Carole King and James Taylor are on tour and will be playing at the Pepsi Center in Denver soon. As I read it, the “VIP proceeds” for each concert will be going to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. This is a Montana environmental group that has steadfastly fought for “NREPA”, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, over the years, never losing sight of that goal, never selling out in backroom deals, never taking Pew money.
AFWR is a loose group without a hierarchy, so loose in fact that they forget to tell the members that their dues are up.
Carole King and Rep Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from upstate New York are friends. Maloney is a steadfast supporter of wilderness and a backer of NREPA in congress. This is the connection that has kept NREPA alive all these years.
I hope that AFWR makes a bundle on the concert tour. They are worthy.
Piece of Mindful 
Environmentalists are people who feel good about destroying the lives of other people.
The market takes care of the environment, because the consequences of failing are severe.
Think of the BP station owners in the Atlanta region. They did nothing wrong. They’re facing bankruptcy.
For some customers of the hundreds of BP stations in metro Atlanta, the familiar yellow-green logo is turning into a pair of scarlet letters.
“I mean, right now it’s 1 o’clock p.m., and the only reason a car is out there is because it broke down at the pump,” said Tim Davis, station manager at the BP on Piedmont Road in northeast Atlanta, where he has worked for 18 years.
Davis said sales at the station are down about 30 percent. Some BP customers have stayed loyal since the Deep Horizon disaster began, but others are taking their gas tanks elsewhere.
“About two weeks ago, when the AJC put a picture of a pelican covered in oil on the cover, then things started going downhill,” he said.
Teriah White, a middle school teacher who lives in Dunwoody, said she used to stop every morning at the BP station on Chamblee-Dunwoody Road to buy coffee and a newspaper. But not anymore. On Thursday, she was pumping gas at a Shell station at North Peachtree Road and Savoy Drive.
“I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I am so incensed,” she said. “I came to Shell today because of the pictures of the birds. I just don’t understand why there aren’t systems in place to fix something like this. I haven’t been happy with BP’s response.”
The British oil giant has tried for more than seven weeks to cap its leaking undersea well and to clean up the mess as it floats into marshes and onto beaches from Louisiana to Florida. Right or wrong, that struggle reaches all the way to the 472 BP stations located within 50 miles of downtown Atlanta. Owners and their employees at those stations don’t work for BP, didn’t cause the spill and can’t fix it, but some are losing business because of it.
The voting power of the consumer is in their dollar, not in politics.
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That outlook is extremely narrow. There is far more possible in the total market, which includes both collective activity through government (large-scale vision) and isolated acts by individuals whose vision is necessarily limited.
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Mark,
What “long term” vision does government have? You jest!!!
They are the most short term focused group of criminals on earth!
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Oh, let’s take just one example: What would Yellowstone National Park look like now were it not a park? Condos? Mansions? All the animals save deer and black bear long gone? No access to lakefront property?
I do not jest. You are very narrow in vision.
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Mark,
I’d howl in laughter except it wouldn’t be polite.
Do you know WHY the National Parks exist?
Because the RICH owners of the property adjacent to the park did not want YOU to live there!
You are so fooled by the bait-and-switch.
They didn’t want you poor folk living beside them rich folk, so they said they would “protect” the unblemished nature …. for you to enjoy for two days a year – while they live it 365!!
Mount Desert Island, Maine, is the prototype Establishment enclave in America.
There are three of them, all islands: Mt. Desert, Jeckyl (Georgia), and Jupiter (Florida). Mt. Desert Island is where a major aspect of the modern environmental movement was created: the lock-out.
In 1910, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. bought a 104-room granite mansion there, importing tiles from the Great Wall of China. [Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), p. 97.]
Rockefeller then used Mount Desert Island as his first great experiment in permanently sequestering property away from the free market, which has an unappreciated tendency to develop properties aimed for sale to middle-class buyers.
Rockefeller and his elite neighbors – Edsel Ford was one of them – were concerned about “overdevelopment.” [John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 199.]
This is an elitist code word for “real estate sales to the upper middle class.” They created an association and donated 5,000 acres to it; then they gave it to the Federal government. President Wilson used executive authority in 1916 to create a special monument; in 1919, Congress passed a law making it Lafayette National Park. Junior bought more land and donated it to the government; this is now Acadia National Park.
He and his peers repeatedly adopted the lock-out strategy, using tax-deductible money, to remove prime real estate from the market in wilderness areas surrounding elite enclaves.
This raises the value of the remaining properties, and it secures an insulated social world for them.
The area around Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of the prime areas where the Rockefellers own large tracts. This area has long been the focus of a Rockefeller-inspired lock-out, beginning in 1919. [Harr & Johnson, pp. 201-211.] Land values there reflect this: astronomical. But the original model was Mount Desert Island.
The Rockefeller family biographers say of Junior’s role: “Very shortly, he became a towering figure, the greatest ally the National Park Service ever had.” [Ibid., p. 198.] The assistance was mutual. The National Park Service provides the authority to keep the rest of us out of these areas on a permanent basis.
