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November 27, 2008 Opinions |
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—Guest Opinion—
Treading On A Taboo
By Jack Hart
Each Tuesday I carry the recycling to the curb and look out over a city bristling with light rail, street cars, bicycles, eco-roofs, and little yellow bins like mine. The greenest of the green, my city styles itself, filled with good citizens leading the way to Earth’s salvation.
If only it were true. The sad fact is that unless we do something drastic, out-of-control population growth will wipe out the gains made by the most ambitious recycling and conservation programs, both here and across the planet.
Portland’s fevered efforts to stave off global warming by reducing carbon-dioxide began more than two decades ago. And how much progress have we made? None. Zero. Zilch. Every day we dump more planet-threatening gas into the atmosphere. Why? Because at the same time Portland’s metro-area population has grown by 42 percent. We cancel out every reduction in CO2 emissions with a gain in CO2 emitters.
Projections say the metro population will grow by another million by 2030. Do you really think anything we can do will meet the goal of actually reducing total CO2 emissions?
Well, maybe you do. A strange taboo keeps us from talking about the actual cause of global warming and a deadly smorgasbord of other environmental problems. In this supposedly plain-talking era, a former presidential candidate will tell us how Viagra cured his ED, but hardly anybody will talk about what’s trashing the Earth. Erectile dysfunction’s a bummer. But the fate of our planet is a little more worrisome.
The taboo afflicts most media, including this newspaper (The Oregonian). The Oregonian’s Earth Day editorial urged support for politicians who back energy-efficient buildings, wind power, public transportation and so on. Everything but population control.
Leaving out the key ingredient can be downright misleading. A March 29 headline read, “Portland lessens its ‘carbon footprint.’” But Portland did no such thing. Portlanders may have indeed reduced their per-capita driving by 5 percent over five years, as the story reported, but the metro area’s population grew by 8 percent over the same period. The number of vehicles registered in Multnomah County has increased 45 percent since 1990. You do the math.
When it comes to global warming, we’re ignoring one simple truth: The Earth doesn’t care about per-capita greenhouse-gas production. It’s the total amount of CO2 in the air that matters.
But just try to find numbers for the total amount of CO2 produced by Multnomah County, Oregon or the United States. After extensive research, the best ones I could come up with are 9.7 million tons, 12 million tons and 7.08 billion tons. When those go up or down, you’ll know whether we’re actually gaining or losing.
If anybody will tell you.
Of course, what we do locally won’t really have much impact on what happens globally. Portland may have double the per capita recycling rate, but when I was a kid, typical families had a 1,500-square-foot house, a few basic appliances and one car. Nobody dreamed about air conditioning, power mowers, trash compacters or microwaves. We weren’t very environmentally conscious, but we were only 140 million strong. The total’s now over 304 million.
I bet one 1950s slob still made less of a mess than two 21st-century eco-freaks.
The problem is planet-wide. When my grade-school teacher quizzed me about the world population total, the correct answer was 2 billion. Now the world’s cities are growing by 1 million people a week. A century from now we’ll clog the planet’s pores with something between 9 and 14 billion human beings.
Development compounds the problem. In 1995, each one of 6 billion human beings produced about one ton of carbon dioxide annually. And that was when hardly any private citizens in China or India owned cars, air conditioners or central heating systems. Since then, we added 1.8 billion bodies and increased the average amount each one pollutes. China’s now pouring out over two tons of CO2 per person annually, and the United States cooks along at nearly 20. Experts predict that by 2050 global energy use could increase fourfold.
CO2’s just part of the problem. We fixate on global warming, while our rampaging population mows down the rest of the planet’s inhabitants behind our backs. When Oregon’s offshore salmon stocks collapsed this spring, the blame fell on the Sacramento Delta, where many of the fish originate. A former oceanography professor who works in the area said, ´If you want to blame something, it’s the increasing population of California. You’re putting more pressure on water and everything else.”
It’s not just fish. The World Wildlife Fund just issued a report announcing that “human activities are causing the most rapid decline in species since the extinction of the dinosaurs.” Over the past 35 years, we’ve crowded out a quarter of all animal species.
