Reason Foundation - Policy Areas (Reason Foundation) Plastic Bag Ban Hurts California's Economy The Orange County Register <p>California just became the first state to ban plastic shopping bags at grocery stores, convenience stores and many other businesses when Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law this week. More than 100 cities and counties in the state had already passed their own bag bans.</p> <p>Even if you don&rsquo;t use the common, convenient, lightweight plastic grocery bag, you should be concerned about the state ban.</p> <p>Proponents of the ban claim it will benefit the environment. But a comprehensive analysis recently undertaken by Reason Foundation, which looked at the impact of plastic bag bans on the environment, found these claims don&rsquo;t stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, the ban is likely to do more harm than good both to the environment and to people&rsquo;s pocketbooks.</p> <p>Lightweight plastic bags constitute less than 1 percent of all visible litter, represent only 0.4 percent of all municipal solid waste and are not a major cause of blocked storm drains. Banning them has practically no impact on the amount of litter generated, the amount Californians pay for waste disposal, or the risk of flooding. In fact, when plastic bags were banned in San Francisco, the county&rsquo;s own studies showed that litter actually increased.</p> <p>Lightweight plastic bags have not caused a giant &ldquo;garbage patch&rdquo; in the North Pacific, nor are they a significant threat to marine animals or birds. Rather, the real culprit of untimely marine animal death is cast-off fishing gear. A bag ban might catch a school of red herrings but it won&rsquo;t save any real marine life.</p> <p>For our study, we calculated that an average consumer using only lightweight plastic bags would be responsible for consuming less energy and water and generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions than someone using alternative bags. The main proposed alternative is five times heavier than the current bag and is responsible for the consumption of far more resources, energy and water. Paper bags also consume more resources, including five times more water over their lifecycle than lightweight plastic bags.</p> <p>Further, the Department of Public Health has warned, &ldquo;During the warmer months, the increased temperatures can promote the growth of bacteria that may be present on [reusable] bags.&rdquo;</p> <p>They encourage users to wash their reusable bags &ldquo;frequently.&rdquo; This of course consumes water &ndash; and if the advice were followed rigorously, &ldquo;reusable&rdquo; bags would consume as much as 40 times more water than lightweight plastic bags.</p> <p>Some dismiss this advice, bragging that they never wash their bags. In those cases, they are putting themselves and other consumers at risk as bacteria spreads easily in shopping carts and at checkout counters.</p> <p>Additionally, our research demonstrated enormous direct and indirect costs on California&rsquo;s consumers. If California&rsquo;s 12.4 million households spend five minutes each week cleaning their shopping bags to get rid of germs and bacteria, the annual opportunity cost would be more than $1.5 billion.</p> <p>The bag ban is likely to disproportionately burden the working poor and those households on a tight budget. A dollar spent on 10 paper bags is a dollar not available for other purchases. And while it&rsquo;s easy to place all the blame on the Legislature, grocery chains sponsored the plastic bag bill and may reap hundreds of millions of dollars charging the consumer more for a paper bag than it cost them to procure them wholesale.</p> <p>Opponents of the bag ban say they&rsquo;ll try to gather enough signatures to give voters the chance to repeal the plastic bag law.</p> <p>In the meantime, it&rsquo;s clear leaders in Sacramento passed another feel-good measure that hurts working people and the state economy.</p> <p><em>Lance Christensen is director of the pension reform project&nbsp;</em><em>at Reason Foundation. This column originally appeared in the <a href="">Orange County Register</a>.</em></p> <p><em>&nbsp;</em></p> 1014050@ Mon, 13 Oct 2014 09:27:00 EDT (Lance Christensen) Plastic Bag Bans Are a Not a Panacea for Environmental Ills Albuquerque Journal <p>Over 200 municipalities in the United States, including two in New Mexico &ndash; Santa Fe and Silver City &ndash; have banned the distribution of lightweight plastic shopping bags. Proponents of these bag bans claim they will reduce litter and protect the marine environment, diminish our consumption of resources and emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce waste and save taxpayers&rsquo; money.</p> <p>Unfortunately, for those who see banning plastic grocery bags as a panacea, a recent report for the Reason Foundation shows that all these claims are false.&nbsp;</p> <p>Authoritative studies show that plastic bags constitute less than 1 percent of visible litter in U.S. cities. The presence of plastic bags in trees and on the ground signifies that a community has a litter problem. The appropriate response is to reduce and ameliorate that problem through education and other initiatives &ndash; not to ban plastic bags.&nbsp;</p> <p>Members of some pressure groups claim that plastic bags kill large numbers of marine animals. Even for bags distributed in coastal cities, that claim is simply false.&nbsp;</p> <p>As David Santillo, a senior biologist with Greenpeace, told The Times of London: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags. The evidence shows just the opposite &hellip; . On a global basis, plastic bags aren&rsquo;t an issue.&rdquo;</p> <p>Because they are so strong and light, plastic shopping bags can actually reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.</p> <p>About 80 percent of all grocery bags in the U.S. are made from lightweight plastic but constitute only 0.4 percent by weight of all waste sent to landfills.</p> <p>Paper bags, which account for most of the remaining 20 percent of grocery bags used, generate the same amount of waste (0.4 percent of the total) because each bag is far heavier.</p> <p>New Mexico&rsquo;s plastic bag bans have likely increased the amount of waste produced as people switch to paper, which would actually increase the costs of municipal solid waste disposal.</p> <p>Some alternative bags appear to be superior to lightweight plastic on some environmental measures, such as use of energy and emissions of greenhouse gases. But that is true only if those bags are reused a sufficient number of times (ranging from six to 30 or more, depending on the type of bag). In practice, households do not typically reuse their bags enough to achieve those gains.</p> <p>At actual reuse rates, lightweight plastic bags result in about half the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of alternative bags, whether those alternatives are paper or reusable.</p> <p>Likewise, at actual reuse rates, all alternative bags are associated with greater water use.</p> <p>Reusable bags are the worst, resulting in the use of at least 10 times as much water as lightweight plastic bags &ndash; if households wash their bags regularly. And such washing is strongly advised: Studies show that about half of unwashed bags contain potentially dangerous germs; meanwhile, failure to clean reusable bags regularly has resulted in several instances of serious illness.</p> <p>So, banning lightweight plastic bags likely increases energy use, water use and emissions of greenhouse gases, but does not substantially reduce waste or litter, or the cost of associated municipal waste and litter collection.</p> <p>If communities are concerned about litter, the best solution is likely a campaign directly addressing that problem.</p> <p>Advocates of banning plastic grocery bags, while perhaps well-intentioned, are actually harming the environment, raising consumer costs and reducing personal freedom.</p> <p>That sounds like a bad deal to me.</p> <p><em>Julian Morris is vice president of research at Reason Foundation. This article originally appeared in the <a href="">Albuquerque Journal</a>.</em></p> 1014035@ Tue, 30 Sep 2014 12:18:00 EDT (Julian Morris) An Evaluation of the Effects of Californiaâ??s Proposed Plastic Bag Ban <p>Many cities and counties in California have passed ordinances banning the distribution of high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic grocery bags and mandating fees for paper bags. State Senator Alex Padilla recently introduced a bill (SB 270) that would impose similar requirements statewide.</p> <p>The premise of these laws is to benefit the environment and reduce municipal costs. In practice, the opposite is more likely to be the case.</p> <p>While the impact of such legislation depends on the way consumers respond, the available evidence suggests that it will do nothing to protect the environment; quite the opposite, it will waste resources and cost Californian consumers billions of dollars. Specifically, such legislation will:</p> <ul> <li>Have practically no impact on the amount of litter generated (moreover, while banning plastic bags at small retailers might reduce plastic bag litter by 0.5%, banning the distribution of HDPE plastic bags by large retailers is unlikely to have any impact even on the amount of HDPE plastic bag litter produced.)</li> <li>Have no discernible impact on the amount of plastic in the ocean or on the number of marine animals harmed by debris;</li> <li>Increase the use of oil and other non-renewable energy resources, including coal and natural gas;</li> <li>Result in five-fold or greater increase in the shopping bag-related use of water;</li> <li>Make little or no difference to the costs of municipal waste management; and</li> <li>Impose enormous costs on California&rsquo;s consumers, likely over $1 billion in both direct and indirect costs (such as time spent washing reusable bags).</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> 1013882@ Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:00:00 EDT (Julian Morris) How Green Is that Grocery Bag Ban? <p>In the past 15 years, approximately 190 municipalities in the U.S. have passed ordinances imposing bans, fees and/or taxes on plastic shopping bags. Many have also introduced fees or taxes on paper bags. Proponents of such ordinances claim they are necessary in order to reduce litter and other environmental impacts, ranging from resource use to emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition, many proponents claim the ordinances will reduce municipal costs (such as those associated with litter removal and waste collection), with benefits for taxpayers.</p> <p>This study investigates all these claims using the best data available and finds:</p> <ol> <li>The bans, fees and taxes on shopping bags have a minuscule impact on litter.