Much More Important Than That

Last spring, after reading one of my posts referencing urban trees as a form of green infrastructure, a friend of mine in high office tried gently to break the news to me.

He emailed, “Local officials or residents generally don’t see trees as what they typically think of as ‘infrastructure.’”  My friend reassured me that “we mostly think of trees as wonderful and beautiful and necessary, but not as infrastructure.”

He’s right, unfortunately.

This reminded me of a hilarious response the editor of the now defunct Business 2.0 gave to me when I tried, in my former role, to explain that Durham and Raleigh are distinct communities and metro areas.

He quipped the oxymoron (contradictory terms appearing in conjunction) that until “Durham is better known,” his magazine would “continue to refer to it as Raleigh.”

No wonder the magazine went out of business in 2007.

Actually, opinion polls have long shown that Durham has nearly the same awareness level as Raleigh even though the latter has the advantage of being memorized as a state capital by nearly all school children.

But the role of the community marketing organization I led at the time was to raise that awareness, especially among prospective visitors for which Durham would be a good fit, while aiding those for whom it wouldn't, to seek alternatives.

Yes, community marketing is not missionary work, but I digress.

Likewise, the general public’s recognition of “green infrastructure” will take time and rely on awareness generated by local governments.

To be fair, it wasn’t until about two decades ago that the term “green infrastructure” began to be used in government circles, although it had been taught as part of planning and administration long before that.

EPA is working hard to further this understanding and I would think that Durham officials will soon catch on.  But more importantly, will they realize their responsibility to educate residents in this regard?

Equally pertinent, will they accept stewardship for not only government-owned trees here but the broader tree canopy?  Will they finally execute a study to quantify that value?

But as Washington Post science journalist, Chris Mooney, suggests, the quantification of ecosystem services (“blending concepts from ecology and economics”) may be missing the even greater benefit of trees and other forms of green infrastructure to public health.

Ecosystem services are things such as provisioning food, regulating services such as water purification, or cultural services such as sense of place or aesthetics.

National Parks, for instance, generate $10 into the economy for every $1 invested by taxpayers, including tourism, but they also pull or sequester $580 million of carbon out of the air annually.

As Mooney did in this week’s column about a proposal by Harvard’s Dr. E.O. Wilson to set aside for our own sake half of the earth’s land area and 70% of the ocean in the form of nature reserves, he often covers research that deepens the connection between health and nature.

I’ve always been healthy but I am arguably healthier now than I’ve been in more than 40 years.  Wherever I’ve lived in Durham over the last 26 of those years, I’ve been surrounded by forests, nowhere more than where I live now.

On the eve after my birthday this past July, new research was published that concluded, “Having 10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000…,” or “being 7 years younger.”

The lots where I split my time, one in Durham and one on a nearby lake each have more than 100 trees alone which obviously contribute to my feeling younger.

Lets see now, research has recently shown that tree cover, not just government-owned trees but the entire tree canopy of a community, has an impact on public health, public works, taxable property values, crime reduction, social services, economic and neighborhood vitality, mental health, air and water quality etc.

Maybe they aren’t a form of infrastructure which is defined as the basics needed for the operation of society.

They are much more important than that.

Why Do We Call Them Water Bills?

Averaging 38.6 inches annually, Seattle has always been a little defensive about its reputation as a rainy place.  It gets ten inches less than Atlanta and about a little more than 9 inches less than Durham where I live each year.

As a native of the Pacific Northwest, I know that much of Seattle’s rain is in the form of mist and drizzle, while in the Southeast, it tends to fall in more concentrated doses.

But there is another difference that explains, in part, why Seattle has the highest rates for consumption of municipal water even if it doesn’t explain why Atlanta is a close second.

In Durham, the rate for 50 gallons a day is less than $10 a month, while in Seattle, water in that amount is $55 a month, and $42.64 in Atlanta.

Circle of Blue is a Seattle-based news/science source about water that I follow and highly recommend.  Journalist Brett Walton there, who also writes for the Federal Water Tap is fond of explaining that cities don’t charge for water.

They charge for the system to collect, treat and distribute water.  It only makes sense that water bills often include a charge for sewer as well as a fee for managing and rehabilitating storm runoff.

In Durham, those charges related to that amount of water come to another $48.52 compared to $116.23 in Seattle.  But anyone making these comparisons needs to read the fine print.

Durham is on a tiered rate system, with 50 gallons a day being the limit of the lowest tier.  So does Seattle.  But Seattle is way ahead the game when it comes to undergrounding the reservoirs it uses for treatment and distribution (not collection.)

In North Carolina, cities such as Durham, rely on surface water from streams and rivers to fill collection reservoirs, while half of the state’s population still relies on groundwater wells.

Of course, these two sources are interdependent because precipitation recharges groundwater which is then discharged to feed streams which fills reservoirs.

There are 37,662 miles of flowing surface water in North Carolina but half are assessed as impaired, meaning unsuitable for one or more uses, which in turn is why stream clean-up and protection should be an even higher priority here.

Seattle and other Pacific Northwest cities face a different problem.  Not only has snowpack diminished, it is projected to get much worse as climate change intensifies.

