Category: All Fragilecologies

Fragilecologies Archives
17 December 2003

Guest Editorial: By Dr. John Shepherd, M.D.
jcscmstas@msn.com

Walk together, talk together O ye people of the earth, Then and only then Shall ye have peace. –Sanskrit proverb

John Shepherd, M.D., a family physician from Colorado, U.S., spent part of 2003 in Tobanda Camp in eastern Sierra Leone working in a Liberian refugee camp.

When I returned from Sierra Leone in mid-2003, I expected to fill a notebook with comments on the differences and stark contrasts between West Africa and the United States. But after trying to provide primary health care in Sierra Leone to Liberian refugees fleeing an unimaginably cruel civil war — a continuation of the mayhem that infested Sierra Leone for a decade — I found innumerable similarities. Admittedly, our technologically burdened American society does not lack dialysis machines or advanced radiologic equipment and chickens don’t patrol our examination rooms for insects nor does wood dust fall from the termites feeding on the wooden poles supporting the roof on the tables and chairs. On a daily basis parents in the U.S., unlike those in Sierra Leone, don’t carry their children into a clinic on their backs or in a wheelbarrow to die of cerebral malaria, herbal poisonings, malnutrition, or Lassa fever. The American expected life span of 78 years, exceeds the 38 years of Sierra Leone, fewer than 18 out of every 100 women expire during childbirth in the U.S., and in most populations in the U.S. more than 20 percent of children live beyond five years of age.

Yet I recognize the shoeless man dressed in torn tee shirt and rope-belted frayed pants, because he walked into the homeless clinic in Denver where I have worked. Some people seek care only when they can no longer tolerate the pain, while others whimper and exaggerate the slightest ill — a range from unbelievable restraint to quaking fragility. Adolescent boys with diabetes skip meals in defiance of authority and don’t come for medication even though the insulin has added an additional five kilograms of weight to strengthen their sparse frames and increased their energy. Some people ask for too much and some refuse to demand enough. All seek enough uncontaminated water, protection from the weather, adequate food, and freedom from fear. Individual diversity melds into the same spectrum of behavior.

Neither country has an organized national health care system that would treat every citizen with the same dignity and quality of care. The Minister of Health in Sierra Leone cares as little for the individual as the insurance company executive in the U.S. People are denied health care because they lack the fee of 5000 Leones (less than $2.10) or because they have no insurance. Complacency and Neglect in the U.S. and Europe ignore the annual death of 11 million children from diarrhea, malaria, and measles. The World Health Organization estimates that $7.5 billion would eliminate malaria which kills a child every 30 seconds. The U.S. expects to spend over ten times that amount for the Iraq war and the U.S. and Western Europe spend $17 billion each year on pet food. Malaria kills more people every 2.5 hours and TB every three hours than the total mortality due to SARS, yet inequities in income distribution and power allow the latter to receive the press coverage.

Functionally, the U.S. legal administration ignores our Constitution just as the magistrates in Sierra Leone demand bribes for favorable rulings. Insidiously contradictory government behavior leads the U.S. to lecture the world about the need to prohibit the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction while seeking Congressional authority to develop nuclear tipped “bunker buster” missiles and leads West African governments to post billboards warning of AIDS, measles, and hemorrhagic fever without offering them condoms, vaccines, or vector control and mechanisms to protect food from rat urine.

The major U.S. political parties fail to cooperate enough to legislate policy needed to assist the poor, while non-governmental organizations have inadequate oversight to guarantee the delivery of goods to people seeking refuge from mutilation. Cultures of greed deter cooperation, and economic systems assure self-perpetuation leading to irresponsible attempts at humanitarianism or “philanthropic pretense” as author Joseph Conrad labeled it. Wealth lies concentrated under the control of a few privileged people, while “conflict minerals” (valuable minerals that are mined and sold) buy guns and not public health, schools, or food for the vast majority.

The same color as the Los Angeles sun falling through the exhaust fumes into the Pacific, the West African sun sets round and orange through the dry-season dust and the smoke of the jungle burning to open land to plant cassava. Unable to see beyond tomorrow or their own village or city, people tend to focus on themselves, their children, their clans and discriminate against outsiders or any foreign element. A perversion of reason provides a pretext for despising, humiliating, and oppressing others. Even survival requires a conquest of human spirit.

Unable to conceptualize beyond the chiefdom or county, poor planning and lack of sustainability dooms good intentions to ultimate insignificance. Antinomian criminals drag a man to death chained behind a truck in Texas, while West African rebels amputate the limb of a child with a machete. Animists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and atheists all live within meters of each other yet can’t recognize the similarities of their beliefs.

The official language is English in both countries, yet many people know little or nothing of it and speak in numerous other languages. Refugees struggle to obtain 2100 kcal per day while obese westerners accustomed to consuming twice that amount strive for this goal. In the U.S., some children go without meals because poverty denies them and in Sierre Leone children go without meals because there is no food. Mothers cry or ululate over the death of their children.

Africa is not just an allegory, but a reality that metaphors can’t capture.

One thought ever at the fore –
That the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space,
All People of the globe together
Sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination.

— Walt Whitman(19th century American poet)

Fragilecologies Archives
1 December 2003

Nothing generates interest in the weather more than a weather or climate extreme. This year is one of those years when droughts, floods, bush and forest fires, and vector-borne diseases are capturing the headlines on a daily basis in the United States and abroad. It is interesting to note that missing from headlines this year (so far) are news stories about ice storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote an editorial entitled “Render unto weather …”. Admittedly, this title was then a play on words, an attempt to get people to stop blaming specific weather anomalies for all the damage that happened to occur during those anomalies. In those days, there was a tendency for governments at all levels to blame nature for the damage that occurs during an extreme event. That way decision makers can blame the heavens for loss of life and property and by doing so convince others that the anomalies were not their responsibility and the damage was beyond their control.

Since the late 1970s, however, an increasing number of social scientists have questioned “blaming nature” for disasters. They set out to devise ways to separate what could legitimately be blamed on a specific weather or climate anomaly from what could legitimately be blamed on societal decisions. Sadly, governments continue to blame nature whenever an extreme event turns into a societal disaster.

For example, in the late 1980s a Congressional bill was put forth in order to “end famine” by deploying a monitoring satellite over drought-prone parts of Africa. The truth of the matter is that droughts often have much less to do with famine than the various underlying political, social, and economic conditions existing in a region at the time of the drought.