</li> <li>There is no evidence of a reduction in municipal litter or waste collection costs as a result of the introduction of bans, fees and taxes on shopping bags.</li> <li>Other environmental impacts are not significantly reduced and some, including greenhouse gas emissions, may increase as a result especially of restrictions on the use of plastic (HDPE) shopping bags.</li> <li>There is likely an adverse health effect from people failing to wash bacteria-ridden reusable bags, the use of which may increase as a result of restrictions on the distribution of other bag types.</li> <li>Reusable bags are less convenient and, when taking into account the time and resources required to remove bacteria from bags, are very costly for consumers.</li> <li>The costs of plastic bag bans fall disproportionately on the poor.</li> </ol> <p>In sum, over the past 30 years, decisions by consumers and retailers have dramatically shifted consumption toward bags with superior environmental and cost characteristics, namely those made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. By banning HDPE plastic bags, legislators have been reversing this trend, to the detriment of the environment and consumers.</p> <p>Those people who are genuinely concerned about reducing litter and other environmental problems should focus their efforts on solutions that have been proven to work. In the case of litter, this means communicating the benefits of litter reduction and undertaking amelioration. In the case of protecting marine animals (a concern especially in coastal states), banning plastic bags won&rsquo;t make a difference but shifting toward more rational fisheries policies would.</p> 1013879@ Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:00:00 EDT (Julian Morris) L.A. Becomes Latest to Pass Nanny-State Plastic Bag Ban <p>First, the environmentalists wanted to get rid of paper grocery bags because they were the result of destroying too many trees. Then the market developed a lighter, stronger alternative in the form of plastic bags. Now the environmentalists want to get rid of these, too, and force everyone to bring their own reusable bags (typically made from cotton, hemp, or polypropylene, a plastic polymer different from that of the typical plastic grocery bag) when they go to the store.</p> <p>Los Angeles recently became the latest&mdash;and largest&mdash;U.S. city&nbsp;to ban plastic grocery bags. By a <a href="">9-1 vote</a>, the L.A. City Council voted to prohibit stores that sell perishable food from issuing plastic bags to customers, and would require the stores to charge customers 10 cents per recyclable paper bag used. Councilmember Bernard Parks cast the lone dissenting vote. <a href="">Under the measure</a>, larger stores&mdash;defined as those larger than 10,000 square feet, or which make more than $2 million per year&mdash;would have to comply beginning January 1, 2014, while smaller stores would have until July 1, 2014 before the rules kick in.</p> <p>The L.A. plastic bag ban appears to have been modeled after a California statewide proposal that fell just three votes shy in the state Senate a few weeks prior to the L.A. vote. That bill, <a href="">SB 405</a>, introduced by State Senator Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles), and its companion bill in the Assembly, <a href="">AB 158</a>, would similarly have banned plastic grocery bags and mandated that stores charge 10 cents per reusable paper bag. According to a <a href="">Senate Floor bill analysis of SB 405</a>, roughly 70 local governments&mdash;including Long Beach, Los Angeles County (unincorporated areas), San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Clara County&mdash;in California have now implemented plastic bag bans. In addition, "Most of these cities and counties also require stores to charge a fee for a paper carryout bag, and a few have banned both single-use plastic and paper carryout bags."</p> <p>Sen. Padilla <a href="">claimed</a> that the passage of the measure by the City of Los Angeles "breathes new life" into his statewide plastic bag ban proposal.</p> <p>In a <a href="">column</a> for the <em>U-T San Diego</em>, I wrote about the state ban and why prohibiting plastic bags would be bad for both individual freedom and the environment:</p> <p class="permalinkable" id="h760614-p5" style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><a href="">According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [see Table 19]</a>, plastic bags, sacks, and wraps of all kinds (not just grocery bags) make up only about 1.6 percent of all municipal solid waste materials. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) bags, which are the most common kind of plastic grocery bags, make up just 0.3 percent of this total.</em></p> <p class="permalinkable" id="h760614-p6" style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The claims that plastic bags are worse for the environment than paper bags or cotton reusable bags are dubious at best. In fact, compared to paper bags, <a href=";utm_medium=banner&amp;utm_campaign=btbcalogo">plastic grocery bags produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, require 70 percent less energy to make, generate 80 percent less waste, and utilize less than 4 percent of the amount of water needed to manufacture them</a>. This makes sense because plastic bags are lighter and take up less space than paper bags.</em></p> <p class="permalinkable" id="h760614-p7" style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Reusable bags come with their own set of problems. They, too, have a larger carbon footprint than plastic bags. Even more disconcerting are the findings of several studies that plastic bag bans lead to increased health problems due to food contamination from bacteria that remain in the reusable bags. <a href="">A November 2012 statistical analysis</a> by University of Pennsylvania law professor Jonathan Klick and George Mason University law professor and economist Joshua D. Wright found that San Francisco&rsquo;s plastic bag ban in 2007 resulted in a subsequent spike in hospital emergency room visits due to E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter-related intestinal infectious diseases. The authors conclude that the ban even accounts for several additional deaths in the city each year from such infections.</em></p> <p class="permalinkable" id="h760614-p8" style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The description of plastic grocery bags as &ldquo;single-use&rdquo; bags is another misnomer. The vast majority of people use them more than once, whether for lining trash bins or picking up after their dogs. (And still other bags are recycled.) Since banning plastic bags also means preventing their additional uses as trash bags and pooper scoopers, one unintended consequence of the plastic bag ban would likely be an increase in plastic bag purchases for these other purposes. <a href="">This is just what happened in Ireland in 2002</a> when a 15 Euro cent ($0.20) tax imposed on plastic shopping bags led to a 77 percent increase in the sale of plastic trash can liner bags.</em></p> <p class="permalinkable">In addition, a <a href="">report</a> for the U.K. Environment Agency found that cotton reusable bags would have to be used 131 times before they would have a lower global warming potential than HDPE bags. (And this was assuming that no HDPE bags were reused. Factoring in the extent to which HDPE bags are reused for trash bin liners and other purposes, the cotton reusable bags would have to be used 173 times to get the same result.) Unfortunately, according to another study, <a href="">reusable bags are only used about 51 times before they are discarded</a>, which, according to the former study, makes them much less environmentally-friendly.</p> <p class="permalinkable">If this was not enough, plastic bag bans come with serious economic costs. Customers have to pay for the more costly paper and reusable bags in the form of higher food costs, taxpayers have to pay for an inflated government bueaucracy (not to mention the paper bag taxes that are oftentimes imposed), and lots of people that work in the plastic bag industry are put out of work. <a href=";utm_medium=banner&amp;utm_campaign=btbcalogo">According to one industry estimate</a>, a statewide plastic grocery ban in California would threaten approximately 2,000 jobs in the plastic bag manufacturing and recycling industry.</p> <p class="permalinkable">Banning things&mdash;whether they be fireworks, <a href="">foam fast-food containers</a>, <a href="">fast-food kids' meal toys</a>, <a href="">medical marijuana dispensaries</a>, or even <a href="">sleeping in your own car</a>&mdash;unfortunately seems to be a popular public policy, especially at the local government level. And plastic bag bans are especially en vogue these days, despite their mistaken or ignorant economic and environmental foundations. Let us hope that when such proposals are inevitably brought up again in California and in state and local governments across the nation, rationality will win out over groundless emotional pleas, and freedom will triumph over nanny-statism. As I maintained in the <em>U-T San Diego</em> article,</p> <p class="permalinkable" style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Environmentalists have every right to try to convince people to adopt certain beliefs or lifestyles, but they do not have the right to use government force to compel people to live the way </em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>they</strong></span> <em>think best. In a free society, we are able to live our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe upon the rights of others. That includes the right to make such fundamental decisions as &ldquo;Paper or plastic?&rdquo;</em></p> <p>See the full column <a href="">here</a>.</p> 1013453@ Wed, 10 Jul 2013 12:15:00 EDT (Adam Summers) Bag Ban Bad for Freedom and Environment U-T San Diego <p>Californians dodged yet another nanny-state regulation recently when the state Senate narrowly voted down a bill to ban plastic bags statewide, but the reprieve might only be temporary. Not content to tell us how much our toilets can flush or what type of light bulb to use to brighten our homes, some politicians and environmentalists are now focused on deciding for us what kind of container we can use to carry our groceries.</p> <p>The bill, SB 405, along with companion bill AB 158 in the Assembly, would have prohibited grocery stores and convenience stores with at least $2 million in gross annual sales and 10,000 square feet of retail space from providing single-use plastic or paper bags, although stores would have been allowed to sell recycled paper bags for an unspecified amount. The bill fell just three votes short of passage in the Senate &mdash; with four Democratic senators not voting &mdash; and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, who sponsored the measure, has indicated that he would like to bring it up again, so expect this fight to be recycled rather than trashed.