In the past, these cities would let their collection reservoirs draw down so they could accommodate the spring thaw.  Now they are trying to keep them at a higher level year around.

But Seattle and now Portland are leading the way in “undergrounding” their distribution and treatment reservoirs to meet federal mandates. 

For those of us in Durham, Little River Lake and Lake Michie are collection reservoirs while what was originally called the Durham Reservoir along Hillandale is one of two treatment and distribution reservoirs.

In the early 1900s, the latter was promoted by the Durham Traction Company (trolley system) as a recreation area.

One of the reasons that Seattle’s water rate is so high is that it has been a leader in converting reservoirs to another form of recreation.  It is undergrounding them and converting the tops to sports and recreation facilities such as softball and soccer fields.

These huge underground storage facilities will reduce evaporation and leakage and make the city’s water supply safer and more secure including the ability to withstand earthquakes.

Portland is not far behind.

One of my nephews earned an advanced degree from Utah State University in the science of horticulture with a specialization in water-efficient landscaping.

It is a discipline at the intersection of biology, design, engineering, politics, law, natural resources, history, psychology, economics, communications and social science.

His work has been helping municipal water utilities in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest instill conservation practices among residents and businesses.

Much of this is best done one on one.

It has always been interesting to me how little time municipalities spend on public outreach to help new residents understand norms and values related to recycling, yard waste, blowing clippings and leaves out of the street, picking up dog waste, etc.

It is because administrators and elected officials have trouble understanding that communication is a critical part of execution and compliance with codes.

Per capita water withdrawals peaked in the United States about 30 years ago, stabilized through 2005 and then began to decline.  By 2010, in the U.S. we withdrew about the same amount we did in 1970.

Public water supplies withdrew 42,000 million gallons per day or 12% of the total in 2010, 63% from surface sources, 57% of which was for domestic use including landscaping.  Of course, there are other demands on public water including commercial, industrial and institutional.

Those in the latter three categories that are withdrawing water from the Durham municipal supply include millions of visitors, university students and non-residents holding down two out of every three jobs here.

In 2010, Durham was using nearly 103 gallons per day per capita while Seattle was using 52 gallons compared to the national average of 89 gallons.  But these numbers can be misleading because this includes more than residential use.

Durham residential water use is projected to increase from 13.24 million gallons per day in 2010 to 22.92 in 2060 even though the population is projected to nearly double.

Seattle’s residential use peaked in 2004 and declined to 32.7 million gallons per day in 2010 and is projected to decline until leveling out in the 2030s and then increasing to 36.8 million gallons per day by 2060 (page 11.)

But hemmed in, its population is expected to increase by only 20% through 2040 by which time Durham will have become the same population that Seattle was in 2010 (page 13.)

Projections, such as these, are very difficult to make.  I smiled as developers along the coast in North Carolina lauded a new report that projects a smaller increase in sea levels by merely shortening the time horizon.

Cities can do so much more in water conservation.  In Durham we have yet to even mandate low-flow toilets in multi-family dwellings or recycling, for that matter.

We can beat these projections.  We must.  Shortening time horizons is shortchanging our children and grandchildren.

The Overlooked Attribute for Appeal to Creatives

Not only is the term creative class misused, but lost in most analysis of research about this bellwether group is the role of landscape appeal.

It is also another reason why officials in Durham, North Carolina, where I live seem short-sighted to keep skipping over the importance of conducting a thorough community-wide i-Tree inventory of tree canopy.

Researchers now unpack the creative class into three types of knowledge workers by occupation or avocation: synthetic, analytic and symbolic.

Analytic creatives work in universities or research labs and in the R&D divisions of corporations.

Synthetic creatives such as entrepreneurs are those involved in applied research, e.g. taking discoveries or what works in one area and applying it to concrete solutions in another such as with processes or systems.

Symbolic creatives are those in the cultural industries including everything from design and packaging to marketing organizations to curators, artists and musicians.

When communities such as Durham seek to perpetuate appeal to the creative class, they are focusing on the small percentage of individuals who will relocate in a four year span.

Symbolics are the least mobile, while analytics are the most.

According to Dr. Richard Florida, “many confuse creative class with young workers” but age 25 to 35 just happens to be the cohort least rooted.  Even then, rootedness and authenticity, more than “hipness” are the attributes of places to which they are most drawn.

In 2003, the year after first publication of The Rise of the Creative Class, I formed a consortium in Durham, to drill down to the county level, long before data mining made that the gold standard.

We were one of the first in the nation at that level to do so.

But not until digging deeper into the research did I realize until recently that the analysis missed one of the most important attributes to creative class appeal, which is natural setting.

Still, as far as it went, It turned out our hunch was correct.  Durham County and the four-county Durham MSA, now hyphenated to Durham-Chapel Hill were identified as some of the highest concentrations of creative class workers in the nation.

Some people who were too impatient to read the research or the book would leap frenetically in an effort to pigeon hole the create class, jumping to classifying it as only as artists, then ad agencies, then entertainment venues and as some still do now, as entrepreneurs.

