Lex Anteinternet: A question for writers of fiction.

Lex Anteinternet: A question for writers of fiction.: If you are a fiction writer, by which I mean novels, how many significant, or central, characters do you feel is the limit for a novel, assu...

Lex Anteinternet: Today is Earth Day for 2021. . .

Lex Anteinternet: Today is Earth Day for 2021. . .:  

Today is Earth Day for 2021. . .

 so let's post a few uncomfortable/surprising truths that relate to this.

Why?  As this area, environmentalism, is one of those areas people allow their political views to enter and trump scientific ones, ending up taking positions counter to their own stated position.

So here goes

First off, almost all the really dire predictions that were made when Earth Day first became a thing have been, well, wrong, showing that our ability to predict in this area is no better and maybe worse than any other.

That's, oddly enough, a reason to hope.

Regarding climate change, those who argue that we should go to an electric future free of coal fired power generation and fossil fuel powered cars have to accept that absolutely, with no exception, requires the use of the one really efficient green power source we have. That's nuclear power.  Back all the windmills you want, but without nuclear power, we're not getting anywhere on this.

On that, fear of nuclear power is purely emotional and wholly un informed. 

For those who scoff at the arrival of electric cars, by the way, you're about at the same point that people who scoffed at the arrival of cars themselves were in 1915.  I.e., there's enough of the old around to fool yourself, but that's what you're doing.  Ten years from now your petroleum consuming vehicle will have no value at all and you'll be looking for an electric one, like it or not.

Re solar and wind, while nuclear is necessary, these have now come into their own.  Scoffing at these sources not being self supporting is living in the past.  Yes, they have their own problems, but everything does.

Next, in order to really preserve the wild areas and basic environment of North America you pretty much have to cap off immigration at some rational level.  I.e., you can't increase the population of the country much beyond the current point and, frankly, you really have to look towards it decreasing, which given the low birth rate of native born North Americans is actually perfectly possible.

The entire population of the world will start decreasing on its own sometime during this century, but the current population growth rate in North America is way beyond the sustainable and that's all immigration fueled.  This isn't racist or xenophobic.  It would still be true no matter what populations were taken in.  It's a simple fact.  For that reason, really, immigration at this point in time ought to be geared mostly towards true refugees with some rational acknowledgement that a slower rate is required.

Tied into this, advocating for growth in everything is contrary to the environment as well, rather obviously.

On another point, agriculture is the only really green industry of any kind, and even it isn't green when its industrial.  If you want to preserve the environment, preserve sustainable family farms and ranches, everything else flows from that.

The closure you live to nature, the more of a real conservationist or environmentalist you are.  If  you herd sheep, ranch, farm, work out in the sticks, etc., you are probably an environmentalist even if you don't know it.  If you work in a large city, chances are that you aren't, even if you think you are.

Related to that, if you aren't gardening, hunting or fishing, you aren't really an environmentalist.

You probably also aren't if  your living a modern corporate existence in a big American city.  You may be eating a tofu based diet and working from home in Seattle, but if you got there by going to an east coast law school to make a big income and went on a vacation, just before COVID 19, to Bali, you're likely consuming a lot more of everything than that guy working down at the garage who's driving a twenty year old beat up pickup to work.

If you call your dog a "fur baby" and have fits about the plights of pets, but don't worry so much about humans, same thing.  Being a misanthrope or just neglectful of the human condition doesn't make you an environmentalist.

If you oppose environmental measures because you are a Republican, and support them because you are a Democrat, you aren't thinking things out.  Individual things require individual ponderings.

All of which means, you can't have it all your way, on anything.

Blog Mirror: USDA Amplifies Farmers Voices and Concerns Over Transportation and Shipping

 USDA Amplifies Farmers Voices and Concerns Over Transportation and Shipping

Lex Anteinternet: "We all do things we said we never would"

Lex Anteinternet: "We all do things we said we never would": 

"We all do things we said we never would"

So said a sticker that was on a car that belonged to somebody who parked in the same parking lot I've been parking in for 30 years.  The quote was attributed to "Soccer Mom".