</p> <p>While public debate over plastic bag bans often devolves into emotional pleas to save the planet or preserve marine life (and, believe me, I love sea turtles as much as the next guy), a little reason and perspective is in order.</p> <p>According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, plastic bags, sacks, and wraps of all kinds (not just grocery bags) make up only about 1.6 percent of all municipal solid waste materials. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) bags, which are the most common kind of plastic grocery bags, make up just 0.3 percent of this total.</p> <p>The claims that plastic bags are worse for the environment than paper bags or cotton reusable bags are dubious at best. In fact, compared to paper bags, plastic grocery bags produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, require 70 percent less energy to make, generate 80 percent less waste, and utilize less than 4 percent of the amount of water needed to manufacture them. This makes sense because plastic bags are lighter and take up less space than paper bags.</p> <p>Reusable bags come with their own set of problems. They, too, have a larger carbon footprint than plastic bags. Even more disconcerting are the findings of several studies that plastic bag bans lead to increased health problems due to food contamination from bacteria that remain in the reusable bags. A November 2012 statistical analysis by University of Pennsylvania law professor Jonathan Klick and George Mason University law professor and economist Joshua D. Wright found that San Francisco&rsquo;s plastic bag ban in 2007 resulted in a subsequent spike in hospital emergency room visits due to E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter-related intestinal infectious diseases. The authors conclude that the ban even accounts for several additional deaths in the city each year from such infections.</p> <p>The description of plastic grocery bags as &ldquo;single-use&rdquo; bags is another misnomer. The vast majority of people use them more than once, whether for lining trash bins or picking up after their dogs. (And still other bags are recycled.) Since banning plastic bags also means preventing their additional uses as trash bags and pooper scoopers, one unintended consequence of the plastic bag ban would likely be an increase in plastic bag purchases for these other purposes. This is just what happened in Ireland in 2002 when a 15 Euro cent ($0.20) tax imposed on plastic shopping bags led to a 77 percent increase in the sale of plastic trash can liner bags.</p> <p>And then there are the economic costs. The plastic bag ban would threaten the roughly 2,000 California jobs in the plastic bag manufacturing and recycling industry, although, as noted in the Irish example above, they might be able to weather the storm if they can successfully switch to producing other types of plastic bags. In addition, taxpayers will have to pony up for the added bureaucracy, and the higher regulatory costs foisted upon bag manufacturers and retailers will ultimately be borne by consumers in the form of price increases.</p> <p>Notwithstanding the aforementioned reasons why plastic bags are not, in fact, evil incarnate, environmentalists have every right to try to convince people to adopt certain beliefs or lifestyles, but they do not have the right to use government force to compel people to live the way <em>they </em>think best. In a free society, we are able to live our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe upon the rights of others. That includes the right to make such fundamental decisions as &ldquo;Paper or plastic?&rdquo;</p> <p><em>Adam B. Summers is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation.&nbsp; This article originally appeared in the </em><a href="">U-T San Diego</a><em>.</em></p> 1013431@ Sat, 29 Jun 2013 09:00:00 EDT (Adam Summers) Congress Moves to Ban Frankenfish <p>The scientific consensus is that genetically-altered salmon is safe. But that hasn't stopped Congress from voting to ignore some inconvenient truths.</p> <p>Last week the House of Representatives approved an <a href=""> amendment</a> [PDF] to the agricultural appropriations bill. The amendment, co-sponsored by Reps. Don Young (R-Alaska) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), prohibits funding for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) <a href="">approval</a>&nbsp;of biotech salmon developed by <a href="">AquaBounty Technologies</a> in Waltham, Massachusetts. The vote was <a href=""> applauded</a> by a motley collection of &ldquo;consumer&rdquo; and environmental activist groups. Opponents assert that the biotech fish, dubbed "<a href="">frankenfish</a>,"&nbsp;<a href="">threaten</a>&nbsp;wild salmon and human health.</p> <p>First some background: AquaBounty&rsquo;s faster growing biotech salmon eat 10 to 25 percent <a href=""> less feed</a> than do conventional Atlantic salmon. AquaBounty salmon grow twice as fast as wild Atlantic salmon as the result of the installation of two genes, a promoter gene derived from the eel-like&nbsp;<a href="">ocean pout</a>&nbsp;and a growth hormone gene from&nbsp;<a href="">Chinook salmon</a>. People have long eaten both species.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href=""> Aquaculture already provides 50 percent</a> of the fish that people eat around the world. Enhancing farmed fish production could relieve pressure on the world's already <a href=""> way overfished</a> [PDF] wild fisheries. So, on the face of it, it would appear that biotech fish are a win for consumers and the environment.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s been a long slog for AquaBounty. The company created the genetically enhanced salmon back in 1989, and alerted the FDA that it planned to seek permission to commercialize the fish in 1995.&nbsp;FDA approval is required for all genetically engineered animals under its authority to regulate &ldquo;new animal drugs.&rdquo; A new animal drug is defined as &ldquo;an article intended to alter the structure or function&rdquo; of an animal, which, in this case, means the two added genes.&nbsp;</p> <p>Last September, the FDA finally held a public meeting to discuss the possible health and environmental consequences of the biotech salmon. With regard to human health issues, the agency&rsquo;s Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee found no biologically relevant differences between conventional and biotech salmon on nutrition and allergenicity. Consequently, the committee concluded that the biotech salmon &ldquo;is as <a href=""> safe as food</a> [PDF] from conventional Atlantic salmon, and that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm from the consumption of food from this animal.&rdquo;</p> <p>What about possible deleterious effects on the environment?&nbsp;The main activist concern is that some AquaBounty salmon might escape and interbreed with wild populations. As evidence for the harm that such an escape might cause opponents cite the &ldquo;<a href="">Trojan gene effect</a>&rdquo; scenario devised by Purdue University animal science professor William Muir. That scenario suggested that such interbreeding could lead to the extinction of wild populations. The idea is that biotech fish might have a mating advantage but nevertheless be less adept at surviving long term in the wild.</p> <p>Muir&rsquo;s work with schools of tiny freshwater fish called Japanese Medaka assumed that the chief mating advantage is that biotech fish would be bigger than wild ones. As it happens AquaBounty&rsquo;s fish are not bigger; they just grow faster. In any case, <a href="">recent research</a> [PDF] has found that genetically modified fish are actually at a selective disadvantage to wild fish. Similarly, another recent study reported that genetically modified coho salmon <a href="">fared badly</a> against wild ones when it comes to reproduction. Muir himself&nbsp;<a href="">testified</a> at the FDA hearing in September that &ldquo;the data conclusively shows that there is no Trojan gene effect as expected. The data in fact suggest that the transgene will be purged by natural selection. In other words the risk of harm here is low.&rdquo;</p> <p>To make the risk even lower, AquaBounty salmon are sterile triploids, that is, instead of having the usual two sets of chromosomes, their fish have three sets. In addition, the company has devised a process that make essentially all of <a href="">their fish females</a>, so there are no males available to supply sperm even if the fish were fertile. Finally, the company plans to raise their biotech salmon in freshwater tanks in Panama. Panama has no salmon, and if the fish escape into the tropical waters they will die from the heat.</p> <p>Given that the scientific evidence currently suggests that the biotech salmon pose no health risks to people and do not significantly endanger the natural environment, why would Congress vote to override an approval process based on science? According to the Associated Press,&nbsp;Alaska's&nbsp;Rep. Young &ldquo;<a href="">argued</a> that the modified fish would compete with wild salmon in his state.&rdquo; In other words, plain old-fashioned special interest pleading trumps science.</p> <p>Yesterday, the non-profit scientific advisory organization, the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), issued a commentary, &ldquo;<a href="">The Science and Regulation of Food from Genetically Modified Animals</a>.&rdquo; The CAST commentary notes that &ldquo;all technologies are associated with some form of risk, but a critical and often overlooked issue is that all risks are relative to alternatives.&rdquo; The commentary points out that wild fish stocks are being depleted unsustainably now and that interbreeding between conventional farmed fish and wild fish already poses genetic risks to wild stocks. &ldquo;Thus, the comparative risk of sterile transgenic salmon is likely to be less than that of fertile, selectively bred Atlantic salmon,&rdquo; reckons the CAST commentary. The CAST report points out that in the absence of unique risks, it doesn&rsquo;t make any scientific sense to subject genetically enhanced animals to different regulatory standards.</p> <p>The CAST report understatedly concludes that the current regulatory approach &ldquo;has resulted in an inhibitory effect on commercial investment in the development of genetically engineered animals for agricultural applications with ramifications for U.S. agriculture and food security.&rdquo; Everybody, including activists, should be wary of this kind of vote. In future conflicts, Congress may well vote to overrule science that the activists believe support policies they prefer.