Of course, the creative class includes or is drawn to places with those attributes and populations but it is more complicated than that.  For example, the groups including those noted above are far more comprehensive, and sometimes things have different meanings.

For example, by entertainment venues, an active street music scene is far more relevant than large-scale venues, especially those that have high ticket prices and where it is hard to come and go during performances.

Overlooked is that “outdoor amenities” are a key ingredient to places where creatives are drawn and congregate.  “Outdoor” unpacks into landscape, climate and recreational influences.

“Landscape” preferences include forest and open country as well as topographic variation, e.g hills and dales, lakes, rivers and access to mountains and coasts, etc.

The greater forest cover a place has, the higher its appeal.

Anyone truly familiar with Durham can see why it is appealing to and has such a huge creative class sector.

Values such as tolerance (we prefer the word acceptance here,) historic building that are appealing to creative class ventures, organic districts such as Brightleaf and Ninth Street, historic neighborhoods, a world class R&D park and two research university are pivotal.

It has a renowned foodie and cultural scene, a downtown entrepreneurial hub along with a landscape mix of urban, small town and rural as well as waterways, greenways and the 60% of forest canopy remaining as shown in the image above of North Durham.

It is the same mix that visitors find so appealing, including the 80% to 85% of newcomers and relocating executives who scout the community first as visitors.

They may be drawn by the community’s overarching brand (more than a logo or tagline) and the coherent storytelling of its marketing organization but only because Durham delivers on that personality.

Officials here have much to worry about including elimination of poverty.

But only by fostering all three elements of Durham’s incredible sense of place, a distinctive cocktail of “built,” cultural and natural assets, can its vitality be ensured so as to generate the resources needed.

Most at risk is its natural setting or landscape because it is the most fragile.  It can be so easily cannibalized by the first two place-based ingredients but without it, they are nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:13, adapted to sense of place, would read – And now these three remain: “built,” cultural and natural.  But the greatest of these is “natural.”  Because it is the most fragile.

It’s Healthy to be Skeptical, Just Not Cynical

Whenever I come across global warming/climate change deniers, I try to carefully listen or read what they have to say.

Some don’t really deny it’s happening.

They believe we’ll just overcome it somehow as we have major crises in the past without seeing that those were ultimately overcome by action, after being made worse by waiting.

I used warming/change in my opening because a new Yale University study shows that Americans feel a sense of urgency when the term global warming is used.

Which, in part, is why more than a decade ago savvy Republican researchers suggested the substitution of “climate change” to make it seem less threatening.

That warm and fuzzy approach to global warming turned out as predicted to not only divide Americans but cause 1-in-5 to be not at all worried (p. 16.)

As an Independent I may have been cynical about the motives of “professional confusers” behind today’s gridlock but now having read this memo I’m not even skeptical.

Ironically, the 2002 Republican research called for a flip-flop.

A decade earlier conservatives had teamed in a bipartisan effort under the first Republican President Bush to break a 13-year logjam by deploying market-based “cap and trade” to successfully curb another harmful emission.

In 2002 there wasn’t the overwhelming scientific consensus there is today that climate change/global warming is a real and present danger or that it is due to human actions above and beyond natural causes over the last 250 years, especially the last 60.

If you are a skeptic who happened to read this far, you may want to read the research by scientists at Berkley Earth who until recently were also skeptical.

It is summarized their new report entitled, Know The Facts: A Skeptic’s Guide to Climate Change.

Then again, studies of “motivated reasoning” find that in many people skepticism is really a cognitive cover used to deflect unwelcome information.

This is especially true when it is sincerely held that what ordinary people believe will not make a policy difference.

Showing irrationality is often rarely enough to “induce individuals to process information in a different way.”

There is a difference between being skeptical and being cynical.

Skeptics have reservations.  Cynics believe others are motivated by selfish concerns and don’t believe in altruism or even honesty.

If you’ve never been into reading and understanding various philosophical outlooks, a new book illustrates each one instead, entitled Philographics.

Deniers often fall into both categories though it seems more often the latter while global warming believers sometimes can get caught up in being cynical about deniers.

New science shows that cynics on both sides run a much higher risk of dementia, especially perhaps those cynical about scientific studies.  The study also shows that cynics won’t die any earlier, perhaps they just won’t remember.

That 2002 Republican research memo predicted more than a decade ago what a new Yale study confirms: use of the terms global warming and climate change are synonymous to Republicans and Conservatives (or as we Independents often joke, is that now redundant?)

But the term climate change “actually reduces engagement” among Independents, Democrats, moderates and liberals.  Fortunately, groups that will soon dominate elections such as minorities and young adults light up when global warming is used instead.

And that might be why global warming is still the most used by Americans personally, as well as in the news media, and in conversation according to the Yale study.

The Berkley Earth report meant for climate change/global warming skeptics includes a breakdown of what events are unrelated, e.g. tornados and earthquakes.

Hurricanes, droughts, forest fires and floods may change due to global warming/climate change but the amount hasn’t been established.

There is a link established to increased heat waves and coastal flooding.

