Posted on 04/10/2002 4:59:39 PM PDT by WhiteyAppleseed
Full Title:Scientist’s Computer Projections Fail to Reveal Tree Threatened by Fatal Disease, Extinction Likely (Opinion is Divided, though a Review is Unlikely)
Subtitled: Computer Model Revealing lack of alligators at North Pole is cause for Concern (Environmentalists Shout Save Allie!)
There are two bills in Congress,H.R. 2829 and H.R. 3705, to amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973. If approved, the law would require empirical, field-tested data and peer-reviewed data for ESA action. Too much analytical modeling-theory is the trend, a method that has been shown to fail expensively with attempts to manufacture habitat for the Piping Plover in Nebraska.
On February 16, 2002, in Grand Island Nebraska, a farmer named Tom Schwarz testified during a House Resources Committee Field Hearing. Mr. Schwarz, representing the Nebraska Water Users, also known as NWU, told the committee, ”Our organization traces its roots to a federal court order issued 12 years ago this week. Early in the relicensing process for FERC Projects 1417 and 1835—the hydroelectric projects of Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District and Nebraska Public Power District--environmental organizations, with the backing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, attempted to require the districts to release water stored for irrigation, supposedly to benefit endangered species. Before the order was stayed 80,000 acre feet of water was dumped and to this day no benefits to the species were ever shown.”
It is this kind of “precautionary principle” decisions, called for by the little barking environmental dogs and all, based on modeling theory, that the two bills before Congress are trying to address. This was the same kind of “precautionary principle” choices that left the Klamath Basin farmers high and dry, their grievances ignored.
The Nebraska farmer wasn’t done there, however. While relating another story of “mitigation” that calls foradding sediment to the riverNot only was Nebraska being asked to provide 130,000 acre feet of water and 10,000 acres of habitat, now the ridiculous idea of adding thousands and thousands of tons of sand to the river each year had been introduced.”
This hair-brained idea came about from the good scientists using modeling theory, bad science pushed to the forefront because the ESA as written and enforced permits it. Mr. Schwarz is one out of many Americans who see the ESA as a tool of control ”to gain power through control of water and land. The evidence is everywhere. Every spring 500,000 Sandhill cranes use the river and their numbers have increased since the 1960s. Yet of the 150 whooping cranes that migrate a few weeks later, and never more than a handful of them land on the Platte, we don’t seem to have enough habitat. How can that be when the Service uses Sandhill habitat as a surrogate for the whoopers?
As Mr. Shwarz said and I think we all agree: “The system we have now related to administering the ESA is broken.”
I urge everyone to contact your representative in Congress. Ask him or her to support HR 2829 and HR 3705. Ask them to sign on as a co-sponsor of these bills.
The ESA is a reckless buzzsaw used to destroy the Tree of Liberty’s protective shade. The Act has hurt citizens. In 2001, the Act killed four fire fighters. Farmers in Oregon lost their livelihoods because of bad science and the ESA.
The Northern Spotted Owl snatched the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from thousands of hard-working countrymen. Recently, it was discovered that the Northern Spotted Owl breeds with the California Spotted Owl. Will that science be used to delist the bird and return Americans to work?
Federal and state scientists committed fraud in a lynx survey; they claimed they were testing the system. Mr. Hansen, of Utah, said: “If this is true, it shows a fundamental mistrust that these scientists have for the very science they are using.” Former Rep. Kelly used the same lame excuse when he was caught in Abscam. Their actions could have affected management decisions in fifteen states and fifty-seven national forests, my home state of Michigan among them.
The Endangered Species Act will be thirty next year. Enacted in 1973, the House passed the bill 390 to 12 and the Senate passed a similar measure on a 92 to 0 vote. President Nixon signed the new bill into public law. Congress has wrestled over reauthorizing the ESA for years. You have to wonder if it would ever see the light of day, if we knew then, 30 years ago, what we know today. The Act is holy writ to the environmental evangelists who never seem to unable to find a Chicken Little scientific model that is used to harm our countrymen.
On March 20, 2002, the House Committee on Resources heard testimony from a variety of people. Interestingly, among them was Peter Illyn, Executive Director for a ministry called Restoring Eden. His testimony speaks volumes about the future of the enforcement of the ESA. His testimony discussed the biblical and moral argument for good stewardship as it relates to the ESA. His testimony is evidence of what many have been saying for years, that environmentalists have made their case a religious cause, and the many examples where irresponsible science was used to forfeit private property shows an alarming trend that we can ill afford to ignore.
I believe it was Hayek who wrote: ” It is possible that a fanatical religious group will impose upon the rest restrictions which its members will be pleased to observe but which will be obstacles for others in the pursuit of important aims.” In the case of the Endangered Species Act, Americans face an Inquisition the likes of which has never been seen.
One of the original patriots, Sam Adams, said: "If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." American lives have been harmed by this destructive Act and too often (as with the Klamath farmers) it has been a case of too little, too late, and their voice, raised in collective protest and redoubled by other concerned citizens, was ignored. I could easily pose a canny analogy to our nation’s early days, in which legitimate grievances were ignored and a crisis followed. Now is the time for us to stand among our fellow countrymen whose lives have been harmed by the ESA, a threat to the beauty of the Tree of Liberty, an endangered species.
The ESA is evil; the most endangered species in America is free human beings.
C_O: “2. Fails to protect endangered species,”
WA: “I agree, but it is heresy to suggest anything else be done and if the ESA cannot be changed now, after Klamath and the Lynx Fraud, when?”
C_O: “3.Serves the interests of a financial elite.”
WA: “And it needs to be changed. Long overdue. It’s broken. Needs to be fixed.”
