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Washington State’s Ambitious Carbon Tax Proposal ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/opinion/washington-states-ambitious-carbon-tax-proposal.html?_r=0
Dakota Pipleline: 120 arrested ~ http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/24/standing_rock_police_arrest_100_water Species may be listed as threatened based on climate change projections ~ http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-species-climate-projections-20161024-snap-story.html 55,000 gallons of gas bursts into Pennsylvania Endangered Rivers ~ http://www.trueactivist.com/pennsylvania-pipelines-bursts-leaks-55000-gallons-of-gas-into-one-of-us-most-endangered-rivers/ Since 2008, 220-450 Endangered Snow Leopards killed annually ~ https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/over-200-snow-leopards-killed-every-year-new-report/ 2/3 of wild animals killed by 2020 ~ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/27/world-on-track-to-lose-two-thirds-of-wild-animals-by-2020-major-report-warns Paris to add 247 acres of vegetation on city walls and roofs ~ http://www.ecowatch.com/paris-urban-gardening-2039785049.html Monterey County California lawsuit against USDA predator killing to proceed ~ http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/blogs/news_blog/lawsuit-against-monterey-county-to-stop-predator-killing-will-proceed/article_e406f558-97c4-11e6-a076-1faae2ed8931.html Peruvian Amazon pipeline bursts ~ https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/another-pipeline-spill-reported-in-peruvian-amazonian-as-indigenous-protests-enter-eighth-week/ First Elk in South Carolina since 1700’s ~ http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/pickens-county/2016/10/25/pickens-county-first-elk-sighting-state-centuries/92718798/ Quantifying Ecological Impacts of 20th Century Fur Trade ~ https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/quantifying-the-ecological-impacts-of-the-20th-century-trade-in-amazonian-furs/ Netherlands to Reforest by a quarter of current ~ http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/10/the-netherlands-will-increase-its-forests-by-a-quarter/505331/ Colorado is going to kill more bears and lions to increase deer numbers ~ http://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/22/colorado-may-kill-more-bears-mountain-lions-to-boost-deer-population/ Tighter scrutiny of Japan’s whaling passed ~ http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/news/win-whales-and-blow-against-japan%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98scientific%E2%80%99-whaling-international-whaling-commission Ross Sea Declared Largest Marine Protected Area ~ http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37789594
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Bioecological Systems Model Developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner, this theory is applied to how children and maturing adults. Here is the helpful image below:  This system is helpful to see how components of each level interact with the other components and across levels. I am going to try and incorporate this into SocioEcological Systems Theory and figure out where Maslow's Hierarchy fits as well.
ANOVA Tables and Linear Regression Analysis of Variance and seeing where points fall on an estimated line. This is actually way less difficult than anything else I’ve done in statistics and more important than that, actually useful. It still seems like magic when the wizard of my professor scrawls the incantations, the numbers, on the board but this is the first time the alchemy came together to make sense. The ability to predict where a data point can occur within some level of certainty is to me absurd. To think that I can do that is an odd concept Contractor vs Scholar Thinking I had my first official meeting with my committee this week and I can’t imagine a more distinct clash of paradigms. Three scholar sitting at a table and me. I prepared for the meeting fairly well and set out the agenda, the draft research questions, and what I was comfortable with and what I wasn’t. I felt good navigating this meeting. Twenty minutes into the meeting I realized that I wasn’t dealing with clients or employees. I began to realize that I was dealing with academics, with scholars. Instead of focusing on answering a question we focused on a theory to further, instead of focusing on how we could apply my research we focused on what methodology we could use. This to me seemed like a complete backwards way to go about it, like putting the cart before the horse. When I realized that I was thinking like a contractor, I told my committee so and asked them how I should change my thinking. They started with a “welcome to grad school” statement saying that whatever research method we choose should apply to a theory we’re interested in exploring and if the place or problem we’re looking at works, then it works. I’m going to need to think about this a lot more – this is new territory.
