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WOW! Time flies! Nearly two years already ecoworld.com has been on the internet calling for global reforestation! We can only personally confirm however a net increase of around a thousand trees, so we´ve still got 79 billion, 999 million, 999 thousand trees to go. No problem, we are ready.

HOW TO GROW TREES
In “Propagating Evergreen Ash,” the world can learn how to construct inexpensive humidors to replant the earth for pennies on the pounds. In “Flagships of the Forest,” instructions are provided on how to create a shadehouse to protect certain tree seedlings. In “Solar Climatrons,” the prospective design is put forward for solar powered ecosystems in the form of massive kilometer-plus sized pressure vessels where entire forests could exist on earth or in floating platforms in outer space or on the surfaces of extraterrestrial planets, satellites and asteroids.

NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN HARMONY
Since the mission of ecoworld.com is not only to reforest the earth, but also to colonize the solar system, in “A New Age of Exploration,” the economic benefits of space colonization are discussed in enthusiastic detail. In “Business Opportunities in Space,” Dr. Willam Turner speculates on the benefits of intersteller commerce with alien species in a truly visionary piece. In A Conversation with the Sun,” the Gaia of space colonization and also the linkage of nature and technology are exposited in vivid terms.

FEWER LAWS & REGULATIONS
Governments can have vested interests in seeing environmental problems persist, not disappear. “EcoCrime = Hard Time,” “Don´t Shut Down America,” “Compensation for Takings” and “The Property Rights Rebellion” by Nancy Marzulla provide abundant evidence of the excess and infringement and counterproductivity of governments that get too involved in protecting the environment. Keep an eye on the eco-hysteria mongers with “Hot Air in Berlin,” where author Kent Jeffries explores with hilarity the garbage-in-garbage-out of most global warming theories.

LIBERTARIAN SOLUTIONS
Free markets and free trade save environments just as much as government regulations, usually they prove more effective. See Bruce Yandle´s “Why Land Rights Matter,” Jane Shaw´s “Beware of Eco-Socialism,” Terry Anderson´s “Reinventing Environmentalism” or Grover Norquist´s “The New Majority,” to get primed on the phenomenon of “free market environmentalism” and a compendium of free market approaches to various environmental issues: wildlife preservation, resource use, water and air quality management, waste management, and more.

Planting 80 billion more giant canopy trees will get us back up to the original total 20 million square miles of worldwide forests. To do this desertified regions need to be reforested. Like the Rishi Valley in India, which had become deforested scrub land, and now is a macro-organic garden with over 150 species of returned migratory birds. The inhabitants of the Rishi Valley planted “anchor species” of trees, cooling and moisturizing the earth, so that topsoil can be rebuilt, one cubic meter at a time. They built “contour bands” to channel runoff into percolation tanks that raised the water level from 40 feet back up to 10 feet.

Two thousand miles to the northwest, in central asia, the Aral Sea is dying. This lake, once the 4th largest on earth, is on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is watered by their respective rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya. In the 1950´s the Kara Kum canal was opened, draining these rivers for large scale cotton irrigation. The lake is less than half the size it was, and it is no longer a viable fishery. Dust storms off the former sea bottom innundate the lands for tens of thousands of square miles. It is among the worst environmental catastrophes in history.

The solution is not so hard to figure out. Getting the area to bloom with value creating and earth enhancing (instead of depleting) plants will get the economy booming. A positive feedback loop of earth restoration and prosperity is created. Look to the example of the Rishi. Reduce the flow of
the Kara Kum canal and establish timber plantations and organic farms that will have lower water consumption rates. At the estuary leading into the Aral Sea divert the increased fresh water flows into acquaculture farms. Displaced cotton workers will work for the new fishery industry, or on the farms and timber plantations.

Originally 50 cubic kilometers per year went into the Aral Sea. Now at least 30 cubic kilometers per year are still being diverted for cotton irrigation. Concrete lining on the canals would save water. A good cash flow of this sort of enterprise should show vastly increased regional wealth. Timber is a good cash crop, food crops and fish sustain a growing Central Asian population.

From the north a big pipe and ditch from the Volga would be a good joint venture for Russians and Kazakhs. Five or ten cubic kilometers or more from the much larger Volga would also expand the Aral Sea. Divert the Ob south, for that matter. Is it worth it?

Where else to plant these 80 billion trees, if not on reclaimed desert, or hyper-salinated farmland? Where else but in these new wastelands of the dark side of our ingenuity? Five million square miles is a lot of territory, folks. Where else are the new deserts to plant, around Lake Chad perhaps, or anywhere in Mato Grosso? Making the world a garden of food, fish and timber where there once was a Sahel on the move, or a Kalihari, or the sands of the Aral Depression. Yes.

The Rishi Valley is in southern India, and is a profound example of how an ecosystem that is ravaged by human exploitation can be restored when land use habits are modified. Restoration efforts in Rishi were begun through the volunteer efforts of a Mr. Sri Naidu, a native of the valley. After losing one of his sons in a swimming accident, Mr. Naidu began to teach farming methods in the Rishi Valley, which had become completely deforested.

The Rishi Educational System

The Rishi school system modified its curriculum to bring ecologically centered courses to the students. The student work emphasizes group and individual projects. The central themes of everything the students learn are local and accountable and highly tangible. All of the projects are geared towards one thing, the ecological health of the Rishi Valley. Efforts towards this goal are economically beneficial, making the schools almost completely self supporting.