C_O: “Disinvests the species into a socialized commons motivated to fail.”
WA: “You would elevate the species to a rank deserving of nobility? Or? Taking your idea of species as private asset…?…I assume the book will explain this one. Can I assume that your picture of biodiversity does include man in the frame, instead of the Insignificant Other, one of the heathen, opposed by the little environmental barking dogs.
C_O: “4. Obscures the fact that endangered species are the principal asset of a habitat management service and are therefore private property.”
WA: “And when the sandhill or whoopers migrate? What about groundwater? It’s certainly not defined as a species, but the ESA has been used to define how much groundwater under property can be used.
C_O: “5. Destroys a competitive market that can manage species habitat at net benefit to society.”
WA: “What happened before the ESA? Even if it were torn up and shredded, even if SCOTUS ruled it unconstitutional, the mindset exists that any kind of development or other use of resurces is the cause of extinction. How would a “competitive market” be created, taking into account life before ESA? I’m sure the book (could I have cut&pasted it for free?) will explain this.
C_O: “and 6. Fails its intent to protect the environment because of its structural inability to balance competing ecological interests. Up until now, all the landowner gets in a legal victory is a respite until the next round. Now, there is a difference: InsCert creates the potential for a civil alternative that takes back control of the asset.”
WA: “I’m sure the lawyers are interested in hearing more. Or by “civil” do you mean something else entirely? The previous statement makes me think otherwise. If that is the case, how many have endured tragedy travails simply because they couldn’t pay an attorney for their right to exist? I believe the farmers of the Klamath used the courts…did it work for them? The “precautionary principle” wasn’t applied to their case. Or we’re back to my beginning and our grievances will only be addressed with the ultimate civil case, one of war? And I’m not the author of that idea—that train of thought has been growing in size for some time.”
The following italicized statements are from:
Natural Process: That Environmental Laws May Serve the Laws of Nature, ISBN: 0-9711793-0-1. Copyrights © 1999, 2000, & 2001 by Mark Edward Vande Pol.
…appreciatively used in connection with the on-going debate here concerning HR2829 and HR3705. (Kate L. Turabian devotees are free to scoff at my flagrant abuse of the scholarly form.)
One premise of Natural Process (NP) is that: Coercion begets resistance, enforcement, and punishment that can be rightly regarded as a destructive waste of energy that all too frequently induces unintended consequences.
This is followed later by the maxim:Regulations become webs of intentional ambiguity by which a punishing trap can be sprung.
The debate concerns the Endangered Species Act and the aforementioned bills, long overdue attempts to correct what is wrong with the ESA, a regulatory piece of legislation that isn’t going to go away by ignoring it or fighting it individually in court. Rather than discussing the connotations of “coercion,” but keeping it in mind, and speaking about the ESA in the light of the maxim above: HR2829 and HR3705 are attempts to remove some of the ambiguity of the ESA. The bills do this by requiring science that isn’t as open to debate as computer generated models; they bring into the regulation field data, peer review, a kind of checks and balances that our government was founded upon.
Assuming the alternative suggested by NP is a kind of free market whose only problems are the maintenance of law and order. Can we have that today? Such a stand on law and order alone (free of regulation), “cannot be justified by the principle of liberty. Only the coercive measure of government need be strictly limited.” (Hayek, Constitution of Liberty. P257)
Hayek again: (p224) “Furthermore, a free system does not exclude on principle those general regulations of economic activity which can be laid down in the form of general rules specifying conditions which everybody who engages in a certain activity must satisfy.”
If we can agree that the ESA needs some work, can we both assume that the other agrees that some form(s) of regulation are necessary? We’ve come too far to recast the die by vote.
From NP, which I’m to understand offers an alternative to the ESA and enforcement thereof….. Government regulation is structurally at odds with competitive principles, simply because non-uniform law enforcement is an invitation to corruption. Single solutions are mandated out of the idea that uniformity constitutes "fairness" even though uniform solutions among variable circumstances are not innately fair.
Bringing the debate to the two Congressional bills, taking the above into consideration, and assuming your argument against the ESA is the manner in which it is being enforced, a kind of “non-uniform law enforcement…an invitation to corruption.”
I’m trying to find common ground. We do agree that the ESA needs work; it is broken. We’re trying to agree to a fix. The Congressional bills do offer a kind of “single solution” though that solution would be based on debate, of all knowledge that can be brought to the table, and by peer review, back again to a kind of checks and balances, lessening the chance for corruption.
I’m not seeing how NP would do it otherwise. Obviously, a good deal of thought and work have gone into it, but I get the impression that you would do away with all regulation, place a value on species/resources (to what standard? The environmentalists?) NP seems to be an attempt at re-labeling the terms: NP: The public can invest in verification businesses that assist individual entities to do their best at accounting the behavior of natural process assets that offset or mitigate human impacts, having a financial stake in that success.
“Verification businesses” sounds an awful, awful lot like peer review, checks and balances, that HR2829 and HR 3705 attempts to put in the process. Later on, NP seems to be saying that we never had to have an ESA to start with: the body of individual interests can more effectively settle disputes within the confines of contracts.>BR> I haven’t read the book, I realize, but this sounds like a juggling of the definitions, the terms we’ll apply to the various players. Either that or wishful thinking.
NP:In order to develop the benefits of successful interdependence, we must choose to apply our collective will through reinforcement of individual integrity and respect for unalienable individual rights.
And here I thought we were both nursing our own personal outrage at the lack of respect for rights. Or wasn’t our country founded on a principle such as this?
NPWe can create a process defined by individual responsibility for the individual share of the whole as a view of the self, enlightened by the price of that share. It is more realistic than to expect an individual to adopt such consideration out of either religious altruism or civic compulsion. In Watermelon Sugar, maybe.
