Hello! Hunting organizations, sign up!

© 2010 Joshua Stark

To elaborate on a passing reference I made two blogs earlier, the biggest threat to Southern California's wild lands is development, and more specifically, the development of solar thermal facilities and their subsequent energy corridors.
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In this light, Senator Feinstein has authored a bill, the California Desert Protection Act of 2010, that would set aside more land for protection. You can read a good summary of the bill here at the Senator's website.

Now, the NRA-ILA is fighting hard to maintain hunting in Mojave National Preserve, but where are they in supporting this issue? The reason I ask is because, like the Ca. Desert Protection Act of 1994, it specifically supports hunting as an activity in much of the lands it is attempting to protect.

At the very least, let's see some hunting groups signing on, because I know full-well that the NRA isn't a hunting organization.

Here's a list of supporters:

• The California Wilderness Coalition
• The Wildlands Conservancy
• The Wilderness Society
• The National Parks Conservation Association
• Friends of the River
• Campaign for America's Wilderness
• Cogentrix Energy
• Edison International (parent company of Southern California Edison)
• Friends of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve
• Friends of the Desert Mountains
• Mojave Desert Land Trust
• Desert Protective Council
• Amargosa Conservancy
• Death Valley Conservancy
• Cities of Barstow, Desert Hot Springs, Hesperia, Indio, Palm Springs, San Bernardino and Yucaipa
• Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley
• San Bernardino County Supervisor Neil Derry
• Imperial County Supervisor Wally Leimgruber
• Coachella Valley Association of Governments
• SummerTree Institute
• Route 66 Preservation Foundation

Show me one hunting group there...

This bill also straddles the constituent fence, as it were, by both adding wilderness land and including space for OHV use. Neither side in that battle will probably be happy in public, but the long-term effects of having the federal legislation specifically refer to both of them will help both groups.

Come on, hunters, this is something to support!

Special thanks to Defenders of Wildlife for bringing this to my attention.

Environmental regulation as straw-man, & the end of our tripartite government

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Yesterday, my Governor outlined his goals for the year. All the normal political statements were dragged out: to get our state out of our horrible economic conditions, to focus on education and reform our prison system, etc. But, I am now immune to the talk; I wanted to see the action.
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On that note, here is one action that stands out for this blog. The Governor has proposed, and it is now a bill (AB 1111, authored by Sam Blakeslee) moving through the State Legislature, that 20 private projects in the State be exempted from California's environmental and public oversight law, The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA, pronounced "SEE-kwa"). Specifically, the idea is for the Bureau of Transportation and Housing to pick 20 individual projects and declare their approval immune from judicial review. You can read the Governor's handout on the idea here (you need a .pdf reader).

I have four major problems with this bill, to be clear:
1) It weakens and obscures a regulation that has been instrumental in providing Californians a clear, open process for commenting on and fighting construction and planning that may impact them;
2) It has absolutely nothing to do with jobs;
3) It doesn't come close to passing the fairness test of good governance;
4) It abolishes our tripartite government.

Recently, I mentioned in passing about CEQA being something beyond a mere "environmental" regulation, and this is an idea that needs to get some media. Beyond the obvious benefits to our environment, CEQA has had two major, unintended and positive consequences for California: First, it codified an open, conspicuous and transparent process for Californians to comment on and defend their interests when threatened from activities that would impact them; and second, in improving environmental impacts, it improved our land, which in turn improved our standards of living, and the desire for folks to move here ("folks" includes businesses and individuals). I'm willing to bet that CEQA raises real estate values in the medium and long term.

Don't believe for a second that this is a jobs bill. California's economy has done just fine during good economic times with environmental regulations in place. The biggest drags on an economy are uncertainty about the future, and this bill brings all kinds of uncertainty: who will be exempted? Who will have to abide by the law? If company x gets a pass, why can't I? This uncertainty will surely slow up proposed projects who may not otherwise have CEQA troubles, because they might have to compete with projects who don't have to play by the rules. Other companies might think that waiting until they get their turn instead of moving forward on project ideas. What a mess! This bill's impact on "jobs" is a joke.

This uncertainty arises because the bill flies in the face of consistent, equitable government. Governments of laws and not men must abide by being equitable. The legal term for the opposite of this is "arbitrary and capricious", and though the reasons for the exemptions may be spelled out, it's a bad road to go down when you exempt private citizens from laws while binding others to them.