Surrogate idea
This idea was thrown around casually in reference to using “the next best thing” as a substitute for an unknown characteristic in a system’s equation. This is a cool idea because it allows you to proceed with an idea even if you don’t know all the components. It allows you to work on and estimate interactions while being honest about lacking full knowledge. I wrote the term down and then tried to look it up and found subpar definitions. The best I found was in reference to electrical engineering and developing circuitry even if not everything is present: “A surrogate model is an engineering method used when an outcome of interest cannot be easily directly measured, so a model of the outcome is used instead. Most engineering design problems require experiments and/or simulations to evaluate design objective and constraint functions as function of design variables. For example, in order to find the optimal airfoil shape for an aircraft wing, an engineer simulates the air flow around the wing for different shape variables (length, curvature, material, ..).” With a little more digging I found how it relates to Critical Theory. Below are two hyperlinks that play with the idea. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/2009/february-09/surrogates-for-theory.html https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/volltexte/institut/dok/full/gg/GG_Surr_1998.pdf I think this could be helpful in SocioEcological Systems Theory and a surrogate of a critical unknown could be used to help solve a wicked problem. Thinking too hard I was busy doing busy work this week and didn’t learn too much new. However, I did have the idea that I am too concerned with knowing all the constituent parts that I don’t allow myself to learn what’s going on. In effect, I am getting in my own way, making things more difficult than they need to be and that is stopping me from learning. I believe our weaknesses are our strengths in excess and my strength is in understanding the narrative. My weakness though may just be in hamstringing myself until I learn the whole thing before being able to comprehend the parts. This is playing out in Statistics. I think I am making it more difficult than it needs to be. System vs Piece Thinking I’m trying to understand ecological ideas and social studies together and these present themselves as systems. I’ve looked at Chaos systems, Socio-Ecological Systems, and Complex Systems but I never thought about what a system is or how to define it. Specifically, there is a way of thinking different from normal ‘Piece’ Thinking called ‘Systems Thinking’. I’m trying to understand it but Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive explanation of it: Systems thinking has been defined as an approach to problem solving that attempts to balance holistic thinking and reductionistic thinking. By taking the overall system as well as its parts into account systems thinking is designed to avoid potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences. There are many methods and approaches to systems thinking. For example, the Waters Foundation presents systems thinking as a set of habits or practices within a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation; and that systems thinking focuses on cyclical rather than linear cause and effect. Other models characterize systems thinking differently. Recent scholars, however, are focused on the "patterns that connect" this diversity or pluralism of methods and approaches. Several ways to think of and define a system include:
Systems science thinkers consider that:
Types of Systems:
This week I went to a couple lectures outside the normal and learned about Red Wolves and their conservation, big cats and their behaviors, and photo elicitation from my advisor. This last one proved to be way more interesting and meaningful to my work than I thought it would be.
Red Wolves About 45 Red Wolves exist today. They are threatened with a few things but right now they are threatened by poor management and loud anti-wolf voices. A Defenders of Wildlife speaker came to campus this last week and described the Red Wolf situation. I knew they were in a rough spot but I remember reading about them a couple years ago and I remember the take-away being that the numbers aren’t great but they’re improving and the population has been steadily increasing for the past couple decades. Apparently I didn’t misremember too poorly: they were doing fairly well and on the right trajectory two years ago. However, two years ago some significant changes started occurring. The major changes were: the USFWS (the Federal agency in charge of the wolf) terminated the Red Wolf position and divvied up the responsibilities amongst an already stretched workforce, they reduced the necessary range for a healthy population by 89%, and they started under-enforcing poaching. Given the information is from a fairly pro-wolf biased source but it is also one of the only organizations looking out for the wolves and also a source I trust. The last piece of news that does not bode well for the Red Wolf conservation is something that I was aware of but not its implications. This summer genetic analysis came out saying that the Red Wolfs are