RightWay2BGreen

2012-01-06T20:23:00.000-08:00

DO THE WRONG THING

REMOVING THE LIBERAL BLINDFOLD

A diverse group of people removing their liberal blindfolds.

With thepolitical pendulum swinging to the right, conservative victory is likely in theupcoming election. Some say this rightward swing is so pronounced thatconservative ascendancy in federal and state government is likely, perhaps, foryears to come.

If that isthe case, the diminishing or even the demise of contemporary liberal environmentalismis virtually assured.

Whichmeans, it’s time to start designing the conservative environmentalism that willreplace it.

Those ofyou who consider yourself green to the core may despair at hearing this, butyou should be celebrating instead. By making this transition, environmentalismwill be shedding a number of debilitating dysfunctions that are endemic inliberalism.

Oneliberal dysfunction that a conservative environmentalism wouldn’t suffer is asystemic blindness that affects all of liberalism in all of its issue areas,environmental and otherwise.

ASSUME YOUARE WRONG

Ilearned about this blindness as I experienced my own evolution from eco-radical to conservativeenvironmentalist. Early in my transition, Iran across a way of managing our relationship with Nature that, at the time,was named “Holistic Resource Management” (changed now to Holistic Management).According to this management system, when dealing with nature in a way designedto produce a certain result, one should always “assume you are wrong.”

When Imade passing mention of that in a conversation with my wife. Her response wasshort and to the point, “If you assume what you’re doing is wrong,” she said.“Why would you bother to do it?”

I had to admit that was a pretty goodobjection. As I thought more and read more about this very counter-intuitivedirective, however, I realized it actually makes very good sense. In fact, Ibelieve assuming that we are wrong can add to our chances of success of justabout anything we do.

How’sthat?

The reasonwe should assume we are wrong, according to Holistic Management, is to makesure that we monitor what we’re doing so that we’re aware of whether if it isworking or not. To someone who is dealing with nature (or with anything in aresults-directed way) the reason for monitoring what you’re doing should beobvious. If you don’t keep track of how things are going you could create anoutcome that is very different than what you intend — an unintendedconsequence, so to speak — that could be very difficult, even impossible, toreverse.

However,if we assume we’re wrong (or at least that the possibility exists that we couldbe wrong), and we monitor what we’re doing, chances are pretty good that, ifthings do start to get off track, we will become aware of it. Having thus beenalerted, we have the opportunity to stop doing what isn’t working and dosomething different or even to take a different approach altogether.

To clarifythis with an example that has to do with our discussion here: If the people whowere trying to save the threatened fish, the spikedace, on the Verde River(covered in a previous post) had considered thatthere was a possibility that what they were doing might not work, they wouldhave been much less likely to have continued to apply that policy until theyhad exterminated the very creature they claimed to be trying to save.

Whatcaused the extermination of the spikedace in the Verde, then, is the fact thatthe liberal environmental groups that intimidated the U. S. Forest Service intoremoving grazing from the riverside assumed that they were right. They assumedthey were right not only to the degree that they did not monitor the situationsufficiently to become aware of the fact that their policies were changing theriver in such a way that it was becoming uninhabitable to the spikedace, butwhen U. S. Forest Service scientists did take note of that fact, theenvironmental groups exerted sufficient pressure to have those scientistsremoved from the case.

Even the horse is incredulous.

To thisday those environmentalists consider the Verde debacle to be a success. Theyconsider it a success in spite of the fact that, after the policy wasinstalled, the river did change and the spikedace appears to have beenextirpated (none have been seen in the river in 15 years). Thoseself-designated spikedace-savers consider what they did on the Verde to be asuccess because the campaign to save several “threatened” or “endangered”native fishes, including the Verde River spikedace, did succeed in gettinggrazing removed from 900 miles of riverside in the American Southwest.

Thisreveals the core flaw in contemporary liberalism, environmental and otherwise.Contemporary liberalism identifies solutions as a matter of the installation ofpolicies — liberal policies. And once that policy is installed liberalsconsider the problem solved. In other words liberals always consider themselvesto be right. That’s how liberals apply their own blinders, and that’s how theyblindfold themselves to realistic assessments of the effectiveness orineffectiveness of their policies.

Take theDrake Exclosure mentioned in a number of other posts: Environmentalistsconsider management of the denuded Drake to be “right” in spite of the factthat it has continued to deteriorate during 65+ years of being protected frombeing used (impacted) by humans.

Photo inside the Drake

They consider their policy of protectionto be “right”, in spite of the fact that the unprotected land outside the Drakeis in better condition and supports a more diverse and more plentiful communityof native plants and animals (see below).

Photo outside the Drake (Photo taken same day.)

How about another example. In California it has been found that the “threatened” BayCheckerspot butterfly has ceased to exist on land where grazing has beenstopped, in some cases to “protect” the butterfly. Guess which landenvironmentalists consider to be managed the “right way.”

Movingbeyond the environmental aspect of liberalism: Consider the Occupy Wall Streetersand their call for an equitable redistribution of wealth: Do you think theyconsider that policy to be the right thing to do? Absolutely.

Do theythink they consider that there is any way in which it could be wrong?Absolutely not!

If theOccupiers get their way, and their policy is made law will they monitor to seeif it’s working?

Or, ifthings start to go wrong (which happens every time this policy is tried), willthey do everything they can to cover up its shortcomings? Will they proposemore regulation? Stricter penalties? Will they say we need to give it moretime? Will they blame their failures on others: the rich, the 1%, human greed,Republicans, Conservatives, Bitter clingers.....

Plug anyother liberal crusade/campaign into the above scenario — universal healthcare,cap and trade, renewable energy, affirmative action, etc. — and it will fitperfectly.

Allliberal policies and the actions that make up those policies are considered tobe the right thing to do because they are morally right, at least within aliberal frame of reference.

Toliberals we all have a right to have enough money, to have access to healthcare, to have a place to live, to have day care for our children, a diaperservice. And, we have a right to a healthy environment, species have a right tonot be made extinct, etc. And all liberal policies that facilitate those rightsare also right.

Becauseliberals believe all of those policies are “the right thing to do,” to askwhether or not they work (whether they get the right results) is to utter anirrelevance. We’re all taught, “You should be honest no matter what theconsequences.” Or, “If you do the right thing, whatever happens is what issupposed to happen.”

Complainabout redistributionist tax policies, i. e. say they don’t work, and you willbe called greedy or a pawn of wall street.

Get intoan argument about energy policy and you’ll quickly be confronted with, “We haveto develop alternative fuels because we’re going to run out of oil someday anddrilling for oil just gets us into wars in the Middle East. Anyway, it wrecksthe planet and just makes filthy rich oil companies even richer.”

Environmentalpolicy? “Why shouldn’t we protect as many species as possible from theenvironmental impacts of humans? Humans don’t have the right to use the planetpurely for our benefit, and the animals were here first anyway!”

Presentingall issues as a matter of right and wrong is what makes liberalism so seductivebecause it means you don’t have to be an ecologist to know what to do to keep asmall, rare fish in Arizona from going extinct. Never mind if you exterminatethe fish in the process. It’s not your fault the fish died out in spite of thefact you did the right thing to save it.

Nor do youhave to know anything about ecology to know how to restore damaged rangeland inArizona. You protect it. And if that land doesn’t get any better, in fact if itgets worse, you say you didn’t protect it soon enough, or long enough, and ifthe unprotected land next door is in better shape, you ignore it and continueto do what you know is “the right thing to do.”

Regardingthe economy, reduce all issues to a simple matter of right and wrong and youdon’t have to know anything about economics to know how to manage the largesteconomy on Earth. Do the right thing. Redistribute income. Put government incharge of health care, in charge of everything. As long as government is run bypeople like you, i. e. liberals, i. e. people who want to “do what’s right,” nomatter what happens you can consider yourself morally superior to those whorefuse to go along with you whatever the reason.

But isprotecting the spikedace really the right thing to do if it exterminates thefish?

Isprotecting rangeland, like that within the Drake Exclosure, really the rightthing to do if it dooms that land to a future of deteriorating desertification?

And, Iscreating a more equitable redistribution of wealth the right thing to do if itcreates the kind of economic collapse happening, as I write this, in Greece,the country with the most aggressive redistributionist policies in Europe? OrPortugal. Or Spain, Or France, Or England...

Onceagain, we can thank one of the planet’s pre-eminent conservatives — MotherNature, as well as the spikedace and other plants, animals and ecosystems — forshowing us that issues — environmental, economic, political — are not justabout morals (right and wrong) they are about practical matters, too —survival, ecological function, jobs, energy, wealth.

And we canthank them for demonstrating to us that results do matter.

All we have to do to avail ourselves of thisinsight is listen to Mother Nature, little fish, butterflies, the truecondition of the economy, etc.. And the only way we can listen is if we assumewe are wrong.