Instead of learning the nuances of the caste system, students in the Rishi Valley learn about real things described by the teacher using a box of 500 illustrated project cards. When a student has completed them all, the student has completed elementary school. Students at all the grade levels work on the same set of projects, usually oriented towards the school´ flower, fruit or vegetable gardens.

Each school offers adult education courses at night, and again, these activities are contributing to the self supporting nature of the school, since the classes are in the all encompassing realm of farming, ecosystem management, forestry, soil science, water engineering,
construction, and so on.

Students make their own activity files, which track the projects they are completing. Their involvement in farming projects causes them to learn to read, to design, to rationally compare, they learn to manipulate categories and subcategories to a practical end, they learn statistical methods, they develop objectivity. They receive an excellent education, one that will make them prosperous farmers, and will make the land bloom.

When building their new schools in the Rishi Valley Mr. Naidu´ ecology school founders built on the worst land, reducing costs further, confident again in their curriculum to be the creator of value. Instead of learning about castes, the students maintain charts on plant growth. Their academic work is effective and inspiring, because each student can see the value of what they are doing. Imagine that, we can save the forests, rivers and farms at the same time as we teach our children. Students can build self-esteem because everyone has shared in the accomplishment of a great common purpose, putting farms and forests where only desert had been. As the students grow up learning how to cooperate with others towards common goals, they also receive an excellent general education that includes farming and other trades, math, reading, writing, money management and abstract thinking.

The Rishi Farming Methods

Fast growing plants that will create a lot of biomass and a solid root system are the first step towards recovery of desertified and salinated soil. In the Rishi the villagers chose the Custard Apple, which in addition to the virtues of being hardy and fast growing, contributes a food crop.

Water catchments were constructed using local material, mostly soil and stone. Building water diversion berms along the elevation contours has allowed excess runoff to be channeled into percolation tanks. The water table in the Rishi Valley was brought up from 40 feet down to only 10 feet down. This allowed well irrigation instead of massive ditch irrigation which wastes water and creates salinity.

Low tech solutions use inexpensive or waste materials. For example, the drip irrigation system that Mr. Naidu invented consists of filing a large food tin with water and blocking the small holes in the bottom sides with cotton so the water will drip out. A few of these around the first trees allows watering through the summer and drought seasons, especially when the trees are first getting established.

The best fertilizer is organic. “Neem Cakes” are popular among Rishi’s farmers. They are a decomposed pile of leaves from the Neem tree. Much of the new soil in the Rishi Valley comes from the silt that must be regularly scooped out of the percolation tanks. Everything, of course, is composted. Desertified soil is first anchored with trees either as patches of forest or as windbreaks, then farms and gardens are established. The process of restoration is self-accelerating, because each element of remediation, the water table, the quantity of biomass, the condition of the soil, creates more of a resource base to recover larger and larger areas that were lost.

The Rishi method is to restore and even intensify what was originally in place; a verdant forest harboring rare birds and yielding timber, a commercially competitive organic farm using lush natural soil, and a human population who stewards this abundance in a way that fosters their own aesthetic sense as well as nurtures their prosperity. What better way to build self-esteem and reward initiative?

ecoworld.com

Issue #6

Summer 1996

A speech by Grover Norquist, President of “Americans for Tax Reform”

Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly Journal of Hillsdale College.”

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall opened for the first time.

That crack widened until the wall fell and the entire Soviet empire was overthrown within three years.

Five years later, almost to the day, we awoke to the news of another revolutionary change. On November 8, 1994, the American people went to the polls and for the first time in 40 years elected a Republican majority in the House and Senate.

House Republicans campaigning on the promise of a 10-point “Contract with America” to reduce the size, scope, and power of the federal government elected 73 new Republicans and gained a net 52 House seats. Senate Republicans gained eight additional seats. Then five Democrat House members and two Democrat senators switched parties and gave the Republicans a 235-200 majority in the House and a 54-46 majority in the Senate.

The capture of Congress by those committed to reversing sixty years of growth and centralization of the national government was just the tip of a larger iceberg. The Republican Party gained 11 new governorships. Now, with the addition of the Louisiana governorship won in November 1995 by Mike Foster, Republicans claim 31 of 50 governors nationwide. Seventy-two percent of Americans live in states with Republican governors. In addition, Republicans won a net gain of 480 state legislative seats and literally thousands of local offices. After the November 1994 election, more than 200 elected officials switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Real power changed hands.

Before the November 1994 election there were 17 states where the Democrats controlled the governorship and both houses of the state legislature. In those states all labor laws, taxes, regulations, all election laws, and all campaign finance laws were controlled by one party. The Republican Party had such complete control in only three states: Utah, Arizona, and New Jersey. (In 1993, New Jersey was won in the wake of an anti-tax revolt that swept former governor Jim Florio from office.)

In the wake of the 1994 election, the Democrats now control the executive and legislative branches in only seven states: Hawaii, Georgia, and the states on the rim of the old Confederacy-Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland. Republicans hold the governorship and both houses of the legislature in 15 states, including such large population centers as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

The depth and breadth of the 1994 election changes demonstrate that the Republican Party is now the natural governing majority party in the United States. The old majority, the Democrat coalition – crafted by Franklin Roosevelt and comprised of Southerners, northern immigrants, union members, big city political machines, and leftist intellectuals – is no longer the force it once was.

WHO BELONGS?

