21.4.05

I'll be in DC for the weekend, so probably no posting until Tuesday.
Stentor Danielson, 13:27, ,

WalMart Wilderness

Wal-Mart to Fund Wildlife Habitat Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, pledged Tuesday to spend $35 million compensating for wildlife habitat lost nationwide beneath its corporate "footprint." Acre for acre, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it would buy an amount of land equal to all the land its stores, parking lots and distribution centers use over the next 10 years. That would conserve at least 138,000 acres in the United States as "priority" wildlife habitat. -- via the Evangelical Ecologist

This certainly strikes me as a step forward. It's a bit hard to judge the conservation utility of the preserved land from the information given -- its precise location and the nature of the restrictions that will be placed on its use will have a big influence.

What would be really exciting, though, is if WalMart made a big committment to incorporating green practices into the building of its stores rather than just replacing that land. Things like solar cells on those giant roofs, recycled building materials, and redeveloping brownfields rather than contributing to sprawl would all help to cut through this idea, seemingly central to WalMart's conservation proposal, that development and conservation are separate activities.
Stentor Danielson, 13:17, ,

18.4.05

Offensive Protests Against An Evil Man

As I type, Paul Bremer is giving a no-press-allowed lecture at Clark University. I didn't bother to go, because lectures by big-name speakers are typically not worth my time (particularly lectures by people famous for things they've done, rather than ideas they've had). When Bremer's lecture was announced, there was quite an uproar on this very left-leaning campus (whose students were amusingly described by Brigitta as "Clarxists"). As I see it, there are three arguments against Bremer's lecture:

1. The resource allocation argument: In general, I oppose bringing big-name speakers. As the fame of a speaker goes up, the price tag rises geometrically while the quality of their talk rises at best arithmetically. When you get into the Paul Bremer/Hurricane Carter league, the speaker's fee is a poor investment of scarce funds. The figure of $40,000 has been thrown around for Bremer's talk, though it's unclear where that number came from, since the contracts for speakers stipulate that the real figure won't be revealed (a stipulation I am very much opposed to, incidentally -- students have a right to know where their tuition dollars are going). But $40,000 is certainly in the right order of magnitude. Bremer's salary for an hour of reciting a speech he's doubtless given many times is certainly enough to support at least one grad student TA for a year. With the university constantly whining about its funding crunch, it has no business wasting that money on a big name speaker -- be it Paul Bremer or Noam Chomsky.

2. The procedural argument: I've been told that the process of selecting Bremer as a speaker was corrupt. This information is third-hand, so it may not be accurate. But if it is, it's a serious wrongdoing. Speakers are supposed to be chosen by the Speakers' Forum, a student organization. But I've been told that Dean Little and StudCo President Kevin Ready did an end run, selecting Bremer and cutting him a check without consulting the Speakers' Forum. The contractual stipulation that the press is not allowed is highly problematic as well, and were I given a vote I would oppose any speaker who demanded that.

3. The ideological argument: Paul Bremer is a bad man, who has screwed up Iraq and will say some pretty horrible things -- that much I have no argument with. What I don't agree with is the conclusion that it was therefore wrong to bring him to Clark. The fact that a group, or even a majority, of students disagree with a speaker's view is no argument against bringing them. A university has the duty to expose students to those ideas that are influential in the world -- and few ideas are more influential today than the neoconservative case for war that attendees of Bremer's talk will get to hear from the horse's mouth.

So while I disagree with rationale 3 for opposing Bremer's talk, I agree with rationale 1, and I agree with rationale 2 insofar as the information it's based on is reliable. Yet the organizing against his talk has focused almost entirely on rationale 3. So I passed on getting involved in the protest.

The actual protest turned out both better and worse than I expected. It was better in that the focus was on expressing opposition to the war in general and Bremer's actions in particular, rather than opposing his lecture. There were rumors that the protesters would attempt to block the entrance to the lecture hall, but (at least while I was there) people were able to enter in an orderly fashion.

It was worse in that some of the messages being presented at the protest were distasteful even for a dove like myself. Hanging Bremer in effigy from a nearby tree is no big deal, since that's a standard bit of hyperbole. The signs declaring the US to be the world's worst regime don't represent my view (I'll take George Bush over Turkmenbashi any day of the week), but I can appreciate where their authors are coming from. But two out of the half dozen or so signs being displayed were rather offensive. One sign declared "Victory to the Iraqi resistance" -- that is, victory to a movement that's killing civilians and would, if given power, be at least as oppressive as anything the US has set up. Another person engaged in a bit of gratuitous fat-bashing, proclaiming "Fat America, walk! Don't kill for oil."