New research also shows that global warming is not only reducing snow pack where water has historically been stored until released into rivers and reservoirs each spring, the means by which 1-in-6 people worldwide receive fresh drinking water.

But paradoxically, the resulting switchover to rainfall also means these water ways are less full in part because it is held in place by soil instead.

Sitting idle, we are likely to see much more rainfall but much less available for human use for drinking water.  This also mean less available for electrical power and agriculture.

Of course the use of climate science has been outlawed for the time being by the legislature in North Carolina because it was inconvenient for a few coastal land developers.

And some members of Congress are trying to do the same regarding military research which over the last 60 years has been the foundation of nearly all of the technological changes driving American innovation.

Fortunately, corporations are paying no heed and building the price of reversing global warming into strategic plans. Nor are many states.

Nine northeast states which banded together to cap emissions in 2009 have seen their economies grow faster than the other states while reducing greenhouse gas emissions nearly five times quicker.

A similar combine of five western states and two Canadian provinces fell apart after conservatives seized control in 2010.  But British Columbia in 2010 and California last year moved ahead.

Regressives such as those banning the use of studies on global warming and other research are easy to spot.

Even those who make it onto the governing boards of much smaller organizations where research is a core value are obvious by using every opportunity to demean it and to starve it of resources and focus.

All conservatives are not regressives, nor are all regressives conservatives. What they have in common is a disdain for research and resistance to progress.

In the words of the famous Brooklyn Dodgers then Yankees announcer Red Barber, “back, back, back, back (smile.)”

Regressives in the North Carolina General Assembly today are failing to head the warnings in that landmark 2002 research for Republicans, because that would, uh, be using scientific research.

It warns that while conservative attempts to negatively brand environmentalists had been successful by 2002, Americans as a whole remain overwhelmingly sensitive about the environment.

They just prefer instead labels such as pro-environment and conservationist.

The memo warns that “when we [Republicans] talk about ‘rolling back regulations’ involving the environment, we [Republicans] are sending a message Americans don’t support” and when it comes to regulations, Americans are “most comfortable with local oversight.”

The last part is lost on North Carolina regressives seeking every means possible to strip local governments of any oversight while demonizing science and regulations meant in the publics interest.

Not all narcissists in high office (found in greater proportion and much further up the spectrum than the general populace) are regressives, but uber narcissism among regressives may explain their claim “we don’t give a damn how many people this hurts.”

Oops, I hear someone banging on my door but keep the faith.  Whoever it is that thinks I’m part of a conspiracy probably won’t remember long.

Turning Pejoratives Into Badges of Honor

I wasn’t surprised that a big story out of Durham, North Carolina last week was buried under several pages of other local news in our local newspaper.

There are far too many “great things” emanating from here to always be front page news.

In my former role as head of Durham’s marketing organization, it fell to us to illustrate the sheer volume both to residents, but even more so to people who work but probably don’t live here, as well as to the news media across the state and nation.

I remember meeting with the newspaper editorial board in Greensboro for a briefing and having to disavow an editor of the notion “only in Durham,” a popular short hand at the time to broad brush some shortcomings here but also applicable to many cities.

Pejoratives such as this about Durham are rare now.  Following a decade of turnaround between 1989 and 1999 spearheaded by that guardian of its sense of place, for more than a decade now, Durham has had the highest image among North Carolinians in general out of all major cities here.

But a state lawmaker from Union County down on the South Carolina line where the largest town has a population of 40,000 tried his best to create another earlier this month while driving another effort to starve cities statewide of revenue.

Dismissing the harm this would bring to millions of the state’s residents just to satisfy a few whining special interests, of which his HVAC business is one, he sniped to a Durham lawmaker who urged caution that his community could stop providing services “or whatever else they do in Durham…”

The real news though is how quickly another Greensboro editor who was in the room back then came to Durham’s defense writing that “It happens that ‘whatever else they do in Durham” has produced a pretty vibrant city.”

While also linking to Durham’s overarching website, he went on to note that Durham is ranked #4 in the nation this year by Liveability.com, which scientifically ranks America’s best places to live and visit,  followed by Greensboro at #19, Asheville #48 and Chapel Hill #71.

This is only one of hundreds of such accolades, across a variety of measures, that Durham has brought to North Carolina.

In the write up, while linking to things to see and do in Durham, the researchers noted that “it’s hard to separate Durham from its anchor, Duke University.”

The nationwide announcement I mentioned at the beginning of this essay was about the publication of the latest research done by Dr. Stuart Pimm (his 250th such paper,) who is Duke’s chair of conservation ecology in the school of the environment here.

He and his wife are also neighborhood activists here or “whatever else it is we do in Durham,” which is also home base to the collective of conservation professions across the globe called Saving Species.

About the time I first became a DMO exec, Pimm was getting his Ph.D. out west against the backdrop of southern New Mexico’s spectacular Organ Mountains.  But while now also an American, Pimm is originally from the midlands of Derbyshire, England.

We have another connection there because that area was set aside in Royal Forest by my 25th grandfather, William the 1st (notice the resemblance,) after he and some of my other Norman ancestors conquered that country nearly a thousand years ago.

