93-year-old wows ’em at Beaver Creek

AVON – The third annual Vail Global Energy Forum was held in early March, and if the conference doesn’t quite live up to the name “global,” it has a good start. Stanford University is the key partner in the event, held at Beaver Creek’s Vilar Center.

But while Stanford sends plenty of very smart people, and governors and senators have spoken, the star each year somehow seems to be George Schultz, who is now 93. He teeters across the stage and his voice does not carry well. But people listen intently to his every word, because he puts full chapters into each carefully spoken sentence.

Schultz had an illustrious career in public affairs. He is old enough to have been in World War II, serving as an artillery officer in the Marine Corps. Then, after teaching economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he took his first leave of absence in 1955 to serve as the staff economist in the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. Later, he served in cabinet-level positions as secretaries of labor, treasury and state under presidents Nixon through Reagan.

If a Republican, Schultz is of the older-school of moderation. Even Mitt Romney, who is clearly smart, felt forced to poo-poo global warming as a fringe theory in order to gain the support of the Republican base. Schultz takes global warming as a sober threat to U.S. security and advocates a hasty path to reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Now honorary chairman of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Schultz this year offered a celebratory tone. “We can breathe a sigh of relief,” he said while pointing to the now bountiful U.S. sources of hydrocarbons, both natural gas and oil.

Schultz said that energy must be viewed through the three prisms of economy, security and the environment. On at least two of those prisms, the United States is well situated, perhaps better than it ever has been, at least in recent times.

With the United States expected to move ahead of Saudi Arabia in oil production within the next few years, and with energy-rich Canada as a key U.S. ally, the United States needs to reassert leadership in the world.

“It’s a crummy world, and we’re part of it,” he said. “If we say we will do something, we will. We are a big part of the world, whether we like it or not.”

But is it a time to return to big cars, bigger houses and big power plants? No, that’s not what he was saying.

Schultz worries about centralized power. He pointed to precision disabling of a major power substation near San Francisco by sharpshooters last year. The saboteurs were not apprehended, nor was their motive discerned. It does expose the vulnerability of the U.S. energy infrastructure, which, if disrupted, would cause economic havoc.

That alone, he said, should serve as a warning that more energy should be produced close to where it is consumed.

He also talked about climate change. While Joe Sixpack may not buy it, the effects of accumulating greenhouse gases are becoming evident. He cited the rapid deterioration of the Arctic sea ice.

“Global warming is a reality today, and it is going to become more so,” he said. “We need to be paying a lot more attention, because in the end, if we talk about security… global warming is very disruptive.”

 

And the Oscar winner is … Telluride

TELLURIDE – Surely, it can’t be an accident or mere coincidence that five of the last six Best Picture winners had their world premiers at the Telluride Film Festival, including, of course, this year’s winner, “12 Years a Slave.”

So says Seth Cagin, publisher of The Telluride Watch. He observes that Telluride’s run of Oscar glory began with “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008, followed by “The King’s Speech” (2010), “The Artist” (2011), “Argo” (2012) and now “12 Years a Slave.”

“Gravity,” another film premiered at Telluride last summer, also scored big this year, giving the two films nine of 24 major awards.

Cagin says that Telluride’s biggest rivals in the film festival business are Toronto and Venice, and he thinks Telluride’s star is rising because, most fundamentally, success begets success. “If the most important role for a festival, from the industry perspective, is to create buzz for serious films that might have difficulty attracting an audience, Telluride has proven it can deliver,” he says. “The Telluride audience is famously adventurous and willing to give everything on the program a fair viewing.”

Too, he says, filmmakers love Telluride.

And who wouldn’t? On Labor Day Weekend, when it’s still hot in low-land cities, it’s crisp and invigorating in Telluride and always as intimate as a large living room.

 

Lionshead looks more like a kitty cat

MINTURN – If you’ve skied at Vail, you’ve probably skied at Lionshead, the westerly part of the mountain. It’s named for a rock formation in nearby Minturn, a piece of sandstone with some resemblance to the visage of an African lion.

But the rock formation looks less like a lion now. The Vail Daily reports that a 30-foot section of the boulder broke off, tumbled down the hillside and came to rest on railroad tracks adjoining the Eagle River.

Nobody was hurt, but it did lead to speculation about the rate of geological processes. Local resident Judy Trujillo said she had recently noticed a large crack in the face.

“My husband and I were talking about when we thought it would break, and I said, ‘Probably not in our lifetime.’”

Now, she wonders when the next rock will fall.

 

Adventurer aims for sky-high goal

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Greg Hill told the Revelstoke Times Review that his 2010 goal to climb 2 million vertical feet in one year was audacious, even though he succeeded.

His goal for March is less sweeping, but will nonetheless take all he has. He wants to ski 100 vertical kilometers, or 62 miles. The skiing is not the hard part. Rather, the real work is climbing on his own power. He’s  not just climbing up groomed ski trails. He’s climbing various peaks in the Selkirks and Monashees. He says he won’t repeat the same mountain during the month.

 

Parks help kids reconnect with nature?

BANFF, Alberta – In a 2005 book called Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv made the argument that human beings, especially children, are spending far too little time outdoors. That argument, echoed in subsequent books by Louv, has gained broad traction, including in Canada.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports a joint statement of provincial and federal officials after a recent meeting in Toronto. The officials noted a rapidly changing relationship with the natural world in just the span of a generation.

“We have gone from being a rural to being an urban country: 80 percent of us live in cities and average 90 percent of our time indoors,” said Leona Aglukkaq, the minister of the environment responsible for Parks Canada.

