Republican Politics and Blind Squirrels

I'm pretty sure but not certain that this cartoon came from a recent issue of Sierra, the monthly magazine from my tree-hugging friends at the Sierra Club.  I'm usually better about attribution, so please excuse my lapse:

By the way, I read over the weekend that while all of the Republican candidates for president are still sputtering over the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, there is a slight break in the ranks.  Lindsey Graham said this on Meet the Press on Sunday:  

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press" that if the Republican party doesn't change its official position on same-sex marriage it will "hurt" the GOP in 2016. In 2012, the Republican platform read, "We reaffirm our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman."

And there's more from Senator Graham:

In an interview Sunday [7 June] with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued to distance himself from the growing field of GOP presidential candidates when it comes to climate change and environmental policy. 

“If I’m president of the United States, we’re going to address climate change, CO2 emissions in a business-friendly way,” Graham said during the interview, noting that he does “believe that climate change is real.”

Believe me, I'm solid liberal, won't be casting any votes for Graham, and believe that he's perhaps only the least batshit crazy of that pack of scoundrels (hey, I never used the word scoundrels before in print!), but I give him credit.  

But the snarky side of me thinks this is only an example of even a blind squirrel occasionally finding a acorn (or in this case, a pair of acorns).

More Fracking in PA?...and Ultrarunning

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett continues to be an anti-environmental corporate stooge for the natural gas industry (AKA Fracking Central):

A recent quote from him in the Sierra Club newsletter:

When reporter Matt Paul asked for a response to the Sierra Club's statement that we should be protecting public lands and not exploiting them, Corbett responded: "...there is a huge source of natural gas underneath the state parks, that is the state's.  I don't believe in just leaving it there."

Fervently hoping that he will be only a one-term train wreck instead of getting reelected this year and continuing the damage.

The link to Ultrarunning comes of course from the risks of despoiling our beloved backcountry.  It would be wise to remember the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964 which established the National Wilderness Preservation System.

The bill passed the House with only 1 Nay vote, and the Senate 78-8, and was signed by President Johnson.  The first few words of the Act--even more true today than 50 years ago--read:

In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.

Enough said.

More Good News, Bad News

Yesterday I posted from the Sierra Club magazine.  Here's more:

1.  China rents 5 percent of Ukraine for 50 years to raise crops and pigs for its growing population.

2.  After a major earthquake in Pakistan, a new seven-acre island appears offshore. Within days, visitors find it littered.

3.  In Nova Scotia, a white moose sacred to the Mikmaq people is shot by nonindigenous hunters, who post photographs of their kill on Facebook.

4.  Kolkata, India, where bicycles outnumber cars, bans the bikes to ease passage for the cars.

5.  In an attempt to protect endangered condors from being poisoned, California bans lead ammunition.


Of the above, I guess I am most offended--but least surprised--by # 2 (although 3 is very close).  As my boss once told me at the restaurant where I worked back in high school, "The public is the messiest people in the world."

Good News, Bad News...and Ultrarunning

I'm a card-carrying tree-hugger and long time Sierra Club member.

They have a page in their monthly magazine giving some quick facts about our planet and its people.  I'm jammed up today so will only post 2 quick items, but hope to post more shortly:

+++France bans fracking+++

---For the first time in 150 years, a gray wolf is sighted in Kentucky.  It is promptly shot.---

The connection to Ultrarunning?  You gotta care about such stuff, for the sake of the backcountry.

 

Good News: A Very Dead Pine Marten...and Ultrarunning

[image credit BBC Nature]

A quick blurb in the March/April 2013 issue of Sierra, the official magazine of the Sierra Club, tells us:

The pine marten, thought for 40 years to be extinct in much of Great Britain, is proved to still exist after one is killed by a car in Wales.

So I went to Google to read more, and find out that apparently there have been many recent reports of sightings for the past several years (indicating the Sierra Club news is kinda dated).  Makes me think of cougar sightings here in the northeast. 

To clarify, apparently a population of martens in Scotland is well known, but the critter was thought to be extinct in Wales and England.

Regardless, any time a species thought to be locally or regionally extinct turns out to be alive and well, that indeed is a cause for celebration.  Especially when the critter in question looks like an adorable cross between a cat and a fox.

