Responding To Conservancy's Alarm At Biofuel Sprawl
Articles reviewing the Nature Conservancy's new report on biofuel sprawl suggest a number of concerns, including the nature of the Nature Conservancy.
We should take special note of some of the Conservancy's positions apparent in these reviews:
1. As Kate Galbraith's remarks suggest in her August 26 NY Times piece, the Conservancy study limited itself to domestic land use concerns, ignoring vast, off-shored impacts;
2. The Conservancy entertains nuclear and coal plants---rationalizing their comparatively small landprints;
3. The Conservancy dismisses "maximal estimates" for solar installations;
4. The Conservancy endorses cap and trade---but what else would you expect from an organization the Chairman of the board of which was Hank Paulson, bush's secretary of the treasury and former Goldman CEO:
"...Steve McCormick, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy highlighted the leadership of out-going Nature Conservancy Board Chairman Henry M. Paulson, who today was nominated by President Bush to be the next Secretary of the Treasury." (1)
In fact, the succeeding leadership of that organization did not survive a scandal raised by reports of its own elitest practices in loaning contributors' funds to its staff and arranging sweetheart land deals:
"Steven J. McCormick who has served as president of the Nature Conservancy since 2001, abruptly stepped down from his post today after a controversial tenure in which the organization came under fire for land transactions and its relationships with for-profit businesses.
"...Mr. McCormick earned $375,000 in 2006, according to the charity’s Internal Revenue Service filings.
"...The (Washington Post) said that in some cases the charity had purchased environmentally sensitive land, placed development restrictions on it, and resold it to trustees and supporters at a reduced cost. The purchasers then gave the conservancy cash donations that were about the same size as the discount they received — an approach that allowed them to take income-tax deductions for their charitable contributions, deductions they would not have received had they instead paid the assessed price for the properties.
"...Mr. McCormick himself repaid a $1.5-million loan he received from the organization to help him buy a house." (2)
The wealthy who play into the Conservancy's game of elitest real estate transactions include some interesting personalities, like Annie Proulx (author of Brokeback Mountain) and her Conservancy-acquired preserve of "640 acres with a mile of riverfront on the lazy North Platte. To get here you ascend from Laramie through the Snowy Mountains and the Medicine Bow National Forest. Then you're in grasslands." (3)
Of course, Ms. Proulx promptly domiciled herself in a big, new, modern, glassy edifice overlooking the water---preferable, we must imagine, to a proletarian village of mud huts.
We should expect contradictory and elitest positions from an organization keeping intimate company with financiers and industrialists. Here is its own account of major acquisitions in the Adirondacks:
"International Paper and The Nature Conservancy today announced a historic agreement...
"The Nature Conservancy will assure that a significant portion of these lands remain available for private commercial working forest ownership. These lands will be subject to conservation easements that restrict future development and allow for sustainable forestry practices, thereby supporting the continued health of the Adirondacks' forest-based economy. As part of this strategy, The Nature Conservancy may retain ownership to a portion of these lands.
"...International Paper continues its presence in the Adirondacks and the state of New York. With the recent realignment of our printing papers business, our Ticonderoga (N.Y.) Mill is taking on an expanded role which is important to that business. In fact, the Ticonderoga Mill is announcing a capital investment in one of its paper machines this afternoon." (4)
Long before the Conservancy's present alarm about biofuels sprawl, any idiot knew biofuel was an obscene concept captured by the vested interests of big ag. Even John McCain, in his mavericky days---before it dawned on him that he had to make nice with the politico-economic establishment in order to advance his personal ambitions---remarked on the folly in his 2003 Senate testimony:
"Ethanol is a product that would not exist if Congress didn’t create an artificial market for it. No one would be willing to buy it. Yet thanks to agricultural subsidies and ethanol producer subsidies, it is now a very big business -- tens of billions of dollars that have enriched a handful of corporate interests - primarily one big corporation, ADM.
"...ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase energy independence and nothing to improve air quality.
"As far as reducing fuel consumption, it requires 70% more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it provides when combusted." (5)
But the Conservancy focuses on the phenomenon of sprawl, which threatens its special notion of environmentalism. Now i have no problem rescuing vulnerable acreage (including the Conservancy's stewardship of a parcel of hemlocks just outside my own village), but the larger issue here---aside from the Conservancy's elitest corruption---is how its special mission, shaped by and serving special interests, contradicts and splinters the general environmental cause---and why there is no cohesive movement. Sierra's romance with T. Boone is a comparable problem.
i think the shape of the environmental movement may be so amorphous and contradictory that the phrase is oxymoronic. Environmentalism cannot be splintered into a hundred different, compromised compartments, and it cannot be separated from politics, economics, education, foreign policy, and the phantoms of faith.
And conservation of energy---to which the Conservancy pays the usual lip service---appears a joke, considering the general lifestyles of the wealthy consumers who too often shape these organizations.
As one of the great feminists remarked a century ago regarding true reform, "an entire revolution in all existing institutions is inevitable." (6)
1.
http://www.nature.org/pressroom/press/press2464.html
2.
http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/3160/nature-conservancy-president-resigns
3.
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:QHDYLM8m8YAJ:articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/18/entertainment/et-proulx18+annie+proulx+nature+conservancy&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
4.
http://www.nature.org/pressroom/press/press131.html
5.