2011-11-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

NATURE'S WAY TO PEACE
or
PEACE AMONG LIONS

As I have saidbefore on The Right Way To Be Green, one of the things we do on this blog islearn from Nature. From that you might assume that what you stand to learn inthat way has to do with ecology, and you would be right -- but only to adegree. Nature can teach us about much more than ecology.

For instance,Nature makes an excellent teacher (one of the best, I believe) on economics,because Nature, more than anything else is a marketplace (link http://www.rightwaytobegreen.com/2011/05/19/is-nature-liberal-or-conservative/). She makes a great teacher onpolitics, too — specifically, conservative politics because she, herself, is aconservative. (link) http://www.rightwaytobegreen.com/2011/05/19/is-nature-liberal-or-conservative/).

Another topicNature can teach us about is peace, as in world peace or peace among nations orpeace of any sort. Here’s how:

It isconventional wisdom among ranchers in the American Southwest ranchers that, ifthere is a dominant male mountain lion whose territory includes all or asignificant portion of their ranch, it is in their best interest to leave thatlion alone even, if he kills an occasional calf or colt. Experience has taughtthese ranchers that an alpha lion maintains a sort of peace and order withinhis territory. Young males stay away because they know that, if they encounterthe alpha male within his territory, he will challenge them and quite likely hewill win the challenge. Perhaps even kill them.

Contrast thiswith what happens if the rancher takes offense at having a calf killed by thedominant lion and hunts him down. All of the territory the old lion had ruledand pacified is then open to contest. As such it attracts all the young malesin the area to come and vie for ascendancy, to make this their territory.Fighting among themselves, they expend more energy than they would otherwise,make more kills than they would otherwise to acquire that energy, leave killspartially consumed to avoid being attacked while they eat them. In some casesfemales and kittens even become casualties in this melee.

Experiencedranchers know that, by eliminating the alpha, they inadvertently create exactlywhat they seek to avoid — more predation, more loss of livestock. By trying tocreate peace they end up creating more war.

This paradigm,of alpha individuals keeping peace and order among populations of animals, maybe the most common form of social structure in Nature. It serves to create anenvironment in which wolves, elk, hippopotamuses, African lions, baboons,chimpanzees, and on and on and on can attend to the vital business ofsurviving, replacing themselves, and continuing their kind.

When the alphaindividual is removed from any of these populations the result is not peace orthe “Peaceable Kingdom” but war, strife, and hardship. The only hope for relieffrom this anarchy is for another alpha to rise to dominance to install peaceand sustain it.

In a preservein Africa, which managers hoped to repopulate with elephants by reintroducing anumber of orphaned males and females from other locations, a number of theyoung males formed into gangs which began to act in very un-elephant-like ways.Most outrageous of these acts were several instances of attacking, raping,killing, and mutilating adult white rhinoceroses — an endangered species.

Preservemanagers were at a loss as to how to deal with this activity until one of themgot the idea to import some adult bull elephants and see if that worked. Itdid. No one knows how the “word” got out to the young males. There was noobvious disciplining of the gang members, but, when the alpha social structurewas restored, the young bulls stopped acting like mobsters and began actinglike elephants, and stopped killing rhinos.

Considerintthat, who do you believe Nature would call an advocate for peace?

Those on theright who would sustain the U. S. as alpha — as the established lion/adult bullwhose power and mere presence causes lesser powers to defer and keep a lowprofile in order to avoid triggering a response?

Or would Naturedub as “peacemakers” liberals, such as Barack Obama, who apologize for America’sexceptionalism and seek to abdicate our position as the world’s alpha. As Obamadissembles the U. S. position as the only superpower what we see happening isexactly what Nature has told us would happen. Encouraged, as were the elephantgangs in Africa, by the lack of an alpha presence humans have been forminggangs and taking political initiative around the world. After instances ofviolence in the U. K., Greece, France, India, etc, etc, an eruption in TahrirSquare overthrew the Egyptian Government and demonstrated the virulence of thisphenomenon with, among other things, the rape of American journalist LaraLogan. Then came more of the same with the gang takeover of Libya and thebrutal torture, rape, and murder of the just as murderous dictator MuammarGhaddafi, all with the expressed support of our president Obama.

Here in the U.S., the gang phenomenon has taken form in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.These occupiers demand the elimination of alpha-ness altogether via theredistribution of wealth and power (redistributed, of course, by them). This,they claim is the way to fairness, love, peace, prosperity, environmentalsustainability, you name it. However, as the occupations drag on and rage andimpatience grows, reports of rape, theft, and violence mount as this movementgoes the way of all such movements.

What can Natureteach us about all of this? She is can teach us that the alpha way to peacepracticed by dominant lions, adult bull elephants (and even a super power U.S.} works. Nature has developed, tested, fine-tuned, and applied this lessonvia millions of years of evolution, adaptation, and trial and error.

Via that sameeducational process, Nature teaches us that removing the alpha inevitablyresults in chaos and strife that can only be relieved by the ascension of a newalpha... and that trading the old lion for a new one can have its downside.

Consider whatthis means if the world trades the U. S. as alpha for whatever will take itsplace. What kind of alpha has the U. S. been? When the Archbishop of Canterbury askedColin Powell if our war with Iraq was just another example of U. S. empirebuilding Powell replied, "Over the years, the United States has sent manyof its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyondour borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enoughto bury those that did not return."

How manyother nations in the history of this planet can say that?

Without theU. S. who will ascend to alpha-ness? A resurgent Russia? Communist China? Anuclear North Korea? A sharia-enforcing Islamist Caliphate?

How sure apath to peace is that?

NOTE FROM THE BLOGGER - DAN DAGGET

2011-10-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I’ve been traveling in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. Most of my time was spent in National Parks — Glacier, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons (see above). — I do like open, undeveloped country.

I learned some things there that I will eventually work into my posts here. First, however, I’ve got something for you that came to mind as I was reading about the Republican debates and one of the issues with which the candidates were reportedly having trouble — global warming.

THE RIGHT WAY TO DEAL WITH

GLOBAL WARMING!

I have a hard time understanding why conservatives let liberals get off so easliy on the issue of global warming (or climate change or whatever they’re calling it these days.) After all, this issue plays so well to conservatism’s strengths that we should win every argument associated with it. In fact, if we conservatives use our heads on this issue I believe liberals would soon be too terrified to even bring it up.

The way to win this issue every time it’s brought up is simple. Don’t bother to argue whether the globe is warming or cooling or whatever, the data is too easy to cook. The same goes for how much of this alleged cooling or warming is due to human impact That data is too easy to cook, too, and it’s all speculation anyway.

The only aspect of this issue that matters is... if the globe is warming, or if it’s cooling, or if it is merely experiencing “climate change” (which the Earth has been doing every instant it has existed,) the free market is the only effective tool we have of dealing with it. In fact, it has been proved every time it has been tried that the free market is the most effective way to deal with any challenge, or crisis we face, whether that crisis has been caused by nature or by accident, or by us.

But, wait a minute, you might say, the free market and capitalism is what got us into this mess so how can we use it to get out of it? How can we solve this problem and problems like it in any way but to have the government intervene against the excesses of capitalism and place controls on the free market

I want to make it clear that I know humans cause problems, plenty of them. And I know that we cause some of those problems via our use of a free market economy. Anything that is free makes mistakes (so do economies that aren’t free).

But I also know that, when the marketplace is free to respond to a crisis, and the humans who operate within that marketplace are free to innovate and to apply their creativity, this most valuable tool ever created by humans is the most effective means we have for solving problems and defusing crises.

Want an example of the free market solving a human-caused problem? How about “overpopulation” and the associated “overconsumption” of natural resources? That’s a problem undeniably caused by humans. To boot, overpopulation is considered the root cause of all the other environmental problems for which we humans are responsible, among which, of course, is global warming.

In the 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich predicted that:

* Humanity was overpopulating at such a rate that hundreds of millions would die from starvation and other “overpopulation-caused problems” during the 1970s, no matter what we did.

* We were using raw materials, including oil, at such a rate we would run out of oil and many other commodities by 1980.

* By 1985, so many billions would have died that the Earth’s population would have shrunk to 1.5 billion.

* By 1999, the overconsuming U. S. would suffer such devastating environmental catastrophes that the life expectancy of its citizens would have dropped to 42 years, and its population would be a mere 22.6 million.

Instead of this predicted human caused disaster, the free market and human enterprise, flourishing most notably in the U. S., have enabled the planet to support a population of 6.9 billion and growing. The U. S. population has surpassed 300 million and is growing, and our prosperity is unprecedented (in spite of the current economic crisis). Our life expectancy is at 78 and rising, and, with regard to famine, our primary food-related problem is obesity not starvation.

To underscore how wrong Ehrlich was, many of the countries that heeded his overpopulation warning now are concerned about underpopulation rather than overpopulation. The reason for their concern? Their “Ehrlich scare” birth rates are too low to produce the workers needed to keep their economies running (and to support all those seniors).