As another example, Hurricane Andrew was a very damaging and expensive extreme event. Although damage was of course caused by this hurricane, studies have since shown that a considerable amount of damage could have been avoided, had the construction companies simply adhered to southern Florida’s building codes. As another example, floods along the Mississippi in the summer of 1993 were very damaging to “protected” settlements in the floodplain. In retrospect, it became clear that decisions to allow for development in the natural floodplain bore as much responsibility for the damage as did the heavy rains and resulting high water in the river system.

Despite the obvious need to identify what to blame on nature and what to blame on the arrogance or ignorance of decision makers, weather and climate impacts researchers remain poorly funded, often ignored by the physical science research community.

In the late 1990s, meteorologists discussed weather-proofing the United States – a laudable goal, but a very difficult if not impossible task to achieve. Such talk misleads the public about the ability of the scientific community to protect society from weather-related harm. I would argue that most social scientists would have cautioned against talk of “weather- or climate-proofing” society.

Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the U.S. government has questioned scientific research’s relevance to addressing societal needs. Now, just about every scientific endeavor seeks to show such relevance, in part by claiming its value to society, at least in their opening paragraphs or colorful brochures. Yet, science budgets do not provide adequate funding to identify the societal aspects of these issues, even though many of the solutions to climate- and weather-related problems lie in the realm of social science research. A better forecast of the trajectory of Hurricane Andrew would likely have had little impact on the physical damage it caused; likewise for the floods in the Mississippi or the famines in Africa.

Since I wrote that editorial for Climatic Change in 1978, the physical side of our understanding of the atmosphere and its impacts on society has improved dramatically, as has the monitoring of the climate system. Social scientists whose interests in the weather-climate-society nexus have grown sharply are, however, still considerably short of the funds needed to better sort out the impacts of decisions from the impacts of anomalies. Justifications for climate research today invoke societal needs as the primary reason for public support. When can we expect funding trends to follow the new verbiage?

If I have one fear to express, it is that the next generation of researchers will decades hence be asking the same questions I am asking toward the end of my career in impacts research.

This editorial originally appeared in Weaterzine, Issue 35, September 2002.

Fragilecologies Archives
18 November 2003

Do we need nature? Paraphrasing William Shakespeare, is nature to be or not to be? That is the question. It seems simple and straightforward. But is it? Who, for example, makes up the “we”? Does the “we” refer to peasant farmers whose livelihoods depend on the productivity of local soils or the availability of water and other natural resources that they must exploit to survive? Does it refer to corporations whose operations and success depend on the use of various elements of the natural environment? How might one interpret the meaning of “need”? Is it a need related to one’s well being, or is it a desired need, but not a necessity?

And then there is “nature”: is nature an object that exists for humankind to exploit, to dominate, to live in harmony with or to modify at will? If purposely modified, can it still be considered natural? Some people argue that humans are part of nature and whatever they do to nature becomes a part of nature.

Each of the words in this provocative question — Do we need nature? — generates its own set of interpretations, each of which can lead to different views about the degree to which societies need nature.

Anthropologists have categorized human interactions with the natural environment as follows: humans over nature, humans subordinate to nature, and humans in harmony with nature. The humans-over-nature attitude stems from a belief that nature exists to serve humankind; it is there to exploit to any desired extent. Humans-subordinate-to-nature represents a fatalistic belief that societies lack either the means to protect itself fully from the vagaries of the nature environment. Whatever hand nature deals to a society, it has to learn to accept it. Humans-in-harmony-with-nature represents an ideal; societies exploit nature in a sustainable way, allowing nature to replenish itself. With respect to this view, societies have accepted that they were at the limits of exploitation of their natural environments. Examples of each of these categories are found somewhere on the globe today. It seems though that the dominant view at the onset of the 21st century is that of humans over nature.

The experience of the Aral Sea after the 1950s provides us with an example of the prevailing attitude of humans seeking to dominate nature. While some people argued that the sea was a resource-generating body of water in the midst of deserts, others saw it as a large unused pool of evaporating water. It was not being used to green the Karakum and Kyzylkum deserts of Central Asia. In the days of the Soviet Union, the natural environment that was left idle was put in a category similar to that of an idle worker: an enemy of the state.

In the 1950s Soviet leaders sought to put the water to work by diverting it from rivers into the dry but fertile desert sands. The water was seen as a hundred times more valuable when used to grow cotton as opposed to keeping alive certain commercially exploited fish populations and a thriving fishing industry. As a result of such a crude benefit-cost assessment, the sea and its deltas disappeared in the span of less than four decades: the fishing industry collapsed; human and ecological health conditions slowly deteriorated; life expectancy at birth dropped like a stone; and an old downstream culture, that of the Karakalpak, was brought to the verge of destruction because of premature deaths and increasing out-migration. Sadly, many of these adverse changes were foreseen in the 1920s by Russian geographers who warned new Soviet leaders about the fate of the region if they did not respect the sea as an object of nature deserving to be carefully exploited.

American folk singer Bob Dylan once captured a societal reality in his musical lyrics, when he wrote that “we live in a political world”. This observation was not new but has been acknowledged by Machiavellian in the 1500s. Much earlier (around 200 AD), Tertellian wrote that the growth in numbers and in affluence of human populations puts tremendous strain on available resources, to the detriment of the health of both society and the natural environment.

There have always have been competing, if not diametrically opposed, views about the “proper” relationship between nature and its exploitation by society. Even in everyday commerce, it is said that “you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate”. Similarly, the fate of the natural world depend on the outcome of negotiations that go on day in and day out to resolve conflicting views about whether, when or how a society ought to interact with its natural environment.

Make no mistake about it; there will be winners and losers at least in the short term, as environmental conditions are changed because of human activities. In truth, some environmental changes will be societally useful, even benign, transformations of nature. Others, however, will eventually prove to have been environmentally degrading if not disastrous.

Today, conditions exist somewhere on the globe that expose the negative forces of change for just about every existing environmental problem of concern: air pollution, acid rain, greenhouse gas emissions, stratospheric ozone depletion, deforestation, soil erosion, water quality degradation, water quantity diminution, lake-level decline, sea-level rise, siltation of reservoirs, salinization of irrigated soils, salt water intrusion, mangrove destruction, wetland loss, and so forth. These environmental changes are at different stages of development in various locations. This is the bad news: the involvement of humans in environmental degradation is obvious and everywhere.