genetically indistinguishable from wolf/coyote hybrids and do not constitute a separate species. On the surface of this it could potentially eliminate the Red Wolf from Endangered Species Act Protection. The DOW has good arguments stating why this would be silly including the fact that they are still ecologically relevant, morphologically dissimilar, and that the genetics do not fully account for separate species. The best argument however is that the only reason that they are hybrids are because their numbers are so low and so they have had to mate with only coyotes for the past half a century. Their argument actually uses this genetic information as stating that the only way to save what’s left of the Red Wolf genetics is to save what’s left of the Red Wolf They summarized the talk saying that if current trends continue it will be impossible for the species to beat extinction by 2025. I was unaware the Red Wolf situation was so dire and I would imagine this is news to most people. Cheetahs and Lions, Jaguars and Ocelots Another speaker came by school this week on her way to presenting at The Wilderness Society’s conference. Dr. Marcella Kelly of Virginia Tech spoke about her work on carnivores in Africa, Madagascar, Borneo, and Central America. Her hour long lecture was captivating and had gems quite relevant to carnivore researchers, ecologists, and conservationists alike. Two of the topics that I think are interesting to everyone though are the relationships she discovered between some big cats. Her work in Africa showed that as lion numbers increase, cheetah numbers decrease. The reason why is both logical and mystifying. Lions apparently are kleptoparasitic upon cheetahs and steal cheetah kills – this is the logical part to understanding why cheetah numbers go down. Just based on this though you would think that cheetahs and lions would set up a mutual benefit relationship or something. However, lions are also known to eat cheetah cubs – this is the mystifying part. Why would lions kill cheetahs that provide them with food? Wouldn’t you want cheetahs around to provide more free meat for you? The central American Jaguar/Ocelot relationship is the opposite. As Dr. Kelly was describing her team’s work of trekking through the impossible rainforests full of dense trees, muddy roads that eat rental cars, and armed locals, she shared decades’ worth of data tracking big cats and mesopredators. Based on her Africa work she expected to find that wherever jaguars roam, ocelots would decrease. However, the relationships were constant and ran parallel with each other – where one succeeded, the other did. This has yet to be explained and the causality may or may not be there either. Photo Elicitation My work is qualitative work. I am trying to understand the social interactions and implications of conservation. This is partially because I believe that conservation is a social act and a social value (as opposed to an ecological or biological decision) and partially because my mind does not work very well quantitatively. In trying to understand quantitative methods and processes we learned about Photo Elicitation this past week. I was skeptical reading the readings and looking into it. However, the moment my advisor/professor explained it I immediately recognized the benefit it could pose to conservation. Basically photo elicitation is art theory. On another level it flips the power structure of the objective/subjective and the interviewer/interviewee. How this method occurs is by having the subject either take photos of something meaningful to them, share photos meaningful to them, or review photos they are involved in somehow. From there, you get the interviewee to then explain the photo and their responses. This takes the ‘known’ knowledge (the objective, the positivistic knowledge) out of the hands of the researcher and puts it in the hands of the subject. The subject holds all the information and the researcher is absorbing it from the subject. The power of this technique is that it gives communication to something that does not have language or does not readily open itself to description. One of the examples used was of a researcher trying to understand what “old” meant in a community and why it was valued. However, if you were to ask someone valued old buildings the data received did not hold much substance. In essence, people don’t know why they value ‘old’ things. But, if you give them a camera and tell them to take photos of things in their community/city that they hold dear and are special to them they will take photos of old things and then you can get them to describe them according to a rubric you develop. From here you can track trends and code similar responses. The whole time, throughout the whole process you never have asked the question “why do old things matter” but have instead allowed it to come out of the objects presented by interviewees authentically. I thoroughly believe that we do not know why conservation matters. I mean this in a few ways, one of them being that the general public cannot explain it. Another reason being that even the most knowledgeable and well trained people will give you either local answers or subjective morality answers – both of which are unsatisfying to me. I do think conservation matters both objectively and subjectively and we are closer than ever to figuring it out. I also think that we haven’t created the language to explain it. I think a technique like photo elicitation can help me give words to a value that we cannot explain. Michigan Snake on Endangered Species List: http://michiganradio.org/post/michigans-only-venomous-snake-just-landed-endangered-species-list#stream/0
