You could compare these courts to the U.S. bankruptcy courts or perhaps to the adjudicative bodies of government agencies.

I do not dispute that a change of that nature in malpractice justice would save doctors, facilities, and medical professionals some money and, theoretically, reduce costs for medical patients and insurance policy holders. But let's think at a very basic level what the implementation of a health speciality court would do. The health courts would no doubt conduct only bench trials, putting malpractice decisions in the hands of professionals (either health professionals or legal professionals well versed in medical issues) rather than juries. Obviously, to save costs, Howard's idea must be that the health courts would find more often for defendants rather than plaintiff-patients. This presents the potential for a lose-lose situation for wronged patients. Either they can continue to pay inflating insurance premiums and rising healthcare costs, or they can sacrifice a chance to seek redress with a jury of their peers as fact-finder.

The question to address next would be whether the potential savings in healthcare costs to all patients and policy holders would justify the relinquishment of jury medical malpractice trials. I do not have an answer to that question. However, I do have reservations about the effects that a professionally sympathetic adjudicative body would have on patient care, even if it might bring down costs somewhat.

More on DWT

The Denver Post published an editorial today joining the call to "stop the madness" of texting and driving. In the Post's words, "Driving while using your hands to type messages on a tiny screen — and then reading the responses — is dumb. So get real. Txtng n drvng dnt mx." Stated as such, the decision seems simple, or at least it should be.

In my previous post on this issue, I briefly discussed how Congress can practically require states to outlaw DWT. Despite "loathing" such government "coercion," the editors seem willing to put this aside in favor of safety. What do I care about? Forget individual rights, personal freedom, and government intrusion. I care about not being plowed down by a texting college student while riding my bike or walking my dogs through my own neighborhood.

Stop the madness.

P.S. - If you feel strongly about this issue or any other issue, you can find your elected officials and send them messages through the website www.congress.org.