WaterWired

G. Tracy Mehan III Review: 'Apocalypse Never. Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All'

It has been a while since I published a review by G. Tracy Mehan III, a frequent contributor to WaterWired, executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association and adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He writes great book reviews (and other things) so when he sends me something I post it. This review of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger will be published in the November/December 2020 issue of the The Environmental Forum. I am guessing that this review might generate more controversy than most I post. But that is fine.

Download Apocalypse Never Review

Here are the first few paragraphs of his review:

A recent front-page headline in the New York Times stated, “Disastrous Wave of Climate Events Slams California. Scientists Fear Fires Are Just the Start.” Journalists Thomas Fuller and Christopher Flavelle, report that “multiple mega fires [are] burning more than three million acres.” They continue, “If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, it is all too real for Californians.”

These are certainly disastrous events; but Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, demurs as to any linkage between the catastrophic fires in the Golden State and a changing climate. Actually, he rejects the notion entirely.

Shellenberger cites Jon Keeley, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist in California who has researched the topic for forty years: “We’ve looked at the history of climate and fire throughout the whole state, and through much of the state, particularly the western half of the state, we don’t see any relationship between past climates and the amount of the area burned in any given year.” Keeley and other colleagues modeled 37 different regions in the United States and found that “humans may not only influence fire regime but their presence can actually override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.” Indeed, the only statistically significant factors for the frequency and severity of fires, on an annual basis, were population and proximity to deve

Okay, now let's cut to the chase...

Shellenberger discounts a climate apocalypse, but supports nuclear as the primary solution for reconciling economic growth with environmental protection. Many environmentalists envision an apocalypse but discount nuclear energy. It is nothing if not an ironic turn of events.

Shellenberger and his colleagues started organizing pronuclear demonstrations in 30 cities around the world in 2019. Evidently, the cry of “Standup for Nuclear” is resonating in Germany. He was even invited to testify before Congress. Maybe nuclear power is nota lost cause. It should get a second look from the body politic.

Don't forget to read the material I left out. All good.

Excellent - enjoy!

“Never let anyone drive you crazy; it is nearby anyway and the walk is good for you.” - The Cheshire Cat

G. Tracy Mehan III Review: 'A New Coast' A Rising Tide Sinks All Boats - Sea-Level Increase, and What to Do About It

G. Tracy Mehan III, a frequent contributor to WaterWired, is executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association and adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He writes great book reviews and today's is no exception: Jeffrey Peterson's A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas

The review will be publsihed in the July/August 2020 issue of the The Environmental Forum. Tracy sent me a PDF of his review. I have included a few paragraphs of his review just to wht your appetite.

Download A New Coast review

A few morsels...

Climate policy focused on federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions
is a hard sell in the United States. From the defeat of the Kyoto Protocol in the Senate 95-0 in 1997, to the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade
bill in a Democratic Congress in 2009, up to and including President Trump’s spiking of the Clean Power Plan and reducing vehicle fuel economy improvements and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, that dog just won’t hunt.

Meanwhile the shale and natural gas revolutions have reduced emissions significantly. States, cities, and many corporations are pursuing their own GHG reduction goals in a civil society movement envisioned by Vanderbilt’s Michael Vandenbergh and Jonathan Gilligan in their thoughtful, hopeful book, Beyond Politics. The Private Governance Response to Climate Change — previously reviewed here. But as noted at the end of that review, “Yet, nowhere in the dozen or so pages of the book’s index will the reader find any references to either adaptation or resilience in the face of climate change.. . . Society, however, may be forced to consider other options given the stark political and economic realities of climate policy.”

Is there common ground left in America to address the impacts of a
variable climate; demographic shifts to coastal zones (doubling by 2060);massive, costly storms, hurricanes, flooding, erosion; and, if you comprehend the arcane art of modeling, rising sea levels that will render storms even more destructive, extend flood zones and move the coastline
further inland due to massive inundation?

Cutting to the chase...

Peterson notes, “Federal supplemental appropriations to recover from the 2017 storms came to $120 billion, and individual major storms have cost tens of billions of dollars.” Moreover, “the Congressional Budget Office estimates future annual property losses of $54 billion and federal government costs of $17 billion annually assuming just existing conditions.” Over and above the money, a proactive policy anticipating sea-level rise would “save lives, sustain coastal ecosystems and protect coastal economies.” Thousands of lives, trillions of dollars saved.

A national planning effort needs to convince Americans to believe in the models predicting sea level rise over many, many decades. But time will tell, and reality will, if Peterson is right, unmute all price signals and concentrate the minds of coastal residents.

