sustainability

Great Letter in Today’s Wall Street Journal

by Kathryn Ciano on October 28, 2010

in Economy, Zeitgeist

This is such an excellent point. There is some virtue in the idea of moderation — conservation, “living simply” so that others may “simply live.”

Yet it is because of modern man’s excess that we are doing so well as a species. It is because we use too much that we are forced to keep innovating, trading, and communicating.

Had modern man’s ravenous hunger for bread not won out over his conservationist instincts, mold would never have grown in Alexander Fleming’s fridge and we would still succumb to the diseases now virtually eviscerated thanks to penicillin.

It may be reactionary to swallow up resources simply because we can. But we are modern men, and this is what characterizes our species. Indeed, we are Americans, and it is because we prefer ever-more that we remain among the most innovative people on earth.

In today’s WSJ, letter-writer Gerald P. Hanner makes this point beautifully:

They Were Tough, but Where Are They Now?

It may be the case, as anthropologist Peter McAllister claims, that modern man is a shadow of his former self (“Visualizer: ‘Manthropology’: How Modern Man Stacks Up Against the Ancients,” Review, Oct. 23), but I’m skeptical. I’ll accept on faith the claim that ancient runners were faster, ancient poets recalled poetry better and ancient soldiers endured greater hardships. The ancients had to excel in those areas—or die. Natural selection is a marvelous way of allowing the top talent to bubble to the top of the heap.

However, comparing humans to Neanderthals in the area of brute strength is invidious. Neanderthals were another species. Humans aren’t able to beat an adult chimpanzee at arm wrestling, let alone an orangutan or gorilla. The great apes are physically much stronger and their skeletal structures much more robust than humans. Yet we survive and live to longer ages than the great apes—and the Neanderthals are long gone.

Gerald P. Hanner

Papillion, Neb.

In Defense of Urban Beekeeping

by Marc Scribner on July 7, 2010 · 1 comment

in Agriculture, Culture, Environment, Health and Illness, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Zeitgeist

Beekeeping is an ancient human practice, with some anthropological evidence suggesting that primitive forms of honey bee domestication go back more than 4,000 years. Apiarists have perfected their techniques and mankind’s honey pot hath overfloweth ever since. While industrialized commercial beekeeping dominates the honey market in the United States, apiculture has become increasingly popular in recent years thanks to the so-called “urban homesteading movement.” Urban homesteaders are back-to-the-landers, but the land at issue is located in dense cities rather than rural areas.

Advocates and practitioners of this lifestyle ran into problems recently, as they discovered that several major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, specifically prohibited the keeping of bees within city limits. Other cities created land-use restrictions, such as minimum lot size requirements, that effectively prevented legal beekeeping. “Public health” was the reason most often given, even though experts agree that beekeeping poses few, if any, public health risks (and it may, in fact, provide public health benefits). Essentially, irrational fears of urban bee swarms attacking school children, or something equally absurd, drove the implementation of these regulations.

Recently, however, as the urban homesteading movement and fears about colony collapse disorder have grown, more people have been questioning the validity of these restrictions. New York City reversed its position on beekeeping earlier this year, and many cities have been following suit. There are still holdouts, but their numbers are dwindling in the United States.

To me, this is a pure property rights and individual liberty issue: residents should be free to keep bees, provided they do so in a responsible manner that doesn’t interfere with the rights of their neighbors. Unfortunately, I’m not sure many of the urban homesteaders would agree. A large chunk of the movement is made up of authoritarian “sustainability” advocates and eco-alarmist Luddites, many of whom support increasing the size of the federal environmental police state through destructive and perverse “green” policies designed to fight climate change or whatever bogeyman keeps them up at night this week. “Consumerism” is also, of course, a big no-no. (To be fair, some of them oppose state coercion.) In fact, The New York Times today ran an op-ed where the author wrote,

Nevertheless, there are still significant obstacles to city beekeeping, and it’s uncertain that, without the government’s help, it will reach beyond a relatively limited stratum of committed New Yorkers.

