The Natural Patriot

Ok, now that I’ve got your attention . . .

It’s often struck me that, just as I am about to wander off and let the blog wither away to die a natural and dignified death, fading into obscurity like the motley materials in the compost I’ve periodically discussed here, something perverse happens to prevent me from doing so. Someone I admire mentions that they read the Natural Patriot and did not fall asleep, for example. Well, it will be clear to the alert reader that I’ve been something of a slacker in this medium for an alarmingly long time now. It was starting to look grim. But I am here to tell you that reports of the Natural Patriot’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Which brings me, at last, to what you’ve been waiting for in amused incredulity: the explanation for the title of my post today.

Why, you would be entirely justified in asking, would I say something so transparently absurd about myself?

The answer will be found in an email that I received out of the blue yesterday from none other than Jeremy Rifkin, (well, OK, technically, it was from a secretary at his institution . . .), economist, bestselling author, architect of a “Third Industrial Revolution”, advisor to various heads of state, and (according to his website) “the most widely read columnist in the world today”. Naturally I was skeptical of the invitation at first, but it appeared to be from a legitimate return address, did not have the pathetic spelling and grammatical faux pas characteristic of internet hoaxes, etc. etc. The name was familiar so I googled him and discovered, among other things, that he was called by Time magazine in 1989 “the most hated man in science“, mainly for his aggressive — and, some would say, unscrupulous — tactics in opposing genetically engineered organisms in the environment (See, for example this essay about anti-science activism). Ah yes, that Jeremy Rifkin. This obviously gave me some pause. I reproduce the message below in its entirety:

Dear Mr. Duffy,

I would like to invite you to take part in a global conversation regarding the new insights into human beings’ empathic nature and the import these new understandings might have on rethinking civilization in the biosphere age.

We are asking 30 of the world’s leading intellectuals, scholars, and scientists from a range of academic fields and professional disciplines, who have been active in various aspects of the unfolding conversation around homo empathicus, to contribute an essay of between 1000 to 2000 words. These pieces will be posted on the Huffington Post website throughout the first two weeks of February.

The Huffington Post is the second largest online news media website in the world after The New York Times and accounts for nearly one percent of total online traffic. I have been asked by Arianna Huffington to coordinate the discussion. Arianna will announce this first great global conversation on rethinking human nature in the 21st century on the homepage and will invite people around the world to join in on the discussion with their own comments, with the goal of moving a deep global dialogue that can help us prepare for the future.

In preparation for this global debate, this week The Huffington Post made available on its website the Table of Contents, Introduction, and Chapter One of my new book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis along with my featured blog. While writing the book I found your work very enlightening. Needless to say, I would be honored if you have a chance to peruse the Introduction and Chapter One online as well as my blog. If you would like a copy of the Empathic Civilization, I would be pleased to send one to you.

I hope you will accept the invitation to become part of what we hope will be a spirited global conversation about our empathic future. If this interests you, please let me know if you would like to contribute an essay by Wednesday, January 20th.

-Jeremy Rifkin

Well, yes, since you ask, this does interest me. Let me start by reassuring faithful readers that I’m not so narcissistic as to believe that I’m one of the world’s 30 leading intellectuals, scholars, and/or scientists. But neither am I immune to flattery. And the Huffington Post is the real deal. Plus, my first thought was “what a great title for a blog post this will be!” So I said, “OK, I’ll bite.” I may very well be stepping into a snake pit. But you can’t make a mark if you don’t engage. It will at least provide an opportunity to dig out the old manifestos about the need for a new concept of patriotism from my files of various rejected newspaper op-ed pieces and post them where someone might actually see them.

Anyway, just a shot across the bow for now. Stay tuned for the essay — and the zombie-like resurrection of the Natural Patriot . . .

Alan Weisman recently published a book that got a lot of press attention for its novelty idea of considering The World Without Us — that is, what earth would look like if some unlikely event wiped out humans and left everything else more or less intact.

An interesting topic for cocktail party chat. But let’s consider the much more germane and pressing question: what will a world with us look like , meaning a world filled with the additional four or five or six billion descendants we as a global society are likely to produce in the coming decades before we bump up against the limits to global human population growth and the numbers stabilize?

As the old warning goes: this is not a test. This is not a parlor game question or an academic question. This is arguably the fundamental question at the root of all others. Consider the words of the father of capitalism himself, Adam Smith, from The Wealth of Nations in the fateful year 1776:

“The desire for food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire for the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage and household furniture, seem to have no limit or certain boundary.”