The old Republican coalition of northerners, big business, farmers, and professionals has given way to a modern Republican coalition of individuals and groups who share a common political goal: They all want to be left alone by the government.

This “Leave Us Alone” coalition is made up of taxpayers who oppose higher taxes and farmers and property owners who don’t want the federal government making their property useless by declaring it a wetland or endangered species habitat or by inventing some other regulation. The coalition also includes Westerners who resent being treated as a colony and having their water and land rationed by eastern bureaucrats. The 17 million small businessmen and women who fear taxes and regulation, the self-employed attacked by regulations and labor laws written for General Motors in the 1940′s, and gun owners who do not want their guns stolen have joined as well. And the “Leave Us Alone” coalition provides a haven for the one million parents who educate their children at home and the 12 percent of parents who send their children to private schools.

During the Cold War, Americans who were rightly concerned about the threat of Soviet imperialism were a strong part of the “Leave Us Alone” coalition. They wanted to be left alone from foreign aggression. Today, Americans with the same concern about predatory criminals are also part of the coalition. They know that the Left’ s response to the Soviet Union – that it wasn’t hostile, that it wasn’t a real threat, and that it behaved badly only because we mistreated it – is also the Left’ s response to crime and criminals. they also know that the Left’ s solution to crime, which is gun control, mirrors its belief that unilateral arms control was the proper response to the Red Army.

And the pro-family, traditional values conservatives are an important part of the “Leave Us Alone” coalition. The so-called “Religious Right” did not organize in the wake of the Supreme Court decision banning school prayer, or even after Roe v. Wade. The development of a national grassroots conservative activism grew out of a self-defensive response to threats from the Carter administration to regulate Christian radio stations and to remove the tax-exempt status of Christian private schools.

In political terms, the pro-family movement can best be understood as a parent’s rights movement. Its members fight against government interference and spending (financed by their own tax dollars) that insults and attacks their values and their faith. Pro-family leaders fight for school choice and the right of parents to direct the education of their own children. They have led the fight to win a $500-per-child tax credit so that parents can have the resources to take care of their own families rather than have their income laundered through Washington and returned in the form of day care centers, educational bureaucracy, and social engineering.

The good news for conservatives is that every part of this coalition is growing – in numbers and political sophistication. While the National Rifle Association has three million members and the Christian Coalition has one million members, when polled, fully 20 percent of Americans believe they are members of the NRA and 19 percent of Americans identify themselves as members of the Christian Coalition. More than 600,000 businesses are members of the National Federation of Independent Business, and every year more Americans strike out on their own in the marketplace.

Also important for the future is the fact that the “Leave Us Alone” coalition is built around a single political principle consistent with American history and tradition – that government should be limited and the people free. As such, it is a “low maintenance” coalition. Conservative leaders can meet in a room, and the taxpayers can agree not to throw condoms at the children of Christians and orthodox Jews, the gun owners can agree not to raise everyone else’s taxes, the Christians can agree not to steal anyone’s guns, and they can all agree not to take anyone’s property. Everyone in the coalition can agree to keep out of the pockets and faces of everyone else. United, they can turn to do battle with the Left. In America, unlike Europe, traditionalists and supporters of limited government are allies, since America’s political tradition is one of ingrained distrust for centralized authority.

THE “TAKINGS” COALITION

The left as embodied in the Democratic Party is a “Takings” coalition made up of groups that want the government to take things – usually money – from other Americans and give it to them: This coalition includes government workers, unions, government contractors, corrupt big city machines, federal grant recipients, left-wing intellectuals, and both wings of the dependency lobby (those locked into welfare dependency and those who earn a handsome living managing that deliberately never-ending dependency). A recent addition has been the new paymasters of the “Takings” coalition, trial lawyers.

Within these economically self-interested groups are the radical utopians who wish to use the power of the state to restructure society. They include the radical leaders of the feminist, homosexual, environmentalist, and animal rights movements. (And don´ t forget the anti-military pacifists, who would now have us surrender our sovereignty to the United Nations instead of the Soviet Union.)

The bad news for the “Takings” coalition is that each of its parts is shrinking and what remains is fractured and divided. Labor union bosses are having trouble forcing a younger, more independent workforce into the harness of paying union dues. In state after state, citizens are pushing trial lawyers litigious hands out of their pockets. Reduced federal spending, resulting from the Republicans Party’s drive for a balanced budget, is forcing cutbacks in patronage hiring by corrupt big city machines. State by state, Republican governors are passing welfare reforms that require work, limit dependency, and displace parasitic social workers. And the radical utopians with their plans to remake society are finding that the new Congress is cutting back and threatening to ban the use of tax dollars for political advocacy.

When Bill Clinton was elected with 43 percent of the vote in November 1992, he knew that the “Takings” coalition that he led was no longer the governing majority. Just look at the numbers for Democrats in the last 30 years. In 1968, the liberal candidate for president received 42 percent of the popular vote, and 38 percent in 1972. In 1976, the Democrats promoted a more popular candidate who was a Southern Baptist, a naval officer, and an anti-Washington populist. The candidate was Jimmy Carter, but after he became president, he governed as a liberal and dropped to 41 percent in 1980. Walter Mondale won 41 percent of the vote in 1984 after promising to raise taxes, and Mike Dukakis won with the liberal high watermark of 46 percent in 1988.

President Clinton therefore, knew that he would have to spend all of this first term accomplishing two tasks: dividing the center-right “Leave Us Alone” coalition and increasing the number of Americans dependent on government who would become permanent fixtures in the “Takings” coalition. His drive for a government takeover of health care – fully 15 percent of the nation’s economy – thus has had nothing to do with health insurance and everything to do with power politics.