The last concern is a serious concern when taken in the context of our current state government. California is walking dangerously close to being ungovernable, and when we play favorites by exempting some private businesses from the law, we step closer to that boundary; but, when we do so by allowing the legislature and executive branches to declare certain citizens untouchable by the third & coequal branch of government, we actually move away from our constitutional form of government.

Our rabid public environment concerning jobs and debt and the economy is clouding our good judgment as a people, and this bill is one prime example of what might happen if we allow that environment to ruin our government, our progress, and the future of our state.

If only they'd called first...

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Last week, my good cousin Kevin shot me an email from the NRA-ILA on yet another attempt by those anti-hunting, lawyering, pinko enviros to take away my right to bear arms...
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or, to put it another way-

Last week, my good cousin Kevin sent me an email from the whack nut-job NRA about something or other that they hoped would rile their base enough to help them keep their vice-like neocon death-grip power-hold on Washington, D.C....

or, (and this is the reason, I swear, I'm not a popular site on the internet)-

Last week, my good cousin Kevin sent me an email alert from the NRA (no need to explain who they are) about a request by the Center for Biological Diversity and a few other environmental and conservation groups. This "Request for Rule Change", sent to the California Fish & Game Commission, concerns management within the Mojave National Preserve, specifically to limit hunting.

Reading the original NRA-ILA bulletin, one is forced to pick a side, which always bothers me about email alerts of any kind. I understand that, in advocacy, the job is to rile folks, but it also has the effect of creating too polarized a conversation.

So I looked up the CBD request. Sadly, neither the NRA nor the CBD thought the public intelligent enough to understand the issue without their interpretation, and it took some digging before I could find it. Some folks think we should read the primary source material for ourselves, and a hearty thanks goes out to the folks at CalGunLaws.com for the copy you can read here.

Second, after some conversations, I also read the Mojave National Preserve's General Management Plan, which is the guiding document for managing the Preserve. Last, I perused the Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan, searching for references to hunting.

Here's the issue: The Center for Biological Diversity is requesting that the California Fish & Game Commission change the rules for hunting within the Preserve. They want to: restrict hunting to Sept. 1st-Jan. 31st (except for bighorn); end rabbit, hare, and nongame animal hunting; and disallow the use of dogs and spotlights. The reason they are asking for these rule changes on these 1.5 million acres of wildlands is to protect the desert tortoise, a species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

As I read the CBD's request, I grew more and more frustrated. If ever there were a document that could be used to split the hunting community from the environmental community, exploiting an already frustrating and unnatural rift for political purposes, this would be the one. Yet, when I read it, I knew that it didn't come from a group of anti-hunting, New World Order totalitarians. It comes from a group of people who want to protect the desert tortoise, and who do not hunt, nor understand the traditions that arise from hunting, nor the regulatory manners involved in California hunting.

So, if the folks at CBD had called or emailed me (please do!) to ask my honest opinion about their request, here is what I would have said:
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Ideally, you should have local hunters among your ranks, and you need to talk to them to understand what they hunt, when, where, and why. Obviously, looking at the request, you do not have this, nor have you solicited input from independent, local hunters about their habits, places, and the like. Okay then, next step.

The next step would be starting from California hunting regulations. It is common practice for the state to manage its preserves by season, opening up hunting for multiple species on a particular refuge, but only during the season for one type. It is also common for the State to restrict access to certain parts of a refuge to protect particular species, while allowing hunting in other parts of the refuge.

Looking at the identified critical habitat for desert tortoises, I see that about 800,000 acres has been identified within the Preserve. That should be your start, because if you just take the Preserve's border, without connecting it in some way to tortoise habitat or hunting habits, then you alienate people due to this arbitrary boundary. Hunters are land-oriented; they think spatially, geographically. They also think in terms of habitat. So, telling them that a particular habitat and spot is off-limits may be unpopular, but it is understood, especially when it comes with real reasons. In fact, if you knew the hunting hot-spots for rabbits, hares, and nongame animals, then you could possibly have avoided this fight to begin with, or at least shown hunters that you really are trying to consider their activities and the real impacts on desert tortoises.

One thing you should avoid like the plague is allowing wealthier hunting opportunities, and even making exceptions for them, while banning hunting for poorer folks. Bighorn sheep is a very limited hunt, and the people who hunt them often spend many thousands of dollars to bag a trophy. Rabbit hunters, on the other hand, are typically poorer, and often times rabbit can provide a valuable, nutritious supplement. You definitely should not ask for an exception.