The impact of population growth reaches way beyond obvious environmental problems. I’ll bet my vasectomy that half the items on page one and the local-news front in today’s newspaper are population related. The paper that arrived the morning I wrote this led with a battle over Willamette Valley development, but neglected to mention that population growth fuels 94 percent of Portland’s suburban sprawl. The front-page story on soaring gas prices overlooked the soaring population that drives up demand. A political story focused on health-care, which has become a problem in part because population growth’s overwhelming the existing system. The lead Metro story raised the possibility of Columbia River bridge tolls as a solution for crippling congestion caused by … you guessed it.
Housing. Education. Health care. Transportation. Nearly 40 years ago, Richard Nixon asked, “How will we house the next hundred million Americans? Will we educate and employ such a large number of people? Will our transportation systems move them about as quickly and economically as necessary? How will we provide adequate health care when our population reaches 300 million?”
Well, we’ve reached it. Conservative estimates put the total at nearly 400 million by 2050, and we’re already feeling just the pinch old Tricky Dick predicted.
Population threatens political stability, too. Countries that grow too fast just can’t get ahead of their problems, and eventually everything comes crashing down. An annual population growth rate of 2 _ to 3 percent can produce a 20-fold increase in a century. Of the 20 countries now suffering that kind of growth, 17 are classed as “failed states,” countries where political and social systems have disintegrated, fueling famine, civil unrest and war.
Population drives immigration, too. Consider Mexico, which quadrupled in population between 1933 and 1980. The only way it could avoid collapse was by flooding the United States with the excess. Projections call for countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to double their populations every 20 years, and many of those people will inevitably find their way to the United States. Ninety-one percent of our population growth over the next 40 years will come from post-2000 immigrants and their descendants.
The non-Anglo nature of that immigration may explain why some Americans think it’s racist to mention it. But a sane discussion of immigration’s impact on the environment has nothing to do with race. The quality of American life will be forever damaged by the arrival of 100 million immigrants, whether they’re Mexican or English.
None of which is to say that we should give up on technological fixes for our most pressing environmental problems. Wind power, fuel-efficient cars and solar energy will delay the Armageddon chickens headed home to our roost. So by all means keep toting those little yellow bins out to the curb. But let’s quit deluding ourselves by thinking that technology alone can save the world.
Instead, let’s:
• Eliminate the taboo that keeps us talking about the root cause of our environmental – and many other – problems. Concern about overpopulation is not racist, communist, sexist or biased against the Third World. We all have a stake in this.
• Quit mistaking per-capita pollution numbers as a sign of progress. Let’s track the totals, of carbon dioxide and every other human pollutant.
• Reward politicians who support population control with your votes. Eliminate tax breaks for more than two children. Focus foreign aid on population-control programs. Campaign for a new worldwide ethic in favor of small families.
• Keep your own family small. World population will eventually level off only if we hold average births per woman to 2.06. We’ll reduce the world population to a sustainable size only if the average woman has no more than 1.7 children.
• Stop treating growth as not only inevitable, but positive. Despite recent reports, a slowdown in metro-area housing starts is not bad news.
If you want to help, don’t waste your time on inconsequential environmental work that treats the symptoms while ignoring the disease. A Portland car-pooling project saved – according to its own chest-thumping claims –3,000 tons of CO2 over five years. That’s pathetic -- we could have accomplished the same thing by slowing metro-area population growth by 30 people a year.
The laminated cards you see in hotel bathrooms are the perfect expression of our preoccupation with distracting trivia. “Save Our Planet,” they say. How? By picking up your towels so that the maid doesn’t send them out for washing. A fine idea, I suppose, although it will do a lot more for the hotel’s bottom line than the planet’s.
I grabbed one of those cards on a recent trip, and I’m staring at it as I write this. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
JACK HART is a former managing editor of The Oregonian. For a real-time population counter, see www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/ worldpop.
—Letters To The Editor—
No Transmission Line!
To The Record-Courier:
I am adamantly opposed to the Boardman to Hemingway Transmission Line Project that is slated to run through Baker County. Idaho Power must be prevented from constructing a 500 kilovolt electric transmission line on some of the most beautiful country in the American West. Oregon land use laws were established to protect rural land from rapacious corporations and developers. I assumed the “green” bureaucrats in Salem, Oregon wanted to preserve the spectacular beauty of our state, but that does not seem to be the case with this particular project.