There is some good news, however. If a government decides today, for example, to pursue policies that allow for tropical deforestation (or for the rapid expansion of irrigation into arid areas), it can find examples of locations elsewhere on the globe where such activities have already been pursued without having taken proper precautions with regard to the long-term consequences for sustainable use of the affected environment. Such examples should serve as a lesson about the negative second- as well as first-order effects of inappropriate land-use practices. Such examples, when collected, can be used to educate and warn about the foreseeable consequences of similar activities if appropriate precautions are not undertaken.

Most environmental problems in which humans become involved are of the creeping kind in the sense that they are incremental, low-grade, almost imperceptible changes, but are cumulative over time. Today, for example, soil erosion is not much worse than it was yesterday and tomorrow it will not likely be much worse than it is today. Yet, after some years have passed, those incremental but cumulative changes in soil conditions will have turned a manageable problem into a soil-erosion crisis.

For most creeping environmental problems there are few obvious identifiable thresholds of change that can be spotted well enough in advance to serve as early warning to policy and other decision makers. Thus, potential thresholds need to be identified qualitatively, based on a notion borrowed from the law — foreseeability. Foreseeability refers to the likelihood of an event. For example, it is foreseeable that a planned irrigation facility that does not allow for proper drainage of the soils will lead to salinized soils, a loss of soil fertility and to the eventual abandonment of the land.

The dilemma facing humanity is having to make decisions about the degree to which societies can exploit nature, in the absence of perfect information about how that exploitation might ultimately negatively affect the environment in the future. Some decision makers are risk-averse. They only take actions that might, with a very low impact, impinge on the health of the natural environment. In essence they have chosen to forego some level of satisfaction in order to avoid the foreseeable degradation of nature. There are the risk takers They are willing to put the environment (and ultimately society) at risk as a result of their decisions. Some risk takers are also risk makers, in the sense that their decisions can create risks, not for themselves but for others to face. A statement by the king in the animated movie “Shrek” captures the sentiment of the risk maker: “Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to take!”

It is clear that we need nature. It is the life support system for individuals as well as societies, for flora as well as fauna, for governments as well as corporations. The challenge to civilization is to identify pathways for societies to exploit nature in a way that does not render it useless or harmful to future generations. The truth is that several generations of humans are alive at any given time. For example, a 15-year old today is tomorrow’s policy maker. She or he can engage in discussions with people who are now 30 years old, or 45, or 60, or 75 or even 90! She or he can engage in decisions related to human-nature interactions that affect the future state of the natural environment. Now, at the outset of the 21st century, is the right time to hold an intergenerational discussion about the environment. Today’s leaders can ask the leaders of the future about the kind of world they want to inherit.

I have always kept in mind an image that I saw in the center of Vienna, Austria: a solid concrete wall in the midst of which, several feet off the ground, was a small sapling, the seed of which had opportunistically taken root in a hostile human-built environment. Since then, I have been drawn to look for such examples everywhere: grass growing in the cracks of pavements, on the tops of mosques in desert regions, and so forth. These realities caused me to realize that nature will survive long after people have perished from the Earth’s surface. It should be obvious that nature does not need us. However, we, individuals as well as civilizations, cannot survive without the natural world.

Fragilecologies Archives
24 November 2003

The thoughts that follow were written primarily in Moscow at the World Climate Change Conference (WCCC 2003) in early October 2003. It was there that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol — individuals, groups, governments — were hoping that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin would announce that he would sign the protocol, thereby putting it into force as an international document. All eyes were on this scientific conference. The organizers did as promised: they delivered Putin as the keynote speaker.

Alas, the pro-Kyoto attendees from a wide range of countries, including Russia, were greatly disappointed. More so, when they realized that the Russian organizers of the WCCC had planned a frontal attack on the science of climate change and, more specifically, on the protocol and Russia’s support for it.

The media picked up on an off hand comment made by Putin, I believe in jest. He suggested that fur coats would no longer be needed in the event of global warming: a positive outcome of higher global temperatures. Seated next to Putin on the dais was one of his key advisors known to be hostile to the Kyoto protocol.

In the paragraphs that follow, I provide a brief summary of the debate within Russia about whether to sign or not. I then provide some speculation about whether the way that Putin deals with the protocol can influence in any small way Bush’s re-election bid in November 2004.

The community of nations is at a point in time with regard to the global warming issue where scores of countries have signed on to support the Kyoto Protocol. The intent of the protocol is to begin a process of re-appraisal of and limitations on the emissions of greenhouse gases (these are also referred to as heat-trapping gases).

According to the protocol’s language it cannot come into force as a legal instrument, until the total amount of CO2 production of the signatories adds up to 55 percent of the globe’s total production of this greenhouse gas. As of now, signatories’ contributions add up to 44 percent. The United States is responsible for about 36 percent of emissions.

The US government is leading the internal political opposition to the protocol as a result in large measure of special interest groups. Under Clinton’s presidency, the US Congress opposed support for the protocol in the absence of specific concessions, such as the developing countries not being given special reprieve from their ‘obligation’ to restrict their greenhouse gas emissions. China and India were specific targets of this US requirement, among others.

The administration of George W. Bush, strongly pro-energy and doubter of the reliability of the science of climate change (for real or manufactured beliefs) has claimed that for the US the Kyoto Protocol process is a dead issue. It refuses to sign on to any restrictions, obligatory or otherwise, on its future economic growth and development prospects. Bush professes to pursue greenhouse gas reductions through its suggested voluntary emission reduction efforts for various socioeconomic sectors of society. [NB: However, the Bush administration is bringing legal action against those US states that are seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through their own state laws.

The US seems to be putting more funds into climate-related research, which many see as an attempt to avoid having to make any decisions of note at least during Bush’s tenure in office, and beyond if possible. Recall that the US is the largest emitter in the world by far of greenhouse gases.

That leaves the Russian Federation as the next largest major producer of greenhouse gases (at the levels emitted in 1990, the protocol’s base year) to sign or not to sign the Protocol. If Putin signs the protocol, it will go into force. If he decides not to sign, the protocol goes into the dustbin of history. What is the government of Putin to do?