Later, NP talks about brining analytical tools to the table. Those tools have been used. I understand them to be computer models, statistics. The concern is that that kind of science has been used too much, which I suspect is why you are opposed to HR2829.
NP, speaking about resources as a kind of tangible standard of wealth: Much of that investment in analytical tools is available and applicable to manage risk in environmental systems.
Yes, you would be opposed to HR2829/HR 3705 because analytical tools are the darlings of the scientists and here you clearly own the concept.
And then it’s back to a juggling of the terms again: NP:Civil power relies upon third party audit to validate reliable investment data. Civic enterprise has the power and scale to avoid independent verification.
Have you read the wording of HR2829/HR3705? Your use of the expression “third party audit” is simply another way of expressing peer review. “Reliable investment data” is another way of saying that empirical data, field tested data should be at the forefront in enforcement of the ESA.
NP raised the question: Can we trust private enterprise to manage the environment? If not, should we give the job to a government monopoly? That is the choice here.
Your choice is clear. “Monopoly” only has good connotations when we think of the game. But if we think of the game—Monopoly—and recall the objective—to win—and then take into consideration what we already know—that it’s dog eat dog out there, then we are left with a certain amount of regulation again. We’ve lived with it long enough that it’s part of our DNA. Only a radical mutation (Civil War?) will change that.
The ESA needs work. As it is now, it is not working. Improvements can be made. Improvements should be made. We cannot continue to exist as a free society if the trend continues.
These are some of the words Mr. Smith read into the Congressional record upon introduction of S. 1912:
I cannot begin to describe for you the human toll that these biological opinions exacted on the farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin. Suicides and foreclosures have both occurred.Those who still have their farms lost most of their farm income last year, many depleting their life savings to hold onto their land. Ranchers were forced to sell off livestock herds. Stable farm worker communities were decimated as families moved to find work.
The real tragedy is that none of this had to occur.
Just this week, the National Research Council found that key decisions regarding the operation of the federal Klamath Project had no clear scientific or technical support.
If those words do not p-ss you off, then as Sam Adams said, “ May posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
We need to change the ESA. We need to change it now. There is legislation in Congress that proposes to do that. Let us all get behind the effort so that the needless loss of life will end. Contact your representatives and senators in Congress and demand action.
There is an analogy to our nation’s early days, during which legitimate grievances were ignored and a crisis followed. If the comparison were made, would it fall on uncaring ears?
Three years from now someone will notice this has occurred and wonder WHY? Then there will be a multimillion dollar investigation and four more agencies to correct what you are correcting right now, the spread of false dandelion.
Stupidity is a growth industry. It looks like next year I'll be using 2,4-D instead of RoundUp for catsear. That should help. I'll run an experiment this month.
Later, you wrote, “Now for my second problem with what is proposed, modeling. “ From what I’ve learned, computer modeling is a kind of lazy-man’s way of getting the work done required by the ESA. You pointed out that it is easy to manipulate the numbers.
On March 20, 2002, Randy T. Simmons, Professor of Political Science and Department Head of the Department of Political Science at Utah State University testified before the House Committee on Resources. Whether field data should be considered over computer models is a contentious issue, he said, ”The problem for policy discussions is that the grand predictions of species loss are not supported by field data” He said that the London Zoological Society’s internet site, Web of Life, claims that 137 life forms are driven to extinction each day—50,000 a year. Later he said, “IUCN can only identify about 1000 extinctions in 400 years…Internationally, the documented loss of mammals and birds has increased in the last 150 yeas from about one species every four years to one each year(Lomborg 2001:254)”
You clearly recognize the problem with computer modeling when you said, “What I learned from the experience was that any model that attempts to forecast anything based on an implicit assumption of exponential growth and concludes that something gets so large as to cause a catastrophe, is just so much garbage.
But, back up 3 paragraphs and it seems like you misunderstood what is happening. You said you have a problem with what is proposed, modeling. That is not the case. In fact, that is 180 degrees from what is proposed with HR2829/HR3705/S1912. I realize that the title to my broadside was misleading, but perhaps it is well that it has generated this discussion.
And I don’t see where some have reach the conclusion that key aspects of ESA evaluation is being thrown or shoved to the universities. Peer review is being called for with the proposed legislation and feedback from many sources will be required, from the owner of the land, as well. But modeling and a greater reliance on universities is not what I read in the proposed legislation. Please give it another look and decide if you can’t help change the way the ESA is enforced.
I read somewhere in those links I provided that one witness called to testify said he had spoken with the orignal bill-makers (I'm new to the vernacular) and that those he spoke with had no idea what kind of monster they were unleasing.
Many of them didn't know, but some did and it was intentional. Nixon knew. The purpose of the ESA was defined in the 1930s. THOSE people (Cordell Hull et al.) knew exactly what they were doing.
WA: I suppose the commerce clause is a kind of control on another species, us, the states, but we use it still, though it may have some faults.
It's not the clause, it's the interpretation. There are parts of the Constitution I would like to amend and perhaps clarifying language there would help.
Or we're back to the thirty-year war again and the premise underlying the ESA: that we have caused species to go extinct.
We have caused species to go extinct and (in most cases) it was intentional. You are assuming that if this "reform" effort dies that it's our only chance to fix this mess. Gimmeabreak.
Whether you believe all of that or not, we still have an ESA and it has harmed farmers in the northwest, killed fire fighters.......
No doubt. The two UN treaties I cited are the principle culprits and both should be rescinded. There are better ways to manage habitat than to give government a monopoly to do it.
WA: I don't see the proposed legislation as "throwing a bone to the universities," although their input would be welcomed, I'm sure, if I read the language of the bills correctly.