“We have also become a sedentary society. Our children average less than three hours of active play per week compared with eight hours per day in front of a screen.”

“Connecting Canadians with Nature” is a research-based report that provides evidence that connecting with nature nurtures childhood development by strengthening core skills like problem solving.

The statement said that the officials are committed to adapting Canada’s parks to meet the changing needs of families.

 

California’s drought in the big picture

TAHOE BASIN, Calif. – California has had it rough. Last year less rain fell than in any year since it became a state in 1850. And while snowfall in the Sierra Nevada is usually measured by feet, not inches, winter this year got off to such a slow start that not all the ski trails in the Tahoe resorts were opened until last week. Yes, the first week of March.

Guess what? It could get worse. The San Jose Mercury News says researchers have used tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence to document multiple droughts during the last 1,000 years that have lasted 10 or 20 years. That compares with just three years in the current drought.

Among the droughty periods was one that lasted 240 years, and another that lasted 40 years.

“We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years,” said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. “We’re living in a dream world.”

A sharper definition to the story is presented by Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist specializing in climate science at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. In a piece published in the New York Times, Hoerling makes several points.

The current drought in California, he says, “resembles the droughts that afflicted the state in 1976 and 1977. Those years were at least as dry as the last two years have been for the state as a whole.” And studying records to 1895, he says, no clear trend toward either wetter or drier conditions has been observed.

Hoerling also warns against blaming global warming for this drought. “At present, the scientific evidence does not support an argument that the drought here is appreciably linked to human-induced climate change.”

He cites a 2013 report by the International Panel on Climate Change: “Recent long-term droughts in western North American cannot definitely be shown to lie outside the very large envelope of natural precipitation variability in this region, particularly given new evidence of the history of high-magnitude natural drought.”

It’s natural to wonder about current droughts given the planet’s gradual warming due to the rampant burning of fossil fuels, says Hoerling. And it’s also notable that demand for water in California has increased dramatically, calling into question the adequacy of the current system of reservoirs and hydraulic infrastructure in the West.

 

Commercial medicinal marijuana in Whistler

WHISTLER, B.C. – One of the nine companies in Canada authorized to begin commercial production of marijuana for medicinal purposes is located in Whistler.

Chris Pelz, founder of the Whistler Medical Marijuana Company, tells Pique Newsmagazine that he intends to have 260 grow lights that will eventually yield 23 kilograms of organic cannabis every three weeks. While starting with four strains, he hopes to expand to 20.

The new law requires that home grow operations be closed. There were 18 such private grow operations in Whistler and 38,000 across Canada.

 

The danger of being a one-industry town

WHISTLER, B.C. – Michael Shuman was in Whistler recently to talk about economic development and diversification. He’s been at this for about a quarter century, giving an invited talk at least once a week during that time and has published seven books, including Local Dollars, Local Sense.

He’s all about keeping it local. Shuman has helped lead community-based economic development efforts from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., to Carbondale. He’s also a fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute.

In Whistler, he urged his listeners to “treat the moment you are in right now as a surplus moment.” The reason, he explained, is that Whistler is in a “very climate-dependent industry, and climate is moving in very unexpected directions.”

Too, he noted that Whistler is essentially a one-industry town. So was Detroit, and for a long time Detroit thrived, reaching a peak population of 1.8 million. That population has thinned to 700,000.

From Michigan comes another example of note. He told the story of Zingerman’s Deli, a business in Ann Arbor, a university town. The company had success but instead of becoming a chain, it decided to grow its roots in one place more deeply. Zingerman’s owners created a bread company, a coffee-roasting company, mail order cake business, and customer-service company. It is now considered an Ann Arbor institution.

 

Polls show shifts in views on warming

AVON – The recession caused a pivot in attitudes about global warming and environmental priorities altogether, according to a presentation at the Vail Global Energy Forum.

Alan Murray, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now heads the Pew Research Center, said that polling showed 90 percent of Americans supported stricter environmental laws and regulation in 1992. But asked the same question in 2012, just 74 percent answered in the affirmative.

Among Democrats, 93 percent report support, said Murray, but Republican support swooned from 86 to 57 percent during that two-decade span.

But as for priorities? Global warming wasn’t a high priority among Republicans before the recession, and it’s dropped since then. Overall, among Americans, it ranks near last, 19th of 20 priorities, according to the Pew polling.

That’s a big shift from 2007, noted Murray, when both the presidential candidates – Barack Obama and John McCain – said that global warming is something that must be addressed.

Now, 67 percent of Americans see solid evidence of warming. But 26 percent said they see none. Among Tea Party-influenced Republicans, 70 percent say they see no solid evidence.

 

Jackson Hole out of step with Wyoming

JACKSON, Wyo. – Residents of Jackson Hole are out of step with the rest of Wyoming on this matter of whether the planet is warming and, if so, what is the cause.

A poll conducted by the Concord Coalition found that 75 percent of residents of Teton County, i.e. Jackson Hole, believe that humans are mostly responsible for the warming. In Wyoming, 53 percent see human complicity. Among Wyoming Republicans, it’s just 32 percent.

None of this is surprising, as it’s often been said that there are two parts to Wyoming,

Jackson Hole and the rest of the state. That may be an exaggeration. The university town of Laramie also tends to walk on the liberal side, and even Casper, the largest city, elected a gay man as its mayor a decade ago.

But yes, the state skews right.

– Allen Best

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