Tiger Beetle on Endangered Species List: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2016/miami-tiger-beetle-10-04-2016.html Endangered Yosemite Frog coming back: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/scientists-endangered-frog-rebounding-yosemite-park-42540478 Sharks being protected: http://www.africanews.com/2016/10/04/13-new-species-of-sharks-to-be-protected/ Lawsuit filed against USDA’s genocide of animals to save Ocelot: https://awionline.org/content/lawsuit-filed-protect-endangered-ocelots-arizona-texas-government-killing Strongest Global Protections for Rare Animals at CITES: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/10/05/the-world-just-agreed-to-the-strongest-protections-ever-for-endangered-animals/?tid=sm_tw Romania bans trophy hunting of carnivores: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/05/romania-bans-trophy-hunting-of-brown-bears-wolves-lynx-and-wild-cats Endangered Hawaiian Crow making comeback: http://www.audubon.org/news/the-hawaiian-crow-ready-make-its-big-comeback First Ca Condor to be raised solely in the wild: http://kcbx.org/post/condor-chick-first-raised-wild-century 3 Million Hectares of Brazil’s Cerrado protected: http://www.malaysiasun.com/index.php/sid/248361617 New Species of Pika discovered: https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/new-species-of-rabbit-like-pika-discovered-in-indian-himalayas/ Two Beetle Species go Extinct: https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2016/stephans-riffle-and-tatum-cave-beetles-10-05-2016.html Court Rejects Drilling in Upper Desolation Canyon: https://www.nrdc.org/media/2016/161005 Paris Climate Change Accord ratified: http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php Highest population of California Otters since 1982: http://www.dailydemocrat.com/article/NI/20160929/NEWS/160929817 Hunting, not Deforestation, biggest threat to SE Asia biodiversity: https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/hunting-not-deforestation-biggest-threat-to-southeast-asian-biodiversity-study/ Wolf hunts are stupid - mtn lions dominate elk calf mortality: http://wildlife.org/jwm-study-mountain-lions-dominate-elk-calf-mortality/ First Female CEO of Ducks Unlimited Canada: http://wildlife.org/karla-guyn-becomes-first-female-ceo-of-ducks-unlimited-canada/ Congress passed Eliminate Neutralize and Disrupt Wildlife Trafficking legislation: http://www.enoughproject.org/news/congress-passes-historic-bill-%E2%80%9Celiminate-neutralize-and-disrupt-wildlife-trafficking%E2%80%9D Another environmental scientist is killed: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47210/title/Plant-Biologist-Killed-in-Ethiopian-Protest/ Dakota Pipeline Protests still going on  Everything (mostly everything) in my life revolves around conservation. Duh. But this week I made poverty, conflict management, and structuralism revolve around conservation. Below are my reflections on Vernacular Conservation, Framing, and the 6 Types of Poverty. And here's a picture of a flower I found.
Vernacular Conservation I read a summary of the book Social Change and Conservation: Enviornmental Politics and Impacts of National Parks and Protected Areas edited by Ghimire and Pimbert. I can’t wait to read the book. In it though, they discuss the idea of Vernacular Conservation. They describe it as “based on site-specific traditions and economies; it refers to ways of life and resource utilization that have evolved in place and, like vernacular architecture, is a direct expression of the relationship between communities and their habitats.” They later go on to say that “local empowerment and popular participation can generate more productive means of livelihood and, through local control and co-management agreements, maintain ‘protected areas’ that the state currently manages inefficiently or can no longer afford.” I’ve seen this described as ‘place-based conservation’ or site-specific or regional conservation (as opposed to landscape-scale conservation) but I’m intuiting that using the local ‘vernacular’ creates the relationships between the people and the land. Vernacular means “the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region” and ‘vernacular architecture’ is focused on the specific domestic and functional built environment. The spirit of this terminology though reminds me of what I learned in literary theory as Structuralism as championed by de Saussure, Levi-Strauss, and then Chomsky in Linguistics. The (mostly Marxist and existentialist) philosophers (Lacan Foucault, Barthes, Althusser, Derrida, Wittgensttein) took it further to understand how we interact with our environment, our material environment, and how our language creates a ‘structure’ in which we interact. I’m assuming that vernacular conservation