C_O: "Then you are either blind, ignorant, or dishonest; take your pick. The sole power to confer peerage is strictly controlled by a university oligopoly"
Here you severed an idea that is critical I am not against universities, modeling, or any of the rest of it in principle. The problem is the motivational structure. Federal funding of universities and public skewel brainwashing, has created a culture of privilege and dependency within the peerage. It is the greenie children in our schools now to whom you would hand the power of peer review. Think about that. These are the same generation as is planting lynx hairs. Without a motivational check of accountability on their part, your recommended changes to the ESA will backfire.
WA: The proposed legislation looks to correct some of the wrongs committed in the name of the ESA. Since science has been the tool used to enforce the ESA, HR2829/HR3705 provides a means to power for the landowners; the listing agency must accept data on the species collected by landowners.
And do what with it? NEPA requires consideration of economic impacts now and they ignore it.
Funny how the little barking environmental dogs never seem to lack for the geist of the university knowledge, more polter than zeit (I¡¦ve waited all my life to use that.), to control private property¡Xusing a science of their own making to wage war against another power base of science. I read HR2829/HR3705 as an attempt to control some of the battle, that too often takes place in court, and which has resulted in landowners plowing their borders under as a kind of moat to keep species off, instead of waiting for the dreaded computer model that suggests the lack of alligators at the pole is a cause for concern. (Interesting, isn't it, that computer modeling enables those who seek to control property a means whereby they don't have to trespass. But hey, who drives 55? A kind of cyper-trespassing?)
Don't blame the tool. Blame the user. Models are useful within limits. As I said to Robert: The problem with any of this is that "science" is defined subjectively by those with something to gain: the faculty and regulatory peerage. Those people need to be under contract to the property owner subject to third party audit instead. All three need to have something to lose if they are wrong. That calls for insurance. The ESA doesn't need reform, it needs to be completely rethought.
C_O: The aforementioned schools are "nearly totally dependent upon Federal funding or tax-exempt foundations that are using the power to control grant funding of "scientific" research to control the value of natural resources, commodities, real estate, imported goods, or even as tools of foreign policy to prop up foreign loans."
WA: Okay, I can't wait for the book. I think we both agree (read previous dialogue) that science is being misused. I don't think there is any argument that there is a power base using the universities. I'll be digesting the rest in time.
I can handle that.
The ESA is not working. Regardless of the constituionality of the Act, it has been around for 30 years. In the end, most people don't wish to see any species become extinct. Given the underlying premise of the Act 'that we are responsible and that by our actions we are causing extinction' the Act supposes that it is in our power to change that, a Herculean task as we have learned.
Unless we make its sponsors choke on it by using it to take their toy. My proposal is transformational, but it is also incremental.
Yet as it exists, the ESA harms our countrymen. I don't think anyone can argue for more wrong as was done to the farmers and ranchers around Klamath.
Maybe you would like to read what I wrote on that?
HR2829 and HR3705 are attempts to give more of a voice to the property owner. In the Klamath, there were three federal agencies, each disagreeing with the other, and in the end, the farmers lost. These bills would have prevented what happened in the Klamath by requiring the science be reviewed.
I don't believe it. Klamath isn't over. That was just Round 1. Peer review or no, I don't trust Peter Moyle and I don't trust the process.
It is well-documented that many species that made it to the threatened/endangered list should never have been placed there in the first place.
I may agree with you, but that is still a subjective opinion.
Lately, it is common for a species to be listed simply to affect negotiations for an Section 10 Exception. That is science? We know it's not. But that is what's being done. It's time for a change. Long overdue.
On that we are agreed. The question is: what kind of change? I disagree with continued Federal control. It can't work. It is inherently unjust. There are better alternatives.
C_O: I think managing habitat for endangered species is a perfectly reasonable land use that the owner should be free to market as a service.
WA: Who determines whether or not a species is "endangered"? History has shown that of the species listed, many should never have been listed. Once listed, the task of removing is remotely successful.
My answer to that is time-dependent and contextual. It's too complex for this discussion. RTB.
C_O: Endangered species should be treated economically as the assets that they are with a risk of loss priced actuarially.
WA: We still have a need to designate whether a species is endangered, threatened, or otherwise.
Not necessarily. There are other ways to identify and manage risk and market mitigating assets and compensatory services.
The method employed for that task is broken; it has not evolved with us and the continued use of that method will continue to kill fire fighters trapped on a hillside, will continue to hold back water for farmers who require it to manage their own species of corn, alfalfa, beans, or cattle, to feed to that other neglected species, mankind. At the same time, a "risk of loss" premises a kind of science that would be better employed openly, with the animating contest of freedom, with dialogue among knowledgeable parties, all parties, as it should be, with built in checks and balances. The trend of ESA action is closed to any kind of dialogue, due in part to the lack of what HR2829/HR3705 are attempting to give to the process.
That openness presupposes the legitimacy of a democratic claim to control land use. I would argue otherwise. The public claim should be constrained to what demonstrably effects them.
C_O: Census data should be private property as certified by an insured third party.
WA: And who determines the third party?
My system addresses it, but indirectly because the marketplace will evolve that mechanic. The point is that it should not be determined by police power because that kind of power over land use invariably expands to control all property and economy. I don't think that you want that.
HR 2829 and HR 3705 help define the intent of the ESA by addressing the process and parameters of listing a species. The idea that census data should be private property has frightful connotations considering the approach to property that has been used. Classifying census data (I assume you mean the numbers of a species, endangered/threatened or otherwise) as property is like building imaginary borders, staking out territory, that is only respected by man, not by the subject of the census, the species.