How about the government alternative, the socialist alternative? How does it work to solve crises, human created or otherwise? FDR’s New Deal and European versions of the same (Hitler’s National Socialism, Mussolini’s Facism) failed so miserably to solve the economic crash of the 1920s that they produced, instead, the Great Depression, WW II, and the Holocaust. It wasn’t until American enterprise was unleashed to win World War II that we saved ourselves, and Europe and Asia as well, from socialist “solutions.”

And what about today? How well would Europe, mired in its current socialism-caused economic crisis, deal with a major natural disaster if it were to face one? And compare how well liberal Democrat-run New Orleans responded to Hurricane Katrina with more conservative Nashville’s response to major flooding or Joplin, Missouri’s reponse to a huge tornado.

What these and plenty of other examples should tell all of us is: if we really are worried about an impending crisis such as global warming, or a new ice age, or whatever, the worst thing we can do is cripple our free market economy with the kind of overregulation, over-regimentation, and high taxation that the Obama administration has made its crusade. In other words, if we really are facing a crisis, or just dealing with the everyday problems that make life on Earth complex and challenging, the worst thing we can do is elect liberals, because socialism and government solutions are always worse than any problems they purport to be able to solve.

2011-07-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

FIRE ERASER

2011-06-09T23:31:00.000-07:00

EAT MEAT AND SAVE THE PLANET

Every time some overinflated Hollywood celeb or irrelevant British royal says we all have to become vegetarians to save the planet, I think about how rarely I’ve seen wildlife in a vegetable field. No elk, no pronghorn, certainly no mountain lions. And if I do happen to see a rabbit or a prairie dog among the veggies, I know whoever planted them is doing everything they can to get those uninvited guests out of there to keep them from eating up the produce or polluting it with e coli.

And wildflowers? In a field of vegetables wildflowers are considered “weeds” and treated as such.

On the other hand, visit a cattle ranch here in the West and you have a good chance of seeing deer, elk, pronghorn, coyote, black bear, bobcat, rattlesnakes, gila monsters, road runners, Gambles quail.... the list is too long to print here. Get lucky and you might see a mountain lion. I know a rancher who has seen a couple of jaguars on ranchland here in Arizona.

As for wildflowers, as I write this, I’m looking at a ranch out the window of my camper, and I can see giant saguaros, cholla cactus, palo verde and creosote bush. The Arizona poppies, brittlebush, and desert marigolds were spectacular this spring, and the native grasses are providing plenty of forage for wild and domesticated animals alike.

An activist vegetarian responding to what I just said would point out that growing vegetables requires a lot less land than raising meat. This enables us to protect more land and allow it to return to nature so it can be home to even more wildlife and wildflowers.

That would be an effective counter-argument if it weren’t true that raising meat on the land can benefit it ecologically even more than protecting it.

How’s that?

Scientists who’ve studied the matter tell us that grasslands and grazing animals evolved together and developed an interdependence similar to so many other mutually beneficial relationships in nature: bees and flowers, beavers and meadows, reef fish and coral. When cattle are managed so that they act like natural grazers, i. e., when they are kept in herds and moved across the landscape in response to conditions of moisture, season, and other natural factors, they create this same kind of interdependence.

That’s why cattle have been successfully used to restore ecological health to land that has been damaged by mining, by raising crops in ways that exhaust the land’s fertility, and even by the environmentalists’ panacea “protection.” For instance, in Arizona and Nevada, cattle have been used to return native vegetation to denuded mine sites and piles of mine waste on which other forms of reclamation had failed. How do they do it? By stomping in seeds and mulch and nourishing the mixture with their own natural fertilizer. Sheep and goats have been used to create firebreaks and remove nonnative plants at various locations from East to West, and sheep, goats, and cows have been used to revegetate land damaged by catastrophic wildfire.

I haven’t heard of a single case of soybeans or broccoli being used to achieve any of that.

As for all that cow flattulence and belching the anti-meat folks tout as a cause of global warming, properly grazed grasslands have been shown to be so effective at sequestering carbon in green and growing grass that some ranchers have been able to supplement their income by marketing carbon offsets created by their naturally-managed cattle.

That works even if you don't believe in global warming

Acknowledging the effectiveness of these techniques the state of Florida has come up with a plan to contract with ranchers to use their livestock to improve that state’s rangelands’ ability to absorb, clean, and sequester water. One of the aims of this program is to raise the water level in the Everglades. That’s right. Florida is using cows to rewater the Everglades.

On the other hand, when grazers are removed from the land the ecological results can be disastrous.

In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, the native plants and animals that live there, some of which are endangered, were displaced by nonnative weeds in as few as three years. When grazing was resumed the rare plants and animals returned.

Also in California, the threatened bay checkerspot butterfly has disappeared from lands from which cattle grazing was eliminated -- to protect the butterfly. On lands that continue to be grazed the butterfly has managed to persist.

Because of this and similar instances “cessation of grazing” has been recognized as one of the main threats to some of California’s most sensitive ecosystems by the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition. That organization includes The Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, and Audubon, among others.

And, for those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you may remember (and want to link back to) the story of the native fish in Arizona (the spikedace) that was sustained by grazing for more than a century and exterminated in less than a decade by “cessation of grazing,” or the Drake exclosure that’s been protected for more than 60 years and is as bare as a parking lot while the grazed land right next to it is covered with native grasses.

There’s more:

Meat is the only human food that can be raised on land that is officially designated wilderness. Not so with vegetables.

Meat can be raised on land that can also be used for recreation such as hiking, mountain biking, hunting, fishing, horseback riding, orving, downhill skiing, and birdwatching. Vegetable fields are off limits to most of those. Just try riding your orv or your horse through someone’s field of bok choy.

So, the next time you chow down on a big juicy steak or leg of lamb, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back for saving the planet, and remember that you are enjoying the only food that can be raised within a diverse, native, openspace ecosystem in such a way that it restores, sustains, and even enhances that ecosystem.

On second thought, maybe you ought to order two steaks. It’s going to take a lot of cows to remedy all the ecological damage perpetrated by vegetarian environmentalists.

2011-05-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

IS NATURE LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE?

Why does Nature respond so much more positively to Conservative Environmentalism than to Liberal Environmentalism?

Because Nature has so much more in common with conservatism.

How so?

Nature operates according to conservative principles. The systems by which Nature functions — ecosystems, habitats, Gaia — can be most accurately described as laissez faire agricultural economies.

For instance:

Bees, bats, quite a few bird species, and certain varieties of moths pollinate the individuals of certain species plants by feeding on the nectar and pollen within the flowers of those plants and trasnporting some of that pollen to the next flower. This enables those plants to reproduce, which makes for more plants, which makes for more flowers, which makes for more food for bees, bats, birds and moths.

Sounds like an agricultural operation to me. Frankly, it’s not all that different than when we humans raise corn or apples or roses. The only difference is, in the case of bees, flowers, it’s hard to tell which is the user and which is the usee. The plants are using the bees as much as the bees are using the plants.

Here’s another example.

Beavers create dams which form ponds that provide the beavers with a refuge from predators and a place to build their lodges. At the same time, those ponds create meadows which provide more habitat for more willows and cottonwoods which means more food for more beavers. incidentally, these same ponds form habitat for trout and frogs and a variety of other plants and animals that all play roles as producers and consumers in this pond/meadow agricultural operation.

One more: (one I’m most familiar with.)

Grazing animals, such as wildebeeste, bison, and cattle, feed on grasses, and as they do they shake seeds from the plants and stomp those seeds into the ground along with the fertilizer they (the animals) provide. As the grazers graze, they also remove standing, shade-producing material from last season’s growth (by eating and trampling). This makes sunlight available to new sprouts (from all those seeds) and regrowing plants as well. As the hooved animals scuff around they break up the naturally-occurring ing crust that develops on soil from the impact of wind and falling raindrops and causes the soil to shed some water and absorb less. Hooved animals also pock the soil surface with hoofprints that create small catchments and enhance the soil’s ability to absorb water.

All of this makes for more grass, which makes for more grazers, which, in turn, makes for more of the predators (lions, Indians, and cowboys) that depend on the grazers for food. Predators do their part within this natural agricultural system by keeping the grazers moving so they spread their benefits over the largest area possible producing more grass for more grazers which, in turn, produces more food for more predators.

You don’t believe grazers can produce grasses? Check these posts.

What all this means, as I see it, is Nature is a web of production and consumption relationships. Within Nature, living things work to produce what they need in order to live. Flowers don’t just “happen”. Bees cultivate and produce them. Willows don’t just grow by accident. Beavers create conditions for more of them to grow. Wildebeeste don’t just wander around eating grass, they are herded by predators so they cultivate, plant, and fertilize the grass which they harvest it as they are, in turn, harvested by predators.