All three of Clark's Republicans were there too, holding "Bush/Cheney '04" signs.
Stentor Danielson, 18:52, ,

17.4.05

Downwind States

Change to the Clean Air Act Is Built Into New Energy Bill ... Under the new provision, the "downwind" states would not be required to meet clean air standards until the "upwind" states that were contributing to the problem had done so. Currently, states can get more time but only if they agree to added cleanup measures. Proponents of the measure in Congress, as well as a spectrum of industry groups, say that the change would give state and local governments the flexibility and discretion they urgently need to deal with air pollution from distant sources. Otherwise, they would have to impose much stricter limits on pollution from local sources, including power plants, factories and automobiles. But House members who fought against the measure, and other opponents, say flexibility and discretion are just other words for delay, saving money for industry and posing risks for millions of people living where the air does not meet health-based standards. -- via The Hamster

I'm actually somewhat ambivalent about this provision. The trust-based reaction -- if industry groups support it, it's probably bad for the environment -- biases me against it. And it does seem to overreach. But there's something to the idea that the law should cut downwind states a break.

I can understand opponents' view that pollution is pollution, and you're just as dead if you get cancer from the factory next door or a power plant three states over. Everyone in the country should get the same minimum standard of protection from pollution. Yet there's still a serious question about the distribution of the burden for meeting that standard. It seems unfair that an eastern state should have to shoulder the costs of compensating for pollution that they didn't create. Yet the proposal seems to also let them off the hook for the costs of pollution they did create, so long as another state is contributing to their pollution.

What would make more sense is an allowance for downwind states to adjust their targets. So if the standard is 5 ppm of chemical X, and the air in Pennsyltucky currently contains 7 ppm of domestic X and 3 ppm of X from Xohd, Pennsyltucky would be expected to meet an 8 ppm standard (i.e., meet the basic standard on domestic emissions). They would then be able to sue Xohd to force it to reduce emissions that cross state lines (or negotiate an efficient combination of reductions in the two states in order to meet the 5 ppm standard in Pennsyltucky). We might also have a higher "urgent" standard, a level at which health threats are so severe that each state has to immediately make enough domestic reductions to meet it, regardless of where the pollution comes from. So if in the example of X the urgent standard was 12 ppm and Xohd produced 8 ppm that drifted into Pennsyltucky, Pennsyltucky would have to immediately reduce its domestic emissions to 4 ppm in order to get under that standard, despite the fact that most of the pollution comes from Xohd (though they could later allow domestic emissions to increase once Xohd got its act together).

The geography of this rule is interesting too. Many environmental issues, such as the Healthy Forests Initiative, can be explained by reference to supporters' and opponents' home districts. The typical framing is that rural, federal-land-heavy districts have one vision of how to manage their land, while those from urban eastern districts want to impose rules on them for the (supposed) common good. It's unclear exactly where the supporters and opponents of this air pollution measure are from, but the article quotes a Texan and a Mainer, respectively, so it's quite likely that there's the same rough geographical breakdown. Yet in this case it's the eastern states that would benefit from the change. Or rather, it's eastern industry that benefits, by being relieved of the burden of emissions reductions. Similarly, it's rural industry that's one of the primary beneficiaries of Healthy Forests.

If these debates were primarily an issue of scale -- local people versus those claiming to act in the national interest -- the support/opposition positions ought to be reversed. An alternative framing -- representatives of industry versus representatives of citizens -- does a better job in bringing the various environmental debates under a single rubric.
Stentor Danielson, 10:39, ,

Kantian Cruelty

I recently came back across the extreme anthropocentric argument against animal cruelty (used by Kant, among others) -- that cruelty to animals makes its perpetrators more susceptible to hurting humans. Empirical concerns can be raised against this argument -- cruelty to animals may just be a symptom of a more generalized cruelty, or may even vent an urge for crulety that would otherwise be directed against humans. But what interested me was a sort of philosophical inconsistency between the argument's purported goals and the empirical mechanism it employs.

The extreme anthropocentric argument charges that a more traditional or straightforward argument against cruelty to animals -- it's wrong because it hurts animals -- improperly treats animals like humans. Extreme anthropocentrists argue that humans and animals are fundamentally different, and so we can't extend our moral notions about the rightness of inflicting harm on humans to animals.

Yet the mechanism by which cruelty to animals breeds cruelty to humans depends on that very blurring of the huamn-animal line. We don't ban cutting bread on the theory that it would lead to cutting humans, because we recognize that bread and humans are such radically different things that our brains would never connect the two sets of behavior. So cruelty to animals produces cruelty to humans only when the perpetrator sees humans and animals as basically the same sort of beings. Extreme anthropocentrists are essentially arguing that conflating animals and people is morally mistaken, yet it's also unavoidable. However, a truly committed anthropocentrist ought to be able to be as cruel as they like, because they're able to maintain that distinction.
Stentor Danielson, 01:32, ,