Read Chapter 1 and then I can start to talk about that. What you are wondering about is involves a synthesis of the most abstract concepts in the book. They are simple, but not commonly understood. It involves a total transformation in perspective of what land is by incorporating its definition into the time domain.
This statement that you own sounds dangerously like the concern of the environmentalist and those charged with protecting an endangered species
I AM an environmentalist, in the classical sense. What surprises many is that I arrived at the conclusion that a system based upon private property rights is the only rational way to care for nature.
I believe that now the whereabouts of a vulnerable species is classified, the file kept in the Holy of Holies¡Xto guard against nefarious butterfly collectors, prairie grass embezzlers intent on wreath-making, and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs looking for Indiana bat wings to brew aphrodisiacs for the international market.
That thought is bogus. It doesn't work. It is the foundation for CITES. Experience with privatizing elephant management in Africa proved it. Creating a legal ivory trade created more elephants. People raised them because they wanted more ivory.
C_O: I'll bet you think you came here to announce what we were to support and watch us line up like the great unwashed.
WA: Actually, I was hoping for a circular unruly mob, as opposed to an orderly line, to gather at the River. Which is why I made the inquiries at the individual state's sites, before nailing my Broadside to this forum. Maybe you didn't see it? I¡¦m sure I visited the California site yesterday in my politicking I think I'm getting the hang of the vernacular. I've been visiting here long enough to know that even a quorum is unlikely. And what is really disturbing is knowing there has been a virtual roll call of proposed bills now dusty with time that have tried to change something that soiled itself years ago.
Mob rule is how we got this mess.
C_O: This example will expose the granddaddy of them all: the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This case shows that civic administration of the ESA: 1. Was authorized unconstitutionally,
WA: And that's why it's been around for 30 years. In a sense, perhaps it shows there are a few redeeming qualitities about our civilization. Will it take a Civil War to change? No. It is in our power to change it.
This is an ill-considered answer; one that presumes democratic whim should overturn the rule of constitutional law. Had we stuck with the Constitution this mess might never have happened. People would have figured out what I am proposing long ago.
C_O: 1. Fails to protect endangered species,
WA: I agree, but it is heresy to suggest anything else be done and if the ESA cannot be changed now, after Klamath and the Lynx Fraud, when?
Tyranny of the urgent again and ends don't justify means (see Aristotle on that one). Since when did the need for change dictate that we limit such change to trying to fix fundamentally bad ideas?
C_O: 2. Serves the interests of a financial elite.
Yup.
C_O: 3. Disinvests the species into a socialized commons motivated to fail.
WA: You would elevate the species to a rank deserving of nobility?
Whaaat? I said that managing species was a valuable service. This means that the existing system destroys the economic viability of that service.
Or? Taking your idea of species as private asset? I assume the book will explain this one.
Yup.
Can I assume that your picture of biodiversity does include man in the frame, instead of the Insignificant Other, one of the heathen, opposed by the little environmental barking dogs.
Gimmeabreak.
C_O: 4. Obscures the fact that endangered species are the principal asset of a habitat management service and are therefore private property.
WA: And when the sandhill or whoopers migrate? What about groundwater? It's certainly not defined as a species, but the ESA has been used to define how much groundwater under property can be used.
Indeed. That's the problem. It is a system incapable of managing relative or competing risks. I deal with that with my time-domain definition of property. Really, it's a quite personal transformation in perspective.
C_O: 5. Destroys a competitive market that can manage species habitat at net benefit to society.
WA: What happened before the ESA? Even if it were torn up and shredded, even if SCOTUS ruled it unconstitutional, the mindset exists that any kind of development or other use of resurces is the cause of extinction. How would a "competitive market" be created, taking into account life before ESA? I'm sure the book will explain this.
Yup.
(could I have cut&pasted it for free?)
Nope. :-)
C_O: and 6. Fails its intent to protect the environment because of its structural inability to balance competing ecological interests. Up until now, all the landowner gets in a legal victory is a respite until the next round. Now, there is a difference: InsCert creates the potential for a civil alternative that takes back control of the asset.
WA: I'm sure the lawyers are interested in hearing more. Or by "civil" do you mean something else entirely?
Founded upon private, for profit business under contract law: civil society. BTW, tort law and insurance deregulation are serious issues with my plans, but then, they are already.
If that is the case, how many have endured tragedy travails simply because they couldn't pay an attorney for their right to exist?
It's a problem created by oligopoly control. The Taft-Hartley exemption for unions indeed needs to be revisited. Property owners will have more money when they start to get their property back and market those services.
I believe the farmers of the Klamath used the courts... did it work for them?
I have fixed some of that with my system design by virtue of how it creates standing in the court. That has been the single biggest barrier to property owners participating in suits involving the listing of species.
The "precautionary principle" wasn't applied to their case. Or we're back to my beginning and our grievances will only be addressed with the ultimate civil case, one of war? And I'm not the author of that idea that train of thought has been growing in size for some time.
That was just plain silly and shows a basic lack of understanding about the precautionary principle (the book deals with that too). We have a long way to go before things degenerate that far, but heck, we are moving fast.
One premise of Natural Process (NP) is that: Coercion begets resistance, enforcement, and punishment that can be rightly regarded as a destructive waste of energy that all too frequently induces unintended consequences.
This is followed later by the maxim: Regulations become webs of intentional ambiguity by which a punishing trap can be sprung.
The debate concerns the Endangered Species Act and the aforementioned bills, long overdue attempts to correct what is wrong with the ESA, a regulatory piece of legislation that isn't going to go away by ignoring it or fighting it individually in court.
That's a heck of an assumption.
