The folks in Germany had to do it after World War II. The folks in Russia had to do it after 1989. Some successfully accomplish it. For some, it is a condition that lingers and lingers. After a totalitarian state falls, there is a mess--a mess of law, of courts, of bureaucracy, and especially of finances.
In the midst of fretting about the filibuster, babbling about Bolton, and fulminating about Frist, we need to take a little time to look at the long view.
In 2006, 2008, or God forbid 2010 or 2012, what must progressive Democrats have in place, ready to implement, when we regain power? Think FDR's hundred days.
If there is one area of national policy that will need a dramatic reorientation after the Bush administration leaves, it is this. Let's talk about how to get it right. This diary deals only with the domestic aspects of environmental action. A later diary will deal international actions, such as environmental treaties and agreements.
The other diaries in this series are:
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 1 - Laws
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 2 - Separation of Powers
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 3 - Civil Service
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 4 - Cabinet Departments
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 5 - Freedom USA
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 6 - Justice USA
Rebuilding after the Fall of the Bushevist State 7 - Public Safety USA
Nature provides many services to all of life. The natural environment produces oxygen during photosynthesis. Various strategies of reproduction and the reality of natural selection maintains biological and genetic diversity. Environmental communities cleanse the air and water. The weather recycles, stores, and distributes freshwater globally. Biological and geological processes regulate the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The environment maintains the migratory and nursing habitats for wildlife. A variety of biological processes decompose organic wastes. Plants and animals sequester and detoxify human and industrial waste. Various animal species provide pest control. Natural selection has produced a genetic library of species that can produce food, fibers, pharmaceuticals, and materials for human use. Plant fix solar energy and convert it into raw materials. Plants manage soil erosion and control sedimentaion of waterways. Wetlands prevent floods and regulate runoff. The upper layers of the atmosphere protect all of life against harmful cosmic radiation. A variety of oceanographic processes regulate the chemical composition of the oceans. The atmosphere and oceans regulate local and global climate. Soils permit production of grasslands and contain fertilizer and nutrients. Various ecological cycles store and recycle nutrients.
An article in Nature estimated the economic value of the services provided by the environment worldwide:
$ 1.3 Trillion - Atmospheric regulation of the gases
$ 2.3 Trillion - Assimilation and processing of waste
$17.0 Trillion - Nutrient flows
$ 2.8 Trillion - Storage and purification of wastes
$20.7 Trillion - Marine coastal environment services
$12.3 Trillion - Terrestrial environmental maintenance services
$ 4.7 Trillion - Forest management
$ 4.7 Trillion - Wetland-provided services
TOTAL $65.8 Trillion of services provided worldwide but not accounted for as services to the economy
In the United States, there are significant ecological communities under threat. These include:
- California wetlands and riparian communities
- Tallgrass prairies
- Hawai'ian dry forests
- Longleaf pine forests and savannas
- Forest wetlands in the Southern US
- Ancient Ponderosa Pine forests
- Ancient deciduous forests in the Eastern US
- California native grasslands
- Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests
- Midwestern wetlands
- Marine coastal communities
- Ancient redwood forests
- Ancient cedar forests in the Pacific Northwest
- Ancient pine forests of the Great Lakes
- Eastern grasslands and savannas
- Southern California coastal sage scrub
Federal government environmental activities spent a large amount of the federal budget, but it is split among a variety of departments and agencies - Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, EPA, and others. The proportion of the federal budget that affects the environment in positive and negative ways is even larger. Therefore, it is very difficult to determine the exact total budget for federal direct environmental activities or the total budget that impacts the environment. And the money supports activities often work at cross-purposes, depending on the constituency interested in a particular department's activities.
The federal government owns almost a million acres of public land, around 28% of the total land area of the US. Most of this land has never been granted to individuals; the rest has been repurchased for specific purposes.
Policy direction for cabinet departments and federal agencies
The policy direction we need to pursue includes the following:
- Consolidation of environmental departments to permit a single environmental policy, one that favors the long-term sustainability of the economic services that the environment performs for the economy. Integrating land management, forest service, weather service, geological survey, fish and wildlife protection, mining permits, rangeland leasing, public land acquisition and sales, national parks, environmental law, environmental protection, soil conservation, and agricultural extension into a coordinated program.
- Strategic management of public lands to provide understanding of what is required to protect each of the biomes, physiographic units, and hydrologic units of the environment in the US.
- Forecasting and responding to environmental hazards to citizens, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods, and droughts.