FYI, the European pine marten is Martes martes; the one in North America is Martes americana, shown below.

[image credit Nature Conservancy]

 

These critters have been occasionally seen in mountains of my local area.  My Ultrarunning life would be complete if I'd chance upon one in the backcountry. 

 

Up to now the most exotic animals I've encountered are bears (several times), a beaver, and once, a bobcat.

 

 

Guess Who Said It?...and Ultrarunning

1. "Corporations are people, my friend." 
2. "...we don't need more national parks in this country; we need to actually sell off some of our national parks." 
3. "It's long past time for this Administration to stop delaying American energy production off all our shores." 
4. "Overregulation from EPA is at the heart of our stalled economy." 
5. "I'll get us that oil from Canada that we deserve." 
6. "Let EPA go the way of the dinosaurs that became fossil fuels." 
7. "No one will miss a hill or two." 
8. "We have to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency."

Answers:

1. Mitt Romney
2. Rep. Cliff Stearns, FL
3. John Boehner, Speaker of the House
4. Rep. Mike Simpson, ID
5. Mitt Romney
6. Rep. Louis Gohmert, TX
7. Sen. Rand Paul (on mountaintop removal coal mining)
8. Newt Gingrich

All these quotes were in a recent fundraising request from the Sierra Club, of which I have been a member for years.  To me, it's a no brainer that any serious user of the backcountry--such as we Ultrarunners--just has to align philosophically with the principles of conservation and preservation espoused by environment organizations such as the Sierra Club.

Yet in certain places in my social circles, even mentioning the Sierra Club--much less admitting I'm a member--is tantamount to saying that I molest children and kick stray dogs.

Somehow it's become chic to want to sell out our descendants' legacy of things natural, wild, and free, as though we can't afford to protect such things.

We can't afford NOT to.

Why Trees Matter...and Ultrarunning

From the March-April issue of Sierra, the Sierra Club's magazine, but I forget the particular article of column:

There's something about being near a massive coast redwood, its spire impossibly tall, or a broad sequoia, with its lava flow of soft, knobby bark, that evokes a visceral response.  It's less like viewing a tree and more like stumbling on a geologic wonder, an arboreal version of the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.  People use their library voices while walking among redwoods.  Maybe it's being in the presence of something that can outlive 50 human generations--a single tree, standing now in the Sierra Nevada, born during the Bronze Age, and whose grandfather shed its cocoa-colored cones before recorded history.

This is why trees matter. We have a solemn duty to protect and bequeath to successive generations the best of the natural world.  As Rachel Carson said, "Conservation is a cause that has no end.  There is not point at which we say, 'Our work is finished.'"

Oh, and the link to Ultrarunning is obvious.  When you're running among trees, somehow you feel protected and sheltered.  Trees never seem sinister or foreboding; they are always benign and welcoming.  That's why running on forested courses is so comfortable, like slipping on an old shoe, or running with a dear friend.

 

Climate Change..and Ultrarunning

I am a member of the Sierra Club (of course).  While not everything the club does is perfect, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks and they are an environmental and ecological and political force t o be reckoned with.


Anyway, the July/August issue of their magazine just arrived and in the quiet of the morning sitting beside my water garden I pored over it.  The magazine is FULL of material of interest to Ultrarunners, and in subsequent posts I will explore those.

Biu today I’ll just focus on an essay by Carl Pope, Sierra Club chairman, that he calls Bevies of Black Swans.  A Black Swan is an unanticipated event with enormous consequences:

Humanity’s latest gamble is ignoring climate change.  Thos endorsing it argue that the likely costs of preventing climate disruption exceed the probable benefits, particularly to the present generation.  Not only is this conclusion almost certainly false; it also largely irrelevant.  The issue…is not the likely benefits of action but the potential costs of inaction in the form of black swan climate changes…We can clearly afford a rapid transition away from fossil fuels; it won’t be free, but we can pay the bill.  What we can’t afford is the collapse of our stable climate.

Read the whole essay here.

Left unchecked, climate change may render our Ultrarunning irrelevant for us and our offspring, as mere survival may become our priority.