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RE:Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons national parks….the lifestyle of the super rich.
Junior Rockefeller bought up the land in front of the Tetons in the early 1950’s, and that enclave along with no state income tax, has made Teton County the richest county per capita in the US.
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Last I checked, I was allowed on those lands, wilderness lands, BLM lands, state land. Not so for private lands.
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Mark,
Yes, you are. But you do not live there. They do.
They did not have to buy their “front lawn” – you did via your taxes.
The trade: you get to visit every 5 years for two days.
Good for you!
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We lived in Bozeman and visited, camped, hiked, watched animals, many times a year for years. We paid an entrance fee, and now since we are older, have a Golden Age Pass, which means we have free or discounted access to every piece of property in the country managed for us by the Federal Government. We get a lot of use out of it.
This is just nuts. You’re pissed because some private investor has not been able to exclude the most beautiful parts of the commons to create cash flow. You have turned the world on its head to match your mindset.
By the way, I am familiar with the history of the Rockefeller Family. The gift of the land was a genuine gift without strings. The resort hotel on Jackson lake is indeed a hangout for the wealthy, but all profits are turned over to the Park Service. John Jr. gave away tons of money – and I fail to see any ulterior motives other than his being a decent man.
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Mark,
I am not “pissed” at all.
You have some refutable belief about “government” foresight that simply is unsupportable.
You claimed “national parks”- and I showed there are a consequence of the super-rick excluding YOU from owning land, literally, in their “neck of the woods”.
They understand what you do not.
They may have millions – but the aggregate of the masses outnumber them.
As one developer said, he’d rather take $100,000 from a thousand people than a $1 million from one man.
Thus, the super-rich fooled YOU into giving up your access to certain areas while protecting the value of THEIR land.
You certainly have the wool pulled over your eyes – but at least you don’t seem to mind…
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No, I’m pretty sure that every attempt to protect something in the commons meets with stiff opposition. You don’t seem to get that without government protection, there would be no Yellowstone Park. It would instead more resemble Spokane.
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Mark,
You can buy a house and live in Spokane.
You have no such option in Yellowstone.
A society can allocate resources by price or by power.
The national parks have always been allocated by power.
In this competition, The People lose.
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You really don’t get it, do you. I should not be able to buy a house in Yellowstone because it is part of the commons. It is preserved for all of us now and in perpetuity.
Good grief.
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Mark,
You don’t get it.
The joke is on you, the mundane “People”.
The rich have their land, and they have stopped you from spoiling it.
You think its a treat to visit every 5 years.
The rich laugh at you.
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Markets have failed to protect water from pollution. Markets have failed to stop the extirpation of thousands of species, and markets failed to stop massive deforestation and desertification worldwide. Markets fail to recognize non-monetary value, and externalize costs of production whenever possible. People flock to undeveloped lands to reconnect with nature, something in very short supply, thanks to unregulated markets. BF, this is obviously a subject which you know nothing about.
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Ladybug,
No, the markets have not failed because your demand is irrational.
I could as easily say “No matter how tyrannical government can be, they haven’t prevented pollution”.
“Pollution” is merely the byproduct of all life. You HAVE TO POLLUTE to live. To live you create waste. To demand no waste means you are dead.
Markets have failed to stop the extirpation of thousands of species,
This is ideological lie. There have not been “thousands” of species extinct by the hands of man, let alone the “market”.
This myth was started by nothing more than an environmentalist “guessing”.
Here is the list – please note it is not “thousands” – it isn’t even “hundreds”…. it is “tens”.