Clinton has tried to turn the United States into a social democracy where the government is in control of not only our health care but our education, our retirement, and 40 percent of our jobs. He knows that socialized medicine is the key to controlling other aspects of our lives. If it were introduced in America, it would be here to stay.

The “Takings” coalition almost won on health care in 1994. Moderate Republicans expected to “make a deal” that would allow a gradual expansion of state power in health care if the President approached them. But Clinton never did. His hubris saved us from nationalized health care.

Having failed to turn America permanently down the path of social democracy, Clinton has hoped to divide the “Leave Us Alone” coalition by attacking social conservatives as those who would impose their morality on others. This effort has also failed. Home schoolers do not wish to force other parents to home school. Gun owners do not insist that others buy guns, or that hunting be promoted as an alternative lifestyle. It is not the National Rifle Association out lobbying to have government schools read books entitled “Heather Has Two Hunters” to preschoolers.

It is, in fact, the Left that now strives to use state power to impose its morality by forcing all taxpayers to pay for abortions and public “art” that mocks people of faith. It is the Left that forces parents to pay for government schools where they do not wish to send their children.

FOUR STEPS TOWARD FREEDOM

The “Leave Us Alone” coalition has now consciously embarked on a four-part strategy to defeat the Washington establishment and the old Democratic majority. It is the same strategy that successfully broke the back of the Soviet empire.

The first step is containment. During the Cold War, Ronald Reagan made the promise of containment a reality. The Soviet Union ceased to expand and was challenged at its outermost colonies in Angola, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Cambodia. Containment in the struggle against Washington translates into the commitment to oppose any and all tax increases. Today, 206 representatives and 32 senators have taken the Taxpayer Protection Pledge against raising taxes. Denied additional tax revenues, the members of the “Takings” coalition have begun to turn against each other. Like gangs of muggers finding the streets empty of tourists, they begin to look at each other as funding sources.

The second step is ending the Left’s sense of inevitability. The communists really did believe that their victory was historically and scientifically inevitable. Many anti-communists also believed this. When Whittaker Chambers left the Communist Party and became a conservative, he commented that he believed he was joining the “losing side of history.” In the 1950s, William F. Buckley said that the job of conservatives was to stand athwart History and yell, “Stop.” Imagine how difficult it was to recruit people to a movement where they were required to stand on the train tracks and be run down by “History.” It might have been the virtuous position, but it was a tough sell.

Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich have promoted an optimistic and forward-looking conservatism. Reagan told the communists they would be swept into the ashbin of history. During the 1980s, the idea of an inevitable Soviet victory faded. What became inevitable was the breakup of the empire. Today, devolution of power to the states, a private Social Security system, school choice, and welfare reform are viewed as inevitable.

The third step is seizing the moral high ground. Communists used to argue that they would do great things for humanity. Yes, there always seemed to be a great deal of blood on the floor and walls, but these sacrifices, these “broken eggs,” would one day make a glorious omelet. Eventually, however, even once enthusiastic proponents of communism lost their faith that all the blood would result in progress. At the end, the border guards in East Berlin did not believe strongly enough to pull the trigger.

Today, in Washington, DC., no one believes in the moral superiority of statism. Even liberal politicians know that welfare does not help the poor. They know that every day the welfare state destroys the futures and even the lives of individuals. But they claim that they are powerless to stop the monster they have created. The dependency managers of the welfare state dominate their political conventions and the mindless destruction goes on just as the Soviet Union went on, without believers at the helm. Conservatives know and can articulate that their opposition to welfare spending is not base just on concerns about wasted money but on a principled opposition to the welfare state’s destruction of lives. The “Leave Us Alone” coalition has the moral high ground, and the Left knows it.

The fourth step is defunding the opposition. Reagan cut off loans and strategic trade with a Soviet Empire unable to create wealth and technological progress. Conservatives are beginning to cut off the flow of taxpayer funds and coerced labor union dues to the Left. When Republicans succeeded in cutting the Legal Services Corporation (a government agency that funds left-wing lawyers) by as little as $100 million, it was the equivalent of the Left burning down five Heritage Foundations in terms of denying resources to the other side.

In fact, every $1 billion cut from the budget ends the funding for 20,000 government workers receiving an average pay and benefits package of $50,000. Should the Republicans succeed in reducing government spending by $200 billion a year from projected trends, in 2002, some four million Americans who would have been dependent on government spending, loans, or jobs will be in the private sector. As the Marxists say, these four million who would have been “objectively” have become members of the “Takings” coalition will now become members of the “Leave Us Alone” coalition.

Defunding the Washington establishment is defunding the Left and cutting off its supply lines. This is especially important since more than 75 percent of the American Left lives off our tax dollars.

FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH

Let me close with an anecdote from a reunion meeting of my liberal college newspaper that took place in 1991. A now prominent liberal writer came up to me and said, “Grover, you conservatives must be so unhappy now that Bush has betrayed you on taxes.”

“Nick,” I replied, “for 40 years American conservatives had to fight a two-front war against Soviet Imperialism abroad all the while domestic statists were knawing at our legs. Today, thanks to the leadership of Ronald Reagan and the sacrifice of millions of American servicemen from Korea to Vietnam to Europe, the Soviet Union is broken into 15 pieces. It no longer exists. So now we can turn all our attention and energy to crushing you.”