There are lots of statements in the media and by a wide range of experts in lots of different fields that claim that Russia has everything to gain and little to lose by signing the protocol. They argue that Russia can make billions of dollars by selling its carbon credits to those countries that are emitting well beyond their allotted share of greenhouse gases.

Russia and its predecessor state, the Soviet Union, are well known for their notoriously inefficient use of energy. Russia’s amount of energy per person or per GDP dollar is considerably higher than in much of the world and especially in Europe, a region with which it often compares itself. So, not only will it make money immediately by signing on ???, but there is a lot of potential to generate increasing amounts of income as it becomes more energy efficient. Some observers have argued that the gains from producing products using energy efficient methods will surpass those from the selling of carbon credits in the international marketplace. So it seems, there is no downside to signing the protocol, while at the same time becoming a global environmental savior.

There is concern, however, that what at first glance appears to be beneficial with respect to the short-term gains from signing the protocol could turn into mid- to long-term losses to the country.

Russia is one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, outside of the Persian Gulf region. If it signs the protocol and governments and industries everywhere devise ways to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, they will lose foreign exchange. That would greatly hinder its economic development plans and prospects. There is also a belief held by many Russians that a warmer Russia would mean higher levels of agricultural production, an increase in the land that could be used for farming and grazing, reduced domestic energy costs, and so forth.

One Russian authority fostering a regional level management scheme for Russia suggested that there would be several benefits at the regional to local levels by signing the protocol: “the Kyoto Protocol means investments. For industry, fuel and energy complex, housing and communal services it means renovation of capital assets and reduction of costs for fuel-energy resources; for agriculture it means conversion to new methods of land management and increasing crop capacity of fields; for forestry it means both enhancing of forest lands and opportunities of timber industry development” (I. Starikov. 2003. “Regional approach to state regulation and management of carbon investments” in Business [international journal in Moscow, special issue on the Kyoto Protocol, p. 40).

A comment made by the chairman of the state Duma Environmental Committee, Vladimir Grachev (2003), underscores the lack at present of an infrastructure within the country to cope with the downstream domestic economic aspects of signing the protocol. For example, are their tax laws in place within the country to reward the energy efficient enterprises and to enforce penalties on those who are non-compliant? He noted that “Russia does not have the legislation in place for application of these new instruments of international and interregional cooperation” but needs to develop such a legal framework to enable and encourage investment in an energy efficient Russia.

There are bigger political questions that the Kyoto process exposes, geopolitical questions. In the Bush era with a US attitude of “go it alone”, the US has isolated itself from its traditional allies, except Great Britain, by taking what have been unilateral decisions to topple the Saddam Hussein regime. Russia, France and Germany separately as well as together have opposed US policy about the pre- and post-war efforts in Iraq. Is Russia going to stand with Europe, which staunchly opposes the US boycott of Kyoto, or with the United States? With regard to the recent (September 2003) summit at Camp David between Bush and Putin, one can only wonder what was said about greenhouse gases, climate change and the Kyoto Protocol.

Let’s speculate for a moment by asking the following question: What might be the impact on the chances for Bush’s re-election in November 2004, if Putin were to sign or reject the protocol by the end of 2003? Or by march 2004? Or by August 2004? The point is that the timing of the signing (on not signing) as well as of the events surrounding the signing itself could have tremendous political implications for US presidential politics. Bush has already been challenged on his anti Kyoto stance by individuals, environmentalists, environmental groups, and his own environmental agencies and by city and state governments as well. Such opposition could be fortified, when as well as if Putin signs the protocol.

In some key ways the US and the Russian positions are similar. Both countries, for example, do not want to give up their prospects for continued economic development and growth. They do not want to make their economies poorer or more vulnerable to outside influences. That is understandable.

While it appears that the Russians are spending considerable effort to sort out the fall out that might follow the signing of the protocol, it is unclear that the American federal government is putting in a similar effort. Nevertheless, the American public, non-governmental organizations and several local and state governments are spontaneously becoming energized, as are some corporations and the commodities market, to take actions that address the global warming issue. In the US it appears that this may prove to be a case where government policy will follow the will of the people rather than lead it. In the Russian situation it will likely be the opposite.

Until the mid-1990s one might have argued that the US was a world power with regard to climate policy. Today, that is no longer the case. Interestingly, the deputy Minister for economic development and trade, M. Tsikanov (2003), recently suggested that, by signing the protocol, Russia could “become a leader in the climate-related process and provide it with the status of ‘world rescuer’…If Russia does not sign the protocol it will never come into force” (p.48).

Tsikanov provided some interesting insight into comparative emissions by major powers, painting quite an advantageous (at least on the surface) economic picture for his country. He noted that Russia could have on the order of 1.5 to 2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent to trade, because its emissions are well below the 5% reduction below the 1990 emission level required by Kyoto; Russia’s level of emissions are below about 17 percent below their 1990 level, due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the resulting sharp reduction in industrial activities. The US, however, as well as Europe and Japan, are emitting greenhouse gases above their 1990 baseline and would need to acquire carbon credits from countries that have credits to offer… like… Russia!

However, their demands for the potential purchase of carbon credits, at present, do not come near the amount that Russia has available for trade and the prices that they have offered has been a fraction of their expected value in the market place.

Tsikanov noted that European governments are reluctant to commit to carbon credit purchases, until Russia signs the protocol.

References:

Tsikanov, M. 2003. “Mukhamed Tsikanov: We are waiting for real proposals from our partners…” [same magazine, pp. 45-48].

Grachev, V. 2003. “Concept of legal and regulatory framework for GHG emissions and removals by sinks”, p. 41, same Business journal. WCCC 2003.

Fragilecologies Archives
5 November 2003

Guest Editorial: By Dr. John Hopewell
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
J.L.Hopewell@student.uva.nl

In February of 1999 I was trekking with a college buddy and a guide in the Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra. We were about 3 hours into our 3 day jungle adventure when I heard the unmistakable sound of chainsaws buzzing in the distance. The buzz saws made my ears perk up more than usual on that day because no doubt this was illegal logging or sometimes called timber poaching, in one of the last unmolested areas of Sumatra. The park is on the flanks of the over 3,000 meter peak Gunung Leuser and contains some of the richest biodiversity in the world including Sumatran tigers, rhinos, elephants, orangutans, hornbills, and countless other bird and insect species. That afternoon, as we were setting up camp on the Bohorok River, a burst of rain fell right on time as it usually does in the tropics. Having just finished my degree in physical geography my eyes were fresh out of 4 years of training to observe my environment. What I saw after that brief shower was a Bohorok river that had turned into the color of chocolate milk and nearly left its banks before it ebbed and settled back to its normal state. Was I witnessing floodwaters exacerbated by deforestation or was it just heavier rain upstream that I was ignorant about? Given the news on November 3rd, 2003, almost five years after my visit to the region, I believe that it was due to deforestation upstream.