[...]

So what can City Hall do? For starters, like other cities in the United States and overseas, New York could support urban beekeeping through small grants, through tax incentives for both beekeepers and building owners, through public education programs and by getting hives into city schools as educational and perhaps fund-raising tools.

Yes, that’s right: he claims tax dollars should be used to promote his hobby and lifestyle choice. Again, I have no problem with the practice of urban homesteading, whether agriculture, apiculture, or aquaculture. It’s the idea that society should be guided by a bunch of paternalistic eco-ideologues that annoys me.

The Environment’s “Odd Couple”: Sustainable Use and Private Management

by Merin Yu on August 4, 2009

in Environment, Natural Resources

Chaffee County, Colorado currently has the opportunity to engage in an advantageous business partnership, but environmental groups are attempting to derail this proposition that would benefit many community members. County commissioners are deliberating on whether to approve a proposal by the Nestlé Corporation that would allow the company to draw water from local aquifers that would be piped to a nearby facility and eventually sold under the company’s Arrowhead brand. Several other cities in the United States are facing the same issue: Fryeburg, ME, McCloud, CA, and Mecosta County, MI, and most recently, Somerset County, PA. Opponents against these proposals by Nestle and other bottling companies often argue that the companies will deplete the local water resources, but this is simply not true. Under private management, there is no reason that the aquifers should experience overuse and depletion.

One of the commonly held misconceptions is that water is a resource that will run out, and many environmental organizations have started using the term “peak water,” likening the availability of water to that of oil, even though the two resources are distinct and have completely different characteristics. For human purposes, oil is non-renewable due to the millions of years it takes to form. Water, on the other hand, naturally replenishes itself through the water cycle. There are, of course, certain circumstances when aquifers run the risk of being depleted (when water is removed at a faster rate than it can be replenished), but in these cases, the resources would actually be significantly better off with private ownership.

Sustainable use of such water supplies requires management, which is what market pricing provides. Where water supplies are low, prices would naturally go up to promote conservation. But if supplies are plentiful and prices are low, there is no dire need to “save” the resource. Problems emerge mostly where government mismanagement prevents the development of private water markets. Water is either a government resource that is not priced properly, or the water is essentially owned by no one.

In the first case, under-pricing can encourage users to over consume, producing shortages, which usually occur when the government subsidizes water usage. On the second case, a “common water” resource that is not owned, protected, and managed by anyone becomes overused and polluted.

The solution involves establishing water as an owned resource—protected by its owners from pollution—that is sold in private markets with market pricing. Water will then flow where it is most needed, and prices will promote conservation where most needed.

Therefore, it is a good idea to allow private owners, like Nestlé and other water bottlers, to manage these resources sustainably into the foreseeable future. They have a distinct interest in long-term viability of the water supply and can work with local communities on mutually beneficial arrangements. Indeed, the water bottling operation is slated to give Chaffee thousands of dollars in taxes every year along with jobs for people in the community. Wholesale opposition to such use of the water makes little sense.

Chaffee County and other communities around the country face a choice: they can either choose private management and sustainable use, or no management and unsustainable use. Assuming these communities would like to ensure there will be water available for future generations, the choice is sparkling clear.

Image:  By Randolph Femmer, National Biological Infrastructure Public Image Library.

Between the Headlines:”Sustainability” Means Sustainably Poor

by Fred Smith on April 21, 2009

in Agriculture, International, Labor, Natural Resources, Private Conservation, Trade, Zeitgeist

“Mars Sets Goal for Sustainable Cocoa Sources”

Another Washington Post story suggests that “sustainability” –whatever it may mean — still can stir the cold hearts of capitalist managers.  Utopians have long been distressed by the differential working conditions around the world.  Poverty does have less pleasant impacts than affluence.  The problem is that associated with all egalitarian policies.

Our desire to improve the plight of the poor too often merely cuts away the rungs on the ladder out of poverty.