- Encouraging the management of economic activities within sound practices for improving the economic sustainability of the local environment. Viewing environmental jurisdictions in terms of ecological communities and natural geological, hydrologic,and bioecological regions.
- Restoration and reclamation of ecological communities that have been significantly reduced or are under threat.
- Focusing research and development in environmental programs on human impacts, human consequences, long-term sustainability, environmental protection, resource preservation, environmental restoration.
- Subsidizing the education and training of professionals working in environmental programs through undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships.
- Providing information and educational resources that are well grounded in scientific knowledge to the general public.
- Protecting the environment and the public from mishandled toxic waste, municipal solid waste, air pollution, water pollution, and radiation.
- Conducting a high-priority research, development, demonstration, and commercialization program to close the ecological cycles being disrupted by economic activities.
- Continuing extensive and detailed, comprehensive and coordinated observation, mapping, monitoring, analysis, and reporting activities about the environment in the US. Understanding the historical geology of all areas in the US. Understanding streamflows of every significant stream and the capacities of aquifers. Identifying locally endangered species and endangered species of national importance. Identifying the local threats and impacts of invasive species. Monitoring microclimate and local weather conditions. Identifying pollution sources and impacts. Monitoring through satellite and aircraft-borne remote sensing. Producing and distribution maps through a coordinated publishing program.
- Devolution of environmental planning, regulation, and enforcement within a framework of national standards and best practices.
- Preservation of wilderness and mature ecological communities (such as old growth forests, prairies, and coral reefs).
- National programs organized by biomes, physiographic regions, and hydrologic units.
- Public designation, ownership, protection, and interpretation of representative environments and significant natural sites--national parks, national forests, national rivers, national grasslands, national rain forests, national taiga, national tundra, national alpine areas, national wildlife refuges, national seashores, national estuaries, national ocean parks, national marine sanctuaries, and national wilderness. Current publicly designated lands
- Environmental rapid-response teams for oil and chemical spills, waste dumping, forest and grassland fires, algal blooms, and invasive species.
- General mapping and charting of land, rivers, estuaries, and oceans for transportation and navigation.
River keepers alliance
The river keepers alliance program proposes federal designation of the private, non-profit and voluntary river keepers program as a public-voluntary partnership for research and monitoring of the environment within watersheds (USGS "hydrologic units"). The designation of a voluntary non-profit agency as a partner clearly defines the political independence of the river keepers in monitoring the environment at the most local level. To assist them, the federal government provides the full support of monitoring resources, mapping activites, and agency coordination services of the federal government. In addition, federal agencies commit to using river keeper data as part of regulation and enforcement actions in protection of the environment.
The governance is based on a memorandum of agreement between the federal government and each individual river keepers organization, which are independent, non-profit member-supported organizations. The model for operation is based on existing river keeper efforts, most notably those of the Hudson Riverkeepers organization. The necessary staff composition to operate genrally follows the patter of the Hudson Riverkeepers staff.
The federal support role is to provide technical support and monitoring equipment, funding for technical training of volunteers, coordination with federal regulators and prosecutors, and integration of reporting into federal environmental GIS systems.
The volunteers provide the on-site monitoring services, extending the ability of federal environmental agencies to research, gather data, and enforce environmental laws and regulations without large personnel costs.
To understand how extensive this program would be, look at the Hydrologic Units Map.
The USGS maps water and groundwater (hydrologic) resources on the basis of hydrologic units. USGS Hydrologic Units
The first level of classification divides the Nation into 21 major geographic areas, or regions. These geographic areas contain either the drainage area of a major river, such as the Missouri region, or the combined drainage areas of a series of rivers, such as the Texas-Gulf region, which includes a number of rivers draining into the Gulf of Mexico. Eighteen of the regions occupy the land areaof the conterminous United States. Alaska is region 19, the Hawaii Islands constitute region 20, and Puerto Rico and other outlying Caribbean areas are region 21. [The regions are shown in figure 1.]
The second level of classification divides the 21 regions into 222 subregions. A subregion includes the area drained by a river system, a reach of a river and its tributaries in that reach, a closed basin(s), or a group of streams forming a coastal drainage area.
The third level of classification subdivides many of the subregions into accounting units. These 352 hydrologic accounting units nest within, or are equivalent to, the subregions.
The fourth level of classification is the cataloging unit, the smallest element in the hierarchy of hydrologic units. [Efforts are underway to add further levels of subdivisions.] A cataloging unit is a geographic area representing part or all of a surface drainage basin, a combination of drainage basins, or a distinct hydrologic feature.