Actually, he was also called William “the Bastard,” which may be where I got it (smile.)  He wasn’t known for conservation but he must have had some innate understanding.

The huge forests he set aside or afforested also included heathers and heath, grasslands, meadows and other wetlands, everything to support wildlife.  My 25th grandfather was an avid hunter, a trait that finally petered out with me.

At one point these forests covered a third of England below the border with Scotland.  The laws setting aside these forests even named a variety of protected species while also banning hunting dogs.

Forest law, as it called, was largely anachronistic by the reign of the Tudors but references to these forests and the wildlife they protected are found in plays by William Shakespeare.

About the time I arrived in Durham twenty-five years ago, a part of Dr. Pimm’s homeland was again set aside as The National Forest with bipartisan support in Parliament.  It has been reforested with 9 million trees to date.

It also linked two of those ancient forests that may inspired him as a boy.

The purpose of the reclaimed forest is not only forestry but biodiversity including wildlife habitat, historic preservation, reclamation of depleted landscape, carbon sequestration (climate control) and of course, recreation.

England’s National Forest lies an hour and a half drive from 10 million people.  In addition to visitors, it has been a significant draw for new and expanding businesses as well as population growth.  A population nearly the size of Durham now lives and conducts business in this forest.

As we know in American, people pay a premium—as much as 50%—to just be near trees and nature.

Stretching across part of Derbyshire, England’s National Forest is also a haven for wildlife.

Dr. Pimm’s new study is drawing incredible attention because it quantifies the rate of extinction as human activity has accelerated.  Pre-human, even with five mass extinctions over time such as dinosaurs, “the ‘death rate’ of how many species become extinct each year out of 1 million species was .01.”

“Now it is about 100 to 1,000 according to Pimm.”  The #1 issue driving this is habitat loss including impervious surface, deforestation, forest fragmentation, crowding from invasive species and of course climate change.

Symbolic is an example I’ve been following, the Monarch Butterfly, down from a historic average of a billion butterflies to a low this year of 33.5 million.

Scientists can’t physically count these butterflies so they trace their 3,000 mile annual migration to where each generation breeds just a few feet from where their great-grandparents wintered.

The causes of the decline include loss of habitat, some of it due to deforestation and forest degradation including along roadsides, but much of it now is caused by insecticides such as those found in Roundup, which has accelerated with the advent of GMO seeds resistant to these pesticides.

Who cares about an insect that at most weights three hundredths of an ounce, right?  Humans should!  Monarch’s are symbolic of the pollinators we rely on for food.

But the study shows that far beyond these tiny creatures we’re also facing another mass extinction. 

Of course, this ground-breaking study and the acclaim it brings to North Carolina is just another example of “whatever else we do in Durham.”

Regressives holding our state General Assembly hostage, having outlawed the use of global warming science to make our vaunted coastline sustainable, now want to make sure that “whatever else we do in Durham” no longer includes fostering urban forest canopy.

These and other actions are increasing apparent as part of an undeclared civil war on North Carolina cities.

“Whatever else we do in Durham” also includes turning pejoratives lobbed by jackasses into badges of honor.  Bring it on!

Reflections on the Knees of Bees

My first memory of a bumble bee is laying next to some clover in the lawn stretching from our ranch house to the road, watching a western bumblebee dance around.  Almost forgotten is that it was probably made indelible by my mom calling warnings to me from her vegetable garden.

The memory came back to me a few days ago when a “Common Eastern Bumblebee” danced in my line of sight while I was taking a break from helping a friend clean out the garage in preparation for Junk King to haul away unwanted items.

This franchise recycles about 60% of what they collect and dispose of the rest.  It is an old business model.  I have a friend who cleaned out basements as a kid just to be able to turn in cans and bottles for the deposit and another whose family business years ago was doing what Junk King has made into a formula enterprise.

The bee hovered there while I was admiring the incredible stands of trees that developers and builders retained in Buckwater Creek, a neighborhood that backs up to a greenway along the steep ravine of the Eno River.

You can distinguish the Common Eastern Bumblebee (page 14) by its big, all black back end, separated from a head of that color by a lighter yellow midsection. By the way, the knees of a bee are the mid-segments of their legs where they collect pollen.

The bumblebee I first saw in the shadow of the Tetons was probably the “Central Bumblebee” (page 35) common along the western edge of the Rockies because its back end was yellow on top and black on the bottom.

Alarmingly, I just read that extremely aggressive Africanized honey bees, aka “killer bees,” were imported into Brazil just after the time I was studying that bumblebee in my early years.  They are now as far north as Palisade, Colorado along the western slopes of the Southern Rockies.

Swarms in the US have already killed horses and people.

I’m not a bee guy but I learned a little from my maternal grandfather when he was a water master in the 1950s at Stewart Dam on the Bear River, about two miles off the route of the Oregon-California Trail where wagon wheel ruts are still visible in that the corner of southeast Idaho.

His job was to monitor flows and divert part of the river via the Rainbow Canal through a complex of wetlands where it was cleansed of sediment and runoff before flowing into Bear Lake which stretches across the border with Utah.