The implications of those desires, and what might be done about them, are well laid out in a recent special theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London dedicated to “The impact of population growth on tomorrow’s world“. It is sobering and thought-provoking reading (and, importantly, for my readers who don’t happen to have access to a full-service university library, the issue is open access). The issue has everything from fossil fuel limits to the demographic transition, to refutations of revisionist claims that population growth is unimportant, to accounts of how policy has reduced population growth humanely in a variety of countries, to what we should be thinking about to fix the problem, on a global scale. The table of contents is shown below, with links to the articles, but here is the bottom line, and I quote:

“This statement, prepared by the organizers, summarizes some conclusions of the meeting without committing every participant to support of every detail.

Rapid population growth in some regions, combined with increasing affluence and explosive growth in fossil fuel and natural resources consumption throughout the world, is seriously endangering a broad range of natural systems that support life. For the first time in history, much of the natural world is adversely affected by human activity. Global warming is just one among many threats to sustaining human life, wildlife and the natural environment.

The United Nations projects that the human population will increase from the current 6.8 billion to between 8 billion and 10.5 billion in 2050. Although more than half the world’s women now have an average of two children or fewer, the global population is still growing rapidly and this year there will be 78 million more births than deaths (a number slightly less than the population of Germany). Over 95 per cent of this growth is in low-income countries least able to provide for these numbers. Despite deaths from AIDS, much of the fastest population growth is in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2007, Western donor contributions to family planning were less than a quarter of the inflation-adjusted target set at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Shrinking family planning budgets have been associated with stalled fertility decline in a number of countries, leading to serious adverse effects on the health of women and their families and the stability and progress of civil society. In Kenya, as a result of diminished focus on family planning, the projected population in 2050 has been increased from 54 million to 83 million. Some observers predict that an increase of this magnitude may lead to food scarcity and crumbling infrastructure and, potentially, to violent conflicts over scarce resources.

With over 80 million unintended pregnancies each year, there is already a large unmet need for family planning. Surveys show that 200 million women wish to delay or stop the next pregnancy and over 100 million are not using any contraception because they lack access to it or face other barriers to its use. Even in the USA, one of the most affluent nations in the world, half of all pregnancies are unintended.

Meeting the unmet need for family planning has been highly successful in slowing rapid population growth. Ready access to contraception and safe abortion has decreased family size, even in illiterate communities living on less than a dollar a day. Increased access to family planning will make it easier for countries with rapidly growing populations to expand education. Education, in turn, particularly of women, makes an important contribution to fertility decline and a crucial contribution to development. However, rapidly growing countries cannot always expand education fast enough to keep pace with the growing number of children each year.

The coming decade should be dedicated to the needs of the one billion young people aged 15–24 in the world, the majority living in low-income settings with limited educational and employment opportunities. Every young person should have full access to contraception and the knowledge of how to use it. The burden of ill health associated with unsafe abortion must be confronted, especially among young people who are often most vulnerable to unintended pregnancy.

The unmet need for contraception in low-income countries is calculated to increase from 525 million couples in 2000 to 742 million by 2015. It is essential that national leaders and international donors, especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, understand the imperative to invest in education and improved access to family planning.

All women should be protected from unintended childbirth. Making every birth a wanted birth is a goal that can be approached through improved access to family planning.

Reaching this goal is vital to creating a healthier and more equitable world.

Theme Issue: ‘The impact of population growth on tomorrow’s world’
Roger V. Short: Population growth in retrospect and prospect.

Malcolm Potts, Anne M. Pebley, and J. Joseph Speidel. Editorial.

Adair Turner. Population priorities: the challenge of continued rapid population growth.

John Bongaarts. Human population growth and the demographic transition.

Alex C. Ezeh, Blessing U. Mberu, and Jacques O. Emina. Stall in fertility decline in Eastern African countries: regional analysis of patterns, determinants and implications.

Adair Turner. Population ageing: what should we worry about?

Steven W. Sinding. Population, poverty and economic development.

Wolfgang Lutz. Sola schola et sanitate: human capital as the root cause and priority for international development?

J. Joseph Speidel, Deborah C. Weiss, Sally A. Ethelston, and Sarah M. Gilbert. Population policies, programmes and the environment.

Richard Nehring. Traversing the mountaintop: world fossil fuel production to 2050.

Bradley A. Thayer. Considering population and war: a critical and neglected aspect of conflict studies.

Ndola Prata. Making family planning accessible in resource-poor settings.

Martha Campbell and Kathleen Bedford. The theoretical and political framing of the population factor in development.

Malcolm Potts. Where next?

One of these days I really have to write another real post, instead of sending out hat tips to other sites (as important as that is), rehashing my own posts under different cover, and other sleight-of-hand.

But for the moment, I note that Wren has invited me to answer a few questions in association with kindly featuring the Natural Patriot at the Nature Blog Network, a cool site that aims to be the “nexus for the nature blog community, the portal through which readers and publishers alike can locate the very best nature blogs on the net.”