Here is the classification for the Klamath-Northern California Coastal hyrdrographic units:
18 California
1801 Klamath-Northern California Coastal
180101 Northern California Coastal
18010101 Smith
18010102 Mad-Redwood
18010103 Upper Eel
18010104 Middle Fork Eel
18010105 Lower Eel
18010106 South Fork Eel
18010107 Mattole
18010108 Big-Navarro-Garcia
18010109 Gualala-Salmon
18010110 Russian
18010111 Bodega Bay
And here for contrast, is the classification for the Great Salt Lake hydrographic units:
1602 Great Salt Lake
160201 Weber
16020101 Upper Weber
16020102 Lower Weber
160202 Jordan
16020201 Utah Lake
16020202 Spanish Fork
16020203 Provo
16020204 Jordan
160203 Great Salt Lake
16020301 Hamlin-Snake Valleys
16020302 Pine Valley
16020303 Tule Valley
16020304 Rush-Tooele Valleys
16020305 Skull Valley
16020306 Southern Great Salt Lake Desert
16020307 Pilot-Thousand Springs
16020308 Northern Great Salt Lake Desert
16020309 Curlew Valley
16020310 Great Salt Lake
For East Coast folk, here is the classification for the Lower Hudson-Long Island hydrographic units:
203 Lower Hudson-Long Island
20301 Lower Hudson
2030101 Lower Hudson
2030102 Bronx
2030103 Hackensack-Passaic
2030104 Sandy Hook-Staten Island
2030105 Raritan
20302 Long Island
2030201 Northern Long Island
2030202 Southern Long Island
Environmental planning and regulation regions
The Appalachian Regional Commission was the first to define a physiographic "province" as a focus of community and economic development. The reason for organizing this effort physiographically was the effects the physiography of the Appalachians had on blocking economic development--the difficulty of putting in roads, the difficulties of building airports, the effects of mining, the isolated communities. The programs of the Appalachian Regional Commission began with a consideration of only the economic effects of environmental degradation-- on tourism, road construction, health, and housing, for example. However, a ecological organization of economic development activities makes a lot of sense. Why shouldn't planning, zoning regulations, building codes, and subdivision regulations reflect the environmental considerations of the local environment. Why shouldn't loss of farmland be a concern in the Muskingum River area Ohio or the load on the Colorado River be of concern to planning in Phoenix and Los Angeles?
Physiographic regional commissions
Physiographic regions, like the Appalachian Highlands are often used for federal and state planning jurisdictions. The Appalachian Regional Commission focused on the economic issues of the Appalachian region. This commission and similar ones need to be refocused on the sustainability of the economy within the ecological limits of the environment. The jurisdictions of these commissions need to be redrawn to correspond with physiographic realities, which often have hydrologic and bioregions consequences.
The governance of these commissions at the division, province, and section levels (USGS Physiographic Regions) comprises representatives from the public sector (especially elected officials), private sector, voluntary environmental groups, and local community organizations and citizens. The commissions themselves make public investment, regulatory and enforcement, environmental research and development, and technical assistance policy. The technical staff of the commissions include environmental preservation and restoration specialists in soils, botany, zoology, and ecology. The staff includes environmental planners, capable of tailoring environmental regulations to support the sustainability of the environment within the jurisdiction, and specialists in urban ecology. The staff also includes people who manage a system of permits and enforcement of the regulations.
In additional to environmental protection and restoration, the commissions provide technical assistance to businesses, focusing on region-specific waste reduction in the commercial and manufacturing sectors. This programs uses engineering extension service resources of state universities to provide help to small businesses in reducing resource waste.
At the federal level, the following ecoregion commissions are designated as federal agencies, much as the Appalachian Regional Commission is today.
- Laurentian Upland Ecoregion Commission
- Atlantic Plain Ecoregion Commission
- Appalachian Highlands Ecoregion Commission (and defunding the Appalachian Regional Commission)
- Interior Plains Ecoregion Commission
- Interior Highlands Ecoregion Commission
- Rocky Mountain System Ecoregion Commission
- Intermontane Plateau Ecoregion Commission
- Pacific Mountain System Ecoregion Commission
- Alaskan Ecoregion Commission
- Hawai'ian Islands Ecoregion Commission
Action Items:
- What other new ideas do we need to consider?
- What existing regulations and restrictions do we need to remove? As one example, it is clear that building codes need major overhauling.
- What existing subsidies that promote resource waste do we need to eliminate?
- How do we account in financial statements and cost accounting for the services that the environment is providing for free?
- What is the role of the national trails system (AT, Pacific Crest, and so on)?