Tiering down in action?

By ending the Clinton-era protection for some 32 million acres of Forest Service land, and giving the decision-making responsibility to the governors of the states containing the USFS land, the federal government has begun an interesting experiment in regional control. In Utah, where there are more than 4 million roadless acres, The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

“This rule gives great flexibility to governors to respond on a forest-by-forest basis,” Michael Styler, director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, said in a statement. “It also allows the needs and concerns of local communities to be addressed.”

The national environmental organizations are not happy with this idea, which is understandable given this administration's track record on almost every other environmental issue that it has altered.

Unlike other federal policies that are basically giveaways to industry, however, I think this one should be viewed as a test of the "tiering down" approach. It's an opportunity for states and communities to demonstrate that they are serious and capable stewards of the land around them, and that they can manage public interests beyond short-term economics. And frankly, at this point and as surreal as it seems, I'd rather see the governor of Utah deciding the fate of Utah's forests instead of the president and his appointees.

Unitarian Jihadists

At last: a fundamentalism worth supporting, courtesy of John Carroll:

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

Big Ol' Utah

Yikes. That can't be good for our bond rating. (Click on the title for the link.)

In its second national assessment of what the 50 states are doing to combat the nation’s worsening rate of obesity, the scholars behind the University of Baltimore Obesity Initiative have found that some states are beginning to take legislative and public-policy steps to ensure that the problem does not become irrevocable...The report card, “State Efforts to Control Obesity,” finds that only California earned a grade of “A” this year, for its legislative package targeted at the nutrition and diets of schoolchildren at risk of becoming obese. For its efforts aimed at all Californians, its grade was a “B.” Maryland received a “B” for its work in controlling childhood obesity, and a “C” for its overall efforts [Utah received a big, ah, fat "F"].

Thanks Simon.

"Tiering Down"

Found the quote I was looking for regarding Emmett's comment on a previous posting:

From This Sovereign Land (Kemmis, 2001 p. 200-1):

In attempting to discern which forms are now most adaptive at the geopolitical level of life, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman hypothesizes that the most viable structure for the new milennium will be a "federal system with partitioning into local semiautonomous regions."

What Kauffman prescribes seems in fact to be occurring. From the global scale on down, the chief organizing principle of the postindustrial age seems to be that of natural, organic landsforms rleated to on another in federal structures....new levels of organization are already tiering downm from continents to subcontinental regions to increasingly self-determining bioregions, watersheds and city-states...

Government power in this model would be apportioned according to an "ascending hierarchy," regionalist James Gardner suggests, "with regulatory authority vested in the lowest level at which it can be competently exercised."