Our Worst Idea

In documenting how our national parks represent America's best idea, filmmaker Ken Burns also gave us a glimpse of what our thinking looks like at its worst, and another example of this poor thinking has arisen at Olympic National Park in Washington state.

The United States Navy seeks to turn the park into a venue for its war games. This plan threatens the park's ecosystem, wildlife, and human visitors with noise and electromagnetic weapons (click here for a more detailed news story about it). It also puts at risk the cherished idea that our national parks represent.

Six years ago, in The National Parks: America's Best Idea, Burns demonstrated how the creation of the parks brought to the world a new combination of democracy, environmental protection, and civic duty. The parks came from public land, helped protect species and ecosystems, and gave generations of Americans something to pass down to those that followed them.

Burns' documentary also captured the constant threat facing the parks. From the start, people have looked for ways to exploit the national parks for personal gain. This self-centered approach to a social institution and an environmental cornerstone has placed several of the parks, including the Grand Canyon, on the verge of destruction at various times in the past. Through a simple application of logic, it is our worst idea, and the Navy's war-games plan is the latest incarnation of it.

One of the biggest lessons from the Burns documentary is that the idea of the national parks as well as the parks themselves must constantly be defended. In this spirit, a petition has been created to challenge the Navy's proposal for using Olympic National Park. To sign it, click here.

When it comes to our national parks, we deserve the best.

This Bear is Just Right

Something's been missing from the North Cascades in Washington state, and here it is: the grizzly bear.

Although grizzlies aren't associated with the Pacific Northwest the way species like the orca and salmon are, the North Cascades represent an important habitat for the bears, a native species that hasn't been recorded in the area for several years. Because of this, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the United States National Park Service are working together on a plan to recover the population in the North Cascades. A public comment period for the plan runs through March 26.

Conservation Northwest, a region environmental organization, supports the proposed plan and encourages the public to comment in favor of it. The organization provides information that can help individuals put together and submit their comments. That information can be accessed here. Conservation Northwest also has a video about the recovery plan. View it below:



As the video demonstrates, despite not receiving a lot of attention as a species of the Pacific Northwest, the grizzly occupies a key part in the North Cascades ecosystem and in the identity of the region. Allowing this PNW native to disappear forever from Washington certainly wouldn't be right.

Use the link on Conservation Northwest's Web site to make a comment in support of grizzly recovery and let them again sleep in their beds in the North Cascades.

National Geographic's Misapplication of GMOs

In the rhetoric of science, one of the following is not like the others: evolution, global warming, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The misfit is GMOs. That is unless the scientific rhetoric in question comes from National Geographic.

I recently took part in a panel discussion about the intersection of scientific rhetoric and environmental communication, and one of the topics that came up was National Geographic's most recent issue, which contains the cover story about why people have a distrust of science. (Check out the article here.) The article features an okay discussion about why so many people have doubts about things like evolution and global warming. However, in contrast to the principles of science, which seek to gain an ever-larger understanding of our situation, the article impedes and constrains itself substantially, particularly in regard to GMOs.

The article identifies the conflict between people's common sense and the scientific method as a key source of misunderstanding. That's certainly a valid point, but it's only part of the discussion. An important issue the article fails to address is that science itself created some of the distrust. As one of my colleagues on the panel pointed out, science enjoyed a "golden age," in which it aligned with industrial and political forces to create dangerous products (for example, atomic bombs and industrial chemicals) that harmed humans and the environment. Along the way, these scientific creations also harmed the reputation of science.

National Geographic says that the majority of scientific research holds that GMOs are safe for human consumption, and therefore, the case of GMOs is a defining example of people's irrational common sense trumping scientific consensus. With regard to the safety of eating GMOs, National Geographic may very well be right, but consumption is not the whole story, and the magazine does a disservice to science by leaving out key considerations.

It is in the history of science's malpractice that we find the difference between evolution, global warming, and GMOs. GMOs are scientific creations, not established theories about the planet's health and development. As scientific creations, GMOs are more like industrial chemicals and pesticides. In fact, they work in tandem with pesticides to create environmental problems. For example, the combination of GMOs and pesticides imperils monarch butterfly populations by eliminating milkweed, an important source of food for the insects. Pesticides like DDT were once said to be "safe" until we became aware of their larger environmental impacts (like the near extinction of bird species, including the bald eagle). And that is where the aspect of public doubt that National Geographic ignores comes into play. We have been misinformed about scientific creations before, and that led to the crash of science's golden age. Given that history, the control that GMO developers have placed on information regarding their products makes people even more wary.