Most, if not all, of these interactions are more complicated than I have just described. For instance, in the case of grazers, grasses, and predators, a variety of creatures perform a number of jobs in this natural agricultural operation. Insects, such as dung beetles, and various microbes break down the manure of the grazers turning it into a form that plants can use as fertilizers. While all this is happening specialized fungi (mycorrhizae) interact with plant roots to enable the roots to take up nutrients from the soil. In each case each participant is producing food for itself as it is used to produce for something else.

Ecologists call this an “ecological community,” a network of interacting species, a food web. Within this community everything plays an essential role in producing what it uses. Want to know what sustains a certain plant or animal. Check what uses it.

There’s another reason Nature can be decribed as conservative (in addition to the fact that it bases the way it functions on the principles of conservatism). Nature can also be called conservative because it has absolutely nothing in common with liberalism.

In Nature there is no “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” No welfare. No unemployment benefits or food stamps. No minimum or living wage. No bailouts. No income redistribution and no progressive taxation.

Protection, the core principle of liberal environmentalism, is totally foreign to nature. Nature protects nothing. It uses everything from the waste produced by single-celled creatures, to the oxygen released during photosynthesis in the most gigantic redwood. In Nature to live is to participate in the web of use relationships — to use and be used. There are no exceptions.

Again, if you want to know what sustains some part of Nature, notice what uses it.

For millenia humans have fit into this economy of natural production and consumption relationships. Much, if not all, of the actions we have used (and continue to use) to produce the food, fiber, and other items we need are as much a part of this ancient web as the actions of any other of its elements — bees, beavers, dung beetles, and mycorrhizae. Obviously, our role within this web has changed drastically because of our development of technology. But we still plant plants and herd animals, and as we play new versions of our ancient roles we still help hold the web together in much the same way that we always have.

That is why removing humans from Nature a la the Drake Exclosure, the Verde River etc. can have results that can be so ecologically damaging and so counter to our conventional environmental wisdom — the widely-held misconception that removing human impacts from ecosystems always leaves them more “Natural” and better off.

Environmentalists who are also conservative can make use of the huge irony revealed in all of this, an irony that invalidates, contradicts, blows to smithereens the core principle of contemporary liberal environmentalism. The irony consists in this: When liberal environmentalists say “the way to heal any Earthly environment is to ‘return it to Nature’,” what they’re really saying is, the way to solve our environmental problems is to put them into the hands of a competent and dedicated conservative.

That's the right way to be green.

2011-04-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

TWO QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD BE ASKING ABOUT LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

After reading in this blog about Liberal Environmentalist policies that:

1. Exterminated a “Threatened” fish those policies were alleged to save.

2. Attempted to cover up mistake #1 by poisoning an entire stream killing all living things in it, including any other “threatened species” that might live there. On top of all this the poison has been shown to pose a threat of causing onset of Parkinson’s Disease in humans.

3. Advocate a “restoration” policy that actually has been shown to have made things worse in 60+ years of a trial created to demonstrate the policy's effectiveness.

And...

After seeing dramatic evidence in comparison photographs revealing that Conservative Environmental policies succeeded in the same cases where liberal methods failed so miserably. (See (name posts))

You should be asking yourself at least two questions.

First:

What are Liberal Environmentalists really trying to do? (Because saving fish, restoring ecosystem health, and the like are obviously not their main goal. In fact they don’t seem to be their goal at all)

And the second question, which I find much more interesting:

Why does Nature respond so much more positively to Conservative Environmentalism than to Liberal Environmentalism?

The quick answer to the second question is: Because Nature is a conservative..., but we’ll get to that in a minute. First I’d like to tackle question #1...

What are Liberal Environmentalists really trying to do?

I’ve spent the last 10 years of my 35+ year career as an environmental activist puzzling over how people who profess to be absolutely dedicated to the environment and its health could harm it in ways such as those I have described in this blog and act as if nothing was wrong.

How could they keep working and fighting so hard to do what they do even though in many cases their actions achieve the exact opposite of what they claim is their life’s purpose?

FOLLOW THE MONEY?
Some have explained this disconnect by suggesting that environmentalists really don’t care about the environment; that they do what they do because it brings them political power and money, and because it enables them to feel holier than the rest of us, or smarter, or smugger, or greener. Some say environmentalists do what they do because they are socialists or marxists and claiming to defend the environment from capitalism justifies their efforts to destroy it.

All of the above is true, but not in the way most of us think. Actually it is true in a way that even liberal environmentalists are not aware of. Most of the environmentalists I know say that money and power really don’t matter to them. That they are activists purely and solely because of their concern for the health and future of the environment. And I believe they mean that, but consider the following...

All environmentalists I know say they want to “protect” the environment. Nearly every environmental group I know of has the word “protection” either in their name or in their mission statement. (There’s even a group named “Republicans for Environmental Protection.”)

In our society the institution responsible for protecting things is the government. For that reason, whether intentional or not, “protecting the environment” inevitably happens via the government. This puts contemporary environmentalism inescapably in the big government/liberal camp because liberals are the ones who try to solve everything via the government and regulation.

IF IT MOVES REGULATE IT

For instance: When the banking system almost collapsed in 2008 all we heard from liberals is: The banks need to be more regulated.

When the BP Deep Water Horizon oil well blew up and started spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico the only solution liberals could conceive of was more regulation.

When Dems declared our health care system didn’t work, the solution, they said, was — more regulation

Global warming — more regulation

Global cooling — more regulation
Severe weather — more regulation

Unemployment too high — more regulation

Economy in crisis — more regulation

Too much oil from overseas— more regulation

Some people have more money than others— more regulation

Endangered species — more regulation

You name it — more regulation, or, in other words, more protection, which means more government.

And in every case, the programs created to administer these regulations — Affirmative Action, Planned Parenthood, Public Health Care, Environmental Protection, Wilderness Designation — extend the authority of government into areas of our lives that range from the most momentous (having or not having children) to the most trivial (what light bulbs we can use.) This, in turn, expands the power over our lives of liberals who advocate and administer these programs.

In other words programs that protect and regulate actually pump political power into the hands of the protectors.

THIS WILL GET YOUR ATTENTION!

Here’s an illustration...

The illustration starts with a question: What modern government passed the first wilderness law, the first endangered species act, the first animal rights laws, the first antivivisection law, was the first to protect wolves, and the first to ban DDT? (Hint: This government was not in the U. S.)

Answer: Nazi Germany passed The Reichsnaturschutzgesetz law (Reich Nature Protection Act) in 1935. The purpose of the act, according to Duncan Bayne in How To Spot a Nazi, was to enable the Nazis to use their purported desire for “preventing harm to the environment" as a justification for increasing control over the German populace. One way in which that worked was by requiring that decisions on how a person could use their property had to be first approved by the Reich. (Sound familiar?)

Nazis considered themselves protectors of the animals as per this cartoon of
rabbits and other animals giving the Nazi salute to Hermann Goering.

Knowing what we know about Nazis, which criterion do you believe German fascists used to judge the success of this law: Whether it protected the environment? or, Whether it expanded their political power?

I’d bet on the latter.

In the same way that the Reich Nature Protection Act expanded the political power of the Nazis in early twentieth century Germany, environmental laws are expanding the political power of the left in the contemporary USA and extending it into all corners of our lives.

Please note that I’m not saying liberal environmentalists are Nazis or that they hate Jews or want to start a World War. However, there are striking similarities between the two political movements. Both allege that they are the one and only true friend of Nature. Both believe that they are mankind’s only hope to avoid destruction, that they are destined, no, required to lead, and that they are the only ones with the answers and the remedy to heal what ails the world.

With that as a basis, the Nazis believed and contemporary liberal environmentalists believe that there is no aspect of your life so personal, so private, or so trivial that they should not control it. (In this regard enviros may even be outdoing the Nazis. I know of no attempt by the Third Reich to control the number of sheets of toilet paper you should use or to dictate how much salt you put on your food.)

(See note below for something too outrageous to include here.)

I also believe that this provides us with the answer to question # 1: What are Liberal Environmentalists really trying to do? (Because saving fish, restoring ecosystem health, and the like are obviously not their main goal.),

Environmentalists didn’t admit failure when their removal of cattle from along the Verde River apparently caused the demise of the Verde River spikedace for the simple reason that, for them, it wasn’t a failure. They succeeded in forcing the U. S. Forest Service to remove cattle and private management from public lands along the river, which is what they intended to do. Concern for the spikedace merely provided the cover and the means to do the job. In other words, they achieved their goal. They increased their political power.

Dead spikedace or no, the program was a success.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS BLOG (BECAUSE IT PROVIDES EVIDENCE OF LIBERALISM’S FAILURES FROM A NEW SOURCE: NATURE HERSELF)

Last, but not least, consider this footnote. Conservative pundits have been telling us for years that liberal programs such as the War on Poverty, Affirmative Action, etc. are a failure, but the evidence they provide is at least open to interpretation. The case of the Verde River spikedace, the Drake Exclosure, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher and others yet to come on this blog give us concrete evidence that liberal programs don’t work — evidence in the form of dead fish, barren landscapes, and birdless habitats. Better yet, that evidence is provided by none other than Nature itself.