His objective was to optimize water use for wildlife, power, irrigation, recreation and municipal use, but during parts of the year, it left him with time to pursue hobbies such as raising sheep and geese, keeping hives of honey bees, and of course, “paling” around with me during frequent visits.

I never asked him why, but I suspect his work gave him a close-up understanding of the importance of ecosystem services and ecological balance.

Bumblebees are more effective than honey bees, in some ways, as pollinators.  Both are raised commercially.  Bumblebees seem more sensitive to habitat loss but many studies now show that bees are also very sensitive to neonicotinoid pesticides, made from a derivative of nicotine.

I’ve learned that an example is the Bayer Advanced 2 in 1 Systemic Rose and Flower Care I’ve been applying the last few years to clusters of Knock Out and Lady Banks roses in my yard as fertilizer and to keep them from being devoured by bugs such as aphids and attacked by fungus.

It makes sense that being systemic it would also affect bees but there is a lot of money involved in studies both pro and con, but the weight now is leaning toward these pesticides as the cause, which are also widely used on corn, as being responsible for bill kills.

It was discovered about seven years ago in an archeological dig at Tel Rehov, a mound in Israel’s lush Beth-Shean Valley about 17 miles south of the Sea of Galilee, that humans there were cultivating bee hives between 9 and 10 centuries B.C.E, the first discovered in the Middle East and the earliest yet discovered anywhere.

Bayer Cropscience is one of many research concerns based in Durham, and this last April, the company opened its North American Bee Care Center here, a partner to one it already has in Monheim, Germany.

Part of the mission of the Bee Care Centers is to bring scientists and stakeholders together.  Another part is communication.  The Wire, part of the Atlantic Media group, reported recently that based on the Bayer Cropscience blog, “2013 was a great year for bee PR in America.”

However, several bee advocacy organizations including the Pollinator Stewardship Council, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, the American Honey Producers Association and the American Beekeeping Federation have sued the EPA overs its approval of similar pesticides by Dow, requiring instead warning labels.

Having a lot at stake, Bayer argues that colonies of honey bees worldwide have increased, not decreased, from 50 years ago and that periodic colony losses have been observed for centuries.  It is also wining and dining lawmakers and Congressional staff.

Bayer points the finger at the Varroa mite.  The USDA notes that annual colony loss has been consistent over the last seven years.  Reminded that ecological imbalance is rarely due to just one cause, these new studies find at least one link is to the use of neonics.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the North Carolina General Assembly doesn’t try to insert a ban on the use of these empirical studies into legislation to bar any local efforts to shepherd urban forest canopy, just as it did with reference to studies on climate change in a previous session.

Choked for funding by lawmakers, regulators too have been complicit, it seems.  The EPA should have conducted independent research on neonicotnoids rather than relying solely on Bayer’s findings and brushing aside concerns about Dow’s field tests.

Much more is at stake than profits.

Neurological research has found that hearing and seeing the birds and the bees gives a cognitive signal to humans that the world is healthy.  This should dictate that we error on the side of caution when it comes to things that threaten them.

In the meantime, here is a link to the guide for Conserving Bumble Bees.  And if you ever come across swarms of bees like the one shown here down in Raleigh/Wake County or as one was reported in Downtown Durham recently, contact the Durham Beekeepers for removal.

The Overarching Role Of Critical Writing & the Arts

I had just finished reading an article by Peg Tyre entitled The Writing Revolution last week in the October issue of Atlantic Magazine, when Frank Stasio, the host The State of Things, a public radio program broadcast from Durham, NC, where I live, interviewed the author along with several of the people mentioned in the magazine article.

Although, as Tyre writes, “research has shown that thinking, speaking, and reading comprehension are interconnected and reinforced through good writing instruction,” according to Arthur Applebee, the director of the Center for English Learning and Achievement -- “Writing as a way to study, to learn, or to construct new knowledge or generate new networks of understanding has become increasingly rare.”

A survey of 500 personnel hiring managers across the nation supports Applebee’s assessment.  In a USA Today article yesterday, Andrea Kay noted that one of the survey findings is that -- “Far fewer mature workers need to improve their writing skills — only 9 percent — compared to 46 percent of millennials, born between 1981 and 2000…”

Both the Atlantic article and Stasio’s interview provide an excellent overview of how interlacing critical writing into other subjects has created a remarkable turnaround for underprivileged kids in some low-performing schools.

Throughout secondary school and college it always seemed like I had to work two or three times harder than other students when it came to handwritten essays; and it wasn’t until I entered law school in the early 1970s, where the use of typewriters was permitted, that it seemed to be as effortless as it seemed for my peers.

As if being left-handed wasn’t challenge enough, essential tremor in both hands meant that I had to write more slowly and carefully than others while still racing to beat the clock.  It helped, when in my junior year, I became the first boy in my high school to take typing but it would be another seven years before that skill would help when taking of exams.

Of course, that doesn’t explain why I have such a struggle with commas (smile.)