For some of that 30, I've parked a real car there.  The cars were, in order of ownership, a 1954 Chevrolet sedan I once owned, a 1973 Mercury Comet, and a 90s vintage Mercury Cougar.  The Chevy I bought when I was still a college student.  I loved it, but owning it turned you into a part time mechanic and I didn't have the time. Additionally, at the time I sold it, I also had the Comet, which I had inherited, which was a nicer and more modern car.

I regret selling the Comet, but I did just that when we had our first child as I was able to buy a 1995 Ford F250 diesel for a good price, part of which was trading the Comet and a F150 to the person who sold it to me.  I  had too many vehicles anyway, I thought, and it was a good deal. The Cougar came along later when we picked it up from a friend of my wife's.  It had a lot of miles on it but it was in good condition and I drove the stuffing out of it, even though the heater didn't work.  

Otherwise, I've driven 4x4s to work.

Often they've been pretty heavy duty ones that could do ranch work as well as sporting transportation.  More recently I've added an old Jeep.  The Jeep is my current daily driver, but my Dodge D3500 4x4 takes me to work a fair amount and to out of town work when I go out of town.  None of these vehicles is new by a longshot.

Most of them look like I'm ready to go pull a trailer full of bulls or go into the hills. But there they are, in the parking lot.

The point of the quote above?

Today is the opening day of turkey season.

I won't be going today. The weather is awful anyway, cold and lots of snow on the ground, but that's not the reason why.  

I'll be heavily engaged in work.

When I was first practicing law, I cancelled an elk hunting trip here in the state (a Wyoming type of trip, not a guided something) as a partner in the firm assigned me something that conflicted with it.  Another partner later apologized and noted that one of the advantages of being a lawyer was "the illusion that you could take time off when you wanted to."  I've found it to be just that, an illusion.

I've been introspective a lot recently.

An old friend. . . my oldest friend, reminded me the other day that when we were in high school I maintained I'd never have a job in which I'd wear a tie.  The conversation came up as we were at a funeral, his son's funeral, and he wasn't wearing a tie as his son always tied it for him.  He doesn't wear them often.  I was wearing one, and I know how to tie one, as I wear them so often.

My youthful declaration about ties was because I didn't want an indoor job.  At that time I was going to be a game warden.  I've written about that before, so I'll forgo doing so again, but I didn't take that path.  Instead I pursued geology, but the bottom fell out of that.  Then I went into law.  I didn't know much about the practice of law and I didn't know any lawyers.

A different friend of mine, who is a lawyer and who is married to a lawyer maintains that law was the only occupation, other than the clergy, that would suit me, and as I'm Catholic, and married, obviously the clergy wouldn't be for me (unless, of course, I was Easter Rite, but that's another story).  Religious are called in any event, and I lack that calling.  Anyhow, that fellow is a German and has a more ordered sense of the world, I think, than I do.  Maybe he's right.  I hope so, and that would give an element of necessity to the otherwise complicated way we govern or our lives.

At any rate, as a lawyer, I've been a litigator.  It's not that I pursued that, but fell into it.  Lots of lawyers used to say that "the law is a jealous mistress", meaning it would take all your time, and whether or not that's true of all branches of the law, its certainly true of litigation.

Or perhaps my personality just works towards devotion to duty and work over anything else.  But after two weeks with two untimely deaths, thinking back on the younger me, I've found that the sticker has been true to my personality more than I would have ever have guessed.

Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.

Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.: Google seems pretty intent on destroying the Blogger format, which means that for people like me, who have blogged on blogger, we have a cho...

Lex Anteinternet: It is now completely impossible to view the shift ...

Lex Anteinternet: It is now completely impossible to view the shift ...: 

It is now completely impossible to view the shift away from an agrarian society. . .

Experimental farm, Willson North Dakota.  1914.

as anything other than a tragic mistake, at best.

We've exchanged a life outdoors and close to nature for one indoors that's artificial.  We've lost our connection with nature in its real, and often not always kind, but always existentially beneficial, sense.  We've lost our connection with other animals in the same way.  In the process, we've made ourselves increasingly physically and mentally ill.  We know that, and in struggling to deal with it, we're moving in the opposite direction.