He was taken aback, but I added two thoughts, “and Nick, the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons. You don’t. And with the Soviets, it was simply business. With you it’s personal.”

Freedom is on the march around the globe. There is a great deal of work to be done, but the imperial city of Washington will fall to the forces of freedom just as Moscow did. It is as hollow, as brittle, and as bereft of self-confidence. The “Leave Us Alone” coalition is growing, and it is fighting on the winning side of history.

Issue #6

Summer 1996

In 1990, the economist Robert Heilbroner expressed genuine surprise at the collapse of socialism.

Writing in The New Yorker, he recalled that in the debates over central planning in the 1930′s and 1940′s, socialism seemed to have won. A half century later he realized that he had been wrong.

Since Heilbroner has leaned toward socialism for most of his career, he deserves credit for admitting that he was so mistaken. Yet by the end of his revealing essay, Heilbroner was suggesting that perhaps socialism wasn’t dead, after all. He proposed “another way” of looking at, or for, socialism. He suggested that we think of socialism “not in terms of the specific improvements we would like it to embody but as the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with the one transcendent challenge that faces it within a thinkable time span.” That challenge, says Heilbroner, is “the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment.”

Heilbroner’s characterization of environmental problems is as misinformed as his half century of wishful thinking about socialism. But this should not be surprising. Environmental issues frequently overwhelm intelligent thought and factual analysis.

For the past thirty years, the United States (and much of the developed world) has experienced the results of this basic misunderstanding, the view that economic growth poses and “ecological burden.” The nation has acted upon the premise that more production leads to more smokestacks puffing out more pollutants and more sewage pipes sending more heavy metals and other wastes into our streams, and that only government regulation can stop the process. This assumption has led to extensive federal intervention in normal activities, from manufacturing to logging and, ultimately, to absurd results.

The federal government defines a “wetland” in such a way that it doesn’t have to be wet, as long as it has vegetation typical of wetlands. It regulates wetlands on the basis of the Clean Water Act, which does not mention the word wetland (the relevant provision was originally designed to prevent pollution into “navigable waters.” People have gone to jail for dumping a few loads of dirt on such “wetlands.”

The Endangered Species Act has been interpreted so severely that people are now deliberately modifying the habitat of their land so that endangered species will not settle on it. Without the act they would have been pleased to have a bald eagle or red-cockaded woodpecker take roost.

The government of Anchorage, Alaska, is adding 5,000 pounds of fish waste per day into its sewage water. Environmental Protection Agency regulations require that 30 percent of the organic material in sewage reaches the ocean, but in Anchorage, the sewage doesn’t have enough organic material. It must be added and then 30 percent must be removed.

Strict controls on grazing practices have prevented the adoption of innovative range management. On private land, the Deseret Ranch in Utah, for example, stocks hundreds of cattle, while the Bureau of Land Management, which manages public land on the other side of the fence, can barely allow thirty animals on similar acreage.

The EPA contends that a mobile home park in Aspen, Colorado, is built on an extremely dangerous mine waste site, and that residents face harm from lead poisoning, even though those who have lived there for years have blood levels below the national average. The EPA has made the park a Superfund site, and insists on a costly and disruptive cleanup. Other small mining towns similarly face a belligerent EPA.

How This Situation Arose

After World War II, as incomes rose, people’s attitudes toward the environment around them changed. “Postwar affluence had produced a generation reared in relative comfort, one now in search of ‘postmaterial’ values long deferred by their elders,” writes Christopher Bosso, attempting to explain the rise of environmentalism in the 1060′s.

Against the backdrop of growing wealth and leisure, the 1962 publication of Silent Sprint, an eloquent book by Rachel Carlson, dropped like a bombshell. It aroused fears that the natural world was being damaged, perhaps destroyed, by human technology. In 1972 another book, The Limits to Growth, raised fears of famine, overpopulation, and resource depletion. The authors predicted that “the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years.” When energy prices skyrocketed after the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, the book’s predictions looked credible.

And, indeed, there were environmental problems. In many cities the air was dirty, and rivers were polluted and full of debris. The Cuyahoga River is said to have actually caught fire in 1969. The event became a symbol of the severity of pollution and galvanized many people to do something about it.

This determination to do something came at a time when Americans were looking to the federal government to solve just about any problem. The nation had just embarked on the War on Poverty, and the Apollo program to land a man on the moon was nearing its objective.

State and local governments, which had taken on some responsibility for environmental regulation, weren’t always aggressive in tightening environmental regulations, since they knew that residents did not necessarily want the goal of cleaner air and streams to override all other goals. But environmental activists considered these attitudes parochial, unenlightened, and political. They sought more control at the federal level, and they got it. Pollution control went off in a “bold new direction,” says textbook author Thomas Tietenberg, with a “massive attempt to control the injection of substances into our air.” That federal attempt is still going on.

The nationalization of pollution control did not eliminate environmentalist politics, of course, but changed its location. Today, local and state governments find themselves in battles with the Environmental Protection Agency as it threatens to cut off funds if they don´ t meet the EPA’s standards. And congressmen from one state pit themselves against those of other states, with the industrialized “Rustbelt” states in the Northeast and Midwest voting to impose heavier controls on new plants built in “pristine” areas such as the growing “Sunbelt.”

