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Bowen and baby

Two notes:

There's a fantastic story in Washington Monthly about coal-fired power plants and the latest efforts to control their damage. It focuses in on Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Ga.

In 2003, Bowen spewed more sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any plant in the United States. Bowen alone emits more sulfur dioxide than all the power plants combined in 12 states and the District of Columbia -- including large states such as California, Washington, and Oregon. And it would take more than three million cars to emit the 21.35 million tons of carbon dioxide Bowen's smokestacks belched out in 2003, according to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

The point of the piece is that traditional environmentalist tactics are no longer working, as Bowen's continuing existence painfully demonstrates.

The old paradigm through which environmental activists tried to take on powerful and deadly polluters relied on three separate but equally important tactics: campaigns to stoke public outrage by linking the illnesses and deaths of particular victims to a particular polluter; aggressive lawsuits brought by the private torts bar; and prescriptive federal regulation to penalize non-compliant localities and industries. Yet the persisting pollution at Plant Bowen shows how ineffective the old paradigm has become in dealing with the most important emerging environmental threats to public health, from fine particle pollution to global warming to agricultural runoff -- all cases where it's difficult to tie specific polluters to individuals who have been harmed. Fortunately, changes now afoot at Bowen also point the way to a solution -- one in which a modernized regulatory regime uses market-like forces to let federal officials pick up the work that lawyers and environmental activists can no longer effectively accomplish.

I don't agree with everything in it, but this really is a must-read for those interested in environmental policy.

Secondly: I -- or more accurately, my wife -- had a baby on Friday. (Oh, I'm such an earth f**ker!) I'll be taking two weeks off, so posting will be extremely light, if not nonexistent. I hope our other contributors will slake your insatiable thirst for knowledge.

And other universal truths

When I saw the quick promo yesterday, I nearly burst into tears of gratitude. All this week, the Daily Show's theme is: Evolution Schmevolution. It'll be four nights of brilliance on a scientific "debate" that's one of our favorite topics. And four nights that will, if the past is any indication, educate 18- to 29-year-olds the world over.

Thank you, Jon Stewart. It's comforting to know there's intelligent life out there ... somewhere.

Egrets, I’ve Had a Few

Feds start to assess ecological damage to refuges near New Orleans The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is beginning to gauge damage from Hurricane Katrina to the 23,000-acre Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge east of New Orleans and the Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, home to the endangered […]

Grist’s Roberts & Giller argue their point in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

No conceivable Bush (or Clinton, or G.H.W. Bush) administration energy strategy aimed at slowing or reversing global warming -- least of all ratifying the Kyoto treaty -- would have protected lives or averted property destruction on the Gulf Coast. Think of smart energy policies as you might of tobacco taxes: good idea, but they probably wouldn't have saved your Uncle Ned from lung cancer.

So write Grist's own Dave Roberts and Chip Giller in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  Read the rest for yourself.  

A harrowing account

On Thursday last, a colleague forwarded a harrowing first person report from a doctor on the scene at the New Orleans airport -- sent to him in turn by a very good friend with 15 years of experience at other global ground zeros, who said that it rang true.

greetings from the new orleans airport

for those of you who don't know i am a member of the texas-4 disaster medical assistence team (DMAT). we are a part of FEMA. i joined a couple of months ago and my team was activated 11 days ago. for the past 8 days i have been living and working at the new orleans airport delivering medical care to the katrina hurricane survirors.

It was powerful, painful reading -- pulling back the veil even further on the reality of the New Orleans disaster.

let me start by saying that i am safe and after a very rough first week
am now better rested and fed

our team was the first to arrive at the airport and set up our field hospital. we watched our population grow from 30 dmat personal taking care of 6 patients and 2 security guards well to around 10,000 people in the first 15 hours. these people had had no food or water or security for several days and were tired, furstrated, sick, wet, and heart broken. people were brought in by trucks, busses, ambulances, school busses, cars, and helicopters

we recieved patients from hospitals, schools, homes, the entire remaining population of new orleans funneled through our doors. our little civilian team along with a couple of other dmat teams set up and ran THE biggest evacuation this country has ever seen

the numbers are absolutely staggering

I haven't spoken personally with Hemant Vankawala M.D., but got his okay via e-mail to repost his account. Other reporters apparently have met Dr. Vankawala -- as in this September 3 report by Jim Douglas of Dallas-Fort Worth WFAA-TV.

...at any given time there were at least 8-10 helo's offloading on the tarmac, filled with 10-40 survivors at a time, with 10 circling to land, it was a non-stop never ending process 24 hour a day operation. the cnn footage does not even begin to do it justice. the roar of rotar blades, the smell of jet A and the thousands of eyes looking at us for answers, for hope.

Read the whole thing in the extended entry -- largely unedited, because the seat-of-the-pants quality of the writing is part of its power.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof makes a reasonable Katrina-to-climate link

Nicholas Kristof does the Katrina-to-climate link in a reasonable way in Sunday's New York Times.  He gives props to Portland for taking technologically available and cost-saving steps to reduce their emissions to just above 1990 levels.  It really shouldn't surprise us that it is the state and local levels that are the environmental innovators. It is just usually one state to the south in California where local conditions (read thermal inversions in LA) eventually beget US environmental regulations.

Kristof also provides extensive links at the bottom of the piece, something more pontificators should do.

On the advantages and disadvantages of E85

So say some Americans turning from gasoline to E85, "a fuel cocktail that consists mostly of grain alcohol, or corn-based ethanol, with a splash of gasoline." The New York Times provides a quick walk through the advantages and disadvantages of E85 which first and foremost these days is the cost. But today's Mideast headlines also have some consumers talking about how they would rather their dollars go to American farmers than OPEC coffers. Infrastructure remains something of an issue -- according to the Times, only 500 or so of the country's approximately 180,000 gas stations carry E85.

And just a factlette that never ceases to surprise -- we import more oil from Canada than any other country.

Biodiversivist

I am jumping on the Katrina bandwagon just long enough to point out that a protective barrier of wetlands would have greatly ameliorated the effects of said hurricane. At least now we can directly assign a dollar value to those wetlands we have destroyed, giving Bush's economic advisors something to chew on. Maybe the next time someone suggests that saving and restoring coastal wetlands is cost-effective they will listen. Something good may come out of all of this, like carbon trading or an impeachment.

Gore chartered planes to airlift evacuees

Oh, Gore. First you get all lively and inspiring on climate change. Now you go and semi-quietly help airlift 270 evacuees out of New Orleans.

Sigh.

Framing expert says Katrina shows need for strong, compassionate government

"The Katrina tragedy should become a watershed in American politics," writes lefty framing guru George Lakoff on AlterNet. "This was when the usually invisible people suddenly appeared in all the anguish of their lives -- the impoverished, the old, the infirm, the kids, and the low-wage workers with no cars, TVs, or credit cards. They showed up on America's doorsteps, entered the living rooms, and stayed. Katrina will not go away soon, and she has the power to change America."

Lakoff argues that Katrina gives us the perfect opportunity to highlight the "heart of progressive-liberal values," namely "empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy)."

"A lack of empathy and responsibility accounts for Bush's indifference and the government's delay in response, as well as the failure to plan for the security of the most vulnerable: the poor, the infirm, the aged, the children," he claims.

Put more succinctly: The Katrina disaster is the best possible argument for strong, vibrant, well-funded government that takes care of its people.  

I wholeheartedly agree. You won't find many Americans this month who would sympathize with anti-tax crusader and government-hater Grover Norquist and his aim "to get [government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, that quote sends shivers down the spine.