fbpx
Menu Close

Article of the Day

If you don’t have time to read all of this this excellent Oregonian article, here’s an excerpt:

<A HREF="http://ads.oregonlive.com/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/www.oregonlive.com/xml/story/lc/lcen/@StoryAd?x"><IMG SRC="http://ads.oregonlive.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/www.oregonlive.com/xml/story/lc/lcen/@StoryAd?x"></A>

After one of the driest Februarys on record, accumulations of mountain snow have dropped even further below normal across much of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

That snow is a vital natural reservoir for the streams and rivers that supply irrigation and drinking water, produce electricity at hydropower dams—and sustain wild salmon journeying to sea.

Last month brought one-fifth to one-third the average rain and snowfall to most river basins in Oregon. For Portland, it was the fourth-driest February on record. The lack of moisture, combined with warmer-than-normal temperatures, left snowpacks worse off than they were a month ago in most of the region. Washington is down the furthest, with a statewide snowpack at 27 percent of normal, compared with Oregon at 35 percent of normal. [Emphasis added.]

Twenty-seven percent of normal.  Ouch.

Mercury Pollution: Just Plain Dumb

In case this wasn’t obvious enough already:  mercury pollution is really bad for kids’ brains.

And what’s bad for brains is bad for the economy.  The IQ losses caused by mercury pollution sap roughly $8.7 billion from the economy each year; and $1.3 billion of that can be attributed to mercury emitted by coal-fired power plants.  (See here and here, big pdf, for more.)

Cutting Jobs

Cutting more trees does not mean creating more jobs. That’s a point this blog has made at least a couple of times. And it’s the same point made today in an opinion piece in the Eugene Register-Guard. Automation, not spotted owls, decimated the Northwest’s forest jobs. By the same token, weakening the Endangered Species Act and opening up roadless areas for logging will not herald a new era of timber employment.

Here’s the crux of the article:

In 1979, it took 4.5 workers to mill 1 million board feet of lumber. By 1989, it took just two workers to mill the same 1 million board feet.

Economists called it increased efficiency. Mill owners called it increased productivity. Millworkers called it unemployment. Merchants in mill towns called it bankruptcy.

Throw Us a Life Preserver

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. life expectancy set a new record in 2003, reaching 77.6 years.  And as a consequence, Americans’ lifespans now rival those of Japan.

Japan in 1985, that is.

Not to throw cold water on good news, but the real story isn’t how quickly American lifespans are rising, but how slowly they are. Since 1985, the Japanese have added 4.2 years to their lifespans.  US residents added just 2.9 years over the same period.  So not only are the Japanese healthier than we are (since life expectancy really is a good proxy for health), they’re getting healthier faster than we are. 

According to UN statistics, the US ranked 24th in the world in life expectancy in 2002, tied with the nation of Cyprus and just about 2 months ahead of Cuba. 

Now, if this were an economic story—say, if America’s per-capita GDP ranked 24th in the world, near the bottom of industrial democracies—it would be all over the papers.  But since the nation’s lagging performance on life expectancy is merely a matter of life and death, not of money, the real story gets ignored.

Hi-Ho Da-Dairy-O!

As an update to yesterday’s post, the dairy farmers of Tillamook voted yesterday to phase out growth hormones from their cattle. Read the Portland Business Journal story here.

Measure: What Matters

There’s a great article in today’s Washington Post on Oregon’s Measure 37, the voter-approved initiative that is threatening to unravel the state’s anti-sprawl laws.

To recap, Measure 37 requires the government to compensate anyone whose land value has been reduced by Oregon’s successful growth management programs—making those programs vastly more expensive and complicated to implement.

To me, the most interesting point made by the article is that Measure 37 claims seem to be creating bad blood among neighbors: farmers who are trying to keep development pressures at bay in order to preserve their livelihoods are being undermined by those who want to cash in on suburban sprawl. And because of the way the measure was written, only people who’ve owned their land since 1973—when Oregon’s growth management act came into effect—can make Measure 37 claims, effectively creating a privileged group of landowners. In effect, the law created a new entitlement program, but one that particularly favors those who already own a lot of land.

As the Post article shows, it will be as fascinating as it is disconcerting to see how the new law will play itself out.

For Economic Growth, Regulate Here

There’s an emerging understanding that environmental regulation can be good for the economy. Retrograde policymakers who oppose regulation as a hindrance to business—such as many of those who prevented the US from joining the Kyoto Treaty—may have misunderstood the fundamentals of the problem. 

In today’s issue of the Washington Post, Michael Northrop unleashes a barrage of evidence (subscription required) that, in dozens of instances, greenhouse gas reductions are actually boosting economic performance and corporate profits. Multinational corporations like IBM, DuPont, Kodak, Alcoa, Shell, and British Petroleum are reducing their emissions and saving a bundle through energy-efficiency.

Britain too, is aggressively trimming its carbon-dioxide emissions, as well as the "energy intensity" of its economy (the amount of energy needed to produce its GDP). British economists are forecasting big gains in national wealth, even while environmental impacts decline.

All this is good news, but it won’t be enough unless the US and other nations begin taking climate change seriously. As Northrop puts it:

Concerted action is unlikely to occur as long as administration officials and some members of Congress continue to use worn-out arguments against limiting carbon dioxide releases, even as hundreds of multinational corporations and smaller businesses are proving them wrong.

Heavy, Man

According to the Seattle P-I, Washington State legislators have introduced a bill that would raise taxes on vehicles to help pay for streets and highways.

Now, part of me likes this idea. As it currently stands, cars and trucks don’t pay their own way.  The state gas tax doesn’t even cover the cost of building, maintaining, and operating the state’s road network. To break even, the state department of transportation consistently relies on general tax revenues to supplement gas tax receipts. Finding new ways to make drivers pay for the true cost of driving should make the system fairer, and ensure that people who don’t drive much aren’t forced to subsidize those who do.

So in theory, I should like the general idea of raising taxes on vehicles. But the problem is that, in this case, I find the specifics a bit disheartening.

(more…)

Tillamook vs. Monsanto

The dairies comprising the Tillamook County Creamery Association are voting today on whether to accept a board decision to phase out the growth hormone Posilac (rbGH), according to a report in today’s Oregonian.

Tillamook’s board wants to protect the integrity of its brand, which has come under increasing fire from customers suspicious of the growth hormone. Many of the dairies—under the approving gaze of Monsanto, the company that makes Posilac—regard this as an unfair abridgement of their right to dairy as they see fit.

Monsanto argues that Posilac carries no health risks for people or cows, and notes that the drug was approved by the FDA. But, as the Oregonian article reports, "The FDA approved Posilac’s use in 1994 in one of the most oft-criticized decisions in its history because agency employees with former ties to Monsanto were involved."

In the end, the dairy industry will follow its customers. Fortunately, Tillamook’s customers have been clear: they are not convinced that bovine growth hormone is safe. And, when it comes to meddling with the food supply, people want safety proved first.

Dry Idea

I posted on this a few weeks ago, but the snowpack in the watersheds that feed greater Seattle is substantially—and worryingly—below normal.  The graph should make the trends clear enough:

The dotted line is "normal".  The yellow line represents the disastrously dry weather year of 2000-2001—the year that summer hydropower production dipped so low that manipulative energy traders were able to wreak havoc on California’s power markets.  The green line is this year, as of yesterday.

So we’re now officially running below 2001—which, I should note, was the second driest year of the last 75.

Now, past performance is no guarantee of future results; that’s as true of weather as of stocks.  But it’s going to take a whole lot of snow over the next couple of months to avoid another dry, dry summer.