I always breathed a sigh of relief whenever exams were multiple choice.  However, as Duke University professor Cathy Davidson noted a year ago in a Washington Post op-ed, Frederick J. Kelly, who invented that form of test, or at least was the first to deploy it in 1914, had a change of heart 14 years later when he became president of the University of Idaho in my native state.

Kelly is famous for writing that “college is a place to learn how to educate oneself rather than a place in which to be educated” and if he were still alive, he would be a strong proponent of “The Writing Revolution,” but the formulaic testing in the No Child Left Behind program, not so much.

In a blog post for Scientific American five weeks ago, Ross Pomeroy, the assistant editor for Real Clear Science laid out an equally strong case for the role of the “arts” as an overarching educational tool to include with science, technology, engineering and math, turning the commonly used acronym from STEM to STEAM.

Summarizing a few of the findings in a study linking the role of the arts in the success of science Nobel Laureates by Robert Root-Bernstein, Pomeroy notes in his blog that -- “Nobel laureates in the sciences are seventeen times likelier than the average scientist to be a painter, twelve times as likely to be a poet, and four times as likely to be a musician.”

He also paraphrases Dr. Jerome Kagen, an emeritus professor at Harvard in writing that “arts contribute amazingly well to learning because they regularly combine the three major tools that the mind uses to acquire, store, and communicate knowledge: motor skills, perceptual representation, and language.”

According to Pomeroy, in remarks made to the Learning, Arts and the Brain Summit in 2009 at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Kagen noted that:

“Art and music require the use of both schematic and procedural knowledge and, therefore, amplify a child’s understanding of self and the world.”

Apparently, government’s continuing role in raising educational standards and fostering creativity and innovation is a lot more complicated than continuing to keep “Big Bird” in existence.

Discouraging Tree-Cutting And Other Harmful Behaviors

Checking into several instances of illegal, improvident or misconceived tree-cutting in Durham, NC, where I live, has reminded me of a recent survey this year revealing that:

• 2.5 to 1 Americans are very concerned about the state of the environment,
• yet by 2 to 1, they don’t believe that their government is working hard to make sure we have a clean environment.

There is much we don’t know about in dendrology, the study of trees, but what we know so far is that they are incredibly valuable, far beyond aesthetics, and especially as what Jim Robbins terms “eco-technology” in his excellent new book The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan To Save The Planet.

They clearly warrant societal efforts to curb deforestation and incentivize reforestation and afforestation (a little-known term which means planting trees where they have not existed.)

As a political Independent, I’ve been bugging my Republican friends  with questions designed to gain a better understanding of their party’s obsession about regulations.

I’ve been frustrated myself during the evolution of such regulations and certainly here in North Carolina where a majority of citizens believe it was a very misguided piece of legislation that passed last year in their state that suborns thousands of acres of publicly-owned roadside trees to the interests of out-of-state billboard companies, a view shared by Republican-candidate for Governor, Pat McCrory.

In 1859, as the United States of America was unraveling, only a generation after its formation, John Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty provided the utilitarian rationale for when government should limit individual freedom whenever there is no other way to prevent harm to others.

One Republican friend and former elected official theorizes that regulations have become increasingly complex in direct response to the failure of executive branches at all levels of government to enforce them in the first place, creating a sort of ever-tightening feedback loop.  I can certainly see his point.

Based on my recent experiences and investigations, I’m even more persuaded though by Cornell economist, Robert H. Frank, who argues in his excellent 2011 book entitled The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good that:

“…it’s generally better to discourage harmful behavior by making it more expensive than by prohibiting it outright. Society’s interest lies in reducing the the total amount of harmful behavior, not in reducing harmful behavior by specific individuals.”

I found in examining instances of illegal tree-cutting here in Durham that prohibitions are virtually worthless because it is so incredibly easy (and inexpensive) for violators to claim the cutting was “inadvertent.” The penalties are rarely applied and when they usually involve some form of replanting of very dinky trees that will take decades before they compensate for the harm to the public.

Frank argues that taxation is a far more effective way to curb behavior when directed at things that harm society, groups and individuals vs. taxing productive activities.

By that he means activities that genuinely add value and create wealth, not rent-seeking behaviors such as those by outdoor billboard companies whose only value is parasitically-reliant on public roadways and the destruction of public property or leveraged buyouts that strip out value for private equity firms.

We need to make these and other bad behaviors very expensive.  But instead, we tax them little or not at all and far less than we do for productive behaviors.

We’ve learned the hard way that indiscriminate deregulation isn’t an answer.  But I believe Professor Frank’s overview of both Adam Smith and Charles Darwin and their insights about both the upside and the downside of the free market and consumerism is well worth a read for anyone.

But as Professor Frank famously tells students:  you should never underestimate the “power of ideology (at any point on the spectrum) to disable critical thinking.”

The New Era of Stewardship

American concern for the environment isn’t static.  At its roots in the years before 1850, life was breathed into the movement as much by artists such as Henry David Thoreau and my favorite landscape painter, Albert Bierstadt, as from science.  The term ecology wasn't even coined until 1866.