I understand that there is a problem with carcasses left from people shooting ground squirrels, coyotes, and hares, and those carcasses unnaturally feeding tortoise predators. Again, though, this problem is more easily solved by restricting hunting within tortoise habitat during the time of year they need. I don't hunt nongame animals, but I'm fairly certain that removing predation from a mid-level predator, making it the apex predator in a region, can have dramatic and unintended consequences. Now, if coyote hunting isn't so intensive as to impact them in this dramatic a manner, then is it really impacting tortoises?

I would definitely reconsider disallowing the use of dogs. Instead, I would have an educational campaign about the proper use of hunting dogs, and their environmental benefits. Dogs find downed game, and have a tremendous impact on decreasing the number of carcasses in a field. Unruly dogs in tortoise habitat can wreak havoc, so restrict hunting within tortoise habitat, not within the entire Preserve.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the largest threats to desert tortoises are climate change and development (including development that is an attempt to help cure climate change, ironically). I don't seriously believe that the impact from hunting is so large as to severely inhibit tortoise recovery, especially in the 700,000 acres not designated as tortoise habitat within the Preserve.

Ultimately, you have two good documents concerning both the management of tortoises and the management of the Preserve, (the Recovery Plan and General Management Plan, respectively) - use those! The first suggests restricting hunting that leaves carcasses, and restricting hunting to a season. The second suggests restricting hunting to a season, but not by type. CBD can do two great things with this: Talk to local hunters, to minimize the impact to hunting while maximizing long-term desert and tortoise protections when determining which locales and times to restrict; and encourage folks to eat jackrabbits (which are hares and very popular in Europe), to cut down on carcasses left in the field.

As for the rule change request, CBD should request that hunting within designated critical tortoise habitat be restricted by season, that season being the quail season (usually the end of January). This is both scientifically sound, and within the scope of everybody's capabilities. However, since I am not a local hunter, I am painting a broad picture that could be further refined by local experience, which would have the added bonus of local support (or at least understanding).
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Those would have been my points. Instead, CBD has taken the recommendation by the Fish & Wildlife Service in its Recovery Plan and tried to apply it to a set of boundaries with no bearing on tortoise habitat, while exempting wealthy desert bighorn hunters from the restrictions. In doing so, CBD has ignored the purpose of recommendations from the Recovery Plan, the Preserve's own General Management Plan, and California hunting tradition and hunters.

I'll admit that I am a fan of the Center for Biological Diversity, and for the Endangered Species Act and the National Park Service. The spirit that drives the folks at CBD emerged from hunters' hearts generations ago, as did parks and a desire to protect those species we see in the wild. As a hunter, I cannot deny my own impacts, or worse yet, only pretend to see my positive impacts while denying I also have negative ones. And, just as I try to walk more and more quietly and lightly upon the land when I hunt if I am to be successful, I must maturely understand my place and responsibility to wild things, too.

Hunting is different from all other outdoors activities in that it is an inclusive experience, it lets me be a part of the wild, to participate in the wild, rather than merely observe it or ride it like a roller-coaster. Hunters will do well to remember that this wild we seek and experience and love includes so much more than our prey and the burger joint on the way home. It includes and requires desert tortoises, and bighorns, all of it, and where we see that our impacts have a negative effect, where we see our impacts are wrong, we must responsibly change.

So one more time, please CBD, reconsider this rule change in light of the Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan, the Mojave General Management Plan, the history and traditions of California hunting and hunting laws, and for hunters like me, who see that our communities should not be split at all, but who are split over politics, so that we may both be used as pawns in others' games.

Don't Give Away Carbon Permits

© 2009 Joshua Stark

I need to be blunt with this title, so forgive the lack of imagination.

Basically, here is a short article from the authors of a report on the impacts of free allocation of carbon permits through grandfathering, in which they say it's a bad idea. Additional comments on the issue and the report from Jim Roumasset (occasional guest blogger at Environmental Economics) can be found here, and they are well worth the read.
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"Grandfathering" in pollution terms is where you let older equipment pollute more for free because it's older. The ethical foundation of this concept is that the impact to such older equipment and facilities will be too difficult for them, and so they would more likely shut down than re-tool, thus causing horrible unintended consequences to these communities. The ethical scales, then, weigh more heavily on jobs and community financial security than they do on the physical health of the community and/or global warming.

Matt Kahn posted a fascinating take on durable equipment and it's damaging environmental impacts, which I unfortunately cannot link straight to, because he doesn't separate his comments into pages (dang it), but you can read his blog here, which is generally good, except for the parts about famous people (unless you like that sort of thing). His entry is on November 23rd. Basically, he said that durable equipment, because of longer lifespans, drag our move towards less pollution, because they are dirtier than newer equipment. It's an interesting notion, even though I'm not completely convinced that making things break down faster is necessarily a good idea. It is also a notion that is exacerbated by incentives, like grandfathering, that encourage people to keep the older stuff around.

