AB 493

I just received an email about a bill before the California assembly. AB 493 may go to a vote today. The bill, sponsored by Ira Ruskin (D-Redwood City) would impose a fee or a rebate on new vehicles sold in California. A fee would apply to a vehicle that produces a lot of polluting emissions, and you would receive a rebate (based on a sliding scale) for cars that produce less. For instance, a Prius would get you a maximum rebate, while a Hummer would be slapped with a big fee.

The idea is right—having the market play a factor in cleaning the environment. However, in principle, I don't think that taxation (and yes, it's a tax when you impose a mandatory fee) is a good means to change behavior. Though, there should be some kind of penalty for excessive pollution. It's a tough issue.

This bill does not take into account that many who use trucks or large vehicles for work (e.g. yard crews, builders, etc.) would have to pay the penalty, nor does it address the fact that car companies are dragging their feet on lower emission vehicles (and probably, as a result, artificially inflating the cost of cars like the Prius). If a Prius cost as much as a two door coupe, then we'd see thousands of them on the road.

Oh Bother!

The Bear at Alert the Bear is good friends with Winnie the Pooh (old school Pooh, not the cheap imitation you see claiming to be PB today). First, Pooh is disenfranchised from the right to define his legacy by the good folks at Disney, and now he has to deal with missing honeybees due to Colony Collapse Disorder. The Bear is definitely on alert!

CCD has been covered by all of the major news organizations, but we, as consumers, don't seem to be alarmed. Supermarkets are still stocked with reasonably priced fruits. Bees are essential to the pollination of flowering vegetation. Nature supplies sufficient bee populations for this to occur without much trouble. Commercial agriculture, on the other hand, has been using commercial bee populations (that travel coast to coast, depending on the growing season) to pollinate. In fact, there are some producers that use pesticide to keep away native bees (e.g. seedless fruit products). I met a beekeeper, Erin Forbes of Overland Honey, this weekend, and she explained that among small beekeepers, they believe the problem to be, quite simply, tired and overworked bees. A story in today's LA Times somewhat agrees:

The only thing that all of the problem hives seem to have in common is that they were experiencing periods of "extraordinary stress" due to poor nutrition or drought.

If the hives are already weakened, factors that otherwise might not be fatal could have disastrous effects.

The good news in the article is that scientists and beekeepers don't seem to be as alarmed now as they have been in recent weeks. In fact, many commercial producers are reporting potentially record crops.

The apiaries are telling us to ask some questions. We need to think more about how we get food to our table. How is commercial growing affecting the environment? How are pesticides and stressed animal and insect populations going to change the way we grow and raise food? How different will the food on the table be in ten or twenty years?

If all of this is too much to handle, I suggest spending some time with our friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Santa Catalina Island Fire Uncontained

(Photo-LA Times)
I read recently in Sunset magazine that Catalina "is, in fact, a mountain, and would be the highest in California if three-fourths of it weren't beneath the sea." Through subduction, volcanic activity, and millions of years of metamorphism, this great island was formed. Nature works slowly, and we only see a mere glimpse of its record.

Los Angeles Times: Breaking News: "'Looks like a volcano'

Dozens of people watched the fire from the top of Signal Hill, 26 miles away. Even from that vantage point, the wall of flames on the islands were clearly seen.

'It looks like a volcano erupting,' said Kevin Lembke of Long Beach."

Catalina--There and Back Again

Last Friday, I wrote a post about my introduction to Catalina Island, a grand little island 26 or so miles off the coast of Los Angeles. I had planned on writing about the island's history today, but I was a bit overwhelmed by the vast amount of information I came across. Basically, a blog post can't do justice to even a brief overview. So here's a casual look at Catalina history, and some links to further reading.

A grade school classmate's mom worked at the Phineas Banning historical residence in Wilmington, CA, so we took a field trip to the house. How does Wilmington connect to Catalina? Well, Banning established the commercial Port of Los Angeles. The wealth that followed enabled his sons to buy the island (yes, dude, they bought it all) in 1891. They weren't the first to own or inhabit the island, nor the last. They bought the island from a gent named James Lick, a California real estate mogul who had the good sense to invest in land before there was even a sense of worth about California property. There were developers at Catalina before Lick, and there were pirates, Portuguese explorers, and Indians on the island before them. (One account mentioned the Tonva tribe at Catalina. This tribe is also known to have inhabited land down the street from the place I grew up.)