&nbsp;</p> <p>Last week, Ronald Stotish, the president of AquaBounty, issued a blistering statement <a href=""> warning</a> [PDF], "Whether or not you support this transgenic salmon, we should all agree these types of shenanigans have no place in a complex scientific debate. These actions threaten the fundamental basis of a science-based regulatory process. Americans deserve better from their elected representatives."</p> <p>Yes, we do.</p> <p><a href="mailto:rbailey&#64;"><em>Ronald Bailey</em></a> <em>is Reason's science correspondent. His book</em> <a href="">Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution</a> <em>is now available from Prometheus Books. This column <a href="">first appeared</a> at<br /></em></p> 1011830@ Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:30:00 EDT (Ronald Bailey) Let Them Eat Frankenfish! <p>We humans developed a bad habit of killing too many fish. But it's their own fault. Aside from being delicious, they're lazy. Atlantic salmon, for instance&mdash;one of the tastiest, fattiest fish&mdash;attain full size only after years of maturation. Did I mention they're delicious?</p> <p>But humans are eating too many of them. And while dedicated enviros go vegetarian, most of us just want to order another slab of succulent, heart-healthy omega-3s without thinking too much. <em>Enter modern science.</em> In the early 1990s, a merry band of geneticists inserted a gene from fast-growing Chinook salmon into slow-growing Atlantic salmon (along with a gene from another fish famed for cold-water tolerance). The result: so-called "super salmon," which grow to full size in nearly half the time. The altered species entered the federal approval process in 1995, and have been swimming upstream ever since.</p> <p>On Monday, a panel of FDA advisers began two days of hearings on whether to allow the first genetically modified (GM) animal into the human food supply. And so far, <a href=""> they are skeptical</a>. Such unnatural creatures have existed since the 1970s, but haven't become part of the common cuisine&mdash;and despite the protests of natural foodies everywhere, this needs to change.</p> <p>Yes, messing around with DNA is serious business, and the registered trademark symbol at the end of "AquAdvantage&reg; Salmon" is a little creepy. The equally unpleasant word "Frankenfish" has been floating around the blogosphere atop scare stories about the future of food. And there is serious (and legitimate) concern that modified fish will sneak out of their aquaculture pens and join Atlantic salmon for wild aquatic sex parties, crossbreeding with&mdash;and potentially out-competing&mdash;their genetically pure peers. The specter of piscine promiscuity understandably makes people nervous.</p> <p>But they needn't worry. The <a href=""> FDA briefing packet</a> is clear that years of study have found no reason to keep tweaked seafood off the market. Salmon 2.0 will be grown in isolation on land, far away from Salmon Classic, and&mdash;even if one or two make a break for it&mdash;it's unclear how serious the effects of minor cross-contamination would be. We've grown genetically modified crops in America, such as corn and soy, since the early 1990s&mdash;exercising similar caution with the locations of fields&mdash;without any serious damage to genetic diversity or incidents of runaway genes. As an extra layer of insurance, the salmon eggs will grow into sterile females only, making freelance reproduction extremely unlikely.</p> <p>Concerns about risks to human health are less well-founded. The remote chance of new allergens&mdash;a fear thoroughly investigated by the FDA&mdash;is offset by the known health benefits of eating more salmon. Government experts have essentially concluded that if it looks and acts like Atlantic salmon, contains "the expected amounts of nutritionally important omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids at the appropriate ratio," and is "as safe to eat as food from other Atlantic salmon," it might as well be labeled as such.</p> <p>Instead of endangering the ecosystem, salmon 2.0 will protect it. Irresponsible human behavior caused overfishing and shortages, but clever human invention has discovered a way to fix these problems. As we learned to do in kindergarten, we're cleaning up our own mess. Don't worry, just dig in and feel good about your healthy dinner <em>and</em> your environmental impact. (For extra flavor, try serving with a homemade salsa&mdash;<a href="">genetically-modified tomatoes</a>, naturally.)</p> <p><em>Katherine Mangu-Ward is a senior editor at</em> <a href="">Reason</a><em>. This article <a href=""> originally appeared</a> at on September 21, 2010. This column <a href="">previously appeared</a> at<br /></em></p> 1010623@ Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:11:00 EDT (Katherine Mangu-Ward) The Government's Catastrophic Response to the Oil Disaster <p>Incompetence has turned the Gulf oil tragedy into &ldquo;Obama&rsquo;s Katrina.&rdquo; As more and more startling facts emerge we are finding <a href=""> almost criminal ineptness by Washington</a> compounded by BP&rsquo;s almost criminal negligence. As with many crises, Washington&rsquo;s reactions cause greater damage than the event itself. Yet lurking in the mess are the extreme environmentalists staffing the Obama Administration with their declared agenda of shutting down all offshore oil drilling. The Sierra Club has bragged about how it helped shut down all new coal generating electricity plants. Other environmentalists are still happy that the Three Mile Island crisis succeeded in ending all new nuclear-generating power plants. Preventing new offshore oil drilling in Alaska is another of their primary objectives. &nbsp;</p> <p>Now CNN reports that almost all new drilling activity <a href=""> has been suspended for over two months</a>. This includes shallow wells in less than 500 feet of water&mdash;despite Obama&rsquo;s statement that such wells would not be affected by his orders to cease all deep-water (over 1,000 feet) drilling. After thousands of deep-water wells have been drilled successfully without spills, the Interior Department, under Secretary Ken Salazar, has so delayed permitting and continuing operations as to possibly bring financial ruin to countless smaller companies. It would be similar to shutting down all airlines after a single crash. It may be that Salazar and his gang are just so ignorant of business that they think the government can simply shut down the <a href=""> super-sophisticated flow of supplies and men</a> and then later restart it like flipping an electric light switch. It&rsquo;s already estimated that it will take <a href=""> two years or longer</a> to get Gulf production back to its pre-suspension levels. Meanwhile, deep-water drilling rigs&mdash;which cost over half a million dollars per day to operate&mdash;are being sent away from the Gulf to work in Africa and Asia where they are wanted. It will take months, if not years, to bring them back. Some 100,000 high-paying jobs are now at risk. Already the number of deep-water rigs <a href=""> has dropped from 42 to 19</a>.</p> <p>Most startling is the news that large boat skimmers could have sucked up much of the spill and cleansed it long before the oil reached shore. At the outset of the spill the Dutch offered <a href=""> skimmer boats with experienced crews</a> that could have handled most of the spill. As <em>The Christian Science Monitor</em> reported in &ldquo;<a href="">The Top Five Bottlenecks</a>&rdquo;:</p> <blockquote> <p>Three days after the accident, the Dutch government offered advanced skimming equipment capable of sucking up oiled water, separating out most of the oil, and returning the cleaner water to the Gulf. But citing discharge regulations that demand that 99.9985 percent of the returned water is oil-free, the EPA initially turned down the offer. A month into the crisis, the EPA backed off those regulations, and the Dutch equipment was airlifted to the Gulf.</p> </blockquote> <p>A giant Taiwanese oil skimming ship, The A Whale, is only now working on the spill. It can process 500,000 barrels of oily seawater per day, but it also <a href=",0,456573.story"> needed the same waiver from the EPA</a> which, expressed in another way, limits discharged water to trace amounts of less than 15 parts-per-million of oil residue. It also needed a waiver from the Jones Act, which <a href=""> prevents the use of specialized foreign ships</a> from the North Sea oil fields because they use non-American crews. Previously, the skimmers had to return to port to offload almost pure seawater each time they filled up with water. &nbsp;</p> <p>In his 6 month moratorium on deep-drilling, President Obama said he was setting up a special commission to issue a report on the safety of drilling. He&rsquo;s certainly not rushing. It took almost two months to appoint the &ldquo;experts,&rdquo; yet they won&rsquo;t even meet until mid-July. Also none of them are oil engineers; they are scientists and environmentalists. <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> detailed their backgrounds in its report, &ldquo;<a href="">The Antidrilling Commission</a>.&rdquo; We also know that Obama and Salazar lied when they claimed that the six month shutdown <a href=""> had been supported by their panel of experts</a>.</p> <p>In Europe the laws governing oil spills <a href=""> are distinct from ours</a>. They are prepared for spills and handle them as national emergencies to be quickly resolved. In Congress, however, the extreme environmentalists are now urging impossibly severe &ldquo;punishment&rdquo; conditions and sky high uninsurable liability on individual companies that will almost certainly shutter all medium-sized oil companies, since they would be unable to acquire the needed insurance. In America it has been smaller companies which have led technological discoveries, such as the horizontal fracking which has now made natural gas abundant. Yet Obama&rsquo;s energy advisor, Carol Brawner, says non-major oil companies <a href=""> could be excluded from Gulf drilling</a> when they, of necessity, are much more careful since spills could ruin them and put them out of business.</p> <p>In conclusion:</p> <p>&bull; We have learned that the oil could have been skimmed early on so that very little&mdash;if any&mdash;would have reached shore.</p> <p>&bull; BP failed to follow established industry procedures and made several consecutive major errors which caused the blowout. This was not a reason to stop all drilling.</p> <p>&bull; Revamping Minerals Management in the middle of a crisis has created a catastrophe in the Gulf that permitted the government to shut down continuing operations, even in the shallow waters where Obama previously said drilling would still be allowed.