The interview is here. Thanks Wren!

As an academic ecologist researching or teaching about ecosystems, a common dilemma is the issue of how to define the boundaries of a system. Where, for example, does the Chesapeake Bay end and the Atlantic begin? What is the edge of the Hubbard Brook ecosystem? Et cetera. But there is one major exception to this rule: planet earth. We can define the edges of that superecosystem reasonably well. For all practical purposes we are limited, as a global society, to the resources we have here, with the single major exception of incoming solar radiation.

Humans have now grown in abundance and influence to the point where we are the force of nature. Which begs the ultimate practical question about ecosystems: How is humanity interacting with the planetary ecosystem, and is this suite of interactions sustainable?

Obviously, this generation is not the first to ask these questions. In 1972, a team lead by Donella Meadows from MIT published a book called “The Limits to Growth” (LTG), which presented results of a computer modeling study commissioned by a think-tank, The Club of Rome, concerned about the mounting impacts of unsustainable human activities on the earth system. They examined the interactions of five subsystems of the global economic system: population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources. The model began in 1900 and continued to 2100. The model was able to reproduce broadly the historical data to the year 1970.

The central message from the LTG model  was that growth of the global economy would lead to exceeding planetary limits sometime in the 21st century, likely resulting in collapse of the human population and economic system.

BUT, the model also suggested, collapse could by an aggressive program of changes in behavior, progressive policy, and strategic application of technology.

LtG modeled three scenarios:

1) The “standard run” represents a business-as-usual situation where physical, economic, and social relationships were maintained more or les as they were during 1900–1970. This run (see the figure above) shows continuing economic growth into the early decades of the 21st century but signs of increasing environmental pressure at the start of the 21st century (e.g., resources diminishing, pollution increasing exponentially, growth slowing in food, services, and material wealth per capita). Sounds uncomfortably familiar? Finally, this scenario resulted in “overshoot and collapse” of the global system in mid-21st century due to diminishing resources and increasing pollution.

2) The “comprehensive technology” approach—approximating suggestions of “optimists” like Julian Simon or Bjorn Lomborg—attempts to solve sustainability issues with purely technological solutions. This scenario assumes (as do some economists, astonishingly enough) that levels of resources are effectively unlimited, as well as efficient recycling of materials, big reductions in pollution, doubling of agricultural land yields, and availability of birth control world-wide. Hmm. This scenario delayed the collapse of the global system to the latter part of the 21st century, after which economic growth outstripped the gains in efficiency and pollution control.

3) The “stabilized world” scenario assumed implementation of both technological solutions and deliberate social policies to reach equilibrium in population, material wealth, food, and services per capita. Policies implemented include perfect birth control for a family size of two kids per couple; preference for consumption of services over material goods; effective control of pollution; maintenance of agricultural land; and increased lifetime of industrial capital, among others.

The publication of the Limits to Growth study (LtG) in 1972 had immediate and ongoing impacts. Millions of copies were sold, and it was translated into 30 languages. It linked the world economy with the environment in the first integrated global model.

Needless to say, the book was also highly controversial. There was and remains a sustained campaign to discredit the LtG, including repeated misrepresentations that the LtG predicted resources would be depleted and the world system would collapse by the end of the 20th century. So people have been arguing about this for more than 30 years.

Surprisingly, no one thought to test whether the predictions were true until very recently, when Graham Turner published a paper comparing historical data for 1970–2000 with the LtG scenarios. Here’s what he found (see the other figures here):

Generally, the “stabilized world” and “comprehensive technology” scenarios overestimated food, services, and material goods for the population. And population was under-estimated by the “stabilized world” scenario. All scenarios matched the remaining non-renewable resources to varying extents. Global persistent pollution was underestimated by both the “stabilized world” and “comprehensive technology” scenarios.

Overall, Turner’s analysis shows that — can you guess it yet? — 30 years of historical data match pretty closely the key features of the business-as-usual “standard run” scenario, which predicted collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century. Conversely, the data did not compare well with other scenarios involving salvation through technology (perhaps too much of it is being diverted to twitter) or stabilizing behavior and policies.

Yikes.

Turner’s analyses also provide some indication of the change in consumption patterns that would likely be required to achieve a sustainable global system. The “stabilized world” scenario assumed a sustainable global average per capita level of material wealth approximately equal to contemporary levels. Currently, of course, the great majority of that wealth is being enjoyed by us in the developed world, which makes up one-quarter or less of the world’s population. If, for the sake of argument, this wealth were distributed evenly across the future global population (assume ~9 billion people), average per capita material wealth would fall to about 1/6th of current levels in developed countries.

Yikes again. Let’s get that cap-and-trade bill passed . . .

[original source:  Turner GM (2008). A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions, 18, 397-411.]