A Basic Misunderstanding

All this has happened because most people don’t know that economic growth and environmental protection are closely and positively linked. Economists are well aware of this. A study by Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger of Princeton University suggests that at low levels of income, economic growth puts initial stress on the environment, but after a certain level of wealth is reached the environment begins to improve. They indicated, for example, air pollution begins to decline when per capita income reaches between $4,000 and $5,000 (in 1985 dollars).

Another indication of this link is the affluence of environmentalists. For example, members of environmental organizations tend to be among the more affluent Americans. A typical reader of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, earns twice the average American income.

In other words, as people become more affluent, they become more interested in protecting environmental amenities. That doesn’t in itself eliminate pollution, which will continue as long as the air and water are, to some extent, “free goods.” But in a system based on private property rights, several factors encourage people to limit pollution.

One factor is the common law, specifically the legal doctrines of public and private nuisance, trespass, wrongful bodily invasion, and riparian law. Although court suits are used less now, in the past when pollution was severe and when it affected a few people disproportionately (not the community as a whole), courts would provide protection, either through damages or injunctions against further pollution. People have a right against invasion of themselves or their property by harmful pollutants. This protection has never been perfect, but it has prevented or ended severe pollution.

Second, over the long run, the profit motive encourages owners to reduce pollution. Over the short term, they may be able to lower costs by letting waste out the smokestack, but that waste costs them money. Particulates in the air often are unburned fuel; by using that fuel rather than letting it go up the smokestack, companies can save money. Similarly, companies can save money by saving expensive chemicals or metals rather than losing them in the waste stream. So there is an inexorable tendency to reduce pollution.

These two reasons explain why the air in the United States was getting cleaner faster during the 1960s then in the 1970s, when the Clean Air Act was passed. And private property rights also encourage efficient use of raw materials.

In 1965, the production of 1,000 metal beverage cans required 164 pounds of metal (mostly steel). By 1990, this required only 35 pounds (mostly aluminum). And the trend is toward ever lighter cans for the simple reason that it is possible to save millions of dollars. Reducing the aluminum can’s metal by 1 percent will save about $20 million a year. The profit motive spurs both innovation and cost savings.

Another illustration of this trend toward efficiency is Mikhail Bernstam´ s comparison of resource use in socialist and market economies. He found that the market-based economies used about on-third the amount of energy and steel, per unit of output, that the socialist countries used.

Partly due to the growth of incomes and the growing awareness of the environment, private conservation has been a hallmark of American society for more than 100 years. Late in the nineteenth century, for example, the National Audubon Society created a system of bird refuges around the country; early in the twentieth, the Sempervirens Club began saving California Redwoods, in large part through private donations. In the 1930′s, activist Rosalie Edge and a small group of friends bought a few hundred acres to create the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in eastern Pennsylvania, to stop the slaughter of birds of prey. But this rich vein of history, of which these examples are mere nuggets, is little known.

The Situation Today; Hopeful or Disturbing?

In the late 1980′s, Ocie Mills began to build a home for his son near Santa Rosa County, Florida. He poured clean fill dirt on the property. Although he had the approval of state officials, he had failed to obtain a permit from the federal government for filling a wetland. Mills and his son each served a 21-month prison sentence for failing to obtain a permit.

Criminals to some, they were to others victims of regulatory excess. And gradually, individuals such as the Mills were joined by hundreds, and then thousands, of people who had felt the encroachment of the federal government. These people formed grassroots groups around the country and became the nucleus of the modern property rights movement, a movement that has been called a revolution. The anger of these people who felt their rights had been trampled helped bring sweeping changes to Congress in the 1994 election.

The 1994 election was greeted by jubilant expressions of hope for a rollback of major regulations, repeal of some laws, and a general recognition that less government is better. And the new House of Representatives started out with substantial plans for regulatory reform. But these quickly fizzled. The reason is the same one that bothered Robert Heilbroner – the feeling that economic growth and environmental protection are incompatible without the strong arm of federal regulation. Environmental activists found that they could build on this idea and frighten people into thinking that the 1994 election had unleashed a destructive monster.

Unfortunately, the strong positive role of the private sector in protecting the environment is mostly unknown to Congress. Even Newt Gingrich, House Speaker and proponent of less government, appears to be completely unfamiliar with free-market environmentalism. The “moderate” Republicans, terrified at losing the moral high ground by being viewed as anti-environmental, have stopped the reform movement.

What is needed is a better understanding of environmental protection, and particularly its connection with economic growth and the institutions that promote economic growth. This educational process will take time, but the evidence is there to achieve that understanding. To borrow Heilbroner’s words, that is our “transcendent challenge.”

ecoworld.com

Issue #6

Summer 1996

(image: Tim Cantor)

THE EVERGREEN ASH

CUSTOMIZED HUMIDORS

HOW MANY TREES ARE NEEDED TO DOUBLE GLOBAL TIMBER MASS

EVERGREEN ASH WILL BE HAPPY…

if you live anywhere in the world where temperature doesn’t freeze at night more than a week or two per year. A magnificant Ash tree, that grows rapidly to over 100 feet in height, with a diameter of 50-60 feet. The beautiful vase like crown is similar to that of the mighty Elm, but unlike the Elm, the Evergreen Ash (Fraxinus Uhdei) is not excessively vulnerable to disease or blight, and the Evergreen Ash, like its name suggests, does not lose its leaves in winter.