</p> <p>Wanting&mdash;or creating&mdash;scarcity has always been a part of the leftist agenda, on the theory that scarcities create the need for government allocation and control. One of the greatest threats of the current situation is that environmental extremists will use it as a justification to further their misguided agenda.</p> <p><em><a href="">Jon Basil Utley</a> is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. For 17 years, he was a commentator for the Voice of America. In the 1980s, he owned and operated a small oil drilling partnership in Pennsylvania. <a href="">This column first appeared at</a>.<br /></em></p> 1010221@ Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:15:00 EDT (Jon Basil Utley) Sustainability Semantics <p>The word "sustainability" has appeared more than 3,000 times in major world publications over the last three months, according to the news search engine Nexis. But does anyone know what it really means? Two Michigan Technological University researchers, ecologist John Vucetich and ethicist Michael Nelson try to answer that question in their new paper, &ldquo;<a href="">Sustainability: Vulgar or Virtuous?,&rdquo;</a> in the current issue of the journal <em>BioScience</em>. &ldquo;Too many environmental scientists think sustainability is primarily about documenting and protecting ecosystem health," they argue, "whereas too many engineers think sustainability is primarily about more efficiently meeting human needs."</p> <p>Consequently, they invite us to consider the vague concepts of human needs and ecosystem health. &ldquo;Depending on how societies understand these concepts, sustainability could mean anything from &lsquo;exploit as much as desired without infringing on future ability to exploit as much as desired&rsquo; to &lsquo;exploit as little as necessary to maintain a meaningful life,&rsquo;&rdquo; they assert. They add, &ldquo;These two attitudes seem to represent wildly different worlds&mdash;one might be called vulgar sustainability and the other virtuous&mdash;yet either could be considered &lsquo;sustainable.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p> <p>The two conceptions are indeed different, but why is the second deemed &ldquo;virtuous?&rdquo; Vucetich and Nelson style their argument as chiefly a plea for universities to include ethicists in the debates over the meaning of sustainability, but they clearly want to smuggle in a specific ethical view, e.g., ecosystems have some kind of inherent moral value independent of human desires.</p> <p>In his 2001 <em>BioScience</em> article, &ldquo;<a href="">Values, Policy, and Ecosystem Health,&rdquo;</a> <a href="">Robert Lackey</a>, a fisheries biologist at Oregon State University, cogently shows that the concept of &ldquo;ecosystem health&rdquo; already slips in the idea that nature has value independent of human desires. &ldquo;Although rarely stated clearly, in most formulations of ecosystem health, there is a premise that <em>natural</em> systems are healthier than human-altered systems,&rdquo; asserts Lackey. &ldquo;Tacitly, the assumption is that pristine, or less altered, is good and preferred; highly altered ecosystems, in contrast, are less desirable, if not &lsquo;degraded&rsquo;.&rdquo; Lackey also points out that because &ldquo;ecosystems have no preferences about their states,&rdquo; defining ecosystem health necessarily involves a person or persons deciding what ecosystem condition or function is &ldquo;good.&rdquo; How do we know whether or not an acre of land would &ldquo;prefer&rdquo; to be a swamp or a corn field? As Lackey notes, either could be considered &ldquo;healthy&rdquo; depending on what human preferences are being implemented.</p> <p>In trying to lay out the dimensions of the concept of sustainability, Vucetich and Nelson use the loaded term &ldquo;exploit&rdquo; without clearly defining it. Exploit <a href="">can mean</a> either: (1) to employ to the greatest possible advantage, or (2) to make use of selfishly or unethically. Given the context of their argument, it&rsquo;s pretty clear that Vucetich and Nelson largely mean the latter, since inserting the former definition into their understanding of "virtuous sustainability" would yield the nonsensical phrase &ldquo;employ to the greatest possible advantage as little as necessary to maintain a meaningful life.&rdquo;</p> <p>For an earlier perspective on exploitation and sustainability, let&rsquo;s take a brief look at the arguments of the 17th century British philosopher John Locke in his <em><a href="">Second Treatise on Civil Government</a></em>. Locke asserts that &ldquo;he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind.&rdquo; Increase the stock of mankind? How? Because by intensively cultivating land, a person produces &ldquo;a greater plenty of the conveniencies of life from ten acres, than he could have from an hundred left to nature.&rdquo; Thus Locke concludes that such a person &ldquo;may truly be said to give ninety acres to mankind.&rdquo; In fact, Locke believes he has underestimated human productivity: &ldquo;I have here rated the improved land very low, in making its product but as ten to one, when it is much nearer an hundred to one.&rdquo;</p> <p>This Lockean view seems to comport with the notion of &ldquo;sustainable development&rdquo; as defined in the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development&rsquo;s 1987 report, <em>Our Common Future</em>. According to that report sustainable development is &ldquo;development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.&rdquo; On the face of it, <em>Our Common Future</em> appears to endorse what Vucetich and Nelson call &ldquo;vulgar sustainability.&rdquo;</p> <p>One implication of Locke&rsquo;s analysis is that if humanity can produce what we need on the moral equivalent of one acre of land that means that we can leave 99 acres to nature. In other words, there is no inherent contradiction between efficiently meeting human needs and protecting ecosystem health, however it is defined. In other words, pursuing vulgar sustainability is actually quite virtuous.</p> <p><em><a href="mailto:rbailey&#64;" title="Send from Gmail">Ronald Bailey</a> is Reason's science correspondent. His book</em> <a href="">Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution</a> <em>is now available from Prometheus Books. <a href="">This column first appeared at</a>.<br /></em></p> <p><strong>Join Ronald Bailey, Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, and Jacob Sullum</strong> on <em>Reason</em>&rsquo;s weeklong Caribbean cruise in February 2011. Sign up today! &nbsp;</p> <p><a href=""></a></p> 1010196@ Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:26:00 EDT (Ronald Bailey) Let Markets Save the Fish and Oceans <p> has an excellent new video that discusses how moving to a market-based system of fishing called <a href="">"catch share" can be effective in discouraging over fishing</a>.</p> <p> <object data="" height="100" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100"> <param name="src" value="" /> </object> </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> 1010030@ Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:08:00 EDT (Samuel Staley) Dam the Salmon The Wall Street Journal <p>Al Gore has been hectoring Americans to pare back their lifestyles to fight global warming. But if Mr. Gore wants us to rethink our priorities in the face of this mother of all environmental threats, surely he has convinced his fellow greens to rethink theirs, right?</p> <p>Wrong. If their opposition to the Klamath hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest is any indication, the greens, it appears, are just as unwilling to sacrifice their pet causes as a Texas rancher is to sacrifice his pickup truck. If anything, the radicalization of the environmental movement is the bigger obstacle to addressing global warming than the allegedly gluttonous American way of life.</p> <p>Once regarded as the symbol of national greatness, hydroelectric dams have now fallen into disrepute for many legitimate reasons. They are enormously expensive undertakings that would never have taken off but for hefty government subsidies. Worse, they typically involve changing the natural course of rivers, causing painful disruptions for towns and tribes.</p> <p>But tearing down the Klamath dams, the last of which was completed in 1962, will do more harm than good at this stage. These dams provide cheap, renewable energy to 70,000 homes in Oregon and California. Replacing this energy with natural gas -- the cleanest fossil-fuel source -- would still pump 473,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This is roughly equal to the annual emissions of 102,000 cars.</p> <p>Given this alternative, one would think that environmentalists would form a human shield around the dams to protect them. Instead, they have been fighting tooth-and-nail to tear them down because the dams stand in the way of migrating salmon. Environmentalists don't even let many states, including California, count hydro as renewable.</p> <p>They have rejected all attempts by PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, to take mitigation steps such as installing $350 million fish ladders to create a salmon pathway. Klamath Riverkeeper, a group that is part of an environmental alliance headed by Robert Kennedy Jr., has sued a fish hatchery that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife runs -- and PacifiCorp is required to fund -- on grounds that it releases too many algae and toxic discharges. The hatchery produces at least 25% of the chinook salmon catch every year. Closing it will cause fish populations to drop further, making the demolition of the dams even more likely.</p> <p>But the end of the Klamath won't mean the end of the dam saga -- it is the big prize that environmentalists are coveting to take their antidam crusade to the next level. "This would represent the largest and most ambitious dam removal project in the country, if not the world," exults Steve Rothert of American Rivers. The other dams on the hit list include the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley that services San Francisco, Elwha River dam in Washington and the Matilija Dam in Southern California.</p> <p>Large hydro dams supply about 20% of California's power (and 10% of America's). If they are destroyed, California won't just have to find some other way to fulfill its energy needs. It will have to do so while reducing its carbon footprint to meet the ambitious CO2 emission-reduction targets that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set. Mr. Schwarzenegger has committed the Golden State to cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 -- a more stringent requirement than even in the Kyoto Protocol.