I mean the natural world here. Yes, the suggestion might at first seem counterintuitive (perhaps even obscene) given the fierce opposition to any restraint on rapacious commerce and “development” that became, rightly or wrongly, intertwined with fundamentalist religion in the conservative coalition in America we have known for most of the last decade.  But of course the situation is more nuanced than that. Even among American Christians, a greener outlook has been taking hold in recent years, and it appears that this sentiment transcends particular religious sects (see, for example, the arcworld website linked below). For most religious people, obviously, there are more important concerns than the environment. But that is equally true of non-religious people.

I was led down this thread of rumination by an interesting letter to Nature this past week, which is reproduced verbatim below. The potential value of appealing to people’s religious views in environmental conservation also resonates strongly with the message from Randy Olson’s new book “Don’t be such a scientist“, which is basically that you can get a lot more mileage for your message by aiming for the heart, gut, and libido than by making clever academic arguments and citing tables of facts. The argument below seems pretty persuasive to me.

Conservation: the world’s religions can help

Shonil Bhagwat & Martin Palmer

The world’s religions are emerging as a surprising driver of support for conservation of biological diversity.

The International Interfaith Investment Group, for example, which is collectively worth more than US$7 trillion, is encouraging religious organizations to change their current investment policies in favour of those that support conservation.

In addition, lands owned by these organizations can contribute to the conservation of biodiversity because of their protected status. More than 7% of Earth’s land surface is owned by religious institutions, and a further 8% has sacred links (http://www.arcworld.org). Given that most countries will never be able to designate more than 15% of their land as protected areas (S. Chape et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 360, 443–455; 2005), territory with religious and sacred affiliations contributes substantially to maintaining biodiversity.

It should also be possible to raise funding for conservation by appealing to donors who have religious faith. For example, the wealthy countries of the G20 group that have large religious populations might step in and help.

The focus of initiatives in the past has been on paying for ecosystem services, which are considered ‘natural capital’ (R. Costanza et al. Nature 387, 253–260; 1997), but an appeal to support native communities on religious grounds might prove more persuasive in a difficult economic climate.

Of the 125 countries that are represented in the Conservation International list of biodiversity hotspots, most have a low per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) and a strong religious base (http://tinyurl.com/2b2kg9). Collectively, these countries are home to more than 4 billion people affiliated with one of 11 mainstream faiths; more than half of them have a total population of 3 billion and a per-capita GDP of less than US$5,000.

Religious sympathy has the potential to make a major contribution towards biodiversity conservation. This contribution could be extremely valuable in the approach to the 2010 target of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

I’ve somehow got on a lot of email lists that I attribute to the Natural Patriot. Greenpeace sends me press releases with a lot of implied exclamation points, as do various purveyors of allegedly green consumer goods. I get excited announcements, often addressed to me by my first name from people I don’t know from Jack, that so-and-so is available for interviews. I have even been flattered to start receiving releases from various esteemed research universities flogging the latest accomplishments of their faculty. Not sure how they got my number so to speak.

I bring this up only as backdrop for one email I received recently that somehow, inexplicably, survived my highly practiced finger on the delete button. It is a very thoughtful, thought-provoking, and compelling essay by Amitai Etzioni in the New Republic arguing (much as Bill McKibben did in Deep Economy) that runaway consumer culture is the real root of America’s–and the industrialized world’s–creeping malaise (stop me if you’ve heard this one).

It would seem easy to dismiss such philosophical arguments as woolly-headed dreaming. But let’s not be premature. As Etzioni notes,”This mentality may seem so integral to American culture that resisting it is doomed to futility. But the current economic downturn may provide an opening of sorts.”

“The kind of culture that would best serve a Maslowian hierarchy of needs is hardly one that would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs–the economy that can provide the goods needed for basic creature comforts. Nor one that merely mocks the use of consumer goods to respond to higher needs. It must be a culture that extols sources of human flourishing besides acquisition. The two most obvious candidates to fill this role are communitarian pursuits and transcendental ones

I will leave you with this thought, and encourage you to read the whole article:

“All this may seem abstract, not to mention utopian. But one can see a precedent of sorts for a society that emphasizes communitarian and transcendental pursuits among retired people, who spend the final decades of their lives painting not for a market or galleries but as a form of self- expression, socializing with each other, volunteering, and, in some cases, taking classes. Of course, these citizens already put in the work that enables them to lead this kind of life. For other ages to participate before retirement, they will have to shorten their workweek and workday, refuse to take work home, turn off their BlackBerrys, and otherwise downgrade the centrality of labor to their lives. This is, in effect, what the French, with their 35-hour workweeks, tried to do, as did other countries in “old” Europe. Mainstream American economists–who argue that a modern economy cannot survive unless people consume evermore and hence produce and work evermore–have long scoffed at these societies and urged them to modernize. To some extent, they did, especially the Brits. Now it seems that maybe these countries were onto something after all.”