We've forgotten who are neighbors are.  We don't found real bonds of love with anyone.  We've forgotten what a community really is, as we don't live in them.  We have no connection with the place or the land.  We don't understand ourselves as creatures.  We're obsessed with money even when we claim we aren't.

The past was certainly not perfect by any measure.  And the present certainly isn't.  This year, 2020, has been a disaster.  A horrible pandemic that originated in the densely packed cities of China spread rapidly through the densely packed cities of the rest of the globe, and while we struggle to deal with it, the best we can come up with is to hide indoors.

Perhaps it's time to really reconsider what "progress" is, and where we're progressing to.

A Tribune op ed and some thoughts on outfitters and locals.

We recently ran the item below.

The Agrarian's Lament: Two Hunting Season Reflections

A column appears in the Tribune today, by an outfitter, congratulating the Legislators involved in this matter (voting the bill down) for their thoughtfulness.  Interested folks can find it here:

Outfitters: Senators deserve our thanks for taking a thoughtful approach

The argument basically is the one I noted.  The bill would have reduced, the way the op-ed termed it, "hunter tourists" by 50%.  And that's true.

That doesn't rise to the level a good argument in my view. After all, legalization of marihuana was subject to the same pocket book interest. And Colorado was, and probably still is, getting stoner tourists. But that is the way that a lot of people tend to look at any question, and this question in particular.

The bill claims the Senators were verbally attacked, which if true is inexcusable, but which probably does show the deep seated cultural feelings on this issue here in this state.  Natives, of which I am one, tend not to be too sympathetic to this argument.

Why would that be?

It's  not, by and large, that most natives and long time residents are opposed to people keeping their jobs and we generally don't want to hurt the owners of restaurants and hotels and the like.   And we're keen on sporting goods stores. So none of that is it.

What is it, is being locked out.

Hunters and fishermen have sort on odd admiration/aggravation relationship with farmers and ranchers (quite a few of which, we should note, are hunters also).  And outfitters have made this worse.  It has to do with access to land.

Now, I'm not going to wax too romantic about this and there's always been places that hunters and fishermen, and from here out we'll just refer to both as "hunters" as fishermen are simply fish hunters, could not go.  But they were much fewer before outfitting became a big business in the state.  

That wasn't until the 1980s and the impact wasn't immediately felt. But by the 90s it was.  Outfitters were part, but not all, of that.

Indeed, out of state land ownership was also a big part of that.  Rich people would buy ranches in Wyoming and lock them up, if they could, whereas the same lands before had been ones of ready access for hunters.  Outfitters, however, came in and bought the hunting access, often locking up public lands that were landlocked by private lands at the same time.

Ranchers and farmers of course participated in this for a variety of reasons, simple economics being one but also because that often meant that they didn't have to deal with the minority of hunters who were some sort of a problem to them.  The outfitters guided their clients and hence controlled them.  

The entire development has impacted the local land culture a lot.  Access to private lands is harder to come by than it once was.  Given that, local hunters are unlikely to love outfitters if they've been pushed off of their former hunting lands.

The Game & Fish, for its part, has tried to redress this and has done so fairly successfully by effectively becoming sort of an outfitter, sort of, itself, by buying access to hunting lands under various agreements with landowners. That's a great program that I highly encourage, but of course it still isn't going to engender love by the locals for outfitters.

With only so much wildlife to go around, and so many places that it can be found, reserving licenses for out of state hunters, while generally supported by the locals, loses some of its appeal when the argument fails to ignore the impact of what outfitting has helped to create in the state.  

It's a classic agrarian conflict.

Indeed, it very closely replicates the agrarian conflict that took place in the 30 years following the Civil War in the South, to some extent, a conflict that came near to violence on multiple occasions.  That won't occur here, but that local hunters will back such bills if they can, and that the outfitting industry will oppose them, should be no surprise.

All of which gets back, in some ways, to my earlier arguments about creating a subsistence hunting license in the state, but that's not seemingly too likely to happen any time soon, and if it did, chances are that those with a trophy focus, and outfitters, might oppose that.  Or might not.