</p> <p>The effect this might have on California's erratic and overpriced energy supply has businesses running scared. Mike Naumes, owner of Naumes Inc., a fruit packing and processing business, last year moved his juice concentrate plant from Marysville, Calif., to Washington state and cut his energy bill in half. With hydropower under attack, he is considering shrinking his farming operations in the Golden State as well. "We can't pay exorbitant energy prices and stay competitive with overseas businesses," he says.</p> <p>Bruce Hamilton, Sierra Club's deputy executive director and a longtime proponent of such a mandate, refuses to even acknowledge that there is any conflict in closing hydro dams while fighting global warming. All California needs to do to square these twin objectives, he maintains, is become more energy efficient while embracing alternative fuels. "We don't need to accept a Faustian bargain with hydropower to cut emissions," he says.</p> <p>This is easier done in the fantasy world of greens than in the real world. If cost-effective technologies to boost energy efficiency actually existed, industry would adopt them automatically, global warming or not.</p> <p>As for alternative fuels, they are still far from economically viable. Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University, has calculated that wind energy costs 6.64 cents per kWh and biomass 5.95 kWh -- compared to 4.37 cents for clean coal. Robert Bradley Jr., president of the Institute for Energy Research, puts these costs even higher. "Although technological advances have lowered alternative fuel prices in recent years, these fuels still by and large cost twice as much as conventional fossil fuels," he says.</p> <p>But suppose these differentials disappeared. Would the Sierra Club and its eco-warriors actually embrace the fuels that Mr. Hamilton advocates? Not if their track record is any indication. Indeed, environmental groups have a history of opposing just about every energy source.</p> <p>Their opposition to nuclear energy is well known. Wind power? Two years ago the Center for Biological Diversity sued California's Altamont Pass Wind Farm for obstructing and shredding migrating birds. ("Cuisinarts of the sky" is what many greens call wind farms.) Solar? Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin has been decidedly lukewarm about solar farms because they involve placing acres of mirrors in pristine desert habitat. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society once testified before Congress to keep California's Mojave Desert -- one of the prime solar sites in the country -- off limits to all development. Geothermal energy? They are unlikely to get enviro blessings, because some of the best sites are located on protected federal lands.</p> <p>Greens, it seems, always manage to find a problem for every environmental solution -- and there is deep reason for this.</p> <p>Since its inception, the American environmental movement has been torn between "conservationists" seeking to protect nature for man -- and "preservationists" seeking to protect nature for its own sake. Although early environmental thinkers such as Aldo Leopold and John Muir were sympathetic to both themes, Leopold was more in the first camp and Muir in the second. Leopold regarded wilderness as a form of land use; he certainly wanted to limit the development of wild areas -- but to "enlarge the range of individual experience." Muir, on the other hand, saw wilderness as sacred territory worthy of protection regardless of human needs.</p> <p>With the arrival on the scene of Deep Ecologists from Europe in the 1980s, Muir's mystical preservationist side won the moral high ground. The emphasis of Deep Ecology on radical species equality made talk about solving environmental problems for human ends illicit within the American environmental community. Instead, Arne Naess, the revered founder of Deep Ecology, explicitly identified human beings as the big environmental problem. "The flourishing of nonhuman life requires a decrease in human population," his eight-point platform to save Mother Earth serenely declared.</p> <p>This ideological turn, notes Ramachandra Guha, a left-leaning Indian commentator and incisive critic of Deep Ecology, has made American environmentalism irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst for the Third World, where addressing environmental issues such as soil erosion, water pollution and deforestation still remains squarely about serving human needs. By turning wilderness preservation into a moral absolute -- as opposed to simply another form of land use -- Deep Ecology has justified wresting crucial resources out of the hands of India's agrarian and tribal populations. "Specious nonsense about equal rights of all species cannot hide the plain fact that green imperialists . . . are dangerous," Mr. Guha has written.</p> <p>Besides hurting the Third World, such radicalism had made the environmental movement incapable of responding to its own self-proclaimed challenges. Since nature can't speak for itself, the admonition to protect nature for nature's sake offers not a guide to action, but an invitation to inaction. That's because a non-anthropocentric view that treats nature as non-hierarchical collapses into incoherence when it becomes necessary to calculate trade-offs or set priorities between competing environmental goals.</p> <p>Thus, even in the face of a supposedly calamitous threat like global warming, environmentalists can't bring themselves to embrace any sacrifice -- of salmons or birds or desert or protected wilderness. Its strategy comes down to pure obstructionism -- on full display in the Klamath dam controversy.</p> <p>Yet, if environmentalists themselves are unwilling to give up anything for global warming, how can they expect sacrifices from others? If Al Gore wants to do something, he should first move out of his 6,000 square-foot Nashville mansion and then make a movie titled: "Damn the salmon."</p> 1002835@ Wed, 30 May 2007 15:25:00 EDT (Shikha Dalmia) Catching the Aquaculture Wave <h3>Executive Summary</h3> <p>The island chain of Hawaii is poised on the leading edge of the development of the legal and technical frameworks necessary for open-ocean cage fishfarming. One offshore farm is up and running, and another has all the permits and licenses and is just waiting for the final rounds of financing. As these operations and other potential operators mature and grow, and with the right legal and regulatory reforms, Hawaii has the potential to lead the nation in quality offshore oceanic fish cultivation. This could be a tremendous boon to both Hawaii&rsquo;s economy and its general entrepreneurial climate.</p> <p>Yet many obstacles remain. Despite studies that show no measurable impact to the environment of the aquaculture already in operation, misplaced fears based on other situations and technologies coupled with a stifling, extended bureaucratic process that allows individuals to contest the permit process with or without reasonable cause hampers Hawaii&rsquo;s chance to develop offshore fishfarming and expand its shrunken economy. This report explores case studies of fishfarming in Hawaii and how the state could reap economic benefits while guarding local waters against environmental impact. With a streamlining of its bureaucracy, Hawaii could soon lead the nation in offshore oceanic fish cultivation, spelling success for its citizens as well as take pressure off of wild stocks of depleted fish populations. It would also powerfully demonstrate how human ingenuity, properly channeled through free enterprise, could sustainably feed people and maintain, or even enhance, a healthy environment.</p> 127511@ Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST (Michael De Alessi) New Zealand the Leader in Healthy Fishing Santa Barbara News Press <p>It is heartening to see attention given to both the decline of our ocean fisheries and wildlife and to possible solutions. Fishermen, however, are not hellbent to &quot;beat out good science,&quot; they&#39;re simply trying to make a living under a truly perverse regulatory system, one that encourages overfishing and habitat destruction.</p> <p>Marine reserves offer great promise, but they are incomplete without changing the nature of fisheries management.</p> <p>In New Zealand, the creation of harvest rights to fish so self-interest lines up with conservation and the future health of fisheries resulted in something anathema to most fisheries in the United States: fishermen agreeing to catch less than they were allotted by the government.</p> <p>From communal village tenure over coral reefs in the South Pacific to the offshore fisheries of New Zealand, owners of fishing rights or territories press for and enforce their own conservation measures, including marine reserves and multi-species management.</p> <p>Marine reserves can only be as effective as the respect given to their boundaries, and as long as we manage fisheries to encourage rapacious behavior, fughettaboutit.</p> <p><em>Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation</em></p> 122423@ Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:00:00 EDT (Michael De Alessi) Resolving Overfishing Fraser Forum ... 127771@ Thu, 01 Jul 2004 15:21:00 EDT (Michael De Alessi) Letter to US Commission on Ocean Policy ... 127772@ Sat, 01 May 2004 15:23:00 EDT (Michael De Alessi) Oceans Need Innovation, Not Bureaucracy Knight Ridder Tribune News <p>Depending on whose science you subscribe to, our oceans are either: on the verge of trouble, in trouble, or on their deathbed. And you can pick your poison: habitat destruction, overfishing, and pollution are just a few of the problems we face.</p> <p>The 16-member U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy just released a nearly 500-hundred page preliminary report, 2 1/2 years in the making, which is supposed to nurse our oceans back to health. Unfortunately, apart from making a timely acknowledgement of the environmental, commercial and recreational importance of the oceans, the report leaves much to be desired.</p> <p>Instead of applying a comprehensive framework to oceans policy, the commission focuses on creating more administrative offices such as the National Ocean Council and Presidential Council of Advisers on Ocean Policy. Think Department of Homeland Security for our oceans. We&#39;re on orange alert, or is it yellow today? As most taxpayers, especially fresh off tax day will attest, bureaucracy does not equal &quot;coordination,&quot; no matter how high it reaches or how small the minutiae it addresses.</p> <p>In addition to layers and layers of added bureaucracy, the report recommends increasing federal research dollars and security for shipping and oil and gas activities (hardly surprising proposals considering the commission consists primarily of academics, federal agency representatives, and the oil and gas industry &mdash; all groups that would benefit).