And may I add to that list some of my own favorite communitarian and transcendental activities: walking outdoors, camping, gardening (though I prefer to call it ecological engineering), puttering around looking at bugs and birds, fishing, neglecting the lawn, turning over rotting logs, among others. Mainstream American Economists? No wonder it’s called the dismal science.

My colleague John Feeney has been working tirelessly to break through the widespread taboo against discussing the root cause of global society’s manifold, seemingly unrelated, yet accelerating problems: there are too many of us.  And we use too many resources, of course, but let’s not let that divert our attention from the very basic fact that the earth is finite and we cannot sustain continual growth in population or per capita resource use.

John has organized an effort to get the issue of overpopulation back on the table, and into the conversation, by recruiting a number of people working in areas related to population and resources to speak out about population during February 2009 (that’s now!) via the Global Population Speak Out (GPSO).  Several media outlets have gotten on board as you can see at the GPSO’s media page.  Last week John and I were interviewed by Caroline Harding at KRFC radio in Fort Collins, Colorado as part of this effort — my comments were about how human population growth threatens the oceans and can be heard here (scroll down to the KRFC logo).

As John asks in a recent article published at the BBC’s “Green Room”:

“Fundamentally, we need to ask what is the greater threat to human welfare: the possibility that humane efforts to address population growth might be abused, or our ongoing failure to act to prevent hundreds of millions, even billions, dying as a result of global ecological collapse?”

Speak up!

[Note: I normally don’t clog the blog with big swaths of text lifted verbatim from other sources, but in this case I couldn’t resist.  This is a copy of one of the Policy News issues I get periodically from the Ecological Society of America’s Washington office.  I include it here both because of the high density of important information about accelerating progress in environmental policy, but even more because the tone and content of this news of federal government activities related to the environment has shifted so profoundly in just the last month that it’s truly hard to believe.]

TRANSITION: EARLY ACTION BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, CONGRESS REFLECTS ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS

CLIMATE CHANGE

In a January 26th announcement on climate change, President Obama outlined several priorities, which included addressing corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, California’s request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “endangerment finding” linking climate change to increased public health risks.

Many opponents of the climate policies have responded with their concerns, warning of government infringement on private property and what they expect to be disastrous impacts on industry. William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, suggested that granting California’s waiver would lead to the regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, something industry also opposes. “This would almost certainly extend well beyond cars and trucks and would have the unintended consequence of creating costly and burdensome permitting requirements on millions of construction projects including hospitals, schools, and office buildings,” he said shortly after Obama’s announcement.

In Congress, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has set a December deadline for moving climate legislation through her Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, where Democrats have an 11-8 edge. She is confident that this margin will allow her to pass the legislation easily but acknowledges that far greater challenges will arise when it hits the Senate floor.

A successful climate change bill, one that will win over a sufficient number of Republicans and conservative Democrats, will likely require input from a variety of sources. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NM) has indicated that several panels may engage in the process-both Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) have expressed interest in participating. Boxer has stated in the past that she would welcome work on climate policy from other committees, and recently indicated that she’ll look to Baucus for guidance in developing legislation capable of standing up to possible challenges before the World Trade Organization. She also said she would be receptive to Banking Committee suggestions on establishing an oversight board with which to regulate a new emissions trading market.

Republicans may also play a role in shaping the bill. In Boxer’s committee, Arlen Specter (R-PA), who cosponsored cap-and-trade legislation with Bingaman in 2007, said that he joined the Committee this year to push for a more moderate climate bill. “I want to have a stronger voice on global warming,” he said. “I want to be sure that what we propose is something which is attainable.” Also likely to figure prominently in the climate debate is John McCain (R-AZ), who joined the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this year. Although Specter and McCain are proponents of climate change legislation, few other Republicans share their views, and EPW Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) [Editor’s note: the closest thing the US Senate has to the anti-Christ] has predicted that Boxer will not be able to defeat a filibuster.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has also vowed to hold a climate change vote-the first ever for the House-this year.

CAFE STANDARDS AND CALIFORNIA WAIVER

The auto industry has long opposed the increased regulation of emissions, arguing that it would do irreparable damage to the already suffering industry in the midst of the economic crisis. These arguments resulted in Former President George W. Bush’s decision not to finalize his interim CAFE rulemaking, which would have applied to model years 2011 to 2015. Last month, however, President Obama indicated that he would move forward with his plans to reduce emissions and improve fuel economy in spite of the economic downturn. He issued two orders, urging Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to finalize new CAFE standards, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to review California’s request to regulate auto tailpipe emissions. The order directed LaHood to finalize the 2011 standard by April before moving on to later years, indicating that the standards could grow stronger, a change supported by both environmental groups and some Democratic leadership, including chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, Ed Markey (MA).