By disregarding an important contributor to public doubt over science, National Geographic simplifies a complex issue, neglects important environmental considerations (like the possible extinction of species), and contributes to the cloud of mistrust people have for even firmly supported and comprehensive scientific facts like global warming and evolution.

I guess crop fields aren't the only places GMOs are misapplied.

Love in the Time of Treatment Plants

We've long known that the struggle between fear and love is about relationships: Fear fights for isolation, and love fights for connection. 

The stakes may remain the same, but the venues of this battle have changed. Today's sites of contention can have a uniquely ugly and foul character, and they make the struggle that much more important. Most recently, that struggle played out at a water treatment plant in California. The following video shows how:

Seeing the dog at the treatment plant, I couldn't miss the presence of the neglect, suffering, and marginalization that accompany fear. Those factors enable each other, making connection rare and fragile. In such a situation, it is easy to discount love.

By contrast, the second part of the video provides a reminder of just how powerful and effective love can be. The people at Hope for Paws, the organization that rescued the dog, cleaned him up, and helped make him available for adoption, prove the fight for love is worth it. Sometimes, it takes just a little offering, and other times, it requires extra effort, but when a connection is made, the bond can overcome even the most apparently hopeless situations.

This is no time for the faint of heart, but it is most definitely a time for the heart.

That's the Style

When it comes to the fashions of environmental messages, Greenpeace is a trendsetter.

Last summer, I blogged about the organization's powerful use of critical rhetoric against Royal Dutch Shell and Lego. That campaign ended in success when Lego announced it would cut ties with the oil company. Greenpeace has also taken on Shell in other fun, strategic ways, including this video recorded at a racing event sponsored by Shell:

The video Shell doesn't want you to see from Greenpeace on Vimeo.

Greenpeace's attacks on Shell represent part of the environmental group's Save the Arctic campaign. The campaign has been successful at helping delay Shell's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean, demonstrating the power of Greenpeace's unique messaging strategies.

Like all good trendsetters though, Greenpeace continues to push forward with its ideas. It has decided to make the style guide for the Save the Arctic campaign open-source. The campaign's fonts, colors, images, and videos are available here to the public, which Greenpeace encourages to create content that expands the reach of the message. For example, I was able to download this logo:

Giving people access to these resources allows Greenpeace to promote its message in a cool, new way. Now, many more voices can add to the campaign, opening up creative potential and taking on Shell through a strength-in-numbers approach.

With its latest strategy, Greenpeace shows us an exciting future for environmental communication.

Up in Smoke

I've found that being an environmentalist can be addictive.

This addiction stems from a desire to help protect something I see as immeasurably special. I felt that protective urge very early in life, and it grew until I wanted to protect every single mechanism of nature.

The story of the West Coast fisher provides a great example of my addiction. As I blogged about here, after being virtually wiped out from much of its original range, the fisher has started to make a comeback with the help of reintroduction projects. I first got excited about their return when a population was reestablished in the Olympic National Park. That success led to reintroduction programs in Washington's Cascade Mountains.

Success stories certainly add to the addictive nature of environmentalism, but nothing feeds the addiction more than success that is threatened. And now, all the work that has gone into bringing the fisher back is at risk because of the illegal use of rodenticide (much of which is used to protect illegal marijuana planting) and other factors. As a result, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing listing the West Coast fisher as threatened. Check out a video explaining the proposal below:



This proposal to protect fishers and support the previous work to keep them around further triggered my protective instincts. I submitted my comments in support of the proposed listing and would like to share the opportunity with others. For more information about the proposal and how to comment on it, click here. The deadline is February 4.

Yes, I'm addicted, and I see no end to my desire to protect nature from thoughtless destruction.

At Play in the Mud

Going back rarely takes us forward except at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in Washington state.

I first went to the refuge in 1994. A lot has happened there since then, but one thing that hadn't happened until recently was my return. Seeing the product of the recent restoration work at the refuge made the wait worth it though.