This tree is one of the easiest trees in the world to grow from seeds, as you will see. You can acquire the seeds from most any tree seed supplier, the one we used was:

Carter Seed Company

475 Mar Vista Drive

Vista, CA 92083

phone 619-724-5931 fax 619-724-8832

These seeds are collected fresh each April, and can be germinated without being soaked or softened in moist sand in a cool dark place (the way you prepare Pine seeds, for example, for germination).

All you need in order to propagate Evergreen Ash seeds, which are about one inch long, perhaps 1/8 inch wide, and 1/16 inch thick (thicker at one end), is a humidor. These are sold in most garden sections of large hardware stores, such as “Home Depot,” or “Orchard Supply,” you get the idea.

WHAT IS A HUMIDOR?

A humidor is any container that is nearly airtight. Using a humidor allows your seeds to stay moist without setting up complicated climate control systems involving mist emitters activated by humidity sensors. For around US $5.00, a humidor the size of a standard planting flat can be purchased. They are typically two square feet in size, with an opaque bottom section where you can put about a 1.5 inch deep layer of planting mix, and a transparent top section which fits snugly on the top rim of the lower half.

HOW TO GERMINATE EVERGREEN ASH

Before describing a custom humidor (and the advantages thereof), here is the way to germinate fresh evergreen ash seeds. Note that this method will work with many freshly gathered tree seeds. Mix up a planting media comprised of 50% peat moss and 50% sand. Some people use 33% peat moss, 33% sand, and 33% potting soil. Others use 25% peat moss, 25% sand, 25% potting soil, and 25% vermiculite. I’ve tried them all, and they all work. The professionals stick to the 50% peat moss, 50% sand mixture. It helps if you screen through a 1/4″ sifting box all the big chunks out of your peat moss and potting soil.

Once you have mixed your soil, get it moist but not soaking, then spread it into the bottom section of the humidor 1.25″ deep. The soil should be firm but not compacted. Sprinkle or place the Evergreen Ash seeds on the top of the soil about one per square inch. These seeds are extremely fertile and you should get nearly 100% germination. Once they are spread on the top of the soil, sprinkle a very thin layer of soil on the top of the seeds. This top layer of soil at the most should be .25″ deep.

Place your cover onto the humidor and gently spray more water onto the top of the mixture. Use a fog/mist nozzle that can be purchased at most hardware stores and screwed onto the end of a garden hose. Put the humidor in a cool and dark place, like under a shelf on the floor of your garage, or under a shrub in a cool spot in your yard. Put a plank under the humidor since otherwise the sides of the humidor will flex when you lift it and disturb the roots of the seedlings.

You should check your humidor once every few days. Within two weeks and possibly sooner you will have little sprouts of evergreen ash coming up all over. At this point get the humidor into an area where it will receive filtered light. You still don’t want it to get too hot, so keep it out of direct sun. Your challenge at this point is to separate each of these seedlings from the planting mix and transplant them into pots. But there is a better way – a custom humidor that uses individual planting tubes! Use the generic humidor described so far just to test the viability of your seeds, then start the main event in a custom humidor!

HOW TO BUILD A CUSTOM HUMIDOR THAT USES PLANTING TUBES

Description:

A humidor that has the standard two square foot rectangular top section, but which has 98 (7 rows of 14 per row) 8 cubic inch starter tubes comprising the bottom section.

Materials:

- 1x store-bought plastic, two piece humidor

- 98x 8″ long, 8 cubic inch planting tubes (referred to as “cells”)

- 1x 2 sq foot rectangular 98 cell-holder tray

- 1x heavy duty aluminum foil, 15″ x 30″

- 1x piece of transparent 1/8″ thick plastic, 12″ x 24″

- 1x piece of 1″ x 1″ wood, at least 6 feet long

- a few dozen 5/8″ long wood screws

- 1x tube of silicon sealer

- 1x 1″ thick plank, 3 feet long, 1 foot wide

- 2x U shaped standard workbench cabinet handles

Directions:

1) Cut the transparent plastic into four pieces. Cut two pieces into sides that are 4″ tall and 24″ long. Cut the other two pieces into ends that are 4″ tall and 12″ long. (These dimensions are not precise, make sure you measure the transparent top of your humidor, because these sides are to be assembled into a box that your humidor top sits on top of).

2) Assemble your four transparent pieces into a box by cutting 4 corner posts, each 3.5″ tall. Drill 1/8″ screw holes into the ends of the plastic with a variable speed drill on a slow setting. Attach the pieces to the posts one at a time and adjust the exact distance with a C clamp, using the humidor’s transparent top as a guide. Drill 1/16″ screw starter holes into the posts once the plastic is attached into place with the C clamps. Screw in the wood screws, making sure the corner posts are on the inside of each corner and that the 1/2″ of extra plastic is on the top of the box.

3) Take the bottom of the humidor and cut the top lip off of it. Use an exacto knife, and be sure to score the plastic a few times or you will not get a successful cut. When you are done you should have a 1 foot by 2 foot rim that will have a groove all the way around on its bottom. Squeeze silicon sealer into this groove, turn it over and place it onto the plastic box you have made. Also squeeze silicon sealer onto the corners inside the clear plastic box you made where the corner posts make contact with the plastic sides. The transparent top of the humidor can now be placed on and off the plastic box at will with a near airtight seal when it is on. NOTE: One modification would be to make the plastic box 6″ tall on each side, or more.