People live in eastern Oregon because it doesn’t resemble the incredibly overbuilt (i.e., ugly) and non-human scale landscape of urban America. James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Geography of Nowhere,” recently stated that “true localism, not the boutique localism of today, is inevitable given the peak oil crisis.” People are moving to rural communities for the first time in a century because they are fed up with the unmanageable, expensive, and unfulfilling life found in America’s crowded cities and sterile suburbs. In emerging rural economies nationwide, local agriculturalists and other small business people are supplying their communities with essential goods and services.
Large energy companies are not interested in the future prosperity of rural communities, but are hell-bent on expropriating the last vestiges of open land in America for their own profit. Both sides of my family have cattle ranched in eastern Oregon for many years and my ancestors would turn over in their graves if they could see what is happening to their beloved rangeland. Overgrazed land can be restored, but high voltage power lines render valuable land permanently useless. At the very least, the transmission line needs to be located in a corridor outside of Baker County, where it is not highly visible.
If the transmission line is put in it will be a hideous eyesore that will irrevocably harm the economic future of Baker County. I am hopeful that the thoughtful citizens of eastern Oregon will assist Steve Brocato, city manager of Baker City, in putting a halt to the transmission line project.
Richard Heriza
Baker City
Five Counties Relinquish Government Status To F.S.
To The Record-Courier:
The Baker, Grant, Union, Umatilla and Wallowa County Commissioners signed an agreement with the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (WWNF) on July 7, 2008, which gave the Forest Service “lead agency” status on their proposal to significantly amend the Travel Management plan for Forest roads. Under this plan, all areas, trails and roads will be closed, unless these access ways are designated “open” on a map. By signing the agreement to cooperate with the Forest Service, the five counties have relinquished their governmental status. The Forest Service has proposed closing 4,261 miles of Forest roads (about 60% of the 9,300 miles of road on the WWNF) and the counties essentially have said “How can we help you get them closed”?
Throughout the spring and summer of 2007, local residents attended a series of meetings held by the WWNF. The majority of the public attending these meetings voiced their opposition to the Forest Service proposal. One organization, “Forest Access for All,” circulated a petition that was signed by over 6,000 residents from Baker, Union and Wallowa Counties. The petition opposing the Forest Service plan was submitted to the county commissioners, and the citizens asked for no further road closures.
The 2005 National Travel Management Rule, requires all National Forests to regulate travel, but does not require changing any current Forest Plan designations of areas, trails or roads. The intent was to change public access on National Forests in two major areas: there will be no “cross-country travel”; and public travel will only be allowed on roads and trails designated as “open” on a Forest map. If a member of the public is found driving on a road without barricades, and that road doesn’t happen to be designated as “open” on the Forest map, that individual will be cited.
There are many problems for the public with the travel management plan, however, the very root of the problems stem from the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Forest Service that the counties signed on July 7, 2008. This agreement gives the Forest Service lead agency status, and lowers the counties’ governmental status to that of a “cooperating agency.” This flies against the powerful, county governmental status, which the U.S. Congress conveyed to the local governments under the law.
For example, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act 1976 (FLPMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) both require federal agencies to “coordinate” with local governments concerning land use. These laws do not allow the federal agencies to supercede local planning, but instead, require them to coordinate any management plans in their jurisdictions with local governments. Essentially, the five counties who signed the MOU, became subordinate to the Forest Service. In relinquishing their governmental status, the counties also relinquished their ability to require the Forest Service to “come to the counties’ table.”
In the Statute, 16 U.S.C. 1604, the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) directs the U. S. Forest Service, “The Secretary of Agriculture shall develop, maintain, and, as appropriate, revise land and resource management plans for units of the National Forest System, coordinated with the land and resource management planning processes of State and local governments and other Federal agencies.”
Baker County also violated its own ordinance, Resolution 94-1003, which opposes any land management decisions made by the Forest Service that would further restrict public access to public lands. By signing the MOU, the counties have relinquished their right to appeal the Wallowa-Whitman Travel Management Plan when it is published. Because the counties signed the MOU as subordinate agencies, they cannot appeal the decision for the citizens of their counties.
You might be wondering why the counties ever signed the MOU. My understanding is that the counties were approached by the WWNF, and offered a “seat at the Forest Service table.” The Forest Service had been ignoring the counties until this time, and the counties saw the offer as a chance to be involved in the decisions about their county roads. Unknowingly, the commissioners signed an agreement that rendered the counties subordinate to the Forest Service, and they did this without understanding that they were giving up their powerful county coordination rights.
