Island Guardian

Monday, February 26th

Green Guilt

You recycle, buy organic local products, drive a hybrid car, you even invited your friends over to watch Al Gore's movie for the third time. You stopped eating burritos made with meat and beans because of the flatulent methane gases you and the cows were emitting. You pitched a fit when your meal-to-go came in Styrofoam containers.

Still you have this nagging feeling that you just aren't doing enough to save the planet from certain looming destruction. You have paranoid guilt feelings because lurking right behind you is your big-ass carbon footprint that follows you around like a dark gaseous stinking cloud.

You know you could do more but like an addict you drink bottled water instead of water from the tap because you think it is safer. But it is bottled in an energy wasting plant by illegal aliens and transported to the island from California by trucks that spew greenhouse gas. The plastic bottles take too much fossil fuel to create and dispose of but you want that water anyway.

You don't want to think about how much energy it took to create the batteries for your hybrid car or how you will dispose of them when they burn out or that the energy to charge them comes from dams that kill salmon. You know the parts to your car are foreign and imported from afar at a huge cost to the planet. You must ride the ferry and it does not burn biodiesel. You take eco-tour vacations to exotic places in the world in jets that burn more fuel getting you there and back than some third world countries use in a year.

Your house was not built entirely out of earth sustaining products. It is filled with modern conveniences that have damaged the atmosphere and brought us to the brink of extinction. Then you look around and the realization hits you in the face like the foul smelling cloud of school bus exhaust. You have a colossal carbon footprint problem and you feel guilty about it don't you?

But you earned the right to your lifestyle. You love mother earth. You love to kayak on pristine waters, hike in the old growth forests, sail with the wind at your back and smell the salmon breath of the whales in silence. You love the freedom and benefits of living in this consumer driven western world and yet you hate it because we are all going to die very soon from the excess consumption that causes global warming. So what are you going to do about it?

Buy carbon credits of course! You can have your cake and eat it too. You can turn around and embrace the odiferous carbon cloud you produced that threatens to choke out all life on Earth by investing in sustainable renewable technologies. It is so easy to give and I guarantee you will feel good about your gargantuan carbon footprint at the same time. You no longer have to feel guilty for your part in the planets destruction! Think of the freedom you will feel. So how does it work?

Remember last election when we voted to put electric utilities in a headlock until they cried uncle and increased their production of energy from renewable resources? Well now there is a way to invest your money into projects that cut greenhouse gas emissions such as tidal turbine generators right here in the San Juan Islands. You can also invest in nuclear power projects that will eliminate carbon emissions and produce unlimited energy. Or you can invest in my non-profit company for solar research (it involves me sitting on sunny beaches while trying to write funny columns).

But seriously, all you really have to do is have a smaller carbon footprint than the next guy. When being chased by a bear you don't have to outrun the bear, just outrun the guy next to you. Nothing helps you feel better than pointing out what a big polluter your neighbor is or how she drives a gas hog and doesn't recycle all of her plastic. And it's okay to jet around the world as long as you can point to the fact that you've invested a bundle in an enormous eyesore of a wind farm in the Columbia Gorge.

All you have to do is buy carbon credits that support clean energy alternatives. Then you can be a highfalutin big pollutin', cigar smokin', burrito eatin', vintage car collectin', limosine ridin' jet-set Hollywood star who owns four houses with 80 rooms and ten pools all heated, and feel just as good as the white bearded tie-dyed deadhead driving a VW bus with a bumper sticker on it that says "America Sucks!"

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Tuesday, February 20th

Appealing

I know we all like to make fun of lawyers and politicians. When it comes to politicians their name says it all. "Poli" in Latin means "many", and "ticks" are little "bloodsucking creatures". Ticks and lawyers are different because at least ticks fall off when you die. But let's be fair. 98.7 percent of these people give all the rest a bad name.

Now a power struggle is brewing between lawyers and politicians right here in our little County. The question is, who should hear land use appeals, the Council of politicians or the lawyers in Superior Court?

Because I can't seem to take anything seriously, the two premises below seem kind of humorous to me. The debate goes something like this:

Lawyers are the only people smart enough to understand the land use appeal process. Not all politicians are lawyers therefore the many little bloodsucking politicians are too stupid to hear appeals to laws they passed in the first place.

If politicians make the laws then they should be smart enough to understand how those laws should apply to individual situations without interference from bigheaded buttinski lawyers. Therefore politicians should hear appeals before they go to court where people can get away with murder (OJ is free out on the golf course; hello?).