Rather than discussing the connotations of "coercion," but keeping it in mind, and speaking about the ESA in the light of the maxim above: HR2829 and HR3705 are attempts to remove some of the ambiguity of the ESA. The bills do this by requiring science that isn't as open to debate as computer generated models; they bring into the regulation field data, peer review, a kind of checks and balances that our government was founded upon.
This is simply an astounding assertion. The agencies still write regulations, police them, levy fines, and administer permits. That is a fundamental violation of the separation of powers principle and has nothing to do with checks and balances. You will find even fewer checks and balances within the peerage.
Assuming the alternative suggested by NP is a kind of free market whose only problems are the maintenance of law and order. Can we have that today?
Good question. Assuming the negative, reforming the ESA means nothing.
Such a stand on law and order alone (free of regulation), "cannot be justified by the principle of liberty. Only the coercive measure of government need be strictly limited." (Hayek, Constitution of Liberty. P257) Hayek again: (p224) "Furthermore, a free system does not exclude on principle those general regulations of economic activity which can be laid down in the form of general rules specifying conditions which everybody who engages in a certain activity must satisfy." If we can agree that the ESA needs some work, can we both assume that the other agrees that some form(s) of regulation are necessary? We¡¦ve come too far to recast the die by vote.
I think you are going too far on too little here. I think the ESA should be scrapped and that the best way to do that is to get its current benefactors to want it. I have that worked out too.
From NP, which I'm to understand offers an alternative to the ESA and enforcement thereof.. Government regulation is structurally at odds with competitive principles, simply because non-uniform law enforcement is an invitation to corruption. Single solutions are mandated out of the idea that uniformity constitutes "fairness" even though uniform solutions among variable circumstances are not innately fair.
Bringing the debate to the two Congressional bills, taking the above into consideration, and assuming your argument against the ESA is the manner in which it is being enforced, a kind of "non-uniform law enforcement" an "invitation to corruption."
Those are the principle problems insofar as they effect property owners. However, the effect that a risk-averse system used to accrue power has on habitat is not addressed by those concerns. That is actually my prinicple concern.
I'm trying to find common ground.
With too little data.
We do agree that the ESA needs work;
No.
it is broken.
Yes.
We're trying to agree to a fix.
That's not the word I would use.
The Congressional bills do offer a kind of 'single solution' though that solution would be based on debate,
There was no debate on the Convention on Nature Protection; there wasn't even a recorded vote. What is this that you are proposing: Government heal thyself?
of all knowledge that can be brought to the table, and by peer review, back again to a kind of checks and balances, lessening the chance for corruption.
I think that one key to your misunderstanding is that you have no idea how process validation works. Read the book. Then you have to learn what a control boundary is, a transfer function, a characteristic equation¡K and how it is that these would serve as the means of legally defining ecosystem processes and thus property. You see, it¡¦s all about processes. Physical property as we know it is a figment that ignores the time domain.
I'm not seeing how NP would do it otherwise.
Quite correct.
Obviously, a good deal of thought and work have gone into it, but I get the impression that you would do away with all regulation,
Shhhh! I do not propose to get rid of all regulation of land use related to endangered speices,
I propose to rid ourselves of ALL regulation.
place a value on species/resources (to what standard? The environmentalists?)
Market pricing that evolves from records of mitigation projects leading to assessment of actuarial risk. As for whose standards, well, RTB.
NP seems to be an attempt at re-labeling the terms:
It redefines property entirely.
NP: The public can invest in verification businesses that assist individual entities to do their best at accounting the behavior of natural process assets that offset or mitigate human impacts, having a financial stake in that success.
'Verification businesses' sounds an awful, awful lot like peer review, checks and balances, that HR2829 and HR 3705 attempts to put in the process.
Only in that it is a physical check. It works more like an accounting firm. It has nothing to do with classical peer review. The operational mechanics are totally different. The accountability I propose is financial. This works more like industry than academia. Think Manufacturers' Mutual.
Later on, NP seems to be saying that we never had to have an ESA to start with: "the body of individual interests can more effectively settle disputes within the confines of contracts."
In principle correct, however technology is what has made it possible to do this in part because of transaction overhead, data transmission, sensor technology, etc..
I haven't read the book, I realize, but this sounds like a juggling of the definitions, the terms we'll apply to the various players. Either that or wishful thinking.
I'll be charitable and won't comment upon the hidden assumption here. You see, when people have been struggling on a problem for a long time, it is usually because they are asking a question without a solution. Under such circumstances, redefining the problem is usually necessary.
It is not just juggling definitions. Remember, I am a medical device project engineer by training. The system works in a manner similar to a combination of several existing systems: best medical practices, process design control and validation, third party certification in a manner similar to Underwriters Laboratories, and accountability through insurance.
NP:In order to develop the benefits of successful interdependence, we must choose to apply our collective will through reinforcement of individual integrity and respect for unalienable individual rights. And here I thought we were both nursing our own personal outrage at the lack of respect for rights. Or wasn't our country founded on a principle such as this?
Of course. They just didn't know the power of what they were playing with or how to apply the principles to problems like these. What you are learning is wholly new and as far as I can tell, a revealed principle of Natural Law.
CO: We can create a process defined by individual responsibility for the individual share of the whole as a view of the self, enlightened by the price of that share. It is more realistic than to expect an individual to adopt such consideration out of either religious altruism or civic compulsion.
WA In Watermelon Sugar, maybe.
Horsepucky. It's real. Think of a co-development project in industry or supply dhain management. That kind of flippant comment will usually get you flamed at FR.
Later, NP talks about brining analytical tools to the table. Those tools have been used. I understand them to be computer models, statistics. The concern is that that kind of science has been used too much, which I suspect is why you are opposed to HR2829.