Also, because of the plan to close a majority of the National Forest access roads, concerned citizens began looking at the historic roads across the National Forest, and they began petitioning the County to recognize these as county roads, and require the WWNF to stop closing them. The Forest Service responded in the local newspapers, by threatening Baker County, “That if it should open any RS 2477 roads that the Forest Service made the decision to close...it will ultimately be decided in Federal Court.” Baker County commissioners may have thought that closer communication with the Forest Service through the MOU, would facilitate designation of RS 2477 roads without going to court.
But whatever the reason, signing the MOU was not a decision that will help the counties keep their Federal lands open for public travel. I believe that the commissioners should notify the WWNF in writing that they wish to rescind their participation under the Travel Plan MOU, and that they should require the Forest Service to “coordinate” with them. It is time for our commissioners to rediscover their position of power. In addition, they need to familiarize themselves with the Baker County ordinance, Resolution 94-1003, which opposes any land management decisions made by the Forest Service that would further restrict public access to public lands.
You can get a copy of the MOU on the website at forestaccessforall@ blogspot.com.
Guy Michael.
Durkee
Power To The People
To The Record-Courier:
Most things are not cast in stone and beyond our control, much as we worry or moan about them. This week’s news that the price of crude has fallen from $147 to $50 dollars a barrel since summer due in large part to fewer miles driven should give us a glimpse into what we can accomplish by changing our actions en masse.
Now let’s create a project of warding off a local recession with its unemployment, hunger, and failing businesses, by choosing to spend locally during this holiday season.
By patronizing local merchants, our precious dollars recirculate and help keep people employed, businesses open, and the streetscape attractive for tourists. And if we want good stores, dealerships, and tradespeople here, we have to support them, especially now that the chips are down.
Yes we can!
Suzanne Moses
Baker City
We Have The Right To Know
To The Record-Courier:
I would like to commend The Record-Courier on its commitment to publishing public comment on its Letters to the Editor page. Lately, I have been reading about the differing views on the Idaho Power transmission line that could possibly traverse 300 miles of Oregon.
I noticed that one person's letter pointed out that people were wasting their time opposing the line while they should be investing energy in finding just the "perfect" route for the line instead. While this approach seems reasonable, it is dangerous. This approach assumes that "enough energy for all" does include 500 kV transmission lines crossing through someone's back yard, which is what Idaho Power and all corporate power companies would like us to believe.
Furthermore, I think this approach, which is also the approach our county leaders seem to be taking, assumes that corporate power and big government are capable of making decisions for "the good of all." This is certainly not true when it comes to corporations. Corporations must make a profit. They are not philanthropists. To illustrate this point, there is a possibility the transmission line picking up energy generated in Oregon, could be used to sell that energy to California at "green" rates, which would mean a great profit for Idaho Power.
As for government, our government can only make decisions for the good of all if we help it to do so. That means we must demand information so that we can advise our elected leaders, who we pay, to act in our best interest. At this point there has been (suspiciously) little media coverage concerning the possible implementation of the line, aside from reports in our local newspaper.
Again, I must commend The Record-Courier. In fact, I happened to read in The Record-Courier that our county commissioners are claiming the transmission line is supported at a state and national level, and yet when I contacted an NPR media correspondent, I found that this is not the case. How could it be supported at such a level when most people know nothing about it?
American citizens need to understand an issue before they can begin to support it. As a rural Oregonian who faces the possibility of a 500kV transmission line crossing through my back yard, I have a lot of questions that have no way of being answered until the issue is actually on the table.
What is sustainable energy? Is Idaho Power a corporate entity willing to generate sustainable energy? What are the possibilities for alternative and local energy? For example, how much has Idaho Power invested in researching true green energy sources, such as solar power, and not just energy packaged to California as "green?"
Perhaps when our county officials say the transmission line is supported at a state and national level, what they really mean is that they are being pressured by a big corporate company to get the line put through our county.
At this point, it seems to me we should not tire ourselves fighting the line or fighting for the "perfect" place for the line. We should be asking questions and demanding answers. I urge you to write your local and state leaders and to contact media sources, and alert people to this serious issue concerning Oregon's natural resources. Let's find out what is going on. We have the right to know.
Sydney Aires
Baker City
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