Environmentalists have a saying: “Nature bats last.” On this blog, she bats next when we consider question #2:

Why does Nature respond so much more positively to Conservative Environmentalism than to Liberal Environmentalism?

Stay tuned.

NOTE:

(I include this here, because if I had added it earlier, it would have overshadowed this post to the point that you might not have been able to read the rest of it, let alone remember it.)

The most chilling similarity between Contemporary Liberal Environmentalists and Hitler’s Nazis is: The “solutions” offered by both for the world’s problems, environmental and otherwise, include the elimination of huge numbers of humans. For instance, when the “2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist,” advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola (a viral disease that causes people to bleed to death through their bodily orifices). He was given a standing ovation by the Texas Academy of Science.

Read the post on this topic:

ANOTHER AMAZING ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION!

2011-04-01T10:41:00.001-07:00

AND ANOTHER SKELETON

IN LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM'S CLOSET

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM

READ THE STORY BELOW

The Gila River in New Mexico after a devastating flood

Same place after restoration

WHAT HAPPENED?!

While I’m asking whether Conservative Environmentalism or Liberal Environmentalism works best and revealing the skeletons in Liberal Environmentalism’s closet, the above photos lead us to another skeleton. This one is described in detail in my latest book, Gardeners of Eden, Rediscovering Our Importance To Nature (So were the other failures of Liberal Environmentalism I’ve pointed out so far. If you want more detailed accounts read Gardeners).

But before I get to that other skeleton I’d like to say a few things about my book. Actually, I’d like to tell you a few things others have said about it.

One reviewer on Amazon.com was almost too enthusastic.

“There are few books that conjure a simultaneously bizarre reaction within a soul: like a biblical epiphany, Dagget stirs new paradigms that made me so excited that I could barely put down the book to complete my daily tasks. Yet, I could not turn the page to the next chapter because the elegant revelations of our place in nature evoked so much thought and "wow", that muddying the gift of a previous chapter with another would do it no justice.”

This book is in my life's top ten list!"

A representative of a Native American college on an Indian reservation in North Dakota gave the book a unique compliment while inquiring about my availability to make a presentation at the college. I believe few other environmental books have had this said about them....

“I personally read Gardeners of Eden last year and was thrilled to see how similar the philosophies in the book are to the Lakota way of thinking.”

A pre-publication reviewer (a liberal environmentalist, by the way) called Gardeners of Eden,

“the most important environmental manifesto since Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.”

If you want to do a little more discovering about your importance to the environment you will want to check this book out. It is available at Amazon.

Now, getting back to that skeleton. This one involves an endangered bird — the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher. the following exerpt is directly from the book.

On a working cattle ranch (the U Bar) in southwestern New Mexico, David Ogilvie (the ranch manager) has managed a riparian area along the Gila River to such a state of health that it:

• is home to the largest known population of one endangered species (the southwestern willow flycatcher) and two threatened species—the common black hawk and spikedace (a fish).

• supports significant populations of several other rare species, some of which are candidates for listing;

• is inhabited by the highest density of nesting songbirds known to exist anywhere in North America; and

• has one of the highest known ratios of native to nonnative fish (99 percent to 1 percent) in the Southwest.

Ogilvie restored an area of riverside habitat that had been severely damaged by flood to a condition known, because of previous experience on the U Bar, to be especially friendly to the southwestern willow flycatcher. As a result, the endangered flycatcher population in that restored stretch of habitat increased from zero in 1997 to twenty-three pairs in 2002. At the time, that was the fifth largest population known. Recently, a population of a species of frogs listed as threatened was discovered on the ranch too.

(HERE'S THE SKELETON!)

The real measure of the environmental value of Ogilvie’s management is best revealed, however, by comparing the flycatcher population of the U Bar’s riparian habitat to two nearby preserves that combine to make up a comparable amount of similar habitat. In 2002, scientists counted 156 pairs of southwestern willow flycatchers on the U Bar. The two preserves had a combined total of zero!

When I mentioned this to a well-known environmental activist and author, he said he didn’t view this as a success at all. He viewed it as equivalent to creating a garbage dump that attracted grizzly bears and calling that dump good bear habitat. (I assure you that the U Bar is no “garbage dump.” To decide for yourself, take a look at the accompanying photos. (shown above)

A few matters of clarification: The "after the flood" picture above is not a picture of the preserves. Actually, the preserves don't look that different than the ranch (except to a Southwestern Willow Flycatcher).

SELLING SKELETONS

So, are environmentalists studying what Ogilvie is doing to make the ranch he is managing so attractive to so many species?

No! They're trying to remove his management from the habitat along the river where it has proved so exceptional in order to make that area more like the "preserves" which the flycatchers and other species I have mentioned avoid.

This gives rise to two very important questions which are the subject of the next post coming soon.

2011-03-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM:
THE MOST AMAZING ECOSYSTEM RESTORATIONS EVER

HERE THEY ARE. All achieved by USING THE LAND, not by protecting it.
Click once for a close-up, twice for an extreme close-up.

The photo sequence above was taken at a gold mine in central Nevada. The restoration started with the mine, already unsuccessfully reclaimed (upper left). Then Nevada ranchers Tony and Jerrie Tipton applied seeds, organic material (hay), animals (cows), and allowed the land to gestate over the winter. The results are shown the following spring and at the end of the summer growing season.

The next amazing restoration involves a pile of copper mine tailings in Arizona. Same formula, same results. This was a superfund site on which standard reclamation techniques had failed also. Then Arizona rancher Terry Wheeler applied the technique he was the first to envision. It worked under the most difficult conditions imaginable.. More than ten years later it is still working.

The restoration picture below was achieved by me and my partner Norm Lowe. The challenge was a gravel mine on the Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff, AZ. The first photo (two photos spliced) shows the mine. Next is Norm broadcasting seeds. (Look at how rough that ground is!) Then a cowboy spreading hay, the cows doing their work, and then the results. Click any of the photos once for a close-up, twice for an extreme close-up.

2011-03-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM vs LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

WE REPORT, YOU DECIDE

This post gives you the opportunity to judge the results of Conservative Environmentalism versus the results of Liberal Environmentalism via compared photographs, Unless otherwise noted, the photos were taken in the same area (in some cases the areas were directly adjacent to one another) at relatively the same time. In cases where the methods used to get the results shown aren't obvious, those methods are illustrated with a simple photo sequence showing the techniques applied.

In other words: We report and give you the opportunity to decide which works best: Conservative Environmentalism or Liberal Environmentalism.

PROTECTED SINCE 1946

This first photo shows an area in Central Arizona on which the land management strategy Liberal Environmentalism says will heal all that ails the land has been applied. This land has been protected from all use by humans since 1946 when a fence was erected around it to create a study plot. What did this plot look like when it was first protected? “Pretty much like it looks now, but the trees were smaller,” said the scientist currently in charge of the study. According to the theory of Liberal Environmentalism this land has been “returned to Nature” and is as healthy as is possible considering what had happened to it up until it was protected.

The second photo shows the land immediately outside the study plot. It has been used mostly for cattle grazing since (and before) it was separated from the land in the study plot. When the fence was built the land outside the fence looked just like the land inside it. Not so today.

THE CONSERVATIVE ALTERNATIVE

The land in the first photo, the one labeled “Liberal Environmentalism” Is the result of a restoration using the bedrock tactic of Liberal Environmentalism — protecting the land from human use (abuse). In view of the results achieved, maybe it would be more accurate to call this “an attempted restoration.” The land in the second photo hasn’t been “restored” it has just been used to produce products for humans — meat. It looks better because it illustrates the most important principle in human use of anything — if something doesn’t work, humans generally do something different. In this case when human management made the land look like it did when the fence was first erected “Pretty much like it (the Liberal Environmentalism restoration) looks now, but the trees were smaller.” Humans did something different — they stopped overgrazing the land, and it recovered.

Just for fun and fairness, because the Liberal Environmentalism project was actually an attempt to restore the land to ecological health, I offer a third photo that shows another restoration, same place (a short distance away), same time. the main difference is this restoration took a few weeks instead of 60 years. The photo below shows the results of a restoration using the principles of Conservative Environmentalism. It illustrates that we can restore ecological health to the land BY using it (Isn’t that what Nature does?) better than we can by protecting it.

(I've included an insert to enable you to compare the results of this Conservative Environmentalist restoration vs Liberal Environmentalist competition.)

WHICH WORKS BEST?

How we did this restoration is illustrated in the next photo. First, we piled rocks in a gully to combat erosion (the reason for the restoration) Next, we broadcast native grass seeds onto the land and spread hay to lure cattle to the site. The cows came (see the rocks) stomped what hay they didn’t eat into the soil turning it into mulch covering the seeds, fertilized the mixture, and moved on. The last photo in the sequence shows the healed gully. The larger photo (above) shows what this method can do to revitalize a piece of rangeland. All the grasses are natives.