On October 30th, a stationary low pressure centered over North Sumatra province began its 5-day assault on the normally 1-3 meter deep Bohorok River and turned it into a monster not witnessed in modern times. On November 3rd, the combination of heavy rain falling onto the illegally deforested slopes of the Bohorok watershed caused a wall of water 4 meters high to come barreling down the narrow canyon containing mud, earth and perfectly sawed logs where first it met the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center, then the many guesthouses that line the footpath towards the park headquarters, and finally downstream to Bukit Lawang village and beyond. In its wake it left at least 180 dead and more than 400 buildings destroyed or 90% of the total village. This was an environmental crime of major proportions!

Environmental crimes are not new to society but in this era of globalization appear to be more and more frequent as well as more and more visible. For sure, with the ability of peoples to reach distant lands either by plane or via CNN, these events hit closer to home more today than ever before. There are countless types of environmental crimes ranging from the Soviet Union’s desiccation of the Aral Sea in Central Asia to many industries just about everywhere knowingly dumping toxic effluents into waterways. The perpetrators of environmental crimes are as diverse as the offenses committed. The common denominator in such crimes though is the indictment of society. Without humans the environment would exist in a pristine world (with the exception of deep climate change and the occasional comet impact.)

Indonesian officials were quick to blame this catastrophe on illegal logging and were quoted as saying “this disaster was not completely natural.” They carried on to say that they know who the loggers are and that they will be brought to justice. But what kind of justice? Corrupt Indonesian justice that led to this problem in the first place or true objective environmental justice?

If there was ever a time for environmental justice, it is now. There is ample evidence to bring an indictment. In fact, there has been such evidence for a long time. There are plenty of witnesses who could have testified. Unfortunately, many of them perished in the raging flood waters.

One of my fondest memories of Bukit Lawang was sitting on the guesthouse porch overhanging the aqua-blue Bohorok River, watching orangutans building their nests 60 meters high in the forest canopy. Most of the orangutans around the town and the rehabilitation center were once stolen as infants from these very forests by “bio pirates” (i.e., poachers) and then sold as pets (just another example of an environmental crime, primate kidnapping!). Once they lost their cute baby faces and became the 100+ kilo people of the forest (orangutan means “forest people” in Indonesian) that they are, their human captors dumped them at the proverbial curbside of society. The fortunate ones were the orangutans who made it back to their jungle home and were witness to the November 3rd unnatural disaster. I wonder what those original people of the forest were thinking from the safety of their perches as these new people of the forest below became the victims of an environmental crime? The orangutans would be a destructive character witness against the defense. What would they like to say to a judge and jury? We will never know, but we can guess.

(AP Photos)

Fragilecologies Archives
3 September 2003

The expression “once burned, twice shy” is based on the belief (if not the hope) that a mistake made the first time may be unavoidable and is understandable. It is assumed that, once the adverse impacts of that bad choice have been felt, it is less likely that a similar choice will be made in the future in a similar situation. This assumption suggests that lessons identified from the first unpleasant experience will be used if similar situations arise in the future.

However, deeper thinking about the “twice shy” part of the adage makes me wonder if it is true only generally and is only sometimes true in specific situations. It is more about what ought to be the response. Yes, lessons are likely to be identified from a first bad experience, but whether those lessons are learned and then used as a guide to action in future situations remains unclear.

Let’s say one is burned a second time. The person takes a second chance in the belief that the same fate will not befall him or her when doing the same thing as before. That too may be understandable, given another belief (perhaps false) that “lightning does not strike in the same place twice.” If they are proven wrong and they are burned a second time for a similar action, one might then revise the adage to “twice burned, thrice shy.” One would certainly hope so, but where is the study that supports such a belief? I do not know if such a study exists. Let’s look at these adages in the context of recent US foreign policy actions.

American President George W. Bush decided to put together a coalition to bring down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the deadly attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. The regime had been harboring the masterminds of 9/11. Coalition forces were successful to some extent: the Taliban was deposed and their leadership scattered, Al Qaida’s home base was apparently uprooted, and the beginnings of a democratic regime were initiated. Kabul and Khandahar were pacified.

Coalition forces have been unsuccessful, however, in disarming the regional warlords, unsuccessful in pacifying the country except for a few pockets of relative calm, terrorist attacks continue to take place in Kabul and Khandahar, and Taliban forces, referred to as “remnants” seem to have regrouped in the northwest territory of Pakistan and the neighboring mountains of Afghanistan. And so forth. To me, this represents the “once burned” situation. I mean this in the sense that many of the Bush objectives for a democratic future for Afghanistan have not been achieved, nor are they likely to be achieved in the future. Meanwhile, our troops are there, out on a proverbial tree limb, and it is costing taxpayers their hard-earned dollars.

Soon after, the President and his advisers, along with British Prime Minister Blair, decided that Saddam Hussein, for long the ruthless, despotic leader of Iraq, had successfully hidden his weapons of mass destruction from United Nations inspectors. They moved to bring down Saddam and his two infamous sons using their military force. They tried to assemble a large international coalition, but in essence they failed to do so, with some minor exceptions. Europe, Russia, and most of the rest of the world opposed such a military venture. Demonstrations against the impending war appeared just about everywhere around the globe, including in the United States and Great Britain.

Such anti-war sentiment notwithstanding, Bush and Blair put together a military force to depose Saddam. They succeeded in toppling his regime, capturing many of his government and political supporters, and killing his notorious sons. They failed, however, to fully understand the quagmire into which they had placed their troops. After just a matter of weeks, the troops were no longer seen a liberators, but as conquerors. After several months, no exit strategy is apparent. The “peace” in Iraq has proven to be costly in American lives and in the billions of dollars needed to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. The pacification of various parts of the country has not occurred. Public safety is nonexistent. This has occurred despite the Secretary of Defense’s assurance that the American plan is on target, that the costs (in lives of troops and Iraqis) are worth the potential benefit (of a democratic and free Iraqi society), that the Iraq situation is not a quagmire, and that the situation is not a case of urban guerilla warfare.