</p> <p>At all levels, the heart of the problem is what is referred to in environmental circles as the &quot;tragedy of the commons&quot; &mdash; resources are depleted or damaged because they are free for the taking, whether fish, clean water or habitat.</p> <p>The commission still doesn&#39;t seem to realize that more regulation and more government agencies won&#39;t beat man&#39;s ingenuity and the tragedy of commons. Consider Alaska: the state thought its halibut stock was being overfished, so it slashed the halibut fishing season from almost 10 months to just 72 hours. The result? There was no significant decrease in the number of halibut caught because fishermen and companies packed 10 months worth of fishing into three days.</p> <p>The key to rehabilitating and sustaining our oceans is stewardship and property rights. The Alaskan halibut fishery is now a success story, not because of new regulations, but because it is one of the few fisheries in the United States managed on a property rights model. Fishermen have Individual Fishing Quotas, which allocate the right to catch a specific percentage of the scientifically determined total allowable catch. The quotas give fishermen both the incentive and the means to care more about the health of our seas. Fishermen in New Zealand using this system have actually voluntarily reduced their catch levels because they know the long-term health of the oceans is in their best interests.</p> <p>Traditional societies in the Pacific Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands used these concepts to protect marine resources. Native Americans often had complex arrangements within and between tribes to allow salmon to move up and downstream in order to maintain the spawning runs and ensure a future supply of fish. Native Hawaiians recognized triangular strips of property running from mountaintop out to sea and respected the boundaries. According to a Hawaii Sea Grant study, this system was set up &quot;to sustain the pattern of Hawaiian life,&quot; and included strict limits on harvests of &quot;species, types, sizes and portions of fish.&quot;</p> <p>In the eyes of the commission, property rights are valuable tools for solving specific problems, but not as an overall framework for oceans policy. This is a mistake. Of course there is more to managing ocean resources than fishing, but the fishery dynamic applies to every facet of oceans management. After all, most Americans are far more concerned with the price and quality the fish at their local supermarket or the health of their favorite fishing holes than they are about deep-sea topography or federal agency hierarchies.</p> <p>The health of our oceans deserves bold, forward-thinking policies that have proven highly successful across the world, not another government agency promising more research.</p> <p><em>Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation</em></p> 122812@ Mon, 26 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EDT (Michael De Alessi) Overcoming Three Hurdles to IFQs in US Fisheries <p><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black"><strong>INTRODUCTION</strong><br /><br />For decades, U.S. federal fisheries policy has relied on direct regulations to prevent overfishing</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana; color:black">. Such an approach has not eliminated overfishing, nor has it prevented the enormous waste and hazards of fishing under a destruc</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">tive race for fi</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana; color:black">sh. The good news is that there is a better way to manage our ocean fisheries. Individual fishing quotas (IFQs), also called individual transferable quotas (ITQs), have proven effective in restoring health and sanity in a host of fishe</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">ries around the globe.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">In spite of these successes, there are a number of obstacles to IFQ implementation. To begin to address these, PERC, Reason Foundation, and Environmental Defense held a luncheon briefi</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">ng on Capitol Hill on November 12, 2003, for fe</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">deral policy makers and their staffs. The briefi</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt; font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">ng, titled "Overcoming Hurdles to Implementing Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) in U.S. Fisheries," was well-attended and opening remarks were made by Congressman Wayne Gilchrist (R-MD), who plans to </span><span style="font-size:7.5pt; font-family:Verdana;color:black">introduce legislation re-authorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act. Mr. Gilchrist assured everyone in attendance that fi</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">shery management legislation needs to be "as reasonable, as pragmatic as possible," and needless to say, more effective </span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">than in the past.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">The following discussion, based on the November 12 briefi</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt; font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">ng, describes the problems in U.S. fisheries, the potential role of IFQs, and the three most contentious issues surrounding their implementation. These are the questions of wheth</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">er a two-tiered system that includes both IFQs and individual processor quotas (IPQs) is needed, what restrictions, if any, to place on IFQs, and whether or not to place a sunset provision on IFQs.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">Support for the briefi</span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">ng and this booklet is provided by </span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">the Alex C. Walker Educational &amp; Charitable Foundation, the Bradley Fund for the Environment, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. It is produced by Dianna Rienhart and is available in hard copy from PERC, Reason Foundation, or Environmental Defense or online at <a href="">www.ifqsforfi</a></span><span style="font-size: 7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black"><a href=""></a></span><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black">.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> 127513@ Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EST (Michael De Alessi) Alternate Framework for the US Commission on Ocean Policy ... 127512@ Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EST (Michael De Alessi) California's Fishy Fish Laws Tech Central Station <p>California&#39;s coastline is one of its greatest natural assets. Below the surface however, a number of serious environmental problems loom, principally over-fishing and the loss of productive marine habitat.</p> <p>California&#39;s answer to these problems was supposed to come in the form of 1999&#39;s Marine Life Protection Act, which would create a system of marine reserves where fishing would be prohibited. But the massive deficit means the state does not have the funds needed to make the marine reserves a reality &mdash; at least not now.</p> <p>While environmental groups lambasted California&#39;s recent decision to suspend the reserves program, this fiscal crisis actually gives the state an opportunity to move towards a more effective long-term solution that stresses the cooperation of traditional foes &mdash; fisherman, both commercial and recreational, and environmental advocates.</p> <p>California&#39;s Marine Life legislation takes an unimaginative, typically unsuccessful approach to protecting marine resources; it assumes that fishing and fishermen are the problem, and attempts to either bar them from large areas or to change their behavior through command and control regulations and restrictions instead of cooperative efforts. In other parts of the world, however, where the rights to harvest fish are more secure, it is the fishermen themselves who press for conservation measures and who often even create their own marine reserves.</p> <p>Marine reserves certainly offer great promise as one piece of California&#39;s marine management puzzle. Numerous studies have shown that at least within the boundaries of marine reserves, marine life is more plentiful and diverse.</p> <p>Jim Bohnsack, one of the leading marine reserve scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service, has described reserves as &quot;civilizing the oceans&quot; by &quot;putting fences in the oceans.&quot; And he&#39;s definitely on to something &mdash; good fences do make good neighbors. But the picture is incomplete and California&#39;s solution misdirected as long as it remains unclear who has the right to fish, and where.</p> <p>The greatest threat to the oceans is what is referred to as the &quot;the tragedy of the commons,&quot; when the race goes to the swift fisherman, all commercial fishermen have little choice but to deplete the seas because any fish they leave behind will simply be caught be someone else, rather than left to grow and reproduce for another year.</p> <p>Marine reserves don&#39;t solve this key part of the crisis; they simply force fishermen to relocate. And the problem is frequently compounded by state or federal regulations that attempt to restrict fishing, but fail to address the reasons fish are over-harvested in the first place.</p> <p>Other states and countries have successfully tackled this dilemma by creating tradable fishing rights. These tradable rights establish who has the right to catch fish, and how much they can catch (normally a percentage of an annual, scientifically determined, total catch).</p> <p>In New Zealand , rights to fish are the equivalent of certifiable property rights. Their system has spawned the growth of innovative quota-owning management groups that invest heavily in fisheries science and enhancement. The management groups also tend to fish conservatively, leaving fish to repopulate the seas, because they recognize healthy oceans are a valuable asset.</p> <p>The cooperative effort in New Zealand is in stark contrast to environmental efforts here.</p> <p>In California, one species of rockfish, the bocaccio, may be a candidate for endangered species listing. When officials in California began a state-wide closure of the bocaccio fishery, fishermen were outraged. In a Los Angeles Times article about the fishery closures last summer, one Central California fisherman declared that &quot;There&#39;s plenty of fish out there &mdash; The problem is, there&#39;s even more regulators.