The Freeholders argued ad nauseum about the proper role of the Council in the Quasi-Judicial function. It was decided that the Council's power to review legal decisions of the Hearing Examiner should be limited.

The Charter dealt the Council out of the process but left the door open for them to reinsert themselves back into the game. In hindsight I think this was a mistake. Perhaps it is naive, but I am surprised that the Council is so eagerly determined to take back this power.

The Charter left open the possibility that the Council in consultation with the Prosecuting Attorney, could adopt, by ordinance, written procedures for the discretionary review of the decisions of the Hearing Examiner. And so the Council, struggling to hold on to power, directed staff to come up with a new ordinance.

The proposed ordinance now under consideration by the Planning Commission gives the players in land use disputes much more incentive to seek the Council's review. For example the Council may allow new evidence to be presented not previously seen by the Hearing Examiner, it gives "standing" to almost anyone to appeal decisions, and allows those parties to weigh-in with additional statements to support new positions, and it guarantees that politics will enter into every decision.

I don't think any of the Freeholders expected this kind of monkey business. It just seems like a bad idea to allow the politicians to screw around with the law. That's an attorney's job. By the way, during the last Northeaster it was so cold I saw a lawyer with her hands in her own pockets!

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Wednesday, February 7th

Consensus is for the Birds

Crows are black. Do we have consensus on this? Okay. Crows are black with big beaks that will peck at stuff in the back of your truck if it's not covered. Dogs left in the back will protect your stuff from crows but you can't trust them around groceries or garbage. Those are the facts.

During the many years that I lived and worked at the Orcas Ferry Landing I paid particular attention to the crows. They fly over everyday from their wild and remote nesting sites on the dark side of Shaw Island to work the ferry line for handouts and to snag groceries from the back of the trucks without dogs in them. These crows were all black.

One day I saw a crow with a few white feathers. In every respect this bird was a crow. A mutant crow but a crow nevertheless. Now if we had consensus that all crows are black then either this bird is not a crow, there was an affair with a seagull, or the consensus method for creating facts is somewhat flawed.

The mistake in our reasoning is precisely this: Consensus cannot create a fact. We begin with an assumption based upon our collective observation that all crows are black and by consensus this becomes fact. However, the fact that all crows are black is only as good as our original assumption, which is now false, because we had not seen every crow.

When we find a crow with white feathers we must conclude a couple of simple things: We assumed all crows were black by consensus even though we had not observed every crow and future genetic mutations or interspecies romantic love affairs, may occur that will produce white feathers in some crows. In other words, we don't always know everything and we can't always know what will happen in the future and the magic wand of consensus cannot turn assumptions into facts.

I appreciate that some of you are still reading this and patiently waiting for me to get to my point. Here it is. I would like to apply the reasoning above to the debate over global warming. I would like to argue that we should not use consensus to create facts about the future because it is not possible to know everything, especially the future.

To think so is falling into a Malthusian trap. In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that population would outstrip the food supply resulting in the death of millions. Since he didn't know the future he couldn't predict all possible factors like technology and how using new efficient farm techniques could produce the food necessary for the eventual survival of humankind.

Today there is consensus about the rise in the temperature of the planet. The preponderance of evidence points to this fact. However no one has actually come out and stated with certainty just what the correct temperature of the planet should be. In Earth's history temperatures have ranged somewhere between molten hot and glacial cold. Take your pick. Personally I'd prefer somewhere in the mid 70's. My fantasy has always been to have Hawaii in the San Juan Islands. I could adapt to that.

Anyway, people's reactions to global warming are interesting to observe. There is desperate panic in the media causing people to jump to irrational conclusions. This hysteria could result in extreme and disastrous policy decisions. On the other hand some scientists are questioning assumptions and as a result are scoffed at and trashed by the consensus group because they have seen crows with white feathers.

Regardless of your opinion about global warming, I think a calm rational approach to this problem will result in better decision-making. Remember, consensus is not always fact and we don't know everything especially the future.

We have consensus that there is at least a little time before the planet self-destructs. We should use that time to sort out assumptions and engage in a rational debate instead of trashing those who disagree with the oppressive dogmatism of the "all crows are black" activists.

Even though we don't know the future we can acclimatize ourselves to it. We can conserve fossil fuel, build dikes around cities we want to protect, build aqueducts to siphon off and pump rising sea water to refill once enormous inland seas. Once these new beaches are formed we can slather on the sunscreen because the surf will be up in Death Valley.

We are creatures that have a remarkable ability to adapt and change. For example, by experience I have adapted to the fact that you must hide stuff that you don't want messed with from dogs and crows. Do we have consensus on that?

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