It looks like the coalition may have won the battle (toppling the Saddam regime), but it seems to be losing the war (pacification and democratization of Iraq). To me, this represents the “twice burned” situation for President Bush and his advisers. Lessons learned from the first venture (Afghanistan) were apparently not applied when it came to embarking on the second military venture (Iraq).

The problem is that the Bush administration does not appear to listen to outsiders, including the general public and, more importantly, the attentive public. It is not listening to its allies or to the criticism of others. For some reason, it wants to go it alone, along with Britain, in Iraq. Now the administration talks about wanting to bring in the United Nations and soldiers from other countries to assist in reconstructing the country. But to do so, the UN wants decision-making powers about that reconstruction. Bush says no. I’m not sure what Blair says.

In fact, Iraq is the third difficult protracted conflict situation the US forces have been involved in: Vietnam was really the first. Perhaps there is one lesson the Bush administration should consider. It is an idea suggested by the opposition to the war in Vietnam: declare victory and leave. The difference in the Iraq situation is that the United Nations and other non-governmental organization would enter the country to fill the void left by departing American and British troops.

In retrospect, once burned is understandable. Twice burned may also be understandable and forgivable. But thrice burned … it is not yet clear how turning a Presidential blind eye to lessons learned in similar situations will be judged by history. Badly, I would think.

“Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?”

Pete Seeger, 1961

Fragilecologies Archives
21 August 2003

It’s pretty interesting looking back to the times when I crossed certain age barriers. For example, turning 16 was a big deal because I could then drive legally. Eighteen was also important because I could be drafted into the Army. And at 21 (in the old days), drinking became legal.

Turning 30 seemed to affect lots of people. They hadn’t reached their millionaire status yet or launched a career that would make them either well heeled or well known. To me, 30 was a no-brainer. I can’t recall any trauma. In fact, I liked the 30s. For some reason it might have been my best decade.

There are lots of jokes about being 39: my best 5 years were when I was 39, some would say. Comedian Jack Benny used to say he was 39 decades after he was. That was part of his act, though. Many people seem to fear 40. Middle age begins somewhere around there, although it is not a fixed number. Maybe being middle-aged is really only a state of mind. I guess I know some people in their late twenties and early thirties who act as if they were middle-aged and others decades older than them who act as if they were in their 20s. Who’s to say which group is right or which one is most content? Perhaps both are.

Then comes 50. Turning 50 caught my attention. It’s hard to remember why. Perhaps it was work stuff that bothered me more than the age thing. Yet age started to be on my mind. At 50, it would be hard to change jobs. Who wants a 50-year-old, even one with lots of experience? Cheaper to get a young person and train him or her. I remember playing singles at my tennis club and glimpsing the four guys in their upper sixties and reminded myself that was going to be my next milestone. Scary I thought, going from a vibrant active energetic go-get-um tennis buff to a much slower-paced truly middle-aged person.

As I approached 60, I became more cognizant of aging. In fact, I decided to celebrate my 59th birthday as the important one in order to avoid the shock that people spoke about that seems to accompany entering the 60s.

This year, going from 59 to 60, is in fact a major jump for a host of reasons. At 59 you still believe that you are going to work forever. You have several projects that you are trying to complete, and you are starting new ones that will likely run for years. There is no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The day you turn 60, that light appears and from then on it gets closer and closer at a steady pace.

You get increasing amounts of unsolicited mail about retirement. Join this club or that one and get your discounts. Move on from Centrum to Centrum Silver. Don’t forget to get Condroitin to rebuild the cartilage you wore down over the years. Now it is on your mind. Gee, my knees do feel funny, now that you mention it. Yep, that pain in my lower back seems not to go away. Check that cholesterol level. Time for regular prostate check-up. Don’t forget that colonoscopy. As if that were not enough, you learn that your dentist who took care of your cavities for decades neglected to remind you that your gums were receding. For the first time you hear the term “pockets in your gums.” Off you go to the periodontist. Talk about pain.

As for the eyes, bifocals have been there for a decade or so for most of us, but no one ever told me about “floaters.” Are they black spots or ribbon-like floaters? Why had I never heard of them before even though I have long been made aware of other kinds of eye problems?

The biggest change when leaving the 50s, at least to me, was the bombardment with unsolicited information about retirement. Friends and co-workers ask if you are going to retire early, say at 62? Or 65 or 70? There is your pension plan that you have to think about and deal with. When do you draw down your pension funds? The financial planners ask you to figure out what amount of money you need when you retire? What kind of lifestyle do you want? Retirement counseling notices appear every month. Pre-retirement email announcements become more frequent.

By the time you hit the sixties, it is likely that some of your co-workers have retired. Some tennis partners can now play any time during the day, while you are still restricted to a couple of hours at the end of the work day.

That is the difference that one year makes, that year from 59 to 60. It is not reversible. You now have a foot in the present and a foot in the future. Some of your thoughts float to issues surrounding retirement. How do you want to spend the last days of your working life? You are torn in two directions. You must think about not only when to retire but how. One cartoon said the following: many dogs have been walked to death by people who had not given any thought to what they would do once they retired.

Fragilecologies Archives
21 August 2003

The color green has many definitions these days. It takes on different meanings, depending on its context. For the notion of the “greening of Uzbekistan,” I have in mind three of those meanings. The first relates to “green” as shorthand for money. Slang for American dollars, for example, is “greenbacks.” The second relates to the color of the landscape’s vegetative cover, which can be made green wherever water can be made to reach the dry but fertile lands of the Karakum and Kyzlkum Deserts. Such a presence of water would produce vegetation. The third use of green is in reference to grassroots environmental movements and a more general belief that environmental sustainability matters.

I suggest that, by paying due respect to the three greens noted above, Uzbekistan can reverse several aspects of its existing trends of environmental degradation and food insecurity that result from human activities. At the same time, it can address the very serious issue of the seemingly inevitable increase of poverty.

