Rolf Peterson was on Stateside today. My fellow Michigan Tech alumni may remember him; for the rest of you, he is a biology researcher who does most of his work on wolf populations, including a lot of research (over 30 years) on Isle Royale.
It was interesting to hear the latest from him, as I haven't heard him give a talk since probably 1999. He's an interesting guy with good insights, and (I think at least) a very reasonable approach to management. Ecological issues are a huge battleground, that (like everything in our increasingly political world) is led typically by nutcases on both sides. One side is made of "environmentalists" who declare logging, hunting, and any management of ecology at all as evil. The other side frames the argument as saving the animals at the expense of the people, as in "Would you rather feed your children or save the whales?" Both are more than happy to distort any study or action to suit their needs. Easterbrook has done a number of articles on this phenomenon from the enviro side. (Here and Here and Here. See Moveon.org do exactly what Easterbrook is talking about here. ) President Bush the younger is widely touted to have the "worst environmental record ever", despite the fact that pollution has consistently gone down, and regulations have gotten stricter in many areas during his tenure. While I'm no big fan of the Shrub, to willfully distort the truth in order to further your political agenda is despicable, no matter what your affiliation.
One such example you may have heard recently was from enviros (and from the omnipresent truth distortionists Moveon.org) about how under Bush there are more cities that don't meet Clean Air standards. What they aren't telling you is that the standards have changed. Dubya oversaw the changes in Clean Air standards making them much more strict. So air quality isn't getting worse, in fact, its getting better, but Bush isn't happy with that and has raised the bar higher. However, that doesn't make a good headline.
Equally disturbing is the continued denial of global warming trends. Despite years of actual data (not just simulations) and a real understanding of the mechanism causing it, the industrialists still deny its very existence. While it is still very much in debate how serious the change is, and what the repercussions will be, and what the proper response is, you no longer find serious climate scientists disputing its existence.
Again, I'm showing my idealism here, but if any of these groups put as much time into solving problems as they do into inventing them, we might have made some progress. I'll guarantee the amount of money spent over the last 15 years trying to lobby and duck tougher fuel economy standards for trucks and SUVs by the big three (Disclosure: My employer is the biggest of the big three) could have easily been invested in the engineering to deliver the needed efficiency gains.
In any case, it was good to hear someone like Peterson on the radio. My experience has tended to show me that the real environmentalists are the people who actually spend some time in the environment. As strange as it may sound in our hyper-sensitive world the most ecologically reasonable people I've met have been hunters, trappers, foresters, and rangers. If more attention was paid to the sober counsel of these people, we might achieve the needed balance to live peacefully with nature. Instead, we get continued pushes going too far in either direction, leaving everyone unhappy.
This is the price of politicizing.
Posted by ktismael at June 3, 2004 3:28 PM