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“Quiet places are the think tank of the soul.”

Here's an interesting story in the Seattle Times about a professional sound recorder struggling to preserve the little quiet spot he found in Olympic Nat'l Park.

Uninterrupted natural quiet is so rare Hempton thinks many people under the age of 30 have never heard it. "Whenever someone tells me they know a quiet place, I figure they have an undiagnosed hearing impairment, or they weren't really listening. Most people believe they know what natural quiet is, but they have not had the experience; it is not the same thing as sitting in an empty theater, a church, a library.

"We spend our lives in containers. Cars. Buildings. Planes. Natural quiet is in open, living space. It's alive."

Technology could be used to monitor wildlife preserves

As this story in the Seattle Times suggests, the effectiveness of a wildlife refuge is directly linked to how well you can protect what is inside it: "... an international black market ... fuels the illegal slaughter of an estimated 500 eagles each year in southwest British Columbia alone, and an unknown number in Washington state."

Many nature preserves around the world have little or no protection, making them essentially worthless as preserves. There are not enough funds to hire an army of forest rangers to be everywhere all the time. The biggest problem with any system that relies on guys randomly driving around in pickup trucks is that 99.9% of the time nothing is happening, and when something does happen, it happens where the rangers aren't. Preventing poachers from killing hundreds of eagles is better than prosecuting them after the fact.

Maybe we should be using technology to protect the planet instead of destroy it? Like E.O. Wilson once said:

The race is now on between the technoscientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it.

Many feigned regret, but ultimately the pork pulled them in

I've written about negative reactions to the energy bill from mainstream green groups, the Apollo Alliance, newspaper editorial boards, and libertarians. I'm sure I could find more -- denunciations of the special-interest-giveaway fest are thick on the ground.

What about the converse, though: Who is reacting positively to this bill? Who will defend it?

The industries that directly benefit from the manifold subsidies and tax breaks, of course (see, e.g., the Nuclear Energy Institute). And the majority Republicans, who receive copious contributions from those industries and who will no doubt receive credit for "getting things done" (see, e.g., Domenici). But who else?

Well, how about that other party ... what's the name again? Demo-something?

Why did enough Dems support this bill to get it through? And are they happy about it? I investigate.

The Sweet Swim of Success

Lower Hudson River clean enough for dipping A dozen-plus locations along the lower Hudson River in New York state are once again fit for taking a dip, thanks to decades of cleanup efforts. Accounts of swimming in the Hudson date back to colonial times, but by the mid-20th century the river was an unholy stew […]

Looney Tuna

Feds, pressured by industry, lax in warning public about mercury in tuna The Wall Street Journal today continues its series on toxic chemicals and human health by taking a hard look at some fishy dealings concerning tuna and mercury. For years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known that canned tuna contains mercury. A […]

Comment on EPA’s Plan

The human and the sublime

While we're on the topic of wild spaces, there's a great article in the New York Times this morning. Even though the author, Edward Rothstein, did some of his exploring in a car, he captures the awe-inspiring beauty of nature in way that will wake you up faster than that cup of coffee.

Preserving wild spaces

There's been some discussion over at The Commons about the lesson that we should take from the Dr. Suess classic The Lorax. Full text of the book (no pictures, though) can be found here. The free-marketeer interpretation is that the demise of the Truffula trees results not from the greed of the Onceler nor the materialism of the society that gobbles up thneeds just as fast as they please. The reason the Truffula trees are all destroyed is that no one has property rights to them. They are part of the commons, and if the Onceler doesn't chop them, someone else will.

Stuff to read

Two interesting pieces up tonight from people who should be in bed.

Makower's got a long and pleasingly wonky post up on Environmental Strategies for Industrial Development, a new report from Alliance to Save Energy that discusses ways industry and government can work together to lower the cost of regulatory compliance. It's partly by simplifying regs and party through benchmarking " common air, water, and waste management functions" and sharing ways to improve them, thereby cutting waste and reducing the need for regs. Hott!

Meanwhile, Cascio hopes peak oil will be like the Y2K bug -- nope, not the way you're thinking. He says Y2K was a real problem that, thanks to shrill and apocalyptic warnings, got solved before it wreaked destruction. So here's to shrill and apocalyptic warnings!

Oh, and one more, from yesterday: An interview with Cory Doctorow (co-proprietor of BoingBoing and advocate for the Electronic Frontier Foundation), also on WC, about "copyfight" and the international struggle for reasonable intellectual property laws. Too many people think of copyright law as a niche concern -- something that only concerns filesharing teenagers -- but it is in fact enormously important. If we want poor countries to develop in a more humane and green way than we did, it's vital they be able to share what Doctorow calls "knowledge goods" -- science, practical techniques, information. Lots of good stuff in here.

Update [2005-8-1 23:21:33 by Dave Roberts]: Here's a layman's intro to copyfight.

Wolcott and me

There is no greater stylist of the English language writing on the World Wide Interwebs today than Vanity Fair's James Wolcott. So to be quoted by him is akin to having Thom Yorke stroll past you on the sidewalk, humming one of your tunes (or, for our older readers, the equivalent of Bruce Springsteen pulling you from the audience to dance awkwardly for a few moments in his video). I don't really go in for the fanboy thing (ok, not much), but if there's one thing I appreciate it is a good turn of phrase, and Wolcott cranks out three or four every time he sets fingers to keyboard, so consider this me screaming and throwing my bra onstage. Um, as it were.

Sadly, he quotes me as "Energy Bulletin," referring to this post, which was reprinted at EB. It all comes in the context of a post about Boy Scouts collapsing in the heat. Check it out.