 One might, however, argue that he is putting too large a wager on a federally led process, given the current distrust of Washington. Trust, in this polarized age, must be cultivated bottom up and top down. The Pew Research Center reports that “Three quarters of Americans say that their fellow citizens’ trust in the federal government has been shrinking, and 64 percent believe that about peoples’ trust in each other.” Only 46 percent view climate change as a toptier problem. 

So a collaborative approach tocoastal policy, with ample education and mutual learning, between public and private sectors, will be a necessary condition to overcoming the distrust and the challenges both of government failure or neglect, and that of asymmetrical information, one of the classic causes of market failure.

Worth your time - the review and the book.

Enjoy!

"It is curious--curious that  physical courage should be so common in the world, and more coral courage so rare." - Mark Twain

From Outrage to Trust at Tucson Water G. Tracy Mehan's Book Review: 'Tucson Water Turnaround'

I have known Michael J. McGuire for over a decade but I have been aware of his reputation for much longer than that. After all, he is one of the world's experts on drinking water. We served together on a National Research Council committee dealing with the California Bay-Delta issue. Later, he asked me to write the foreword to his book, The Chlorine Revolution: Water Disinfection and the Fight to Save Lives. He also runs the informative This Day in Water History site.

Since I have a connection to and fondness for Tucson I was glad to see his latest book (written with Marie S. Pearthree),Tucson Water Turnaround: Crisis to Success.I was going to review it but I was beaten to the punch by someone who writes incredible reviews.

G. Tracy Mehan III, a frequent contributor to WaterWired, former assistant administrator for water at EPA in 2001-2003, executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association and adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, sent me the following PDF of a his review published in the May issue of Journal of the AWWA:

Download Tucson_Water_Review_GTM

The first few paragraphs to wht your appetite.

Before Flint, there was Tucson.

Michael J. McGuire and Marie S. Pearthree have written what the military would call an “after action report” on one of the great crises experienced by an American water utility in the pre-Flint era absent a natural disaster. In Tucson Water Turnaround: Crisis to Success, they provide a deeply researched, well-sourced insiders’ view of how, in 1992, Arizona’s Tucson Water (TW) became embroiled in nonstop controversy for nearly a decade. The story reveals technical omissions and missteps, obtuse management, political interference, and the failure to realize just how customer-facing a water utility truly is. As consultants and, with Pearthree as a TW employee, the authors were intimately involved in this tale.

As in Flint, Mich., the Tucson crisis stemmed from the failure of corrosion control when water from a new source—in this case the behemoth Central Arizona Project (CAP)—was brought to Tucson, a city accustomed to high-quality groundwater. CAP is a 336-mile system that brings Colorado River water to Arizona and now serves 80% of the state population. CAP was to be the solution to groundwater mining and subsidence as well as the key to future growth. Pressure was also building for Arizona to use its full allocation of CAP or Colorado River water pursuant to western water law (“use it or lose it”) rather than revert to California by default.

And the last paragraph:

The tragedy in Flint involved another failure to anticipate the consequences of switching source waters with consequences for human health—not just taste. As Mark Twain may or may not have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Hopefully, the water utility sector will not experience another Flint or Tucson fiasco, thanks to the labors of Michael McGuire and Marie Pearthree.

Enjoy!

“It’s not true that you never learn from history. You do, but then you forget.” – Martin Wolf

Is It Safe? The Tale of American's Drinking Water Systems: G. Tracy Mehan III's Review of 'Troubled Water'

G. Tracy Mehan III, a frequent contributor to WaterWired, former assistant administrator for water at EPA in 2001-2003, executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association and adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, sent me the following email PDF of a review he wrote of Seth M. Siegel's Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink book.

It will appear in the March/April 2020 issue of The Environmental Forum and its publisher, the Environmental Law Institute.

Download GTMIII_Is_It_Safe_Review_Troubled_Water

The firsrt few paragraphs:

Martin Doyle, director of the Water Program at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, recently observed, “Being able to blithely  drink water from just about any faucet in the United States without concern is one of the greatest achievements of American Society.” The report from the 2019 Aspen- Nicholas Water Forum, titled “Ensuring Water Quality: Innovating on the Clean Water & Safe Drinking Water Acts for the 21st Century,” notes that “The [Safe Drinking Water Act] has achieved remarkable improvements in drinking water quality with more than 90% of community water systems achieving all water quality standards all of the time.” Noting that there are still numerous challenges, and that the law’s effectiveness has “plateaued,” the report recognizes that “this is an incredible accomplishment.”