HOW WE DID IT: (click and take a closer look.)

2011-02-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM

vs LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

WHICH WORKS BEST?

Conservatives sustain a threatened fish.

Liberals extirpate it.

WHY DO WE NEED A CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM?

Liberalism doesn’t work to solve environmental problems just as it doesn’t solve problems of poverty, race, the economy, terrorism...

WHAT'S THE RIGHT WAY TO BE GREEN ?

The way that works.

A WORLD WITHOUT ENVIRONMENTALISTS

An answer to the book: “The World Without Us”

A LIBERAL SOLUTION TO THE
"OVERPOPULATION PROBLEM"
Why Don't Liberals Walk Their Talk?

PUT UP OR SHUT UP
Time for a Showdown on the Western Range

2011-02-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM

vs LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

WHICH WORKS BEST?
Click once for a close-up, twice for an extreme close-up

LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS EXTIRPATE A THREATENED FISH

In the mid-1990s, two environmental groups intimidated the U. S. Forest Service to remove grazing from along the Verde River in central Arizona. The reason? The groups alleged the cows were a threat to a “threatened” fish — a 3” native minnow called the Spikedace. When the Forest Service caved to the groups’ threatened lawsuit and halted grazing along the river, trees invaded streamside meadows such as the one with the cowboys riding through it displayed on the header at the top of the your screen. Cattle acting as mowers had kept these lush oases relatively free of trees for more than a hundred years. Removing grazing, however, caused a dramatic ecological change along the entire “protected” area. When floodwaters coursed through these transformed meadows the invading trees created turbulence which in turn caused erosion. The result is shown in the photo above.

The final irony in all this is: no spikedace have been seen in the river since it was “protected,” but plenty were seen before that. What that means, in my estimation and the estimation of the government's own scientists, is Liberal Environmentalism extirpated a threatened species.

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM

SUSTAINING HABITAT FOR A THREATENED FISH

The second photo shows one of the areas along the Verde that is privately owned. It continues to be grazed and managed by one of the ranchers who has remained in business in spite of Forest Service policies. On this section of the river, which is managed according to the principles of Conservative Environmentalism, the meadows remain intact.

Which one works best?

What do you want?

WHAT HAPPENED?!
When government scientists took note that the removal of grazing along the Verde had apparently altered the habitat in such a way that it had become inhospitable to spikedace, they proposed a study to confirm or deny this. Such a study, they hypothesized, might enable them to avert the total disappearance of spikedace from the Verde. The study might have done just that if not for a regional Forest Service fisheries biologist who was simultaneously serving as an officer with an environmental group publicly campaigning to remove grazing from all public land. This administrator used the opportunity provided by her position with the Forest Service to discredit the scientists and their proposed study. The harassment became so intense one of the scientists, the top native fish expert in the southwest, retired and left Arizona. The two other scientists on the team were replaced and the study scrapped.

To this day, none of the environmentalists nor the federal employees responsible for the demise of the spikedace and the serious reduction in numbers of the rest of the upper Verde's native fish have been held accountable for this “taking” of a threatened species even though it is a federal crime. None have expressed regret that their action exterminated a population of a threatened species, nor have any of them proposed reversing the policy.

Instead the liberal environmentalist groups and the federal and state agencies involved have proposed to poison the river and to continue doing it periodically to kill the nonnative spikedace-eating predators that have thrived in the river since grazing was removed and the character of the habitat changed. After each poisoning they would restock the river with spikedace. They would have to stock it with more than spikedace because, ironically and tragically, the poison they would use would kill every living thing in the river with gills. That would include any other rare, threatened, or endangered species that live there, unknown numbers of invertebrates (which spikedace eat), and any spikedace that might have managed to survive the environmentalists’ first “solution.” Note that in other streams in which this poison has been used the living community has never fully recovered and any benefit to the species supposed to “benefit” has been temporary and illusory. Note also that the new spikedace would be stocked into a deep, cool, mud-bottomed river that is not longer suitable habitat for them.

Compounding the absurdity of this tragedy, the poison which the government and the enviros intend to use has been linked by published scientific research to the onset of Parkinson's disease in humans.

THE CONSERVATIVE ALTERNATIVE or
WILL THE REAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS PLEASE STAND
When cattle grazing along the Verde was first alleged to be a threat to the spikedace and other native fish in the river, one rancher— a political conservative —immediately volunteered to move his cattle off Forest Service lands along the river on which he was leasing grazing access. He even voluntarily removed his animals off his private lands along the river, which he was not required to do. More than that, he enlisted friends to help plant willow saplings every ten feet on both sides of the river for 4 miles to help the river “return to nature.”

When it became clear that removing grazing wasn’t helping the spikedace, but was actually causing its numbers to plunge, this same rancher offered to resume controlled grazing of cattle along the riverside to try to restore it to a spikedace-friendly condition. (Controlled grazing means he would manage his cattle to achieve environmental goals as well as production goals.)

Beyond that, he offered to rewater an archaic stretch of riverbed with water he would normally use for irrigating crops and create a refugia in which to raise young spikedace to restock the river. The Forest Service turned down his offer to restore the habitat, and the Arizona Game and Fish Department blocked his plan to create a refugia for the fish.

When this happened the rancher pointed out to the Forest Service that the agreement he had signed with them when he removed his cattle from along the river contained the provision that, if this action didn’t work to bring back the fish, he could put his cows back on the river. When the USDA refused to keep this agreement he teamed with other ranchers and conservative activists to bring to light the fact that there were other situations, similar to the one on Verde, in which liberal environmental solutions had actually caused harm to the environment. And that there were activities generally associated with and championed by political conservatives (ranching and farming) that had benefited it.

For example, the government’s own researchers had determined that the largest known populations of spikedace and loach minnow (another “Threatened” native fish) occur on the Gila River in New Mexico where livestock are present or where other agricultural operations impact the river.

Adding weight to the claim that conservative environmentalists can be an endangered species’ best friend (and liberals their worst enemy), on two other streams in Arizona livestock exclusion was followed by the disappearance or severe reduction of populations of another threatened species, the Gila topminnow. Again, on other sections of those same streams, or on nearby streams, controlled grazing continues and so do the fish.

With that in mind, Verde River ranchers and their allies have been pressing for “equal protection under the law.” This would require that environmental laws be applied to environmentalists as well as to other users of the land.

Currently, with liberal environmentalism calling the shots, this is not the case. Before the removal of grazing from along the Verde, the “scientific studies” used as a justification for this action were collections of unproved assumptions and urban legends about how protection would benefit the environment and how grazing and other human activities threatened it. No consideration whatsoever was given to the fact that controlled grazing or any other human use would or could have any positive impacts on any aspect of the environment, including the health of native fish populations. Nor that the removal of these activities could have any negative impacts.

This myopia continues to be standard operating procedure on other streams in the American West in spite of what has happened on the Verde. Liberal environmentalists are still demanding the complete removal of controlled grazing from native fish habitat in direct contradiction of the best scientific information available, and agriculturists are continuing to be villainized without any consideration of scientifically supported evidence that they might be the primary reason why the habitat supports natives fish at all.

Members of the conservative coalition moved to action by the environmental debacles on the Verde and elsewhere are lobbying state governments and federal agencies to require that environmental decisions be based on studies that consider the positive value to the environment of productive human activities and the negative impacts of removing those activities.

Included in that campaign is an effort to require consultation with the EPA before any wildlife agency can release poison into the environment for any reason. At present this rather conservative measure, which is required by federal law, has yet to observed in cases of poisoning the nation’s waters to achieve liberal environmentalists’ “species recovery solutions.”

THE SCORECARD

LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM:

• Made decisions based on self-serving assumptions and urban legends rather than on the basis of the best science available or on the basis of actual experience.

• Not only extirpated the threatened fish they supposedly were “saving,” but altered the habitat in a way that harmed the food web on which those fish depended, many other species, other environmental functions and values, and the lives of people who were actually a boon to the values the environmentalists claim they were trying to save.

• Got a free pass on all of the above by being the beneficiary of political and media prejudice that groups “protecting” the environment can do no wrong.

• Have accepted no responsibility or ownership for what they have done and to this day are continuing to try to expand this failed approach to more and more streams.

• Tried to deflect responsibility for the harm they had caused by intimidating and working to discredit scientists who pointed out that their program was creating the exact opposite of what the environmentalists contended it would produce.

• Tried to cover up and remedy the disaster they had created by doing something that was even worse: releasing a poison into the environment that effected even more species, made the results more permanent, and poses a confirmed threat to human health.

CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM:

• Ranchers played an important role in sustaining a healthy population of native fish (including spikedace) in the Verde River for more than a hundred years. In southern Arizona, ranchers have performed this function for more than 300 years.

• When the Verde ranchers were told they were causing a problem (even though it wasn’t true) at least one of the ranchers voluntarily removed his cattle from the river and even went the extra mile of planting thousands of willows to speed the river’s recovery.

