Observations From the Back Row

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De Omnibus Dubitandum
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Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: $205,075 to Move a Bush

While this is only slightly related to Resourceful Earth’s work on natural resources, its too comical/depressing not to share:

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billionhighway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.

The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.”

I do not profess to be particularly knowledgeable or excited about flora, but I cannot for the life of me understand why it matters that this plant was located in the “wild” especially if everyone was fine with moving the plant anyway. It certainly doesn’t exist in the “wild” after the government spent $200,000 to move it to a new location. It’s effectively been planted/altered by man at that point, as far as I can tell.

Biodiversity Bombshell: Polar Bears And Penguins Prospering, But Pity Those Paramecia!
Just last year, the World Wildlife Fund’s climate blog headlined that “Polar Bear Population in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay Unlikely to Survive Climate Disruption.” But it seems that since then this subpopulation, previously believed to be among the most threatened subpopulations due to global warming, has made a miraculous recovery. According to aerial surveys released by the Government of Nunavat this month, their numbers are at least 66% higher than expected. This region, which straddles Nunavat and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered to be a bellwether for how well polar bears are faring elsewhere in the Arctic.

GMO label movement faces hurdles in Vermont
Advising people that their food contains food is somewhat counterproductive. It’s only real purpose is to enable activists and scare mongers to frighten consumers about, well, nothing, actually.

Charles Clover: Green Rage Against Shale Gas Is Irrational
This Sunday marks the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day. Once again, we can expect an all-out assault covering all communication channels, a barrage of all the most stale ideas concocted by the most backward-looking eco-obsession.

Peter Foster: Human Day
Property rights are the best guides to custody of the ¬environment - For more than 40 years, Earth Day has both reflected genuine environmental concern and mirrored the UN’s attempted eco power grab. Sunday’s Earth Day comes two months ahead of the vast, but significantly brief, UN Rio+20 conference. Both are pale reflections of their original radical aspirations. Earth Day is still celebrated, but 42 years of crying wolf have inevitably had an effect. The event has also been corporatized, greenwashed and taken over by such announcements as that of the “50 sexiest environmentalists.” Rio+20 will represent the graveyard of aspirations for all prospective — and inevitably less sexy — Captains of Spaceship Earth, Global Saviours, and High Priests of Gaia.

My Take - “Captains of Spaceship Earth, Global Saviours, and High Priests of Gaia" - we have far too many of these types in the pest control industry. One fumigator I am familiar with classifies himself as a “world problem solver” because he embraced the eco-clamor to replace methyl bromide.  Now his “solution” is under attack and I hear nothing from or about him.

The primary registrant asked for support from the pest control industry to keep their product, sulfuryl fluoride on the market. Yet I didn’t hear a peep from them when that piece of junk science known as the Montreal Protocol eliminated their competition methyl bromide!

These people just don’t get it. No solution will stand the test of time with the greenies. They will embrace any “solution” to one of their non-problems today as long as it suits their needs in order to attack some product they wish to destroy. Afterwards .... whatever is left out there will be fair game.

Foolish people in our industry (and I include the manufacturers at the top of that list) will work to find something to replace a perfectly good product with one that is acceptable to the greenies.

After the greenies have attained their goal, they turn on the replacement product and those who manufacture, sell or use those products. There is no safe ground with the green movement. They are irrational; they are misanthropic; they are not our friends; they cannot be trusted because they have no command and control structure!  Why can’t we get that?

Patrick Michaels: Celebrating Earth Day: Is Another Half-Acid Apocalypse On the Way?  Editor’s Note: Ignore the ad and it will go away in a few seconds.
What with it being Earth Day and all, it’s a good time to reflect on the sorry track record of environmental apocalypse prognostication and make a little forecast of our own, namely that something called “ocean acidification” is going to be the latest, greatest threat to our survival. “This time we mean it”, my greener friends are saying.