There are, however, some important points to keep in mind. Deserts, real deserts where rainfall is extremely low (technically, below 100 mm annual precipitation) and evaporation rates very high, are the result of natural processes. The ascending motion of the atmosphere at the equator must descend somewhere at the relatively higher latitudes, and that “somewhere” is a belt of arid lands that girdle the globe – from the Sahara to the Arabian Peninsula, across greater Central Asia and extending into the western part of China. Ascending motion of the atmosphere is a precondition for cloud formation and its consequent rainfall. Descending motion tends to kill cloud formation and therefore the possibility of reliable and substantial amounts of precipitation. There is also a considerable range of vegetation types that exist in the broader desert environment (hyperarid to arid to semiarid). It may not be the type of vegetation that societies like or prefer to see or can use directly or indirectly, but it shows that various types of vegetation have adapted to and can flourish in such a seemingly harsh drylands environment. Interestingly, throughout history civilizations and traditional cultures (i.e., nomadic, pastoral, and oases societies) have learned to live and flourish in such an environment.

Green as Money

Uzbekistan is a relatively poor land-locked country in the midst of Central Asia. It was part of the Soviet Union along with the other Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgystan. Uzbekistan gained independence at the end of 1991 as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism. Since then, it has pursued an economic development strategy that has required a large infusion of American and other foreign economic developmental and humanitarian assistance.

Recent studies about the standards of living of the Uzbek population show that there are many people, especially in the rural areas, who are living under conditions of abject poverty. Its population at 26 million is the largest of the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. Its population growth rate is relatively high at 1.63% per year. Donor agencies have recently come together to figure out which activities that they might support with funds to reduce poverty by 50% in the Central Asian region by the year 2015.

Uzbekistan’s high population growth rate is putting increasing pressure on its fixed, if not dwindling, water supply. This is a dangerous combination, as per-capita water availability is on the decline, already at dangerously low levels in various locations around the country, such as Karakalpakstan in the Aral Sea’s disaster zone. They are in dire need of financial assistance in order to achieve sustainable development.

This “green” alone – money, that is – is not sufficient to improve the well-being of the rural population, but it is a necessary condition for economic and social development processes to begin to take hold. There will likely never be enough funds made available to Uzbekistan’s poor in order to solve the poverty-related problems that exist in their local environments.

Green as an Indicator of Agricultural Productivity

Riding through the countryside in late spring, one can see the large expanses of treeless arid lands covered with wheat and cotton, two of the country’s major crops. At the same time, one can also see large barren landscapes crusted with white salts and a few plants (called halophytes) that can survive in such salty soils. Large livestock herds of sheep, goats, and cows can be seen munching on whatever vegetative cover there is. The rangelands are overgrazed to varying extents by the livestock, because there are too many animals for the amount of vegetation available as fodder.

This meaning of green symbolizes the fact that the hyperarid, arid, and semiarid soils of the country are fertile but lack enough soil moisture to make them productive and to keep them sustainable in terms of agricultural activities. This is also an important “green,” but again, it is not a sufficient condition for the much broader attempt at the greening of Uzbekistan. The pressures on the lands fortunate enough to receive water are already at a high level, and they are still increasing.

Green as Ecology

The color green also represents ecology and a belief in and support for environmental sustainability. This meaning of green is the name of environmentally oriented political parties (e.g., the Green Party in Germany). A principal tenet of the environmental movement is to achieve sustainable human interactions with the natural environment. Basically, it can be represented by the “precautionary principle,” a principle based on restraint: take no action that might adversely affect the natural environment in the long term, the lack of scientific information notwithstanding. This is a difficult principle to put into practice, however, as there are groups in society that tend to seek gains in the short term, when adverse impacts may seem to be only slight. Over time, though, the impacts on the environment mount and produce environmental crises in the long term. What seemed sustainable from a short-term perspective proved after some time to have become unsustainable.

Concluding Thoughts

I suggest that we need to identify a proper mix of the three “greens” in order to achieve the greening of Uzbekistan. Funds are needed to support local efforts to improve land use and land productivity in the degraded lands of the countryside. Local people must receive those funds and be brought into the process in order to have the luxury of a perspective about the future, rather than being forced to focus only on day-to-day concerns about feeding their families.

Proper land management practices are already known for hyperarid, arid, and semiarid areas – the drylands. Land in such areas can be productive. However, they are sensitive to overuse, over-exploitation, overgrazing, and even to the use of too much water. Water in these areas must be used efficiently in terms of quantity, and carefully in terms of quality. What to do with the water once it has been drained from the fields is an important issue. Methods are available to deal appropriately with drainage water, but those methods must be adopted.

In the past, there was a belief that the desert is a vast environment available to develop, if only water could be found to irrigate it. But it is more than that. Now the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union are independent states, and their borders have become increasingly rigid. The states basically have to live off the resources that exist within their bounded territories, except for whatever water is allowed by upstream states to cross their borders. Much more care now must be taken by each country, and each region within that country, in using the land, water, and human resources. The human interactions with the environment are dynamic and requires periodic review; the land is fixed in amount, though some of it has been degraded to such an extent that it must be removed from production; water may be a dwindling commodity in the future, given the prospects of global warming of the atmosphere and the accelerating drawdown of groundwater; and the country’s population is expanding rather rapidly, putting additional pressures on land and water quantity and quality.

Perhaps it is time for the Uzbeks (and other Central Asian Republics, for that matter) to decide what kind of country they want to have, what level of greening they would like to achieve, and to work backwards from there, identifying pathways to achieve that desired state. There is no single quick fix or proverbial “silver bullet” that can be counted on to save the day for Uzbekistan. It will require, though, vision, long-range planning, and transparency, in addition to the three “greens.”

Fragilecologies Archives
14 July 2003

The conflict in Iraq is in the news each day. Daily attacks on allied troops keep the post-Saddam effort at rehabilitation in the headlines. Soon, more American soldiers will have been killed after Bush declared the war over than during the active combat phase. President Bush’s policies toward Iraq have their outspoken supporters and detractors. An increasing number of people today consider the current situation in Iraq as a quagmire. They argue that Bush declared military victory too early. They claim that the administration went into the conflict with little understanding about the “peace” phase that would likely follow the breakup of the Saddam regime. While they forecast the breakup, it appears that they failed to forecast the breakdown of society that followed. Now, some Democratic congressmen and a growing part of the media are questioning much of the intelligence information that was used by the president to seek congressional, international and American public support for his decision to confront Saddam.

Finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD), locating labs that could have been producing germ warfare, capturing Saddam, the welcoming of the liberators by the Iraqi people, the anarchy and looting in the country that prevailed after the fall of Baghdad, and so forth – it seems that the expected capture of Saddam and his sons did not occur and unexpected anarchy did. To many Iraqis, the allies were first seen as liberators only to later be viewed as occupiers. A sweet US military success seems to be turning into a political and diplomatic nightmare.

Déjà vu all over again: The Philippines in 1899

At the very end of the 1800s, the United States fought the Spanish in the Caribbean (e.g., Cuba) and in the western Pacific (the Philippines). These were Spanish colonies that the US sought to liberate from Spanish rule. An interesting perspective of the preceding 25 years was recorded in an English history book published in 1911. Its author, G.P. Gooch, made the following observation about the US role in liberating this Spanish colony.

Aguinaldo [leader of the Philippine insurgency against Spain] has been brought from Hong Kong in an American vessel and treated as an ally, and he had believed that the Americans were helping his fellow- countrymen to gain their freedom. When they learned that they had only changed their masters they set up a republic. A revolt broke out in 1899, which required several campaigns and an army of 70,000 men to suppress. The ravages of disease, the barbarity with which the Filipinos fought, and the cruelty with which the troops retaliated sickened America of the struggle… Heroic efforts were made to educate the Filipinos and prepare them for ultimate self-government; but they felt no gratitude, and clamored for independence. The expense of the operation was enormous. A year or two after the war, in the words of Mr. Bryce, “the one party no longer claimed any credit for the conquest, and the other could not suggest how to get rid of it.”(G.P. Gooch, History of Our Time, 1885-1911. NY: Henry Holt and Company, pp. 217-18).

Bush’s State of the Union mis-speak?

The most recent controversy, a political “hot potato,” arose during President Bush’s state of the union address early in 2003. He stated that British intelligence had reported that Saddam had been seeking to buy nuclear weapon grade uranium in Africa (Niger to be exact). That piece of intelligence, which was included in the President’s address, has now been found to have been false. Fingers are being pointed toward the President for having deliberately misled the American public in order to gain support for an inevitable military attack on Saddam’s regime. After days, if not weeks, of denial followed by fingers pointing to the President, President Bush took the high road and pointed his finger at the director of the Central Intelligence Agency Tenet. Bush now claims, several days after the controversy arose, that it was the CIA’s responsibility to correct the text of the state of the union address before he had to present it. He has finally “passed the buck” to one of his political appointees, the CIA director, after several days of warding off political criticism.

Nikita Argawal, on the Rediff Diary web site, made the following observation:

All through our lives, we blame our shortcomings on people or circumstances. No matter the situation, there is always someone else to blame. Where will the buck stop? Taking responsibility for our own actions is something we must learn to do. Teaching a child to make his own decision and face the consequences is far more important than most parents realize. www.rediff.com/news/2002/nov/18diary.htm

When I was growing up in Rhode Island back in the early 1950s, I remember hearing the phrase “the buck stops here.” According to a British website, “passing the buck” refers to “passing responsibility onto someone else.”

The website also described the origin of the phrase: “From the card game poker. A buck was a marker that indicated whose turn it was to deal. Passing the buck moved the deal onto the next player. Silver dollars were later used as markers and this may have been the origin of the use of buck as a slang term for dollar” http://phrases.shu.ac.uk.

To many Americans the phrase “the buck stops here” is associated with Harry Truman, America’s 33rd president. As a no-nonsense president, he took responsibility for the things that went wrong during his administration. The logic behind his statement was as follows: he had appointed his high level administrators, cabinet secretaries, and if their agencies, for whatever reason, caused politically embarrassing problems, Truman felt that the ultimate responsibility for those problems rested with him as the head of government and commander in chief. He displayed this sentiment in a sign on his desk in the Oval Office since the mid 1940s.

Truman was a highly controversial president, especially for his outspokenness and his honesty. Following the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Vice President Truman took over the presidency. He had been chosen for the VP position for reasons of political geography. When he assumed the presidency he had almost no foreign experience.

He was confronted immediately with complex decisions to make. Dropping the A-bomb on Japanese territory is one of the most notable. He had to deal with an ideologically hostile Joseph Stalin and a large Soviet Army, with the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe, with a bloody conflict on the Korean Peninsula, with Soviet testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs, and the infamous Berlin blockade. Domestically, his presidency was challenged with an anti-communist fervor in the US congress and in 1948 by a third party of Dixiecrats (southern Democrats) led by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. On the eve of the 1948 presidential election many people believed that he had lost the presidency to Thomas Dewey. He woke up to learn that he had been re-elected. One newspaper at least got it wrong, as did the polls.

He did what he thought was the correct thing to do and was willing to take the blame if his decisions led to adverse consequences. In terms of popularity among all the American presidents, Truman received ratings that were among the highest. Historians have rated Truman a “near great” president. At the time, however, his approval rating barely surpassed the 20 percent mark. His image among the general public still remains as a popular president. There are recent activities to revise the historical record of the Truman era tending to portray his decisions during the cold war in a much less favorable light.

Truman still provides the American people with the image of an as-close-to-ideal president as possible – decisive, honest and not reluctant to take responsibility. His was a difficult presidency, because of the politics of the times, the onset of the cold war and the emergence of two increasingly well-armed, ideologically opposed superpowers.

On more than one occasion President Truman referred to the desk sign in public statements. For example, in an address at the National War College on December 19, 1952 Mr. Truman said,

“You know, it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you – and on my desk I have a motto which says ‘The Buck Stops Here’ – the decision has to be made.” In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that, “The President – whoever he is – has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.[From Mitford M. Mathews, ed., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951), I, pages 198-199].

The controversy over 16 words in Bush’s state of the union message – that Iraq was seeking uranium on the African continent and the president’s response to it – suggests that the buck no longer stops at the sitting president’s desk. The administration’s response to those criticizing Bush’s reference to Saddam’s search for uranium in Africa is that the buck stops “there.” ‘There” refers to anywhere but the oval office. To be sure this president is a different kind of president than his predecessor, Bill Clinton. Unfortunately he may also prove to be a different kind of president than Harry Truman. What kind of lessons are our presidents passing on to our children? There are consequences you know…