is the idea that the axiomatic perception of a piece of land determines your view of it and literally creates the world in which the relationship you develop with it occurs. This sounds a little heavy but it is basically that your values dictate where you spend your time and money. This sounds good but is exceedingly difficult to do in practice with conservation for the next reason that I learned about…. Frames and Framing Spotted Owl and Timber in the Pacific Northwest. Snail Darter and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Wolves and Ranchers. These are examples of intractable environmental conflicts. These are conflicts sometimes decades-long, center around a polarizing flashpoint, and divide otherwise neighborly community members around ideology. Right now I am reading Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts edited by Lewicki, Gray and Elliot and all I can do is think of the development/oil industry and wetland projects I worked on or was most familiar with in southern California. Trying to mix Oil and Water was difficult. The problem as I saw it was that it was possible and metrics valued by both sides could be achieved. I don’t think anything was resolved while I was working on the projects I did and I still don’t think too much progress has been made since I left two years ago. And the fight had been occurring for at least two decades before I arrived on the scene. It is exhausting. What I am learning from this book and from some other conflict management things I’ve explored is the that ideas of Frames and Framing are integral in understanding your own perspective, the other’s perspective, and the context that your conflict is within. Framing is the organization of things that make the perspective on how people, groups of people, society integrate and communicate reality – in essence, it becomes their reality. There are many places to go with this. One of the ways is when someone is in a particular frame, they are more likely relate new information in regards to that frame. This can also lead to not accepting things unless they correspond to your frame. The other way that I am thinking is in regards to Daniel Kahneman’s work and how a particular problem is framed reflects the probability how it will be solved. In regards to intractable environmental conflicts, framing develops a perimeter that we think and work within. As shortcuts to help us understand a situation, frames can develop a center in which the gravitational pull of the topic circles around. To re-frame the conflict is to clarify or redesign a perception, to sharpen an understanding from both sides of the conflict, to identify the subject and objects within the parties’ frames, and to identify differences- those that can be bridged and those that can’t. 6 Types of Poverty In researching how poverty and conservation area management are related I discovered this theory by Eric Jensen, an education specialist who wrote the book Teaching With Poverty in Mind. In it he identifies 6 types of poverty (situational, generational, absolute, relative, urban, overcrowding, and rural). I have yet to fully understand how conservation and poverty are connected but below is an excerpt from this website describing his theory (https://blog.udemy.com/types-of-poverty/) Situational: This particular type of poverty is usually temporary as it involves a crisis or loss occurring. Events connected with situational poverty include environmental disasters, divorce, or severe health problems. A good example of situational poverty caused by an environmental disaster would be the destruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Many people were homeless, lost their jobs, and had nothing to their name. The fall of the economy can also be considered an event that could cause situational poverty. Learn economics to have a better understanding of how the economy affects everyone. Generational: This type of poverty involves the birth of two generations into poverty. Because they were born into this situation, they usually don’t have the tools to help get themselves out of it. Absolute: This particular type of poverty is actually rare in the United States. People in absolute poverty don’t even have basic necessities like a roof over their head, food, and water. Their only focus is on surviving each day as it comes. Relative: This type of poverty is known as relative because it is relative to the average standard of living in that person’s society. What is considered high income in one country could be considered middle or low income in another. If a family’s income isn’t enough to meet the average standard of living, they are considered to be in relative poverty. Urban: This particular type of poverty is only for metropolitan areas with populations over 50,000. Overcrowding, violence, noise, and poor community help programs make it even more difficult for people suffering of this type of poverty to get out of it. Rural: Like urban poverty above, rural poverty occurs only in specific area types. These areas are nonmetropolitan with populations below 50,000. The low population limits services available for people struggling financially, and a lack of job opportunities only compounds the problem.