If EPA grants the California waiver, the state would begin regulating automobiles’ greenhouse gas emissions in the current model year, according to the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols. The emission standards would force automakers to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars and trucks by 30 percent by 2016.

EPA administrator Jackson is expected to open the public comment period on the waiver request in the next few days.

California is the only state allowed by the federal Clean Air Act to enforce its own pollution standards, but only with a waiver from EPA. If the waiver is granted, however, other states would be permitted to enforce the same standard. So far thirteen states have moved to adopt the California standards, with another four indicating that they will follow if the waiver is granted. The 18 states represent about half of the U.S. auto market. The auto industry has been fighting to block the waiver request for years and has embraced CAFE standards in response, attempting to dissuade states from imposing the California standards by arguing that emissions regulation should take place at the national level.

The auto industry is also pushing for Obama to finalize the CAFE standards through model year 2015 as soon as possible, thereby precluding the chance of increased standards after 2011. But the change in administrations has taken a tremendous toll on the industry’s influence in Washington, as has the power shift in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where longtime industry proponent Representative John Dingell (D-MI) lost his chairmanship to the more environmentally focused Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) this year.

The February 3 Washington Auto Show reflected these changes, featuring numerous green products, a renewed focus on electric vehicle development, and the tagline, “Driven by the Environment.”

ENDANGERMENT FINDING

A 2007 decision by the Supreme Court ordered the Bush administration to begin anew its study via EPA on whether climate change endangers public health and the environment. The results of this study were the subject of a great deal of controversy last year, following allegations that EPA made an “endangerment finding” that was later revoked after talks with the Bush White House. Obama’s EPA is now tasked with completing the study-if the agency makes an endangerment finding, greenhouse gasses will be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson sent an email to her staff listing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions among her top priorities, and stating that she would be acting on the Supreme Court ruling in a matter of days. Her early climate moves will come with the help of top climate counsel Lisa Heinzerling, the lead author of the climate change briefs to the Supreme Court, as well as David McIntosh, former aide to Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who helped to draft the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill debated last summer on the Senate floor.

EPA PRIORITIES

Jackson’s email outlined four additional areas that will receive her personal attention:

1) Improving air quality: Jackson notes that many U.S. communities are out of compliance with air quality standards and thus face pollution levels high enough to harm human health.  She says that EPA will fill regulatory system gaps in accordance with both science and the law.
2) Managing chemical risks: Noting the inadequacy of present measures for evaluating and regulating chemicals in consumer products, Jackson says that EPA will revise and strengthen its chemicals management and risk assessment programs.
3) Cleaning up hazardous-waste sites: Jackson plans to accelerate the cleanup of the country’s many contaminated sites as a way of generating jobs while improving the environment and quality of life in surrounding areas.
4) Protecting America’s water: Jackson underscores the importance of protecting both freshwater and marine resources. She says EPA will intensify its restoration and protection efforts, work to improve drinking-water safety programs, and reduce pollution from both non-point and industrial discharges.

MIDNIGHT REGULATIONS

Although White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel put a freeze on all pending rules upon President Obama’s inauguration, many of the most controversial rules, including plans to revise the Endangered Species Act and to exempt some farms from Superfund reporting requirements, were already in place. The Obama administration could reverse these rules by reinitiating the rulemaking process, but Congress could achieve a resolution much sooner by using the Congressional Review Act. Under the Act, a simple majority in the House and Senate and the president’s signature would be sufficient to vote down regulations that took effect after May 15, 2008. Alternately, Congress could deny funding for the implementation or enforcement of the rules to which it objects.

House Democrats have introduced a measure that would use the Congressional Review Act to freeze the Endangered Species rule. Meanwhile, the proposed changes to both the Endangered Species Act and Superfund rules have already been challenged in court.

ROADLESS RULES

Throughout much of the Bush administration, the timber industry, environmental groups, and the White House battled in court over the 2001 Clinton roadless rule, which granted blanket protection to roughly 58 million acres nationwide. Prior to Clinton, two presidents, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, tried to implement national roadless rules, but in both cases the rules were challenged in courts and ultimately voided.

Although the 2001 roadless rule was not explicitly overturned, the Bush Administration put in place another rule allowing states to petition for their own roadless protections, effectively giving states the ability to develop lands protected under the 2001 rule. So far, two states have undertaken the process: Idaho, whose rule the Bush administration finalized before leaving office, and Colorado, whose plan is still in development.

