big money winning out agsint the environment yet again

[dannybin1742]

just retarded

what is wrong with people, in this administration, money can buy you anything

Large areas could be cut where state and federal habitat protections are already in place, such as national forests and places where the economic benefits of development outweigh the biological benefits of habitat.

i find the bold text the most disturbing

 

[conjur]

More of the same from this administration. Just about the most anti-environment ever.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: dannybin1742
just retarded

what is wrong with people, in this administration, money can buy you anything

Large areas could be cut where state and federal habitat protections are already in place, such as national forests and places where the economic benefits of development outweigh the biological benefits of habitat.

i find the bold text the most disturbing

Awwwww, you should be thrilled, this is what the U.S. citizens want for Builders to get richer and destroy all species and habitat except for new suburban homes, can't have anything else, what's your problem???

 

[AmbitV]

ummm there are plently of examples where we damage the environment due to economic benefits. If environmental concerns always trumped any kind of economic benefit, noone would drive cars, there would be zero factories....

 

[Steeplerot]

More like we would have smarter cleaner factories and a viable public transit.
But why would the administration encourage this?
It is run by tycoons of the energy industry.

 

[AmbitV]

sorry but cleaner factories and public transit still emit pollution

 

[maddogchen]

Originally posted by: conjur
More of the same from this administration. Just about the most anti-environment ever.

yep.

 

[judasmachine]

Don't you guys know? God gave us this planet to use as we see fit. We are free to kill off whatever we damn well feel like. And it doesn't matter if we destroy so much that it will no longer support us because Jesus will come out of the sky and save us all.......... (he'll bring us cold fusion.... or magic)

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: AmbitV
Sorry but cleaner factories and public transit still emit pollution

Therefore the solution is create as much pollution as possible?

 

[kage69]

Damn, that's just sad. And I just read about that rocket fuel component today, what's it called - per'something...anyway, there's enough of it in lettuce for pregnant women to avoid eating too much of the stuff. Causes birth defects and impaired learning skills or something.


All to save a buck, how depressing.

 

[ReiAyanami]

dinosaurs: 275 million years

humans: 1 million years

modern humans: 25k years

Don't worry, the destruction of the environment by the Administration is all part of Bush's Apocalyptic Future.(he says bring it on)

 

[AmbitV]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: AmbitV
Sorry but cleaner factories and public transit still emit pollution

Therefore the solution is create as much pollution as possible?

i was addressing the bold text in the OP: "economic benefits of development outweigh the biological benefits of habitat"

That's actually not totally unreasonable.

Sometimes tough decisions have to be made. What if developing housing on currently protected land means affordable housing for families that can't afford anything else.

I'm not saying just because you have economic justifications means you have a free license to do whatever you want to the environment. All I'm saying is you can't necessarily rule an action out just because it damages the environment.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: AmbitV
i was addressing the bold text in the OP: "economic benefits of development outweigh the biological benefits of habitat"

That's actually not totally unreasonable.

Sometimes tough decisions have to be made. What if developing housing on currently protected land means affordable housing for families that can't afford anything else.

I'm not saying just because you have economic justifications means you have a free license to do whatever you want to the environment. All I'm saying is you can't necessarily rule an action out just because it damages the environment.

I know - that's why I was responding to the second comment, not the first one. Every development has environmental impact; but minimizing the impact is, in most cases, a pretty worthwhile goal.

 

[0marTheZealot]

Industrial society and the environment are not two ends of the spectrum. Both of them can co-exist. The keyword here is sustainably co-exist, which is entirely possible. If we released pollutants into the air at the same rate or lower than the environment can compensate, we could essentially keep polluting forever. If we cut down the forests at the same rate as new trees grew into maturity each year, we could cut down trees for practically forever. The same goes with nearly every single resource on earth. However, as it stands, we are living in an unsustainable society and thus we have many of the problems present today. Technology, industry and human ingenuity don't have to be at ends with the environment. In fact, when they co-exist with nature, everyone benefits. The standard of living will be higher, more enjoyable quality of life, etc etc. However, we probably won't be able to see this sort of world. The population will have to crash to around 500 million or so because of the extreme stress we have placed on nearly every single sector in the environment. And we will run out of the resources that are propping up sectors of the environment htat is keeping us afloat for the last few decades, if not in this decade, then certainly within two.