Bald Cypress and Loblolly Pine I visited the National Park next to my future study site this past weekend. The place is wild. It floods during rains, catches on fire during lightning, and is home to all kinds of animals. Walking through it deafening insects punctuated by Pileated Woodpeckers and Barred Owl raucous encompassed my ear space completely. It was so loud the entire time that it became a background hum – white noise. The place reminds me of The Princess Bride’s Fire Swamp. About 5 times a year it floods anywhere from 1 to 5 feet and moves sediment and nutrients throughout current and archaic riverbeds. The place itself is truly wild and is one of the last (If not the last – I’ve got to look into this more) bottomland hardwood forests remaining (in only the US, maybe elsewhere…more research is needed). This habitat was the habitat of the United States’ Southeast from Texas up into North Carolina. Not anymore. This last ~30,000 acres is about all that’s left. As unique as the habitat is the true characters of this place are the trees. The most idiosyncratic of which are the Loblolly Pines and the Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum). The Loblolly Pines (Pinus taeda) here are some of the tallest trees in that country and the tallest this side of Rockies (basically everything except the Redwoods). They’re also super old. The have a thick trunk with Ponderosa-like bark, rough and scaly. The Cypress are crazy looking. They have super bloated trunks that narrow into the proper tree about 15 feet from the ground and shoot into the canopy about 80 feet above. The weirdest part are their ‘knees’ though: their roots pop out of the ground into these biotic stalagmites. This means that in an undisturbed and old Cypress stand you’ve got about 100 knees sticking out of the mud and leaf litter for every 10 trees. It’s like the maw of some swamp creature slowly devouring the fat trees in their way. Why do the Cypress have knees? No one knows. It is hypothesized that they provide stability for the tree or act as a type of ‘snorkel’ when it floods.  Loblolly Pine - pinus taeda  Bald Cypress - Taxodium distichum Experiment vs Observation
I am getting closer to thinking like a scientist. The simple dichotomy between an experiment and an observation was made apparent to me this week. An experiment is something that you can control where an observation is simply that. I had never thought about the repercussions of that simple binary and what that means for developing theses, paradigms, and testing theories. My problem now, and I think indicative to conservation in general, is how to understand protection of species and habitats. So much of conservation is observation and so little of experimentation is relevant because it is so big. Conservation exists in a system. Observation leaves you watching species die and prairies converted into oil pipelines while you write a paper about it. On the other end, you can’t experiment on a system as large as the earth without intractable repercussions (I guess that’s called life). Qualitative research provides a middle ground with pragmatic research where you the researcher contribute to the outcome of your study with your engagement. Stewart Brand also recommends a similar caveat with his idea of the Vigilance Principle as opposed to the researcher’s maxim of the Precautionary Principle (if introduction of a new product or process whose ultimate effects are disputed or unknown should be resisted). Benevolence In philosophy we discussed agency, oppression, and deviance. One of the terms that came up was the idea of benevolence in regards to sexism. Benevolent Sexism is basically the idea that women need to be protected by men. Overtly, you can express that women are equal, that they deserve equal rights, etc but actions, behaviors, and policies are designed to protect them or provide for them more than men because they need it more. I wonder what Rhonda Rousey would have to say with this? The first thing I thought of though when understanding this term was the relationship to post-colonialism and environmental issues. Benevolence in Post-colonialism manifests itself a couple ways I think. First, the disfigured aide stemming from White Guilt to old colonies creates a dependent nationalism that actually inhibits independent growth and postmodern actualization (basically: let’s send a bunch of development loans to poor black and brown people because they just don’t know how to fend for themselves). Second, whenever we see videos of the Arab Spring, the vacuum created afterwards, or similar acts of civil disobedience, a group pity of their situation and sense of relief that we in the first world aren’t there takes over. From there, what do we do and how do we help runs through the collective unconscious: send troops, send bombs, send support? No, that’s too much – unless terrorists find that vacuum enticing. Well, that’s unacceptable. Enter the Faustian handshake of now caring for a people that cannot take care of themselves. I might be totally wrong but it gets messy and benevolence helps me to understand how seemingly good intentions of a first world populace can get mangled in the real world of geopolitics. Less clear to me and more insidious is how the concept of benevolence manifests itself in our relationship with the environment, environmentalists, and environmental projects. Zizek said ( I think in Violence but maybe in Desert of the Rea) that environmentalism will be co-opted by capitalism but that is the wrong path because you cannot solve the problem with the same mechanism that created the degredation. It took me several years to understand what that meant and I still don’t know If I agree with it. Environmental and Restoration Firms provide developers and municipalities with the appropriate tools to swerve through the hard fought regulations, sometimes the only biodiversity and land protection. I’ve seen how developers off-handedly say that they’ll ensure they’re in line with the regulations. Fast forward and land has concrete on it. I’m reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park when John Hammond’s dream of giving a vision of dinosaurs to kids is walked over by the lawyer who says they’ll have a coupon day. I see actual environmental success coming from productive relationships between industry and conservation. I really do. I believe that benefits from both can occur. But I am thinking that the concept of Environmental Benevolence is detrimental to this. Seeing environmental concerns as weak or something you have to tolerate only gets you crumbs because no one is invested. Dana White didn’t anyone wanted to see female fighters. Then he saw Rhonda Rousey fight and he thought of a huge market share of a female audience. Let her demonstrate to the UFC that female fighters are worth watching and both parties will make money. The same can be said for forests, wetlands, and prairies: activate their ecology and they will provide. |
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