The Idaho plan creates five “management themes” for different areas, with the intent of balancing development, access, and conservation needs. Although some conservation groups support the plan, others sued the Bush administration in January, accusing the Forest Service of improperly approving Idaho’s rule, which they say would remove protection from 400,000 acres and weaken protections on an additional 5 million. They allege that the Forest Service failed to conduct the environmental analyses required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Many of the groups involved in the lawsuit called for President Obama to make reinstating the Clinton’s roadless rule one of his top priorities, some suggesting that he issue a directive giving the Forest Service chief, rather than local officials, decision-making power over the designated roadless areas. Obama expressed his support for the rule on the campaign trail but has not yet taken action.

ECONOMY: HOUSE PASSES STIMULUS BILL, SENATE DEBATES

On January 28, the House approved the economic stimulus package easily, albeit without any Republican support. President Obama had attempted on multiple occasions to reach out to Republicans, who maintained that their vote was not a rebuke of the President, who they praised for his efforts, but instead a vote against the process and legislation created by Democratic leaders in Congress. Specifically, House Republicans expressed concerns that the bill was put together with little minority input and that it contains billions in spending for federal programs that have long been on Democratic wish lists but do little to stimulate the economy. Senate Republicans have expressed similar concerns, but with a 58-seat majority, Democrats will not likely have a problem gathering the 60 votes needed to move the bill.

In the House, the bill underwent some relatively small changes before its final approval. Of particular interest to environmentalists was the addition of $3 billion for transit programs. Many environmental groups praised this addition, stating that the extra funding would significantly reduce oil usage while creating new jobs. The total cost of the House bill now stands at $819 billion, with roughly $275 billion in tax cuts and the remainder in direct investments.

The Senate is currently debating its version of the bill, which, as expected, does not include as much funding for the sciences as the House bill. Science infrastructure, which receives $2 billion in the House version, only receives $430 million from the Senate. The Senate is also directing less funding towards public lands programs, but Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has been circulating an amendment that would provide an additional $2.5 billion to related programs.

The amendment would divide the additional funds among several key areas including:

* National Park Service: $950 million, covering park construction and maintenance, as well as habitat restoration and exotic species management. With this addition, total funding levels would match those specified in the House version of the bill ($1.8 billion).
* Wildland Fire Management: $870 million, almost doubling the current allotment
* Bureau of Land Management: $350 million
* Fish and Wildlife Service: $125 million. This would bring the total resource management and construction spending for FWS to $425 million, almost three-quarters of the refuge system’s typical annual budget.
A committee spokesman said the measure is Bingaman’s top-priority amendment to the stimulus. Even if it fails, there is a good chance that park and refuge funding will be increased during House-Senate conference negotiations.

Some lawmakers, however, may push back against the higher spending amounts in the stimulus. For example, Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), who leads a coalition aimed at reducing stimulus spending, argued that many of the stimulus accounts would be better dealt with in an appropriations bill. Conversely, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has expressed hopes that national parks will receive significant funding through the stimulus, noting that they have an estimated $9 billion backlog of maintenance projects.

Meanwhile, other lawmakers have expressed concerns that the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) could hamper attempts to get the green energy projects-a large portion of the stimulus package-off the ground. Environmental groups and private landowners have used NEPA-related lawsuits in the past to halt the construction of green infrastructure (e.g. wind turbines and the transmission systems necessary to support them), claiming inadequate environmental review. Even strong opponents of NEPA hesitate to take action against it at the federal level, but California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated that he may attempt to roll back state environmental laws, allowing for faster action on transportation projects funded by the stimulus. Several environmental groups suggest that this move would pave the way for Congress to revise NEPA in light of the economic crisis. Another option-increasing the staff at agencies that oversee environmental reviews-could allow for faster action on stimulus projects without compromising safeguards against environmental damage.

In spite of the many debates and complexities slowing the package, Democratic leaders hope to have it finalized and on President Obama’s desk by February 14.

BIOFUELS: OBAMA TEAM HALTS REVIEW OF RENEWABLE FUEL STANDARDS RULE

On January 26, the White House withdrew a prominent biofuels rulemaking from its Office of Management and Budget review. The rule, proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), would implement a 2007 law expanding the renewable fuels standard (RFS). The expansion would increase the RFS to 36 billion gallons by 2022, 21 billion gallons of which would be next-generation biofuels. It would also require that the greenhouse gas emissions from these biofuels have lifecycles considerably shorter than those of conventional fuels.

Although Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ordered a freeze on all pending Bush administration rules, this freeze did not apply to regulations with deadlines already in place. The December 2007 RFS law gave EPA a year to craft the rule, so it remains unclear why it was withdrawn.