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=faed0c9b-6d5c-46dd-acd2-3163891b6685&Region_id=&Issue_id=79a48974-2bd4-4888-be97-e8a445366a84
6.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5GF5vh6s13cC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=stanton+woman%27s+bible+introduction&source=bl&ots=OdDRi1OrZs&sig=-0Cy0DwhnJ_NI0SoX_9RTKh18IY&hl=en&ei=KFOZSremMoGe8Qb7nPStBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=stanton%20woman%27s%20bible%20introduction&f=false
We should take special note of some of the Conservancy's positions apparent in these reviews:
1. As Kate Galbraith's remarks suggest in her August 26 NY Times piece, the Conservancy study limited itself to domestic land use concerns, ignoring vast, off-shored impacts;
2. The Conservancy entertains nuclear and coal plants---rationalizing their comparatively small landprints;
3. The Conservancy dismisses "maximal estimates" for solar installations;
4. The Conservancy endorses cap and trade---but what else would you expect from an organization the Chairman of the board of which was Hank Paulson, bush's secretary of the treasury and former Goldman CEO:
"...Steve McCormick, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy highlighted the leadership of out-going Nature Conservancy Board Chairman Henry M. Paulson, who today was nominated by President Bush to be the next Secretary of the Treasury." (1)
In fact, the succeeding leadership of that organization did not survive a scandal raised by reports of its own elitest practices in loaning contributors' funds to its staff and arranging sweetheart land deals:
"Steven J. McCormick who has served as president of the Nature Conservancy since 2001, abruptly stepped down from his post today after a controversial tenure in which the organization came under fire for land transactions and its relationships with for-profit businesses.
"...Mr. McCormick earned $375,000 in 2006, according to the charity’s Internal Revenue Service filings.
"...The (Washington Post) said that in some cases the charity had purchased environmentally sensitive land, placed development restrictions on it, and resold it to trustees and supporters at a reduced cost. The purchasers then gave the conservancy cash donations that were about the same size as the discount they received — an approach that allowed them to take income-tax deductions for their charitable contributions, deductions they would not have received had they instead paid the assessed price for the properties.
"...Mr. McCormick himself repaid a $1.5-million loan he received from the organization to help him buy a house." (2)
The wealthy who play into the Conservancy's game of elitest real estate transactions include some interesting personalities, like Annie Proulx (author of Brokeback Mountain) and her Conservancy-acquired preserve of "640 acres with a mile of riverfront on the lazy North Platte. To get here you ascend from Laramie through the Snowy Mountains and the Medicine Bow National Forest. Then you're in grasslands." (3)
Of course, Ms. Proulx promptly domiciled herself in a big, new, modern, glassy edifice overlooking the water---preferable, we must imagine, to a proletarian village of mud huts.
We should expect contradictory and elitest positions from an organization keeping intimate company with financiers and industrialists. Here is its own account of major acquisitions in the Adirondacks:
"International Paper and The Nature Conservancy today announced a historic agreement...
"The Nature Conservancy will assure that a significant portion of these lands remain available for private commercial working forest ownership. These lands will be subject to conservation easements that restrict future development and allow for sustainable forestry practices, thereby supporting the continued health of the Adirondacks' forest-based economy. As part of this strategy, The Nature Conservancy may retain ownership to a portion of these lands.
"...International Paper continues its presence in the Adirondacks and the state of New York. With the recent realignment of our printing papers business, our Ticonderoga (N.Y.) Mill is taking on an expanded role which is important to that business. In fact, the Ticonderoga Mill is announcing a capital investment in one of its paper machines this afternoon." (4)
Long before the Conservancy's present alarm about biofuels sprawl, any idiot knew biofuel was an obscene concept captured by the vested interests of big ag. Even John McCain, in his mavericky days---before it dawned on him that he had to make nice with the politico-economic establishment in order to advance his personal ambitions---remarked on the folly in his 2003 Senate testimony:
"Ethanol is a product that would not exist if Congress didn’t create an artificial market for it. No one would be willing to buy it. Yet thanks to agricultural subsidies and ethanol producer subsidies, it is now a very big business -- tens of billions of dollars that have enriched a handful of corporate interests - primarily one big corporation, ADM.
"...ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase energy independence and nothing to improve air quality.
"As far as reducing fuel consumption, it requires 70% more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it provides when combusted." (5)
But the Conservancy focuses on the phenomenon of sprawl, which threatens its special notion of environmentalism. Now i have no problem rescuing vulnerable acreage (including the Conservancy's stewardship of a parcel of hemlocks just outside my own village), but the larger issue here---aside from the Conservancy's elitest corruption---is how its special mission, shaped by and serving special interests, contradicts and splinters the general environmental cause---and why there is no cohesive movement. Sierra's romance with T. Boone is a comparable problem.
i think the shape of the environmental movement may be so amorphous and contradictory that the phrase is oxymoronic. Environmentalism cannot be splintered into a hundred different, compromised compartments, and it cannot be separated from politics, economics, education, foreign policy, and the phantoms of faith.
And conservation of energy---to which the Conservancy pays the usual lip service---appears a joke, considering the general lifestyles of the wealthy consumers who too often shape these organizations.
As one of the great feminists remarked a century ago regarding true reform, "an entire revolution in all existing institutions is inevitable." (6)
1.
http://www.nature.org/pressroom/press/press2464.html
2.
http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/3160/nature-conservancy-president-resigns
3.
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:QHDYLM8m8YAJ:articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/18/entertainment/et-proulx18+annie+proulx+nature+conservancy&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
4.
http://www.nature.org/pressroom/press/press131.html
5.
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=faed0c9b-6d5c-46dd-acd2-3163891b6685&Region_id=&Issue_id=79a48974-2bd4-4888-be97-e8a445366a84
6.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5GF5vh6s13cC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=stanton+woman%27s+bible+introduction&source=bl&ots=OdDRi1OrZs&sig=-0Cy0DwhnJ_NI0SoX_9RTKh18IY&hl=en&ei=KFOZSremMoGe8Qb7nPStBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=stanton%20woman%27s%20bible%20introduction&f=false
posted by The Old Grey Ent at 8/30/2009 09:52:00 AM
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