Marsupials
* Broad-faced Potoroo (1875, Australia)
* Eastern Hare Wallaby (1890, Australia)
* Lake Mackay Hare-wallaby (1932, Australia) [1]
* Desert Rat-kangaroo (1935, Australia)
* Thylacine (1936, Tasmania, Australia)
* Toolache Wallaby (1943, Australia)
* Desert Bandicoot (1943, Australia)
* Lesser Bilby (1950s, Australia)
* Pig-footed Bandicoot (1950s, Australia)
* Crescent Nailtail Wallaby (1956, Australia)
* Red-bellied Gracile Opossum (1962, Argentina)
Sirenians
* Steller’s Sea Cow (1768), Commander Islands
Rodents
Bulldog Rat
* Oriente Cave Rat (?, Cuba) [2]
* Torre’s Cave Rat (?, Cuba)[3]
* Imposter Hutia (?, Hispaniola) [4]
* Montane Hutia (?, Hispaniola) [5]
* Flores Cave Rat (1500, Indonesia)
* Verhoeven’s Giant Tree Rat (1500, Indonesia)
* Cuban Coney (1500, Cuba) [6]
* Hispaniolan Edible Rat (~1546, Hispaniola)[7]
* Big-eared Hopping Mouse (1843, Australia)
* Darling Downs Hopping Mouse (1846, Australia)
* White-footed Rabbit-rat (1870s, Australia)
* St Lucy Giant Rice Rat (1881), Saint Lucia) [8]
* Short-tailed Hopping Mouse (1896, Australia)
* Nelson’s Rice Rat (1897, Islas Marias) [9]
* Guadalcanal Rat (1899, Solomon Islands)
* Long-Tailed Hopping Mouse (1901, Australia)
* Martinique Giant Rice Rat (1902), Martinique) [10]
* Bulldog Rat (1903, Christmas Island)
* Maclear’s Rat (1903, Christmas Island)
* Martinique muskrat (1903, Martinique) [11]
* Darwin’s Galapagos Mouse (1930, Galapagos Islands)[12]
* Gould’s Mouse (1930, Australia)
* Pemberton’s Deer Mouse (1931), San Pedro Island) [13]
* Lesser Stick Nest Rat (1933, Australia)
* Indefatigable Galapagos Mouse (1934, Galapagos Islands) [14]
* Chadwick Beach Cotton Mouse (1938, Florida)
* Ilin Island Cloudrunner (1953) Ilin Island) [15]
* Little Swan Island hutia (1955, Swan Islands)
* Pallid Beach Mouse (1959, Florida)
* Emperor Rat (1960s, Solomon Islands)
Lagomorphs
* Sardinian Pika (1774, Sardinia) [16]
Proboscids
* North African Elephant (North Africa)
Soricimorphs
* Marcano’s Solenodon (?, Hispaniola) [17]
* Christmas Island Shrew (1985, Christmas Island) (officially critically endangered, but has not been reliably seen since 1985) [18]
* Balearic Shrew (Europe) [19]
* Tule Shrew (Baja California). Only known by the four type specimens collected in 1905
Bats
Guam Flying Fox
* Puerto Rican Flower Bat (Puerto Rico) [20]
* Lesser Mascarene Flying Fox (1864, Réunion, Mauritius)
* Guam Flying Fox (1968, Guam)
* Dusky Flying Fox (1870, Percy Island) [21]
* Large Palau Flying Fox (1874, Palau)
* Panay Giant Fruit Bat (1892, Philippines) [22]
* Nendo Tube-nosed Fruit Bat (1907, Solomon Islands)
* New Zealand Greater Short-tailed Bat (1988, New Zealand)
* Lord Howe Long-eared Bat (1996, Australia) [23]
* Sturdee’s Pipistrelle (2000, Japan) [24]
Cetaceans
Chinese River Dolphin
* Baiji (2006, China) (officially listed as functionally extinct; it is possible that a few ageing individuals still survive)
Artiodactyls
Auroch
* Aurochs (1627, Poland)
* Bluebuck (1799, South Africa)
* Arabian Gazelle (1825, Farasan Islands) [25]
* Red Gazelle (1894, Algeria)
* Schomburgk’s Deer (1932, Thailand)
* Queen of Sheba’s Gazelle (1951, Yemen) [26]
* Saudi Gazelle (Declared extinct in 2008, but not seen decades before that; Saudi Arabia)
Carnivores
Bali Tiger
Javan Tiger, pictured 1938
* Falkland Island Wolf (1876, Falkland Islands)
* Sea Mink (1894, Northeastern North America)
* Japanese Sea Lion (1950s, Japan)
* Caribbean Monk Seal (1952, Jamaica)
Subspecies
* Bali Tiger (1940s, Bali) [27]
* Japanese Wolf (1930s, Japan)
* Mexican grizzly bear (1960s, Mexico)
* Caspian Tiger (1970s, Tajikistan) [28]
* Javan Tiger (1976, Java) [29]
Perissodactyls
Subspecies
* Quagga (1883, South Africa)
* Tarpan (1919, Eurasia)
* Syrian Wild Ass (1928, Syria)
* Western Black Rhinoceros (2006, West Africa)
and markets failed to stop massive deforestation and desertification worldwide.
No such deforestation exists.
Desertification is not man-made. In case you didn’t know, the Sahara predates modern man.
Markets fail to recognize non-monetary value,
Another fallacy.
There exists no value except as allocated by Man
Unless a man sees value, it has no value.
“Money” is merely the measure of value – that is all it does. To declare “non-monetary” value is like trying to measure velocity without a measure of distance.
and externalize costs of production whenever possible.
…and, the problem with this is….???
People flock to undeveloped lands to reconnect with nature,
All the world is “nature”
something in very short supply
You obviously live in a city.
Get out of your little box and travel. You’ll find the the vast most of the world is “wild and untamed”.
thanks to unregulated markets. BF, this is obviously a subject which you know nothing about.
I challenge that opinion.
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Most of the world is not “wild and untamed.” There are roads almost everwhere, except where citizens and terrain have forced government to stop. There are no state, or private, wilderness areas. You’re crazy as a loon.
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