In 2009, work began to remove a dike that had kept Puget Sound away from the land for more than 100 years. When the restoration was announced, I became excited. The dike had turned the area from an estuary to farmland. Its removal invited the sound back to continue the natural processes that had been blocked for so long.

Because the refuge is visible from Interstate 5, the sound's progress over the last five years continued to interest me. Whenever I drove by, I would sneak a look at the expanding mud flats. The sight of them (or the high tide over them) always made me smile. All that estuary mud represented a return to a time before human intervention and a return of nature.

Two weeks ago, I decided it was time I returned as well. My mom and I visited the refuge and spent several hours walking the trails. We saw bald eagles, great blue herons, a seal, and, because of the low tide, lots and lots of mud. It was awesome. Through the teamwork of people and nature, the refuge had seen an amazing transformation from what it had been on my first trip there. This was no stick-in-the-mud story; it was progress toward a better relationship between the human managers of the land and the refuge itself.

One of the signs along the walking path talked about all that was going on in the estuary's mud, including the lives of creatures that call it home. I'd say that's just the beginning of the story.

Common Ground of the Pacific Northwest

Welcome to the land where environmentalists provide more timber jobs than the logging industry.

For years, the increasing mechanization of logging has stripped away tree-falling and mill jobs in Washington state and Oregon. Work that used to require dozens can now be done by a handful. In contrast, this article demonstrates how the environmental movement can increase logging jobs while addressing important environmental issues.

In summary, the story documents how Oregon Wild, a regional environmental group, enlisted loggers and a mill in John Day, Oregon, to thin forests at risk from wildfires. The thinning reduces fuel for the fires. It has also kept John Day's Malheur Lumber mill going, led to the hiring of more mill workers, and produced a 10-year contract for a local logging company.

The impacts of collaboration in this story are amazing. Some of the old hostilities between environmentalists and loggers are still apparent in the article's quotes, but they serve more as testaments to the power of common ground to overcome major political and social obstacles. Perhaps the most powerful realization is that once the ice was broken, innovative ideas like using logging for conservation purposes and developing ongoing partnerships flowed freely. When we are able to let go of positions that keep us apart, we can achieve a lot.

The partnership between environmentalists, loggers, and the mill in Oregon shows how finding common ground and new ideas can revitalize public discussions, help resolve conflicts, and result in a better world.

The Maturity of Optimism

The environmental and political worlds are aflutter over the optimism of Washington state.

Although it's usually associated with children, fantasy, and naïve behavior, optimism is what allows us to grow. It brings with it the confidence to face major challenges, seek new ways of thinking, and do what is said to be impossible.

On the other hand, it takes no real effort or talent to find reasons something cannot be done, especially when faced with difficult, complex issues. We've heard "can't" so many times on environmental issues that you'd think it were the name of some species or chemical compound. The combination of pessimism and cynicism that breeds (or yields) "can't" poisons our collective decision-making processes and clouds our lives. It certainly isn't inspirational, and it isn't productive either, meaning it's neither youthful nor mature.

This week, Governor Jay Inslee showed the possibility and productivity of optimism by proposing the Carbon Pollution Accountability Act, a cap-and-trade system that would make Washington the world leader in limiting carbon pollution, address costs for low-income families, contribute to public education, and provide funding for transit infrastructure that would reduce the need for cars. Simply put, it is the smartest, most exciting thing I've seen come to the political side of environmental issues. For a full recap and breakdown of Governor Inslee's proposed program, check out this article from the Sightline Institute.

The best part of knowing your limits is waving as you leave them behind.

City Kitties

The City of Angels isn't exactly heaven for big cats, but cougars there do have some guardians who are helping them cross over ... the freeways.

Although we don't tend to associated cougars with cities, a population of them exists in the area around Los Angeles. The city puts a lot of stress on that population though.

As a species, cougars require large territories. Consequently, the roads in L.A. pose a major challenge. Some cougars are killed by cars, and the city's road system segments the population, creating a high risk of inbreeding.

Two environmental groups have stepped in to help address the problem with the "Save L.A. Cougars" campaign. The National Wildlife Federation and the Santa Monica Mountains Fund are working to raise money and support for a wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway. The crossing would give cougars and other wildlife a safe place to move between the areas divided by the road. To learn more about the project, click here.

It's good to know someone is watching over L.A.'s cougars.