However, the costs of global warming are going to be borne, and putting a price tag on carbon is a good, huge step towards lessening it, but only if it is done right! What is right? First, it can't be cheap; second, its revenue has to be redistributed in a way to alleviate the regressive nature of its impact on poor folks.

Grandfathering fails both of those tests. In fact, the purpose of grandfathering is to make the process cheap, and this creates horrible distortions. Consider the two possible scenarios: 1) Carbon pricing is made cheap for everybody, or 2) carbon pricing is made expensive, but grandfathering is included.

In the first scenario, carbon is still emitted into the atmosphere, while revenues are collected either by the government or by private companies who got free permits. Conclusion: Consumers pay companies or the government more through what is effectively a sales tax, while more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere. Presumably, we are trying to cut carbon emissions, so this is a big, fat failure.

In the second scenario, free permits are given to companies, but the emissions have a lot of value because carbon is made expensive (through cutting the total amount allowed). If it is true that the older equipment cannot be made cleaner, then the company, very soon, will have a huge incentive to cease operations and sell off their permits, effectively pocketing the carbon tax from consumers AND leaving the communities stranded. The carbon price would come from the economy, which, considering that oligopolies/monopolies account for the vast majority of our markets, means that consumers would pay a disproportionate amount, and poorer people paying a disproportionate amount of that.

In the end, if we put a price on carbon, it's a tax - it is a government-mandated price and cap. If its purpose is to cut carbon emissions into the atmosphere, then it is going to have to be expensive. The first ethical question then, is: Should companies collect tax revenue, or should your government collect it?

Now the title of my post should be clear.

Environmentally damaging connections

© 2009 Joshua Stark

A couple of unfortunate stories to point out here, but the eye-opening is important.

Emily Green has a great blog, in general (check it out), and a few weeks back posted an amazing story on the connection between a well-known California Senator and a powerful "farming" family. Amazing, and sad on at least three levels for me, because pomegranates are my favorite fruit.
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Today, Capitol Weekly and Capitol Alert both reported on recent campaign donations to a group called "Californians for a Fresh Start", which is supporting a change in term-limits laws. Specifically, the change in the law would lower the limit from 14 years (two Senate terms and three Assembly terms) to 12 years, while allowing all the time to be served in one house. My guess is that it would also include a "fresh start" for currently-serving legislators. The three contributors are the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, the L.A. County Federation of Labor, and Majestic Realty.

Why is this an environmental & ethics concern? It just so happens that Majestic Realty directly benefited from a last-minute law which exempted its proposed NFL stadium from state environmental regulations (CEQA, to be specific). So, don't be offended if one sees this as Majestic Realty spending $300k (it's donation) to a proposition that would exempt current legislators from a law that everybody else has to abide by as a token of its appreciation for being exempted from laws that everybody else has to abide by. Of course, the other two organizations benefit from the exemption (temporarily), but they all lose (along with the rest of us) by creating a horrible precedent, further poisoned by this new twist.

CEQA, by the way, is billed as an environmental law, and its focus is environment, but it is really a good-governance law, because it creates a process by which institutions and businesses must be clear about their impacts, and it offers the public the opportunity to weigh in on decisions that may impact them.

This is another story that is sad to me on a few levels. First, I like football, and I treat folks who don't with suspicion. Second, I love CEQA, and this precedent means that a serious fight is coming over a good law that gives regular folks a voice. Third, I'll just come right out and say it: I don't like term limits, because they create bad distortions in public representation, and (more importantly) they infringe on my right to representation as expressed through the 1st Amendment's freedoms of speech, petition, and assembly.

I won't be voting for the "new" idea because it doesn't eliminate term limits, it just further ensconces one particular group of individuals, while reinforcing the appearance of impropriety between large financial interests and our representative form of government. But, it's sad that is has had to come about the way it did.

A landowner's take on the ESA

© 2009 Joshua Stark

A great post over at Rich Fletcher's blog on conservation, the Endangered Species Act, and the concept of "highest and best use", one of those driving forces that have, historically, pushed lands to develop into suburbs and the like. It's a good read, I highly recommend it.