&quot; When the system of fishing rights was created in New Zealand, on the other hand, fishermen immediately criticized the government for actually setting some catch limits too high.</p> <p>Marine reserves are only as effective as the respect given to their boundaries. The more financial hardships commercial fishermen endure, however, the more likely they are to skirt regulations, including restrictions on where they can and can&#39;t fish. The current system encourages cheating by making it difficult for fishermen to make a living. Healthy fisheries would also mean lower enforcement costs for the state, as fishermen will become more self-enforcing as they become more profitable.</p> <p>Once the boundaries of marine reserves and fishing areas are well established, ocean advocates of all stripes are far more likely to act like good neighbors instead of fighting over the scraps. And seafood lovers around the state might finally see an increase in the supply of such delectable local fish as snapper, rockfish, Petrale sole, starry flounder, and sand dabs.</p> <p><em>Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation</em></p> 122705@ Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:00:00 EST (Michael De Alessi) Processor Quotas Threaten Individual Fishing Quotas Anchorage Daily News <p>In politics, good and bad policies too often get rolled into one. Such is the case with Alaska crab fisheries. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is backing individual fishing quotas for crabbers &mdash; a good policy &mdash; but forcing them to sell most of their catch to a small group of established processors &mdash; a bad policy.</p> <p>This will hurt not only Alaska and West Coast crabbers who ply the waters of Alaska but other fishermen as well. All along the West Coast, fishermen who go after bottom fish such as Dover sole and sablefish are in desperate need of IFQs to bring back their fisheries &mdash; but not at the daunting price of a very limited market to sell their fish. Yet this is what the powerful senator is offering crabbers &mdash; and it could set a chilling precedent.</p> <p>Stevens has offered his deal to crabbers as a rider to the omnibus appropriations bill that Congress must approve by Jan. 31. It comes when Alaska&#39;s crab fisheries and many other fisheries are in dire straits. Traditional approaches to managing U.S. fisheries &mdash; shortened seasons, restrictions on vessels and gear, and closed areas &mdash; have not stopped the buildup of excess capacity and overfishing in at least a third of commercially fished stocks in U.S. waters. And they often result in a dangerous race for fish, as Alaska crabbers can attest.</p> <p>IFQs stop the race for fish by assigning individual fishermen specific shares of the total allowable catch set each season by managers. With IFQs each fisherman knows his or her allotted catch, so there is no need to race other fishermen for a share. In addition, managers can extend seasons beyond the four- to six-day openings common in Alaska crab fisheries since they know that the overall catch is capped by limits on individual catches.</p> <p>An illustration of the effectiveness of IFQs is Alaska&#39;s halibut fishery. In the early 1990s, halibut fishermen were limited to fishing during just three 24-hour fishing openings a year. Not only did profits fall and most of the catch have to be frozen, but halibut fishermen had to fish in bad weather, resulting in loss of life. When IFQs were adopted in 1995, fishery managers extended the season to 245 days. Fishing became more profitable and safer.</p> <p>Indeed, studies of fisheries in New Zealand, Iceland, Australia and Canada show that those with IFQs register higher profits, better stock management, less bycatch, improved safety and greater cooperation with government officials than traditional regulatory regimes.</p> <p>Unfortunately, only four federal fisheries in the United States use IFQs today. The last time the Magnuson-Stevens Act (the nation&#39;s over-arching fishery legislation) was reauthorized, a temporary moratorium was imposed on new IFQs. The moratorium has expired, but politics have prevented more IFQs.</p> <p>This situation is especially unfortunate for Alaska crab fishermen, who participate in one of the world&#39;s most dangerous fisheries. Short seasons increase the danger by limiting options for fishermen in deciding when to fish. But IFQs will allow managers to extend seasons so crab fishermen can fish during safer weather.</p> <p>For Stevens, there is another issue &mdash; how to compensate processors who invested in plant capacity to meet the needs of short fishing seasons. If IFQs are implemented and seasons extended, some processors will have lots of excess capacity (like extra freezer space) and less control over prices because fishermen will be able to choose when to fish. The rider would allow crab fishermen to have IFQs, but they will have to deliver 90 percent of their catch to a handful of processors.</p> <p>This rider has drawn protests. The Justice Department argues that it is anti-competitive and would not stand up to antitrust law. And Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have criticized Stevens for attaching a precedent-setting policy issue to an appropriations bill.</p> <p>Surely, better options &mdash; like a stranded capital buyout program or simply including processors in the allocation of IFQs &mdash; exist for compensating processors who were steered by flawed government policy to invest in redundant capacity. Let&#39;s save IFQs.</p> <p><em>Donald R. Leal is a senior associate of the Property and Environment Research Center</em></p> <p><em>Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation</em></p> 122372@ Tue, 30 Dec 2003 00:00:00 EST (Donald R. Leal) One Fish, Two Fish, You Fish, I Fish Fraser Forum ... 127774@ Tue, 01 Jul 2003 15:52:00 EDT (Michael De Alessi) Arrogant and Corrupt Long Beach Press Telegram <p>In the 30 years since its creation, the California Coastal Commission has played an important role in protecting the coast, limiting offshore oil and gas exploration, enforcing public access to ocean beaches, and restricting coastal development. But in the process it has been contentious, arbitrary, arrogant, corrupt, and often ignored property rights.</p> <p>The California Appeals Court recently declared the commission unconstitutional due to its exposure to political influence. As a cosmetic fix to the court&#39;s decision, Gov. Gray Davis signed a hurried bill creating four-year fixed terms for legislative appointees to the commission.</p> <p>That isn&#39;t a solution. Lawsuits will continue and more importantly, the commission is still in desperate need of a complete overhaul.</p> <p>A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the Coastal Commission described its demands for land in exchange for permits as an out-and-out plan of extortion. In 1992, former Commissioner Mark Nathanson was convicted for soliciting bribes in exchange for coastal building permits. And just last October, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gov. Davis&#39; re-election campaign received $8.3 million from donors with business before the Coastal Commission, most of whom got their permits approved shortly thereafter.</p> <p>The latest case against the commission arises over a marine environmentalist group&#39;s plan to create kelp beds on the sandy ocean bottom using durable, recycled materials. Rodolphe Streichenberger, a French researcher, developed the plan with the help of the late Wheeler North, a CalTech marine biologist who specialized in replenishing depleted kelp forests.</p> <p>Kelp forests are havens of biodiversity, great for countless species and a huge benefit to the overall health of our oceans. They are also in serious decline, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, especially in Southern California.</p> <p>Recognizing the vast environmental benefits of kelp forests, Newport Beach officials approved the Marine Forest reef project and the site was leased from the Department of Fish and Game. Despite Newport&#39;s enthusiasm, the Coastal Commission deemed the reef unpermitted development, and refused to issue a retroactive permit. Detractors claimed it was simply an excuse for ocean dumping but the marine life is there for all to see (although by mandate there is now no maintenance of the reef), and a simple dumping plan would hardly merit the designs of a Cal-Tech biologist.</p> <p>As with everything it does, the commission&#39;s problem with the Marine Forest project has more to do with jurisdiction and procedure than environmental effects. There are scientific, ecological questions that need to be asked, such as how reefs affect species composition, how durable the reefs are, and how they affect water quality, but these questions need to be asked in a less politically charged environment.</p> <p>Peter Douglas, the Coastal Commission&#39;s most prominent employee, recently wrote, &quot;The coast is never finally saved. It is always being saved.&quot;</p> <p>He is right, but only because conservation and politics remain inextricably intertwined. The Nature Conservancy learned this long ago, which is why it originally turned to private conservation and respect for property rights to improve environmental quality.</p> <p>Other states such as Alabama have experimented with privately built artificial reefs, and as a result, Alabama has seen a dramatic increase in offshore productivity. The Coastal Commission, on the other hand, has squashed any private innovators that have come its way.</p> <p>The first target of the newly created commission in the early 1970s was the Sea Ranch, a visionary private development in northern Sonoma complete with its own set of even by today&#39;s standards onerous building restrictions aimed at environmental sensitivity. By the time the commission was through with them, however, they could no longer afford those covenants and their vision was compromised.</p> <p>If Gov. Davis and the Legislature are serious about improving the Coastal Commission, all appointments should be made by the governor and be subject to review by the Legislature. Performance measures, such as coastal acreage developed and marine pollutants reduced, should be adopted so that the commission&#39;s mission is clear, and its predilection for granting favors to the well-connected limited.</p> <p>Above all, entrepreneurs should be encouraged rather than discouraged from finding innovative solutions to environmental problems. With a restructured Coastal Commission, the state would reap the numerous benefits of a patchwork of biodiversity kelp forests and other environmentally sensitive developments that would actually improve the current condition of our coast.</p> <p><em>Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation</em></p> 122552@ Sat, 05 Apr 2003 00:00:00 EST (Michael De Alessi)