No. I am opposed to civic control. I don't want to reform the ESA; I want to induce its slow supercedure and eventual collapse by giving government an able competitor. Such would be best for both humans and habitat.
NP, speaking about resources as a kind of tangible standard of wealth: Much of that investment in analytical tools is available and applicable to manage risk in environmental systems.
Yes, you would be opposed to HR2829/HR 3705 because analytical tools are the darlings of the scientists and here you clearly own the concept.
There you go again with the analogy of, "if you aren't for this, you are against everything it's trying to do."
Tools are tools. How helpful or destructive a tool is depends upon how the tool is used, doesn't it? The problem is one of motivational structure, not the need for technology. The government can't make a bus that runs either.
And then it's back to a juggling of the terms again: NP: Civil power relies upon third party audit to validate reliable investment data. Civic enterprise has the power and scale to avoid independent verification.
Have you read the wording of HR2829/HR3705? Your use of the expression "third party audit" is simply another way of expressing peer review.
No, it's not.
"Reliable investment data" is another way of saying that empirical data, field tested data should be at the forefront in enforcement of the ESA.
Perhaps, if I understand you correctly, we agree that field tested data is important, but the government has no business controlling the use of property unless they want to buy it at full market value. One problem there: the Constitution forbids the National government from holding Federal Lands within the several States.
NP raised the question: Can we trust private enterprise to manage the environment? If not, should we give the job to a government monopoly? That is the choice here.
Your choice is clear. "Monopoly" only has good connotations when we think of the game. But if we think of the game 'Monopoly' and recall the objective 'to win' and then take into consideration what we already know 'that it's dog eat dog out there, then we are left with a certain amount of regulation again. We've lived with it long enough that it's part of our DNA. Only a radical mutation (Civil War?) will change that.
This is silly.
CO: We can create a process defined by individual responsibility for the individual share of the whole as a view of the self, enlightened by the price of that share. It is more realistic than to expect an individual to adopt such consideration out of either religious altruism or civic compulsion.
WA In Watermelon Sugar, maybe.
C_O: Horsepucky. It's real. Think of a co-development project in industry or supply dhain management. That kind of flippant comment will usually get you flamed at FR.
Is that all it takes! I was under the impression that the good folk at FR were somewhat restrained in their emotions. I am interested in what the book has to say. The reviews were all pleasant, but there was one:
William Holmes, Soper Wheeler Co.:
Mr. Vande Pol's depth of knowledge and accurate perception of the Environmental movement and its consequences are most comprehensive. As a tragic record of where we are today, as more and more property rights are expropriated from private to public (civil to civic), the book is a treasure. He makes some most ingenious proposals and I would love to live in that world, but certainly I will not, nor, I fear, will any of my descendents.
What concerns me is that four fire fighters died needlessly while doing their jobs. What concerns me is the coercion brought to bear upon citizens through enforcement of the ESA. And the ESA is one out of many Acts with similiar intent. Fire fighters are going to continue to die, farmers are going to continue to lose their livelihood. Since the bills have been introduced, I assume there exists a certain amount of optimism that things can and should be different.
It's a matter of ultimate efficiency. If you have ever chased after the weeds that heavy equipment can bring in, or dealt with what you have to do to get it there and repair the damage, you would understand. Then there is paying the taxes on the income to hire the dozer. Then there is having enough work for it. Then the problems get bigger. I am 48, 6'-0", 163# and I don't go to the health club. The job takes longer but the good results come sooner. So, why work out when you can work outside?
The reviews were all pleasant, but there was one:
William Holmes, Soper Wheeler Co.:What concerns me is that four fire fighters died needlessly while doing their jobs. What concerns me is the coercion brought to bear upon citizens through enforcement of the ESA. And the ESA is one out of many Acts with similiar intent. Fire fighters are going to continue to die, farmers are going to continue to lose their livelihood. Since the bills have been introduced, I assume there exists a certain amount of optimism that things can and should be different.Mr. Vande Pol's depth of knowledge and accurate perception of the Environmental movement and its consequences are most comprehensive. As a tragic record of where we are today, as more and more property rights are expropriated from private to public (civil to civic), the book is a treasure. He makes some most ingenious proposals and I would love to live in that world, but certainly I will not, nor, I fear, will any of my descendents.
Bill Holmes is a great guy: a classic forester, timber operator, landowner, and mill owner.
I have sold books to members of the local Native Plant Society, extreme leftists, libertarians, honest bureaucrats, researchers, and conservatives. They all had several things in common: love of freedom, a love of nature, and the certainty that the current system is corrupt and incapable.
That should give you hope that there is room for a new consensus. Oh, and the insurance companies, technologists, and entrepreneurs will like it too.
Bill could be right, but then, what difference would it make how we try to fix it? Your book is in the mail.
The environmental movement was born out of legitimate goals. There was greed and shortsightedness on the part of resource industries. I have experienced it first-hand. It was appropriate to go to government to get problems addressed. Much of the work that was done was necessary and successful and that is part of the problem with it.The primary role of government has turned from forcing rapid economic growth to the exclusion of all else, to an obsession with constraining people from anything that can be construed as harmful. It is certainly not encouraging anybody to do "good." It is a politics born out of the paradigm that people are fundamentally incapable of harmonious interaction with each other or the planet. That misanthropic notion has been rolled into a quasi-religious set of beliefs that is being used by those with every intent of motivating the body politic to trade away its most precious freedoms out of unreasoned fear. Now that environmentalists and regulators are in power, we have greed and shortsightedness on their part. It must be stopped before we lose all that is dear.
I don’t say this lightly. To these same organizations, I owe many of the pleasures of my youth for having preserved those places that taught me much of my first love for the land, but these are not the same people and they do not share the same purpose. This book is, in part, a response to the sense of having that love betrayed.
