(letters)

Hot Button

Because of its scope and scale and time frame, global warming presents an unprecedented communications challenge. Your special issue, Global Warning [December 2003], rises to that challenge with style and substance—setting a new and welcome benchmark for conveying both the urgency of the problem and the prospects for solutions.

The articles are extraordinarily well researched and beautifully written (and, as always, exquisitely produced). The introduction by David Malakoff [“Global Warning”] frames the issue well, with trenchant insights on the changing political trajectory of the issue. The subsequent articles illuminate some of the most alarming impacts and the most promising solutions. You manage to strike that elusive but essential balance between honestly portraying the magnitude of the challenge and focusing on practical, achievable solutions. This really is a great contribution to the debate. Thank you for this tremendously valuable piece of work.

KC Golden
Policy Director, Climate Solutions
Seattle, WA

I appreciate that more leaders are taking global climate change seriously, but I am skeptical of the “market” as the primary approach to this crisis. Electricity is different from wheat, watermelons, and other commodities: It can't be stored, doesn't have ready alternatives, is very capital-intensive, has huge environmental impacts. And the grid is a very complex engineering system that requires coordination and planning, which are considered collusive and illegal under a competitive system.

Carbon dioxide is a global problem, and no area in the world should be producing more than is efficient for any task at hand. Hard choices have to be made to reduce it and other greenhouse gases. This can be done without enduring the cumbersome process of capping and allocating carbon—by using “carrot and stick” green taxing first and “command and control” regulation where necessary.

Roland W. James
Santa Rosa, CA

Audubon's recent stories on humanity's influence on global warming failed to address a major cause. Environmentalists hate logging, oil development, and mining, and deplore pollution-spewing power plants. But they blithely ignore the fact that all those industrial activities are simply a response to the demands of a pampered public. In short, producers are vilified, while consumers who live in McMansions and drive monster SUVs are let off free.

Robert H. Paschall
Bishop, CA

Congratulations on your global warming issue! David Malakoff's article and the interview with Carol Browner [The Auduboner] were especially cogent and refreshing. For 15 years as an Audubon chapter activist, I have been a frustrated advocate for recognizing global warming as a major threat to Florida's ecology and economy. Without effective international cooperation to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, we could lose the Everglades and other gems. The Bush brothers seem to have written off Florida's future, perhaps thinking that disaster won't strike on their watches. Your continuing advocacy will help awaken Floridians to this issue.

Lee Bidgood Jr.
New Smyrna Beach, FL

Pet Peeve

Thank you for writing about the illegal pet trade [“The Pet Offensive,” Incite, December 2003] and for bringing up the fact that much of it deals in smaller animals such as turtles, lizards, and birds. Sadly, even licensed breeders of legal animals do a poor job providing adequate lives for the animals in their care. If children were kept the way some of these animals were, you'd find the caretakers in prison. Our animal laws need to be stronger and do more than merely slap people on the wrists and make them pay a small fine.

Jennifer Szucs
Seattle, WA

Heartfelt thanks to Mr. Williams for his December column on the hubris of humans owning exotic pets. The arrogance of humans toward animals continues to be a sad commentary on our species. As Alice Walker so wisely said: “The animals of the world exist for their own reason. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”

Maggie Rufo
Novato, CA

Sea Sawing

I cannot believe Ted Williams suggests in “The Exhausted Sea” [Incite, September 2003] that somehow George W. Bush will be a “genuine environmental hero” if he follows the ocean guidelines set forth by the Pew Foundation. Environmental hero?! C'mon, Ted! You know darn well that George Bush—even if he did follow all the guidelines in the Pew report—would still go down in history as the worst environmental president of all time. A drop in the bucket doesn't put out a fire. What good is it to be “the Teddy Roosevelt of the oceans” while at the same time being James Watt reincarnated? Shame on you, Audubon, for once again letting your partisan Republicanism slip through.

Kevin Pierce
Clinton Township, MI

Ted Williams responds:
Mr. Pierce should bear in mind that Bush's tenure may be less than half over, that rehabilitation is still possible, that a Teddy Roosevelt of the oceans and a James Watt of the land is better than a James Watt of everything, and that it's okay to encourage even an antienvironmentalist when he leans in the right direction.

It was certainly appropriate to put “The Exhausted Sea” under the heading of Incite, but if the goal was to cause an uproar against commercial fishing in this country, Mr. Williams failed with this longtime member. His jaundiced take was unfairly scathing and full of partial truths.

It's easy to blame harvest for problems with fish populations. It's an easy activity to monitor. But by hanging his hat on that one issue, Mr. Williams never mentioned habitat degradation, industrial and agricultural pollution, urban sprawl, and dams. He also failed to mention successful efforts by managers, commercial fishermen, and the environmental community to work together to solve problems of concern to all of them: The use of “bird strips” on the top of gill nets in the San Juan salmon fishery in Washington to protect marbled murrelets, the use of tangle nets on the Columbia River to allow the release of nontarget stocks, and the concerted effort of commercial fishermen and local Audubon chapters to defeat antifishing initiatives in the Northwest are just a few examples.

It is incumbent on all participants that the harvest be done intelligently and with a goal of sustainability. No one should argue with that. The pressure that the environmental community keeps on all portions of that process is a good thing. But the topic deserves fair and unbiased coverage. Mr. Williams's article fails to do that.

Robert Sudar
Longview, WA

Ted Williams responds:
“Industrial and agricultural pollution, urban sprawl, and dams” played no role in the collapse of the depressed stocks I wrote about. And the only “habitat degradation” affecting them is caused by mobile net gear. I cited three “successful efforts by managers, commercial fishermen, and the environmental community”—the recovery of striped bass, swordfish, and summer flounder .

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© 2004  NASI

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