Worth noting, however, is the intense pressure EPA and the White House have received from both industry and environmental lobbyists on the details of the rule. In particular, industry representatives and environmental groups stand on opposite sides of a debate over how to address emissions from the so-called indirect land-use changes that would result from increased biofuels production. Environmentalists and scientists, concerned about the consequences of clearing additional land for agricultural production, cite studies indicating that clearing would release additional carbon into the atmosphere-significantly worsening the emissions profile of certain biofuels-by disrupting areas where it is naturally sequestered. Industry groups and biofuels investors argue, however, that the science is not advanced enough to accurately recalculate emissions profiles based on land use and that EPA should proceed without adjusting for indirect land-use.

The Ecological Society of America released a position statement on biofuels sustainability in January of 2008, which outlines the ecological principles necessary for biofuels to help decrease dependence on fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global climate change.

What a week it’s been. Martin Luther King Day followed immediately by the swearing in of a pathbreaking President of the United States. I would like to write at length about the tide of hope that President Obama’s measured words, and deliberative actions leading up to and following the inauguration, have set in motion.  But for now, I will only pass on this clever and aesthetically pleasing graphical analysis of his inauguration speech, based on this cool software and taken from here. Basically, it simply goes through a text and plots each word therein (excluding “the”, “and”, and the like, evidently) with its size proportional to the number of times it appears in the text. Essentially like the tag clouds you see associated with blogs or Technorati, etc.  So here, my fellow Americans, is the analysis of President Obama’s inauguration speech:

In comparison, here is the analysis of President Bush’s second inaugural speech in January 2005:

The inaugural speeches of Presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Lincoln can be found here. I will leave it to the pundits (for now at last) to make the detailed comparisons. Naturally, I was intrigued by the idea of trying this out myself. So just for grins, I cranked the Natural Patriot’s first post through the grinder and here is what it produced:

Not terribly surprising given that the first post was essentially a definition. And here is the analysis of my own reflection on the upcoming Obama inauguration:

Lots of opportunities for fun and mischief here . . .

It’s as predictable as the seasons — every year, when I hear the excerpts from Martin Luther King’s historic speech on the radio at this time of year, it brings tears to my eyes.  I just watched the speech on CNN again and this year was no exception.

But today the words come across in a whole new light.  It still seems, indeed, like a dream that a mere 46 years after Dr. King’s sublime speech (a period of time that seems shorter and shorter as I get older), the hugely diverse, cantankerous, politically divided, myopic, maddening, yet inspiring population of this country have come together to elect an African-American President of the United States.  A mere four decades after black people in this country could be routinely denied entrance to a hotel or restaurant or even a bathroom with no explanation and noone much noticing, a black man is moving into the Oval Office of the White House. And freedom is, at last, ringing from every hill and mole-hill in Mississippi.

Even these months after the election, it seems surreal — a dream — that this could happen.  It seemed inconceivable even 3 or 4 years ago that this could happen at this stage in history.  Yet here we are.

Martin Luther King’s dream, a dream that he gave his life for, brought this country through a dangerous and tumultuous period in our history, with remarkably little bloodshed. It made possible, in no small part, what we will witness at the historic inauguration tomorrow, a mere four decades later.  Much has been said about this literally world-changing event, and there is undoubtedly much more to be said.

But it occurs to me that there is a larger lesson here for Natural Patriotism. It is about, if I might blatantly steal the phrase, “the audacity of hope”. Four decades ago it seemed impossible that black children could one day hold hands with white children in America, much less grow up to be President.  It has come to pass. We faced the seemingly impossible challenge of getting past the bitter, divisive history of four centuries of slavery and brutality to forge a nation of unity from diversity.  Though we have a way to go, it has come to pass. The American way of life was built, in significant part, on exploitation of African-American people.  Yet we are leaving that behind. The American people rose to the challenge.

Now we face the seemingly impossible challenge of another fundamental transformation. The American way of life (and increasingly that of most other countries in the world) is similarly built on exploitation of Nature. This, similarly, is a situation that the nation cannot ultimately survive. It seems, similarly, impossible to move beyond. But perhaps the most important lesson of the momentous transition we are now witnessing is this: Yes, we can.

We can reach the mountain.  We will not all make it, and the going will be difficult, but we can get there.  We can find a way to live happily on this earth, the only home we will ever have, into the distant future.  We can move beyond an economy based on fossil fuel and extravagant consumption and extravagant waste.  We can move beyond the ignorance and hostility to an idea whose time has come. Yes, we can.

As in 1963, we know where we have to go, and we even know how to get there.  The challenge is locking arms together and making the long difficult trek. We have the ideas, we have the know-how, and we are at long last beginning to see the political will.

Even a few years ago, it seemed impossible that we could face the realities that oil is running out, that burning it is cooking our planet, and that our ravenous appetites are literally suicidal.  But we are beginning, after a long darkness, to see light on the horizon.  And I feel that I can allow myself to believe that we will make it.  I have a dream.