Experts break our concern for stewardship of our environment down into three eras and perhaps now a fourth:

• Pre-1970, environment was more about natural conservation
• Post-1970, environment was more about pollution control
• Post-1990, environment was more about pollution prevention
• Post-2010, environment is more about sustainability

As I was making my home in Durham, North Carolina in the late 1980s, a global conference was defining sustainability simply as “an activity that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (1987 UN Conference on Environment and Development).

I’m persuaded that “sustainable resilience” is a better term as proposed by Professor Emeritus Dr. Roger Caldwell of the University of Arizona because in his view lots of experimentation is required to achieve or maintain sustainability and also because it transcends just the environment.

Caldwell even suggests that sustainability may be the next great era after technology, but not in my mind, if conservatives have their way.  According to researchers working at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Sheps Center, which just 10 miles from my house in Durham, conservatives are much more likely to distrust what they stigmatize as “regulatory science” because it doesn’t support their world view prejudices.

What do I know?  The study by Dr, Gordon Gauchat, released just a little over two weeks ago, illustrates that conservatives’ trust in science has been declining since 1974, especially among the higher educated.  But maybe as capitalist George Soros suggests what new really need is to “move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems.”

Gauchat’s UNC-CH study also reveals that moderates like me tend to be less educated than conservatives and especially liberals, but we’re definitely not stupid.  Quibble about degrees here or there but who can argue that we don’t owe it to future generations to be better stewards of this planet? Really!

The study rules out some long-held theories about the long gradual decline in trust for science among conservatives settling on politicization.  The study is particularly enlightening for those of us living in Durham, home to two major research universities, world-renowned Research Triangle Park and scores of major corporate and government research facilities.

Duke University in Durham is also the gold standard for sustainability, both in policy and practice.  Next month when I go to Duke Eye Center for my annual exam, I will park in a green parking deck with living green walls, cisterns, a retention rain garden and a clematis covered rooftop level.

Adjacent buildings sport an award-winning green roof and heliport and across the street is an area where University Trustees have approved construction of a new tree lined 6-acre reclamation pond that alone will save 100 million gallons of Durham drinking water each year.

The 23-million-gallon pond will collect and retain rainwater and storm run off from more than a fifth of Duke West Campus to be recycled for other uses such as cooling towers.

Any organization, private, public or non-profit would do well to study and emulate both the Duke policy and the extensiveness and intensity with which it is being put in practice, much of it driven by my friend Dr. Tallman Trask III.

There are obvious contradictions such as the outdoor billboard messages either bought by marketers or enabled as donations for Duke Medicine Marketing.  While sacrificing roadside forests and undermining community values they are easily corrected anomalies and understood given the difficulty of entrenching sustainability in every nook and cranny of such a large enterprise.

Those who distrust science as an objective means of making and informing democratic decisions, public or private, are well advised to suggest anything better.  While they may thwart or retard government sustainability initiatives, this is a movement now so pervasive as to make such obstinacy anything more than a speed bump.

If Our Nation Was More Like Spartan Nation

Some people may have tuned out upon reading in the local Durham newspaper recently that STEM, the model that Southern High School will transition to that model next year, refers to education in science, technology, engineering and math.

A few may have connected the dots to a report delivered this month to President Obama which recommends that the nation produce 1 million additional college degrees in those areas.

The proposal may be destined for partisan gridlock, however, given that only 6% of scientists affiliate with the Republican Party according to a Pew study Which also reports that nearly a third of scientists are political Independents.  More than half of all scientists affiliate with the Democratic Party.

Of the third who are Independents, 6% of those lean Republican, while 81% lean Democrat.  It is clear that as the Republican Party has increasingly moved to the far right, it is shedding not only moderates but scientists as well, leaving it in an echo chamber of confirmation bias with little or no empirical voice.

Ideologically 9% of scientists are conservative, 35% are moderate and 52% are liberal.  As the Republican Party becomes increasingly ultraconservative and white and male, it is easy to understand why the Gallup Poll found that 29.6% of that group are “climate change deniers” compared to just 7.4% of all adults.

But many who read about the change occurring at Southern High here in Durham may have failed to noticed that the four specialized academies at the redesigned school will include include one called the School of Business Management and Sustainability.  It is fitting that Kenneth Barnes is the principal at Southern.

Kenneth was in management when I first met him and became friends nearly 2 1/2 decades.  At the time he worked at a Durham company that manufactured test tubes among other things.  Before finding her passion in community relations for the local television station, his wife Monica and I worked together at the time to jumpstart Durham's official community-destination marketing organization.

When the company close the facility, Kenneth lost his job and seemed to lose his way for a while.  I saw Kenneth frequently as he tried his hand as an entrepreneur in a business somewhat related to farming an area close to his heart from when he grew up down east.

Then Kenneth zeroed in on his true passion.  He returned to school  and added a teaching certificate to his bachelors degree in business administration.  He became a great math teacher while earning his master’s degree in school administration.  He was a doctorate candidate the last time our paths crossed a few years ago.

Kenneth has a perfect blend of backgrounds to lead SHS in this transformation.  He will definitely understands the importance of business management as part of a career in STEM areas.  I just wish he and his program could have been around to have an influence on those Americans who seem so estranged from science today as adults.