Modern day society is akin to placing 20lbs of weight on a countertop yearly and adding 5lbs of supporting structure to maintain the 20lbs of added weight. Eventually, the weight will be too great to bear regardless of how much support we have underneath.

 

[Genesys]

Originally posted by: conjur
Just about the most anti-environment ever.

Good, there is plenty of environment in other countries.

 

[CycloWizard]

As a salmon fisherman, it would deeply trouble me if any of the salmon species went to extinction. However, I don't really see anything in the OP that actually suggests that the changes will do this. It reads more like a reorganization to me, just from the first two paragraphs.

The Bush administration Tuesday proposed large cuts in federally designated areas in the Northwest and California meant to aid the recovery of threatened or endangered salmon. Protection would focus instead on rivers where the fish now thrive.

The critical habitat designation originally included rivers accessible to salmon, even if no fish occupied them, and covered most of Washington, Oregon and California and parts of Idaho.

I know from personal experience that at least salmon in the Great Lakes have made a huge comeback. When I was but a wee lad (about 15 years ago), we could catch our limits on Lake Michigan just about every time out. It was so bad in the early 90's that we quit going altogether. Now it seems that there is a slow recovery. Many around the Lake suggest that it is directly related to a development boom around salmon spawning points, then the pendulum swinging back towards protecting them.

I guess my point is that we live in a pretty fragile equilibrium with nature and we don't always understand our impact until after the fact. From this article, it sounds like we blew a lot of money on rivers that now have no salmon in them anyway, so we're redistributing funds to rivers where the salmon are. Maybe someone can point out why this is such a terrible idea.

 

[AmbitV]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: AmbitV
i was addressing the bold text in the OP: "economic benefits of development outweigh the biological benefits of habitat"

That's actually not totally unreasonable.

Sometimes tough decisions have to be made. What if developing housing on currently protected land means affordable housing for families that can't afford anything else.

I'm not saying just because you have economic justifications means you have a free license to do whatever you want to the environment. All I'm saying is you can't necessarily rule an action out just because it damages the environment.

I know - that's why I was responding to the second comment, not the first one. Every development has environmental impact; but minimizing the impact is, in most cases, a pretty worthwhile goal.

Second comment was a response to a response to the first comment.

Someone suggested that if evironmental concerns always trumped any kind of economic benefit, then we would have cleaner factories and more public transportation.

But that's not true. Because those things still emit pollution. If environmental concerns are to override any economic benefits whatsoever, we would tolerate zero pollution, and hence rule out anything that emits pollution (however low that pollution may be).

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
As a salmon fisherman, it would deeply trouble me if any of the salmon species went to extinction. However, I don't really see anything in the OP that actually suggests that the changes will do this. It reads more like a reorganization to me, just from the first two paragraphs.

The Bush administration Tuesday proposed large cuts in federally designated areas in the Northwest and California meant to aid the recovery of threatened or endangered salmon. Protection would focus instead on rivers where the fish now thrive.

The critical habitat designation originally included rivers accessible to salmon, even if no fish occupied them, and covered most of Washington, Oregon and California and parts of Idaho.

I know from personal experience that at least salmon in the Great Lakes have made a huge comeback. When I was but a wee lad (about 15 years ago), we could catch our limits on Lake Michigan just about every time out. It was so bad in the early 90's that we quit going altogether. Now it seems that there is a slow recovery. Many around the Lake suggest that it is directly related to a development boom around salmon spawning points, then the pendulum swinging back towards protecting them.

I guess my point is that we live in a pretty fragile equilibrium with nature and we don't always understand our impact until after the fact. From this article, it sounds like we blew a lot of money on rivers that now have no salmon in them anyway, so we're redistributing funds to rivers where the salmon are. Maybe someone can point out why this is such a terrible idea.

Or maybe everyone gave up trying to catch them?

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: AmbitV
Second comment was a response to a response to the first comment.

Someone suggested that if evironmental concerns always trumped any kind of economic benefit, then we would have cleaner factories and more public transportation.

But that's not true. Because those things still emit pollution. If environmental concerns are to override any economic benefits whatsoever, we would tolerate zero pollution, and hence rule out anything that emits pollution (however low that pollution may be).

While I understood what you said, and according to the woefully misnamed 'principle of charity' required in logical thought, I think it can be assumed that no one here supports the withdrawal from all activities with any environmental impact; at least, it would be their responsibility to lay explicit claim to such a view.