• When it became obvious that the removal of controlled grazing was harming rather than helping the fish, ranchers offered to resume what did work and even went “above and beyond” to use their crop irrigation water to create a fish “nursery” to help bring back the spikedace.

• Ranchers cooperated with scientists to find out what was really going on. Liberal environmentalists refused to do so, and harassed scientists in order to create a coverup.

• Based on the findings of those scientists, ranchers continue to provide the only habitat on the Upper Verde River where native fish continue to hold on.

• Served as advocates for the environment and for the humans harmed and potentially harmed by the destructive actions of liberal environmentalism.

• Conservatives honored their agreements. Liberals did not.

2008-07-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

WHY DO WE NEED A CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM?

Liberalism doesn’t work to solve environmental problems just as it doesn’t solve problems of poverty, race, the economy, terrorism...

This blog is an effort to inspire the birth of a truly conservative alternative to contemporary liberal environmentalism.

Right off the bat that brings to mind a couple of questions:

First, isn’t “conservative environmentalism” an oxymoron? Isn’t it impossible to have a conservative environmentalism because all conservatives want to take us back to the “old ways” when everything was ruled by old white men whose lust for profits and dominance over nature created all of our environmental problems in the first place?

Second, why bother? Many conservative pundits are hard at work trying to do away with environmentalism. Rush Limbaugh has described environmentalism as “the new home of displaced communists” and “one of the tentacles of liberalism seeking to envelop our planet in its evil grip.” Others regularly refer to environmentalists as “radical” and “wackos.”

Why, then do we need a conservative environmentalism?

Addressing the second question first: We need a conservative environmentalism because it would identify and address environmental problems that are real and really need to be solved. It would not dream up problems (global warming, for instance) or pervert already existing problems (wildfire, species extinction), as does contemporary liberal environmentalism, so it can use them as tools to advance leftist goals, i. e., increase the sphere of government.

We need a conservative environmentalism because there are a lot of people who identify themselves as political conservatives who are as concerned about real environmental problems as any liberal. They want to have healthy watersheds, forests, and rangelands (I know because I’m one of those people.) but we don’t want to have to sign on to (or appear to sign on to) solutions to these problems that merely grow bigger government.

Which brings us back to the first question:

Is “conservative environmentalism” an oxymoron? Actually, it’s quite the opposite. I’m convinced, and I believe that via this blog I can convince you, that a conservative environmentalism is the only true environmentalism. The reason for this is because an environmentalism based on conservative principles would deal with environmental problems/opportunities rather than serve as merely a Trojan Horse for growing government. And, as in all instances where these two approaches go head to head, the conservative approach would solve the problem or realize the opportunity. The liberal approach would merely make the problem worse and then try to convince us that even more goverment would somehow give us a different result. That’s what it always does.

What’s the definition of insanity?

TAKING ON BIG GREEN
The actions of contemporary mainstream environmentalism harm the environment as well as help it. And in the cases where that is true, the more aggressively those actions are applied, the more harm they do. To let others know about those instances in which contemporary mainstream environmentalism, which I call Big Green) creates the opposite of what it purports to be its mission is the main reason I decided to create this blog.

Here on the RightWay2BGreen, you’ll see the true face of that harm and come to know why it happens, how it happens, and how it can be avoided. Most importantly, you’ll come to know what flaw in Big Green’s conceptual basis causes it to create the opposite of what it promises to create, and you’ll learn why people who sincerely believe they love nature end up harming it and refuse to even consider admitting or correcting their mistakes.

You will read things on this blog that you will read nowhere else. You will see pictures of environmental solutions that you will see nowhere else. In fact, you will see pictures of events and achievements that Big Green insists are impossible, and that it works constantly to discredit, coverup, or deny.

You’ll also read descriptions and see pictures of environmental harm perpetrated by Big Green that you will find nowhere else. Needless to say, Big Green is working constantly to discredit, cover up and deny that as well.

Coming next: Some of those descriptions and some of those pictures.

2008-07-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S THE RIGHT WAY TO BE GREEN?

What’s the right way to be green? A way that works, that achieves your environmental goals, that creates or restores health and function to ecosystems and provides a sustainably abundant way for humans to live within those ecosystems. Notice that I say sustainably abundant. I do not subscribe to the zero-sum definition of sustainability—that more for anyone means less for someone (or something) else, or as it says on a bumper sticker: “Live simply that others may simply live.”

The abundance theory of sustainability goes like this... As we produce food, fiber, and other goods and services we produce abundance for ourselves and others, including for other species. In my most recent book, The Gardeners of Eden Rediscovering Our Importance to Nature, I said it this way: You can’t have your cake unless you eat it, too. Unhealthy ecosystems, after all, only produce money for environmental groups who are able to sell them as bones of contention and stairsteps to political power.

So, what’s the wrong way to be green? A way that produces scarcity rather than abundance; that damages ecosystems by impairing or even destroying their ability to function and thus produces scarcity for all in the process. Why, you may ask, would anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist do something that harms the environment? Because they’ve made a mistake, or they’ve been fooled, and they’re doing the wrong thing when they think they’re doing the right thing, is one answer, but the more accurate answer is: for the same reason anybody does something to harm the environment—when it brings them money or power or achieves their political agenda.

Those of you who have bought on to mainstream liberal environmentalism have been sold a phony.

2008-07-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

A WORLD WITHOUT ENVIRONMENTALISTS

How Would The Environment Fare If It Was Unprotected?

Many of us in the U. S. and in other post-modern societies subscribe to the prejudice that the use by humans (especially modern technologically-adept humans) always has a negative impact on Nature. For this reason we have invented something called “environmentalism,” along with a body of laws, rules, regulations, interest groups, a servile media and education system, taboos, fads, fashions, movies, books etc., to protect Nature from us. The assumption upon which all of the above is based is that the more we protect things from us, the more they will return to “balance” or a state we call “pristine” and the better off we will all be. This is true, we are told, even though our standard of living may be diminished drastically. We will be better off, we are told, because we won’t keep making things worse until we destroy the planet, or end life as we know it, or all become cannibals, or whatever image some liberal Chicken Little du jour uses to convince us that we are doomed unless we follow Big Green.

One writer whom I have met and who reviewed my first book (Alan Weisman) has even written a book named The World Without Us. It is described as a “penetrating, page-turning, tour of a post-human Earth.” Actually, there are already a number of places here on planet Earth that show us what a “post-human Earth” would be. With that in mind I offer the photos that accompany this post as illustrations after the fact for Alan’s book or for a sequel called The World Without Environmentalists.

The photo sequence below shows an exclosure in central Arizona, the Drake Exclosure, which was set aside in 1946 to study what a “World Without Us” would look like. The top photo shows the exclosure in 2004 after 58 years of the remedy contemporary liberal environmentalism tells us will restore nature to health, diversity, and balance. The second photo (below the first) shows what the land outside the exclosure, which has continued to be grazed by a local rancher’s cattle and used by humans for firewood cutting, off-road vehicle recreation, hunting, etc, looked like that same year. The third photo was taken on the same day as photo #2 from a point inside the exclosure looking out. Notice which way the elk tracks are headed.

Is this piece of the Earth better off without humans or without environmentalists?

OTHER EXAMPLES OF A WORLD WITHOUT US
(AND OF THE NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF BIG GREEN)

DESERTIFICATION On Wupatki National Monument, adjacent to former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s family’s ranch in Northern Arizona, the amount of bare dirt (soil without plants on it) has more than doubled in 13 years of preservation or “World Without Us” management). In contrast, four trials of using cattle to encourage plant growth on a study plot on the Babbitt Ranch monitored by EcoResults (a not-for-profit I helped found) increased plant cover by native grasses by an average of 20% per trial.

ENDANGERED SPECIES A ranch along the Gila River in New Mexico hosts one of the largest known populations of an endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher. Two adjacent preserves, examples of “The World Without Us,” host none of those birds.

NATIVE PLANTS On a preserve near Santa Barbara, California, where I live today, exclosures have been constructed to protect areas of native grasses from human impact on the theory that the current invasion of California grasslands by plants from other continents is caused by the damage done to those habitats by more than a century of human use. After 15 or so years of post-human management the exclosures have proven more hospitable to the invaders than the natives. The protected areas have become almost pure stands of invaders, while outside the fence, where the land continues to be grazed, and thus be used by humans, there are healthy stands of natives grasses right up to the fence.

VERNAL POOLS In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, Nature Conservancy scientists found that post-human management made these concentrations of native diversity and endangered species vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plants. This invasion caused some of these seasonal wetlands to dry up before the rare plants and animals that inhabit them could spring to life and reproduce. In as few as 3 years of “protection” these areas, which have been called one of the highest concentrations of rare and endangered species on Earth, have literally disappeared.

To their credit a number of mainstream environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and more have recognized this situation and have facilitated the return of grazing to these unique areas. Still, the other situations I described above, and plenty more like them, have experienced no such progress.