As environmental organizations have grown, their common agenda has diverged from its purpose. Their adherents’ principle goal has devolved to pursuit of funding to support a political and legal agenda. They have ignored scientific evidence and overridden legitimate discourse over technical differences in the name of preserving entrenched bureaucracies and political power groups feeding off taxes, grants, and lawsuits. It has even led to an odd form of corporate welfare: membership in an oligopoly in return for selling out or buying up smaller competitors. The consequences have compounded. Ruined lives have been rendered into political cannon fodder. In the conduct of battle, the environment has been subordinated to the status of a political hostage. Much like a child in a custody case, the object of the dispute is the one that suffers. The worst of it is, it does not have to be this way.
When one begins a process like this, it starts as a polemic, for much of what starts you writing is a sense of what's wrong. This book takes to task environmental activists, all levels of government, universities, developers, irresponsible loggers, lawyers, rural/suburban residents, bankers, the urban public, politicians, insurance companies, and more! Each of us is a user of the environment and anyone who would buy this book and read it shares such a love of nature and an investment in how we got here. Maybe we have to see the egg on our faces before we can work with those with whom we have struggled for so long. At least we all have something in common!
Perhaps for some it is enough to simply state an injustice, but love of the land won't let you get away with just that and will lead you to wonder what might be done instead. The polemic took nine months. Taking the answers from the abstract, to the concrete, and then to the elegant took far longer. I have done my best to make them simple. I ask your forgiveness for anything less, but this book had to get out. It is time.
Doesn't use of the expression "invasive species" connote so much of what the ideology that gave birth to the ESA and its continued use--that man is responsible for everything and he should be able to do something about it. Which has led to judgment calls by the agencies charged with enforcing the Act. Much as we use the term "invasive species" to describe a species we'd prefer not to have around.
Doesn't the biological, ecological, scientific record of the interaction of the species full of examples of one species taking over the territory of another? Yet we're still somehow resonsible for what the Israelis are doing to stay alive, responsible for what blacks went through during our nation's early days.
Does the book address this idea in any way?
I remember shoping at the Eddie Bauer store in Seattle and looking at the shotguns, rifles, and stuffed animal heads from African safaris. I remember shoping at the original REI Co-op store, when one use to go there to buy camping gear for use on hunting trips. Actually, I have an old Mountaineers Book that has a section that praises the outdoor skills needed to be a good hunter.
If I went into either an REI Co-op store or an Eddie Bauer store and said I needed equipment for a hunting trip, the sales people would probably have no concept of what was required and be upset at me for wanting to "harm nature."
Enjoying and protecting the environment so that one can enjoy is now a quasi-religious issue, where some uses such as hunting, fishing, riding trail motorcycles are considered forms of blasphamie. I find it facinating that the original "concervationists" like Teddy Roosveldt were avid hunters who really enjoyed not only the out of doors but pitting their wits & skills against those animals.
No, I don't object to your having that eucalyptus, as long as you are willing to make sure that it stays on your property. Now, if there is a fire, thousands of seeds will blow over a quarter mile. Are you ready to be accountable for that? Are you ready to post a bond to cover the same event in perpetuity if you sell that property? If not, you are not being accountable for importing that plant.
I would object to that. So you see, it's about accountability for risk. Perhaps it isn't a problem if you import that rhododendron, perhaps it is.
In 1960, when Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty was published, he dedicated the work To the unknown civilization that is growing in America.
I nailed this broadside to this forum (after making discrete inquiries on several state site message boards) after I reviewed some of the information available on-line regarding HR2829 and HR3705 (S1912, as well). I think the power feeding the Tree of Liberty branch-trimmer, known as the ESA, should be cut. An incredibly small portion of Congress is trying to do that with the bills.
The bills came about, in part, because of the terrible situation that evolved in the Klamath Falls area of Oregon. I’ve never been there. The pictures of the area reveal a land well cared for. One picture I saw (from a link earlier in the thread) was of a small body of water surrounded by a patchwork of green cultivated fields. Maybe that was the lake that was the center of the controversy.
One element of the controversy that hasn’t seen a lot of airtime is the contract the farmers and ranchers of the area had with the government. My broadside here has been criticized as uncalled for—as many would like to get rid of the ESA altogether—as would I. But, how much airtime has been devoted to questioning the contract that placed the farmers and ranchers at risk? Was it right for the government to contract with them as it did? I read somewhere that unless the water project (Klamath Lake?) was in place, without irrigation, the land certainly wouldn’t have been settled as it is now.
I was reading chapter 23 of Hayek’s work when I came across this:
We have reached a state of affairs in agriculture where almost everywhere the more thoughtful specialists no longer ask what would be a rational policy to pursue but only which of the courses that seem politically feasible would do the least harm…We must confine ourselves to showing that agricultural policy has been dominated in most Western countries by conceptions which not only are self-defeating but, if generally applied, would lead to a totalitarian control of all economic activity.( Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 1960 p362)By attempting to assure agricultural producers a reward for their work, by delaying that growth of civilization, Hayek argued that all was done was to postpone adaptations that agriculture could have made on its own. Elsewhere in that chapter, there were these words:
Few arguments have been used so widely and effectively to persuade the public of the “wastefulness of competition” and the desirability of a central direction of important economic activities as the alleged squandering of natural resources by private enterprise…It is undeniable that where for such technological reasons we cannot have exclusive control of particular resources by individual owners, we must resort to alternative forms of regulation.” (Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p368)That was 1960. Six years later, in 1966 we had an Act to protect the eagle and a few other animals, and another seven years later in 1973 we had the ESA. You’re apparently not in favor of HR2829/HR3705.
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