Rather than 'trump' all that is required is to identify that market economics implicitly places a weight of zero on the preferences of agents not directly involved in a transaction. The environment is an agent, and a limited resource, but it has historically been excluded from considerations as such. It has been treated as an infinite resource, both for 'dumping' and 'extracting'. Increase the weight of environmental impact from zero to anything greater than zero, and you automatically build cleaner factories and transportation (public or otherwise).

 

[Genx87]

You are right, we should push for tougher enviromental laws so we push the rest of our industry out of this country and to China where they can give two shats if the river is yellow and registers well above tolerable levels of toxins.

Then people like dmcowen can come back here and piss and moan our factory jobs are going overseas.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Genx87
You are right, we should push for tougher enviromental laws so we push the rest of our industry out of this country and to China where they can give two shats if the river is yellow and registers well above tolerable levels of toxins.

Then people like dmcowen can come back here and piss and moan our factory jobs are going overseas.

such a movement wouldn't last very long.

 

[0marTheZealot]

If we pollute at the same rate that the environment can compensate/remove it, we can pollute forever. However, when we overload the system, we can't pollute forever because nearly every single environmental system is shocked to the point of inaction/inefficency.

 

[AmbitV]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

While I understood what you said, and according to the woefully misnamed 'principle of charity' required in logical thought, I think it can be assumed that no one here supports the withdrawal from all activities with any environmental impact; at least, it would be their responsibility to lay explicit claim to such a view.

Rather than 'trump' all that is required is to identify that market economics implicitly places a weight of zero on the preferences of agents not directly involved in a transaction. The environment is an agent, and a limited resource, but it has historically been excluded from considerations as such. It has been treated as an infinite resource, both for 'dumping' and 'extracting'. Increase the weight of environmental impact from zero to anything greater than zero, and you automatically build cleaner factories and transportation (public or otherwise).

First, we seem to be in agreement since what you've said is entirely compatible, perhaps even supportive of, the original bold text, which I was defending.
But merely according some weight ( >0 ) to the environment does not solve the fundamental problem. For we are then left with the question of how much weight to assign the environment, and how this weight compares to that of economic considerations.

Who is to assign the weight? Different people will have differing opinions on what a reasonable weight is. Greedy developers think the environment should be given minimal, if any, consideration. On the other side of the spectrum, we have those that support "the withdrawal from all activies with any environmental impact".

Rather than treating the environment itself as an agent to the transaction, I believe we should assign the environment to an agent, who will thereby be a party involved in the transaction. This would mean assigning private property rights to property that is now considered "public property". This would include forests, rivers, the ocean, and perhaps one day even the air you breathe. The freerider problem you describe (treating the environment as an infinite resource, assigning it zero consideration) would then be alleviated, because you now have an agent (the property owner) that feels and understands the limited nature of the resource, and assigns value to the resource accordingly. Limited evironmental resources would then, like any other scarce resource/good, be subject to free market forces.

Why don't factories dump their waste into your backyard (literally, behind your house)? Because they know you own your backyard, and they'll have a lawsuit on their hands. By assigning property rights to the environment and hence turning it into all of our "backyards", we can protect the environment in a similar fashion. Sure some factory might pay one owner enough to obtain the right to dump in that owner's backyard, but as we know when supply decreases, price increases, and at some point the factory will be forced by free market forces to stop.
Certain fish and buffalos face extinction because of overfishing and hunting. Yet cows and chickens don't have that problem. Someone owns the cows and chickens, but noone owns the fish and buffalo. Assign ownership rights to precious resources like these, and society fares a much better chance in dealing with our current environmental problems.

 

[ReiAyanami]

Originally posted by: Genx87
You are right, we should push for tougher enviromental laws so we push the rest of our industry out of this country and to China where they can give two shats if the river is yellow and registers well above tolerable levels of toxins.

Then people like dmcowen can come back here and piss and moan our factory jobs are going overseas.

dude, that's like arguing to allow child labor here so that Nike might consider moving some jobs back from Malaysia. crap enviro standards are the icing on the cake, the real reason every manufacturing job has gone to china is because the average manfacuturing wage there is 2.8% that of here

the extremely toxic stuff is already done over there and mexico

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: AmbitV
First, we seem to be in agreement since what you've said is entirely compatible...

I've actually proposed that before - whether you assign a government 'proxy' or private citizens to do this I'm not really sure, but the idea of making the environment an active agent in relevant contracts is the ideal solution.