COMMENTARY: It’s time to judge forest policy by its result, not by its intent

Failed federal policies implemented by unelected agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management during the past 30 to 40 years remind me of a quote from the late economist Milton Friedman: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

The Northwest Forest Plan enacted by President Clinton in 1994 may have had good intentions, but it has failed catastrophically.

Read more at the Register-Guard

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LETTER: (Council punts on 2010-11 budget)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR (Submitted to the Corvallis Gazette-Times, 2/17/2010 by John H. Detweiler) - In the February 17th Gazette-Times we were treated to an above-the-fold article telling us that the Corvallis City Council is punting on the 2010-11 budget. The Council is going to proceed with programs such as community sustainability and give proportional cuts to police and fire. ∴ Sooner or later, Corvallis is going to have to establish priorities and make choices. This will not be a pleasant experience; but there is no other choice. The alternatives are for us to not fund basic services (e.g. police and fire) or for all of us to ride our own hobbyhorses all the way to bankruptcy. ∴ The purpose of local government is to provide quality services to the most people possible with the money that is available.

To establish priorities, we need to know how often citizens use the services provided and what their perceptions are of the relative quality of these services. I estimated service usage and relative perceptions of quality with the raw data collected for the 2009 Corvallis Citizens Attitude Survey. My analysis can be found at http://www.peak.org/~detweij.

Services that are used more often should receive more funds. Tax money should flow to the services that are used the most often by the most people where the quality can be improved and users cannot be identified in a cost effective manner. Where the users can be cost effectively identified, user fees should be imposed to recoup the cost of these services.

To continue on our present path is foolhardy.

John H. Detweiler Read More......

150 Years of Decarbonization

MICHAEL CRICHTON, SPEECH, November 6, 2005, Complexity Theory and Environmental Management - Excerpt: Notice that in 1968, when [Paul] Ehrlich published his book The Population Bomb, world fertility was already in decline. Ehrlich was thus urging people to do what they had already been doing for about 10 years. It’s not clear whether he knew this or not. But certainly when he said, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over…. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..." he was simply wrong. As you see, after his book appeared the death rate remained flat in developed countries, and it continued to fall for another 10 years in developing countries.

Ehrlich’s procedure—crying out in desperation to urge what’s already happening—isn’t unique. We have a contemporary example in the call of politicians and activists to end our dependence on fossil fuels, and move to a “carbon neutral” lifestyle. Their call to action is, however, a bit late.

According to Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller Institute, industrialized nations have been decarbonizing their energy sources for 150 years, meaning we are moving away from carbon toward hydrogen. In other words, the ratio of carbon to hydrogen decreases as you go from wood and hay (1:1) to coal to oil to gas (1:4). Here is an illustration from one of his articles:



Ausubel expects the trend to continue through this century as we move toward pure hydrogen—without the assistance of lawyers and activists. Obviously if a trend has been continuously operating since the days of Lincoln and Queen Victoria, it probably does not need the assistance of organizations like the Sierra Club and the NRDC, which are showing up about a hundred years too late.

(Click illustrations to enlarge and your 'back arrow' to return)






Ausubel’s ideas are controversial to some, but not to sites like Sustainability Now:









Comment added: This is awesome progress.



Read Michael Crichton's entire speech: Complexity Theory and Environmental Management

(John) Michael Crichton, 1942-2008 Read More......

Corvallis Council gets sustainability plan

Some balk at land use revisions

Gazette-Times, by Matt Neznanski, reporter - Although the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition received a standing ovation from some people at the noon meeting of the City Council, councilors were a little cooler toward the group’s final body of work. Councilors chose to “receive and accept” a report that reflected the work of hundreds of volunteers and contained initiatives and ideas for tackling specific topics such as energy use, transportation, education and housing citywide.

“There’s a lot of work yet to be done,” Ward 9 Councilor Hal Brauner said. “As I look through this plan, a lot of things I can agree with and a lot of things I don’t. I think a lot of people feel that way.”

In the report, the coalition outlined goals and recommendations including the reduction per-capita energy consumption by 50 percent, encouraging half of residents, organizations, government and business to buy local first and creation of compact, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use neighborhoods over 80 percent of the city’s area.

Ward 2 Councilor Patricia Daniels tried to strengthen the Council’s action to a flat-out acceptance of the plan, but that was voted down 5 to 3.

“Accepting this plan does not mean we are adopting everything in it without discussion and refinement,” she said.

But the idea of tweaking the city’s land-use laws caused enough hesitation for the majority of the Council that its support was a bit muted.

“I’m trying to avoid giving the impression to future councils and the public that this is something we’ve adopted,” said Ward 6 Councilor Stewart Wershow. “There are certain items that will fall away either because the people we represent do not support them or because we do not have the money.”

Coalition town hall meetings drew as many as 650 people to Oregon State University’s CH2M Hill Alumni Center.

The coalition is a network of more than 130 organizations and individuals in Benton County dedicated to creating a community in which resources are renewed at the same rate as they are used. Partner organizations include nonprofits, businesses, churches, schools and local government.

City leaders invested $30,000 in the town hall meetings and promised to use the plan when crafting city policies promoting sustainability next year.

Matt Neznanski can be reached at 758-9518 or by email.

Copyright © 2008 Corvallis Gazette Times, A Lee Enterprises subsidiary Read More......

Not all Corvallis embraces goals of ‘sustainability’

Corvallis Gazette Times OPINIONS, Letter to the Editor - The third “Sustainable Corvallis” town hall meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 7 did not appear to me to represent a cross section of the citizens of Corvallis. I wonder if the sustainability leaders have a profile of the people presenting the vision for the city. It is important to identify this group of self-selected, nonelected people who are proposing to determine the future of the community.

The City Council should carefully analyze each of the goals before attempting to implement them since voters were restricted to only the options presented without discussion. Most of the goals were selected by about 50 percent of the voters. Hardly a strong consensus.

Every citizen who is interested in their future and the community needs to log on to sustainablecorvallis.org/workgroupproposals. Read and think about what is being proposed.

Working toward these goals will require significant money and resources. The majority of the goals are unachievable and inefficient.

Goals that are desirable are already being worked on by people who recognize their value. The other goals suggested can only be achieved by enforcement and indoctrination.

If you don’t mind being told how to live your life, where and how to live, travel, eat and think, then just ignore all of this. If you enjoy some degree of freedom, then I strongly urge you to become informed and involved.

Charles R. Nelson, Corvallis Read More......