Even as the crisis in Flint, Michigan, spotlighted the remaining legacy issues with the 6.1 to 10 million lead service lines still existent, the EPA states in its proposed revisions to its Lead and Copper Rule that “the United States has made tremendous progress in lowering children’s blood levels.” Specifically, “the median concentration of lead in the blood of children aged 1 to 5 years dropped from 15 micrograms per deciliter in 1976-1980 to 0.7 micrograms per deciliter in 2013-2014, a decrease of 95 percent.”

The last two paragraphs: 

As this reviewer has often argued, raising water rates to maintain the system is often viewed by an elected official as a tax increase, root canal in political terms. Whether it be an independent water authority (Denver), a separate corporation owned by the city (Louisville) or a private, investor-owned utility, anything that creates distance from the electoral cycle will improve utility management and finance. Washington, D.C.’s water and wastewater utility improved immensely since becoming a separate authority. Yet, as Siegel points out, “De-linking water utilities from mayoral politics, though, need not lead to unaccountability.” City or county elected officials can reserve the right to appoint the board members or commissioners, ideally for fixed terms. 

Regulation is hard work. There are no shortcuts. Data, science, technology, and economics are all part of the mix and need to be brought to bear on the challenges of determining actual risks to human health and what to do about them so that benefits exceed the costs. Otherwise, regulators will practice precaution without principle.

Enjoy!

"Water water everywhere and nearly all of it fit to drink." - G. Tracy Mehan III, from the article

Oliver Houck & G. Tracy Mehan, III: 'Reading the Environment — 1969-2019: Books Have Warned, Inspired Professionals'

G. Tracy Mehan III, a frequent contributor to WaterWired, executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association and adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason Universitysent me the following email and a PDF of an article he co-wrote.

My colleague, Tulane Law professor Oliver Houckand I wrote the attached overview of environmental literature over the past half decade for the 50th anniversary issue of The Environmental Forum and its publisher, the Environmental Law Institute.

It was a difficult task but we hope we convey the breadth and depth of the canon. We hope you find it to your liking.

Suffice it to say that he's being modest. It's great!

Download MEHAN-HOUCK_FORUM_2019_Nov-Dec_2019

The first few paragraphs should whet your appetite.

The anniversary date of 1969 was a year particularly well known for air quality emergencies from New York to Los Angeles, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching on fire,and oil on the beaches of Santa Barbara, each of which produced law and policy reforms of their own — as well as the beginnings of a vast literature, from newspaper and magazine articles to a legion of books. And the pace of publishing on pollution and resource topics hasn’t slowed down at all.

Any attempt to capture environmental writing over the past 50 years requires a considerable lack of humility, given the outpouring of so many titles in this field. A recent Google search of “environmental books 1969-2019” yielded 154,000 results, no doubt an underestimate if you inquire into sub-specialties like environmental engineering, science, and economics. In the aggregate,the fact of this production provides reason alone for hope. So long as so many people continue to think, write and read about how to reconcile human conduct with the rest of the planet, we are the better for it.

We should begin by paying tribute to those who came before, the conservationand nature writers, the pioneering scientists, explorers, wanderers, poets, and painters who were the antennae of an evolving conservation movement occurring over centuries. Bill McKibben, writer and activist, has done a great service by assembling and editing a marvelous collection, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, including over one hundred American writers. Published in 2008 by the indispensable Libraryof America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the nation’s literary heritage, it features both classic and popular commentary on the environment. Certainly, Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” (from A Sand County Almanac)  and the likes of George Perkins Marsh (Man and Nature) are featured, but also Buckminster Fuller, the poetGary Snyder, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gay, John McPhee, Wendell Berry, Amory Lovins, the environmental historian William Cronon, and even P. T. Barnum’s diatribe against billboards. The collection is solid and representative for anyone wanting an overview of the canon.

For McKibben, “environmental writing,” in contradistinction to nature writing, “takes as its subject the collision between people and the rest of the world, and asks searching questions about that collision: Is it necessary? What are its effects? Might there be a better way?” While it often celebrates nature, it also recognizes, implicitly and explicitly, that “nature is no longer innocent or invulnerable.” McKibben goes on to conclude that “environmental writing is America’s most distinctive contribution to the world’s literature.” We agree.

And the last two paragraphs...

What we have here, together, is a sober assessment of the climate change challenge and reasoned hope for what could be. Which is what literature should do. 

So many books . . . and so little time. That is the bottom line for our limited review of the vast, overwhelming, but enriching cascade of environmental literature since 1969 and the founding of ELI and enactment of NEPA. The canon is rich, inter-disciplinary and, at times, both dispiriting and inspirational.At its most poetic, it contributes to the re-enchantment of the natural world.

Excellent!

Enjoy!

"Environmental writing is America’s most distinctive contribution to the world’s literature." - Bill McKibben