NEW SCOTLAND — The Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy has reached “well beyond the halfway mark” of raising $1.2 million needed to purchase the historic Bender Melon Farm by May and preserve it, according to MHLC Executive Director Mark King.
King said that much of the raised money so far came from a $400,000 state grant through the Regional Economic Development Council in December 2019, which MHLC applied for in the summer. “We track grants all the time and it was there so we were aware of that opportunity for a while,” King said. “It really makes a difference in the project and I’m not sure we could possibly succeed without it. It’s a giant boost.”
This month, an iceberg nearly the size of Atlanta broke off in Antarctica.
The glacier, known as Pine Island, is considered one of the fastest retreating glaciers in Antarctica, where the climate is changing rapidly. Some parts of the content recently experienced record-high temperatures of nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
The loss of large ice chunks, known as calving, is a routine process that happens to every glacier. In the past, Pine Island would calve every four to six years, glaciologist Alison Banwell says. But now, calving events occur “almost annually” on Pine Island, she says.
While states like Maryland and Delaware are actively looking to abolish their nutria populations, states in the deep south seem to be slightly less agressive. The coypu is highly regarded in regions around the Gulf of Mexico and southern U.S. Delta waterways; ironically, some of the first areas where nutria were introduced. Both Louisiana and Texas actually have regulated hunting and trapping seasons on the rodents. Cajun trappers of the Barataria region regard the nutria as an important staple of tradition and as an important community resource. Food and fur - and while the nutria pelt has its own commercial value, I’m told nutria meat is actually pretty tasty as well; no surprise, as trappers like myself are well accustomed to the table-fare of baked muskrat and beaver stew!
That said, even states with harvest seasons and bag limits recognize the absolute chaos nutria can inflict upon marshlands when not properly managed. The Louisiana Coastwide Nutria Control Program is quoted as stating “The decline in fur trapping activity since the mid-1980s has resulted in over population of nutria.” My personal translation - there aren’t as many trappers as there once was, and without regulated trapping activities taking place on the landscape, “big guns” are called in to heavily cull instead. Unlike civilian trappers, I’m willing to gamble each individual animal’s resources (pelt, hide, meat etc.) aren’t being fully utilized when the need arises for an eradication situation.
This circa 2000 interview with Barry Commoner is interesting.
The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective. The chief remedial method has been the installation of emission-control systems--devices attached to the pollutant-generating source (such as autos, power plants and incinerators) that trap and destroy the pollutants before they enter the environment.
The fault is not that the control devices have themselves become less efficient since the 1980s. Rather, a countervailing process has overcome their emission-reducing capability. That process is economic growth: year by year, there are more cars and trucks on the road and more energy generated. As long as a control device is not perfect--that is, it does not reduce emissions to zero--this increased activity counteracts the device's ability to reduce environmental pollution, and economic growth becomes the enemy of environmental quality.
It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions. In turn, this economic limitation renders the control system vulnerable to the countervailing effect of increased economic activity. By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
"He's a drug store truck drivin' man
He's the head of the Ku Klux Klan
When summer rolls around
He'll be lucky if he's not in town"
"Well, he's got him a house on the hill
He plays country records till you've had your fill
He's a fireman's friend he's an all night DJ
But he sure does think different from the records he plays"
There is, however, a way to eliminate those bank-busting surprise medical bills without eliminating health insurance. Just ask Europe. Several European countries have health insurance just like America does. The difference is that their governments regulate what insurance must cover and what hospitals and doctors are allowed to charge much more aggressively than the United States does.
When I described surprise medical bills to experts who focus on different western-European countries’ health systems, they had no idea what I was talking about. “What is a surprise medical bill?” said Sophia Schlette, a public-health expert and a former senior adviser at Berlin’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. “Seriously, they don’t happen here.”