4) Use the rest of your 1×1″ wood to make a rim around the outside bottom of your plastic box. This box is going to be placed onto the top of the starter tube tray, so take care to make sure that your plastic box and the wood rim you make around the bottom is as perfectly level as possible. Screw the pieces of wood onto the plastic using the methods described in #2. The screw tops will be on the inside of the plastic box, of course, since the wood lip will run around the entire outside bottom perimeter.

5) You are now ready to prepare the starter tube tray. First of all, cut your plank to 1 foot by 3 feet in size, and attach the door handles on each side. The entire humidor, tray, tubes and all, will sit on top of this to prevent flexing either due to an uneven surface where the humidor is eventually deployed or due to occasional movement of the humidor.

6) Place the starter tube tray onto the plank. You may wish to put blocks on the plank to keep the tray legs stationary on the plank so that the whole thing doesn’t slide around when you move it. The next step is designed to complete the process of having an airtight humidor that uses starter tubes. Wrap a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil over the entire top of the starter tube tray, covering up the holes that the tubes are to go into. The tray has 7 rows of fourteen holes. Smooth the foil over these holes so you can clearly see each of them. Then poke a small X into the inner 5 rows of 12 holes (or fewer if you want to start with fewer seedlings). Your humidor will hold up to 60 tree seedlings!

7) Place the plastic top on the top of the starter tube tray, once the aluminum foil is in place. As you can see, with the top on, the tray is virtually airtight. Prepare your seedling mix as described earlier in this article. Moisturize the mixture and fill the tubes with soil to within 1 inch of the rim. Plant the seeds under about 1/8″ (not more!) of good seedling mix. Only after a starter tube has the seedling mix in place, the seed planted and moisturized, is the tube ready to insert in the tray. Gently poke the starter tube through an X in the tray. The hole in the aluminum will tear itself wider only enough to fit the contours of the starter tube, preserving an airtight humidor. Do the same for as many starter tubes as you have decided to germinate trees with. You can do up to 60.
Follow up: Put the humidor in a cool dark place for up to two weeks. It may be up to four weeks with some seeds, and some seeds need preliminary stratification, but more on that some other time. After the seeds germinate, put them in a cool area that gets heavily filtered light. Once the seedlings reach the top of the humidor, be sure to take the top off. Remember that once the top comes off you will need to water much more frequently. Prior to the top coming off the humidor you may not need to water at all, but check at least once per week. When the seedlings get between six inches and a foot tall, replant them in pots and watch them grow…

NOTE: You can get the starter trays and tubes from Stuewe & Sons who even have a web site at http://www.stuewe.com. Ask for the “RL98 Tray with Super Cells.” Tell them Ed “Redwood” Ring sent you! And if the Stuewe site ever goes dark, drop me an email and I’ll email you their address and phone number.

HOW MANY TREES WILL DOUBLE THE TIMBER MASS OF THE PLANET?

Here is something for you eighth graders…and eighth graders at heart:

1) Determine square miles of planetwide tree canopy BC 8000.

The earth has 197 million square miles of total surface, 58 million miles of land surface. Originally 34% of the earth had tree canopy, meaning that the size of the original ancient forests was 20 million square miles.

2) Determine square miles of planetwide tree canopy at the present time.

These days forests cover 26% of the land surface of earth, making them 15 million square miles. This forest is comprised of 7 million square miles of original ancient forest, and 8 million miles of second growth forest.

3) Determine average number of canopy trees per square mile of mature forest:

If the trees are planted an average of 35 feet apart then the average crown diameter would need to be 40 feet to create a good canopy. This is a reasonable crown diameter for a big tree, which is the lynchpin of the polycultural forest – the new seringal. At 35 feet apart there are 25 trees per acre or just about 16,000 per square mile.

4) Calculate quantity of big canopy trees of world forests BC 8000.

It would take 320 billion trees to cover 20 million square miles with 16,000 trees per square mile.

5) Calculate quantity of big canopy trees today.

If there truly is 15 million miles of forest today, then there are 240 billion large canopy trees in the world.

You now know that 240 billion extra trees must be planted before the timber mass of the planet can double and the forests of the planet can recover to their original healthy glory!

The next step is to plan recovery, using the custom humidors described above. Each humidor can produce 50 trees per year, and occupies 3 square feet of space. This humidor is totally self contained, and therefore has an inefficient usage of space. None-the less, at this density the following calculation can be made:

Here at ecoworld.com we believe that we will need to plant ten billion extra canopy trees per year for at least the next twenty five years – that’s right, 250 billion trees – if the ecoworld.com goal of doubling the planet’s timber mass by 2045 is to be realized.

If each humidor produces 50 canopy trees per year, then to plant ten billion trees per year we would need to have 200 million of them in the world. If you laid them end to end and side to side they would consume 21.5 square miles. Area equivalent to a square 4.6 miles on each side.

The implications are staggering. A few small villages on each continent specializing in the production of these trees would result in reforestation becoming a real industry. Reforestation above the 10 billion tree per year increase would increase sustainable logging yields, serving growing world markets for timber.

SO HOW MANY BACKYARD GREENHOUSES?

If every EcoWorld gardener had one 20×20 foot greenhouse holding the equivalent of 80 humidors in 4 rows of 20 (they would probably be more efficient than that) they would produce 4,000 trees per year.

That means to achieve our goal of doubling the timber mass of planet earth we would need to have 10 billion trees per year being produced by no less than 2.5 million people.

That is only one backyard greenhouse for every 8 square miles of original 20 million square miles of planetary forests!

That’s only one backyard greenhouse for every 2,500 people! Piece of cake.