What I really like about it is that it comes from a landowner. The pressures these folks must feel whenever they try to do real conservation on their land must be tremendous. Remember, conservation is the noun form of "to use sparingly", and that is the proper definition when it comes to folks who have land that they can put to various uses. Farming, especially for the landowner who doesn't have tens of thousands of acres, can be a frightening business, because you are on the bleeding edge of margins, smack between the Scylla of oligopoly and the Charybdis of oligopsony*.
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Mr. Fletcher's point is that laws like the Endangered Species Act help to re-define the highest and best use of a property. I'll second that, and say thanks for pointing it out.

*An oligopoly is a market with few producers, an oligopsony is a market with few buyers, and Scylla and Charybdis are the proverbial "rock and hard place" from Greek myth.

My Problem with Pigou

© 2009 Joshua Stark

Nowdays, there is a movement afoot in economics right at the junction of economics, ethics, and the environment, based on the works of an obscure (to normal humans) economist.
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Arthur Cecil Pigou was a prominent economist of the early to mid-20th century, and his work has influenced a number of studies in economics, but the one that is coming to prominence in recent years is the push to "internalize externalities." Pigou proposed a tax on transactions with negative externalities, because they are cases of market inefficiency.

There are two ethical claims here: 1) Economists believe it is unfair for someone to be hurt by other people's transactions; and 2) economists believe that market inefficiencies are wrong behaviors. The second one is a little more debatable, but I believe that the first one is just about as universally held a belief as one will find on Earth.

What a Pigouvian tax is, then, is a tax on a transaction intended to help mitigate the effects of its negative externality. Here is an example:

Say you buy 50 gallons of diesel fuel for your truck. As you drive off, the exhaust from your truck aggravates a kid's asthma. That child is rushed to the hospital, and her life is saved.

Who paid for the hospital trip? Who should pay? The visceral reaction is to feel at least partially responsible for the problem. Of course, in the real world, we pretend that we can't really determine these causes and effects so cleanly, but it's really because we can't determine whose specific particle aggravated the asthma, not because we don't think the situation is wrong.

But we do know that diesel exhaust is bad. We, as a society, are picking up the tabs for diesel's effects (called social costs), especially when the child doesn't have health care. This is a negative externality resulting from the purchase of diesel; the deal was between you and Chevron, the kid had nothing to do with it, and yet, she goes to the hospital, and I have to help pay.

Economists see this as a market failure, and some have proposed that, to help alleviate that failure, we should tax the item. The tax will raise the price of the item, lowering its quantity demanded in the market. In the case of diesel, this means that less diesel exhaust will occur in the air, because people will buy less of it.

The Pigouvian tax is widely accepted in economic circles, it crosses ideological lines, and in fact, there exists a Pigou Club of economists and wonks who believe in its use.

So, what's my beef with it? Well, first, it's a regressive tax, like all sales taxes. A regressive tax is one that has a larger percentage impact on poorer people than richer people. In our example, a person making $10k/year would pay a higher percentage of her income to the diesel tax than a person making $100k/year. My ethical claim is that poorer people should not pay a higher percentage of tax than richer people. Worse yet, some are calling for Pigouvian taxes to take the place of income taxes, which are progressive taxes (that is, the rich pay a higher percentage than the poor). This is an untenable long-term revenue situation for government, and it's bad macroeconomic thinking, too, for a couple of reasons.

Last, there is no guarantee that the revenues will not ruin the impact of the tax on externalities. Consider this: The construction industry lobbies for an exemption to the tax, on the grounds that it impacts jobs; the government exempts the insurance industry by providing an income tax exemption or a subsidy; the company bosses tell their folks to fill up, because they can just write it off at the end of the year. A person can conceive of a situation where more diesel gets consumed than previously (look at ag. subsidies now, if you don't believe that's a possibility).

But, in order for people to have the incentives to make honest economic choices, we need some way to internalize these externalities. We are all paying the social costs, so not having a price tag on their impacts at the diesel pump gives us a false price for diesel when we buy it. Since we can't ask for people's income statements at the pump, what do we do?

The solution I agree with is to help ensure that the tax (placement and revenue) helps alleviate the externality. This can be accomplished through a rebate of the Pigou tax to everybody, a combination of flat-out equal checks to every citizen of the country of a portion of the tax, and improving health care and non-citizen third-party impacts like air and water pollution problems in the wild lands. The rebate takes care of the regressive tax problem, and the projects to improve wild lands will help alleviate externalities there, too.

So, don't go asking me to join the Pigou Club until it comes with these fixes. Though, I doubt seriously that I'd be asked, anyway.