My experience and my examples come mainly from ranching and rangeland management in the American West, but the phenomenon I am describing occurs in other types of habitat with other kinds of management, too.

HAWAII On the Hawaiian island of Kauai farming was removed from the Hanalei Valley to benefit native birds. When bird populations began to suffer, farming was restored, and the birds came back.

INDIA In Cattle and Conservation at Bharatpur: A Case Study in Science and Advocacy, Michael Lewis describes a situation in Bharatpur, India, in which the grazing animals belonging to surrounding villagers were removed from an area of wetlands that had been created as a hunting reserve for the local maharaja and recently converted into a park. Nine villagers were shot to death achieve this removal. Since the villagers and their livestock were forcibly removed, the marshes, ponds, and canals have become clogged with plants the cattle used to eat. As a result bird numbers have begun to drop as has the tiger population, which used to be one of the most dense in the world. As of 2003, the Indian Government was struggling to deal with this apparent anomaly in environmental theory: Removing the impacts of humans is not supposed to cause parks to deteriorate.

In all of these examples, and plenty more, the remedy mainstream liberal environmentalism or big green has identified as the only way to deal with our environmental problems—reducing human impact—has failed to achieve its goal. It has failed to save endangered species, improve habitat, and encourage the survival of native plant species. In every case I have listed it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do: it exterminated the endangered species it intended to protect, destroyed the habitat it was intended to restore, made areas more, rather than less, susceptible to invasion by nonnatives, and hastened the desertification of land it was supposed to preserve.

LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT There are plenty of sources who say environmentalism is asking for too much, is too expensive, puts animals before humans, is wreaking havoc on our economy, is a religion, etc., but few if any are saying what you have just read: that contemporary liberal environmentalism and its cure for everything environmental—reducing the impact of humans—is bad for the environment.

The irony of what you will read in the Rightway2BGreen is that it doesn't call those of us who are concerned about the environment "wackos", it makes the case that we need to swap Big Green for a conservative environmentalism that judges the worth of an action on its results rather than on how well it fits a liberal, anti-capitalist, misanthropic agenda.

2008-06-30T03:55:00.000-07:00

A LIBERAL SOLUTION TO THE

"OVERPOPULATION PROBLEM"

The other day, I was discussing the environment with a liberal friend when we got to a lull in the conversation and he said all the actions we were talking about, restoring rangelands, saving endangered species, revitalizing watersheds, were better than doing nothing, of course, but they were all futile because in the end there are just too many people on the Earth. For that reason, he continued, the only thing that could really make a dent in the Earth’s environmental problems would be for about half of the people to disappear. Actually (after acknowledging that what he was going to say wasn’t “politically correct”) he said that the entire planet would be better off if about half of the people now living would be killed in a nuclear war or a plague or something equally as horrible.

As happens frequently in situations that make me uncomfortable, I couldn’t think of a clever and appropriately devastating rejoinder to make on the spot, so I just grunted and acted disinterested and hoped he would change the subject.

Later on it occurred to me that I should have called him on what was a totally cruel, tasteless, stupid, and completely empty comment—I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want to be responsible (by wishing it) for the death of a couple of billion people, but when it comes to liberals, I’m not so sure anymore.

A good retort to his comment, it occurred to me, would have been to say, “Knowing how you feel about peace and love and all that I’m sure you would never condemn anyone else to be nuked or plagued or to committ suicide. Nor would you ask them to do it in your stead. So, I assume what you just said means you, and the other people who think like you, are volunteering to remove yourselves from the planet in order to save it from overpopulation and all the problems that it causes. I want to commend you for that because it is so courageous and self sacrificing, I’m totally in awe. When do you plan to do this? And is there anything you’d like me to do for you after you’re gone?”

While I was kicking myself for not having said the above, another thought came to mind that was much more of an awakening and absolutely chilling. It occurred to me that liberals really are removing themselves from the earth, and that they really are committing mass suicide, and they are doing it at a really startling rate. Shades of Hale-Bopp and Jonestown!

At that point I remembered a couple of environmentalists I knew, and a couple more I’m aware of, who killed themselves because they thought they were “part of the problem.” I thought of a woman in England whom I had heard had herself sterilized so she couldn’t increase her carbon footprint by producing other humans. I thought of myself and my wife who had essentially done the same thing—We didn’t have kids at least partially because we swallowed the “Earth is overpopulated” propaganda, too.

I also thought of an article by Mark Steyn called “It’s the Demography, Stupid”). In this article Steyn pointed out that in the U. S. there are only 2.07 births per woman. In Ireland 1.87. In New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76, and in Canada 1.5, which is well below replacement rate. Germany and Austria come in at 1.3. Russia and Italy at 1.2; and Spain is at 1.1, which is only about half replacement rate. This means, Steyn points out, that “Spain’s population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria’s by 36%, Estonia’s by 52%.”

In America, demographic trends suggest that the majority of this attrition by far is happening among liberals. Steyn notes that, “In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.” By 2050, the 100 million more Americans who will be alive will be mostly red-staters.

The next time you talk to a liberal tell him or her goodbye, thank them for their sacrifice, and ask them if you can have their Prius or, better yet, their wine collection.

Ed Abbey, guru of modern radical environmentalism, promised his followers that they would live to “piss on the graves of their enemies.” It appears that he may have had it backwards.

But before you start thinking that liberalism and liberal environmentalism contain the seeds of their own suicide, you should consider the fact that this movement is a very, very good recruiter.

Conservative environmentalism needs a good recruiter and that’s what we’re trying to do with this blog.

2008-06-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

PUT UP OR SHUT UP

This is a reprint of an article I wrote about 15 years ago and published in a number of media. No one has yet taken me up on the challenge

TIME FOR A SHOWDOWN ON THE WESTERN RANGE

Some arguments can’t be resolved with words. They have to be settled mano a mano out in the real world where success and failure are a matter of results not rhetoric. You can argue forever about whose horse is the fastest, but the only way to find out is to race them. One place where we need a good horse race these days is in the interminable argument over whether or not to remove grazing from the public rangelands of the American West.

Most of you, I’m sure, are wondering what’s to argue about. Everyone knows what’s wrong with those lands—that they’re overgrazed, overtrampled, and polluted with cow splats. And everybody knows who’s to blame—all those filthy-rich welfare ranchers and their ravenous cows and sheep. Some scientists claim that livestock have wreaked more havoc on the West than all bulldozers and chainsaws combined. Some even say that the damage they have created is so severe it may never heal.

So, what’s the hold up? The way to save the range is getimoff and lockitup, right! Remove the cows and the ranchers and everything will return to nature. Well, if that’s what you believe, I’ve got a challenge for you.

What would you do if I offered to bet you that, if we took two identical pieces of Western rangeland side by side, and you used the getimoff and lockemup approach on your side, and I put cows on my side, lots of em, and left them there until they had eaten just about everything, and then I took them off until the plants grew back and did that over and over again, that my side would be healthier than yours?

Would you break your fingers trying to get me to “shake on it” before I changed my mind? Would you put your life savings on the line? Would you tell all your friends that you had found a sucker so dumb that you were already spending your winnings?

Before you start counting, there’s a couple of things I ought to tell you.

First, I ought to tell you that there has been a change in the way some ranchers manage their animals. Some ranchers have begun emulating the way natural grazers graze, concentrating their animals by means of temporary fences, herders, or tasty enticements and moving them about the land in the manner of a herd of bison pursued by wolves or Native American hunters and drawn by the lure of fresh pasture and the next waterhole. Grazing in this way, natural ungulates don’t overgraze, but they do mow, de-thatch, reseed, and fertilize, performing the same functions you and I perform to keep our own grasslands, our yards, green and healthy.

These methods have been used to restore grasslands to health on lands damaged by mining, off road vehicle damage, roadbuilding, and catastrophic wildfire. They have been used to cover piles of toxic mine waste with green and growing plants. Last but not least, livestock have even been used to revegetate land damaged by overgrazing.

Anti-grazing activists dismiss these successes as self-serving rancher hogwash, but when I first made my challenge four years ago in a magazine that was distributed nationally (Range), no one took me up on it. Because that magazine was read mostly by ranchers, I made the offer again, more recently, in the newsletter of the Arizona chapter of the Sierra Club, one of the groups that has been most critical of grazing. Again, no takers. This past December (2000) I made the challenge again at The First National Conference on Grazing Lands. Still no takers.

The reason I’m doing this is not to whitewash the damage grazing has done and is still doing. It is to make a point. What better way to let you, the American Public, know that ranching (livestock grazing) can be the most effective tool we have to restore health to certain ecosystems of the West than by having the opposition back down from a challenge like this. Or to have them take the challenge and lose out in the open for all to see.

I say it’s the most effective tool because, in most of the successes I listed above, the getimoff and lockitup alternative had been tried and failed. In other words the showdown has already happened, and they lost.