Most people who travel to the island learn quickly that the Wrigley family (of chewing gum fame) bought Catalina from the Bannings in 1919. Their development and push to create tourism on the island is quite visible today (including the beautiful art deco Casino, where, alas, there is no gambling). The Wrigleys also owned the Chicago Cubs, and they brought the club out to the island for spring training occasionally in the 40s and 50s. The island grew as a popular destination until WWII when the military annexed the island. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the military was concerned about an attack on Los Angeles, and they saw fit to make Catalina an outpost and watch point. (The summer camp I attended and mentioned in the previous post used Navy land and materials. I swear my tent was used by WWII sailors, and it smelt like it had lived through a lot.)

Movie crews, tourists, full-time residents, bison and wild pigs followed. The island is sparsely populated, mostly due to the conservancy established by the Wrigley family. Next week I'll tell you how to get your family and your own smelly tent to the island for a little adventure.

Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me

I first traveled to Catalina Island (a small island located about 22 miles off the coast of California Google Map) as a Boy Scout in the early 1980s (back when it wasn't problematic to be a Scout). The Los Angeles Scouts had a summer camp at Emerald Bay. To us, as suburban kids, it was a natural landscape we were unaccustomed to, a paradise. The water was cold, but clear. Could this be the same Pacific waters? No sludge? No bacteria? I remember my first hours there in camp. Myself and a few others from Troop 961 hiked over a ridge at the edge of our campground, and we were surprised to be met by a herd of bison! Our encounter with nature was more than we bargained for. We were kept awake all night by packs of wild boar who roamed camp in search of candy, toothpaste, anything sweet. Woe to the kid who neglected to eat all of his Skittles or put his shampoo up in a tree and out of snout range.

These two species were not native to the island. The fact is that the beasts were brought over to the island for a film production and (according to rumor) left due to a shortage of funds to pay for their return. On a recent trip, I learned that the boar had been all but eliminated from the island (they were a threat to the ecosystem), but the bison still thrive. The Catalina Island Conservancy devised a plan to export a portion of the bison herd to repopulate Plain State Indian reservations.

My introduction to the island was important, not only because it was a fun place to go (being a pre-litigious era, we were allowed to go jump off of a 30+ foot cliff into the sea). It was a way to connect to California history, to wonder at a marvel close to home but never dreamed of, and to experience nature in an elemental way that was not easy for a kid of my background and setting.

For the next few Fridays, I'll tell you a little more about Catalina Island, its history, my connection to it, and how you can plan a trip. For now, I'll leave you with a link to the hit song, "26 Miles (Santa Catalina)" (iTunes) by the Four Preps.

The Control of Nature

My plan was to work on a post last night and finish it in the morning. Instead, I spent the night battling nature. Our basement leaks like a sieve. We have a champion sump pump (that my father-in-law thankfully installed) but that machine is not enough to stop the seeping water. Thus, I was armed with a shop vac, and cursed my way through moving basement water-soaked miscellanea.

This effort brought to mind the way in which we build homes and cities with little regard as to how nature can and will intrude. There is much written about this, but I have not come across a better author than John McPhee. The most powerful of his books on this subject is The Control of Nature. Here is how his website describes the book:

"In Louisiana, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has declared war on the lower Mississippi River, which threatens to follow a new route to the sea and cut off New Orleans and Baton Rouge from the rest of the United States. Icelanders confront flowing red lava in an attempt to save a crucial harbor. In Los Angeles, basins are built to catch devastating debris flows from the San Gabriel Mountains.

Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking is his depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those attempting to wrest control from her stubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters."

The phrase "contested territories" says it all. We're in a contest with nature, and we're certainly the underdog. Reading McPhee, one realizes that we're at the mercy of bad planning and aggressive engineers, more so than the environment. Where is your house built? What dangers await?