JASON J. CZARNEZKI

The American transportation infrastructure is poor, and as, I stated before, individual energy consumption and the risk of climate change are being hedged against the creation of carbon-free automobile technology.  Yet it seems there is so much continued hostility towards improving train travel in the U.S.  I must admit that I personally don’t get it.  Taking the train is so much more comfortable and easy than a plane or driving a car, except that the tracks and/or train cars are in poor shape so travel times are too long.  Trains cost money, but so do highways.  And trains are more environmentally friendly than cars or planes.  So I applaud efforts to improve train travel in the U.S. since I view it as a savvy long-term investment in terms of the environment and the econony; unlike others who view train infrastructure as a short-term economic waste.  This has been the debate in Wisconsin for some time about having high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison.  Now it seems the Democratic governor is pulling out all the stops to make sure the line gets built.  See here.  And while I’m at it, the Vermonter needs to go faster so I can get from Montpelier to NYC in less time.  Here’s hoping.

Today begins Vermont Law School Orientation for new first-year students, and faculty are introduced and mingle with the students.  Admittedly, after a year in China, I’m finding it all a bit overwhelming.  In China, despite the 14.5 million people in Guangzhou, I was a cultural outsider, did not speak the language fluently, and, thus, could and was often expected to be quiet and on the sidelines.  Today, during our opening convocation, I was in a room with more English speakers than I have experienced in a year, and students and faculty alike sought me out to say hello and ask me about my travels.  I’m enjoying be back and everyone’s kindness, but a little reverse culture shock is setting in.

I spent a summer in college with a National Science Foundation grant doing research in Yellowstone National Park under the guidance of scientists from the Great Lakes WATER Institute.  While most of memories are of doing science experiments late into the evening, many of my memories consist of park visitors doing very dumb things like hiking without a compass and getting lost and putting little kids on the backs of bison.  Apparently, according to this article, technology is giving park visitors more confidence to do stupid things.  Amazing.

The subject of overpopulation has become taboo.  American public interest groups no longer discuss the issue as an environmental problem, the issue has been removed from policy platforms and websites of environmental groups, and, to the extent the issue of population has been mainstream, its focus is on human rights, gender equality, and the ability to have children.

Yet, population growth and the Earth’s carrying capacity are major issues.  China and India, each with over 1 billion people, view overpopulation as a major economic and national security issue.  China is often criticized for its one-child policy, mostly due to reports of its aribitrary and sometime brutal enforcement of the policy.  And now India is using cash bonuses to delay citizens from having more children.

When I was in China, the Chinese were (a) often upset that the West criticized their one-child policy, and (b) were surprised that I both recognized that population size was a legitimate concern and commended the Chinese government for recognizing overpopluation as a legitimate issue, even if I strongly disagreed with the arbitrary and capricious nature of its enforcement and admitted such a policy could not and would not work in the U.S.

Unfortunately, in America and globally, population growth is sort of a political hot potato.  Obviously for political and constitutional reasons, setting a child limit in the U.S. would never fly, but, even though I acknowledge American individualism and personal autonomy, it pains me that open policy discussions cannot be had about incentives to keep family sizes, and thus resource consumption, down at both the domestic and international level.  In the 1990s, phrases like ‘zero-population-growth’ (ZPG) and carrying capacity were big buzz words, but these debates/discussion seem to have been lost.

“Exclusive Golf Course is Organic, so Weeds Get In“–Does this article fall in the ‘every-little-bit helps’ category, or the ‘but what about all the other environmental harm’ category like land degradation and habitat loss?  I suppose a little bit of both.  We should recognize all the environmental harms of our choices and when possible use the best option given our preferences and economic constraints.

This also reminded me of a great article in Sports Illustrated by Alexander Wolff called “Going, Going, Green” about the impacts of climate change on sports and how sports are developing environmentally-friendly techonology.

Legal Planet has an interesting post about the Obama Administration’s response in the case Connecticut v. AEP, and whether it will act strategically in order to pressure Congress to pass climate change legislation.  But again, as I posted before, are we better off without new legialstion and instead having the EPA regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act?

Prawfsblawg has begun their annual Law School Hiring Thread.  The thread asks law professor candidates to provide info on (a) whether they have received a first round interview at a school, and if the school mentioned the areas they were looking into, and whether the interview offer was accepted; (b)  a callback from a law school and/or accepted it; and (c) whether they have received an offer from a law school and/or accepted it.

Republican Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Rob Johnson, the future opponent of Democratic U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, has said that people who believe in global warming are “crazy” and that the idea of climate change is “lunacy.”   He is also quoted as saying, “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change.  It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination.”   See the full article with many other choice quotes here.

Al Gore might respond–‘I hope he is correct.’  Gore, in his NY Times Op-Ed “We Can’t Wish it Away,” states, “It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.”

Gore continues, “I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.”

I also hope that that climate change is really no big deal, but I question the basic choice to not deal with potentially serious or catatrosphic risks due to environmental degradation, even if the risks are potentially low-probability (and climate science suggests they are not).  And this does not even consider the major national security and economic concerns of America’s dependence on oil.

Vermont Law School has been named one of “The Greenest law Schools” by preLaw magazine.  See here.

My friend, former neighbor and composting buddy, and self-proclaimed eco-geek, Matt Montagne, has helped create Voices on the Gulf, a website designed to inspire writing and conversation about the BP Gulf Oil Spill.  Check it out.