MORE ON SO-CALLED "SMART" GROWTH

A comment from a reader now living in the South

"You left out one important detail. In the 60s and 70s many people WERE going back to cities - Boston was undergoing an explosion of new construction and remodeling of old Brownstone houses, etc. Many people just liked the city life, and didn't like driving. But with another product of extreme liberalism and activist judges - BUSSING - all this inertia turned in the other direction - toward the suburbs.

No doubt much suburban development would have occurred anyway, but certainly at a slower pace. When the business climate deteriorated, businesses moved out as well. You know the rest.

With children grown up, my wife and I might just like NYC - but I refuse to live in a town where cops don't allow citizens to defend themselves, and where taxes must subsidize "the disenfranchised" and provide hotel rooms to any and every "homeless" bum.

One of my colleague's daughters was a social worker. She worked with "the homeless" here. What an earful about "the homeless" I got last week. She said that none of these people could stay off drugs; you simply couldn't ever give them enough - housing, counselling, food, money, anything. She decided that she or anyone else could not help these people".

My reader is right. Here in Brisbane, Australia, where we have none of the American social pathologies alluded to above, there is an absolute explosion of new residential construction in the heart of the city





PLANTATION PINE TREES ARE BAD NOW

And you MUST not log natural forests. And plastic comes from oil. And making steel burns lots of coal. So: Back to the caves!

Changes in U.S. forests caused by land use practices may have inadvertently worsened ozone pollution, according to a study led by Princeton University scientists. The study examined a class of chemicals that are emitted as unburned fuel from automobile tailpipes and as vapors from industrial chemicals, but also which come naturally from tree leaves. These chemicals, known collectively as VOCs, react with other pollutants to form ozone, a bluish, irritating and pungent gas that is a major form of smog in the lower atmosphere.

While clean-air laws have reduced the level of man-made VOCs (volatile organic compounds), the tree-produced varieties have increased dramatically in some parts of the country, the study found. The increase stems from intensified tree farming and other land use changes that have altered the mix of trees in the landscape, said Drew Purves, the lead author of the study that included scientists from four universities. "There are seemingly natural but ultimately anthropogenic (human-caused) processes in the landscape that have had larger effects on VOC emissions than the deliberate legislated decreases," said Purves.

The study may help explain why ozone levels have not improved in some parts of the country as much as was anticipated with the enactment of clean-air laws, Purves said. Environmental technologies such as catalytic converters and hoses that collect fumes at gas pumps have substantially reduced human-produced VOCs. However, in some parts of the country -- particularly the area extending from Alabama up through the Tennessee Valley and Virginia -- these improvements may have been outweighed by increased VOC emissions from forests, mainly because of tree growth in abandoned farmland and increases in plantation forestry.

They found that areas where farmland has been abandoned during the last century have early generations of trees that produce higher levels of VOCs than older growth forests. In the South, pine plantations used for their fast-growing supplies of timber have proven to be havens for sweetgum trees, which are major producers of VOCs. Indeed, virtually every tree that grows fast -- a desirable quality for forestry production -- is a heavy emitter of VOCs. "It's just one of those biological correlations," said Purves. "What you want is a fast-growing tree that doesn't produce a lot of VOCs, but that doesn't seem to exist."

Noting President Ronald Reagan's notorious 1980 reference to trees causing pollution (Reagan said: "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation."), the authors conclude: "The results reported here call for a wider recognition that an understanding of recent, current and anticipated changes in biogenic VOC emissions is necessary to guide future air-quality policy decisions; they do not provide any evidence that responsibility for air pollution can or should be shifted from humans to trees." [Which translates as: "Reagan was right!"]

More here.




FAR-LEFT SUPPORT GREENS

One of Australia's most Left-wing unions has switched its support to the Greens -- because they are the most protectionist. Environmentalism is often just another cloak for an impoverishing Far-Left agenda


"In a break with tradition, the AMWU will donate $100,000 to the Australian Greens in the run-up to next month's federal election. National president, Julius Roe, confirmed that around half his organisation's election spend would go to the Greens in recognition of their "consistent support for issues that will make a difference to our members and their families". Roe highlighted the positions taken by Bob Brown's party with regard to free trade and industrial relations.

The AMWU will also make contributions of up to $10,000 to 16 individual ALP candidates who have supported union members on free trade and manufacturing jobs.

Roe is urging union members to get involved in the campaign to evict John Howard from the Lodge. "This Government is the most anti-worker in Australia's history," Roe says. "It is in the interests of all our members, and their families, that it is defeated on October 9. "It has betrayed Australia's economic, cultural and political independence by putting George Bush's interests ahead of our own. The war in Iraq, and the US Free Trade Agreement were clear examples of that."

Roe conceded the AMWU had been "very disappointed" by ALP support for Howard on free trade, particularly after the Senate committee it dominated listed dozens of concerns."

More here.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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