Tove K on game theory and evolution; Brian Chau on nice people and power; Greg Lukianoff and Angel Eduardo on the betrayal of trust; Dan Williams on social media
This Tove K. thinks that President Trump, who having never run for any office got elected President on his first try, and then subsequently re-elected, only got there through a series of lucky strikes (twice?), and has "grandiose delusions," and only by accident didn't end up a complete failure. She evidently believes it is a grandiose delusion to think our borders should be policed, the abuses of wokery should be stopped, the billions of grift should be ended, we shouldn't be engaged in endless wars, and the administrative state should be reined in and made subject to the executive authority of the President under Article II of the Constitution. Her characterization of the President would seem to reflect a establishmentarian mindset on steroids.
According to their Substack bio, Tove K. and her husband live with their six children 'as much as possible' from their land 'in the outskirts of civilization' in the countryside of southern Sweden. Presumably that location and lifestyle insulates them from the risk of bombings and other delightful consequences of mass migration into Sweden. I would think her characterization of the President reflects traditional Swedish culture and her personal circumstances, i.e., it is completely baseless and is an attempt to rationalize something she has no willingness or ability to understand.
I doubt it even goes that deep. Tove is an unclear thinker, and frequently makes internally inconsistent arguments in addition to those not consistent with reality. I doubt she thought through it at all.
I wonder that, too. I used to be subscribed to her ‘stack, but I eventually gave up since most every post had frustrating logical nonsequitors. I will pop over and read when AK brings something up, but am usually disappointed.
Check the comments to her essay for a clue. I think her characterization of Trump as 'delusional' is the pot calling the kettle black. Her conclusion is based on Trump's niece book about him and her observations of her own children. Maybe she has time on her hands living in the countryside, although with 6 children it is hard to see how that can be. I haven't been to Sweden, but the 'expat community' in Moscow in the 1990s included a significant contingent of Swedes. Of necessity, they were invariably proficient in the English language, because why would anyone outside Sweden bother to learn Swedish?
I don't think there is any doubt that Trump is delusional. The only question is to what degree and this becomes a question because it is not at all clear how much of what he says he actually believes himself. The "stolen" election of 2020 might be the best example.
"Through such a series of lucky strikes, Donald Trump climbed his way to the presidency of the United States." Some people just seem mentally/emotionally unable to even consider that Donald Trump actually has qualities that make him a great man. Sad.
That said, I give him credit for understanding what a large minority were unhappy about and convincing them he could fix it. I'm not sure if he hit on this through great insight, luck, or a bit of both.
Or, alternatively, "he leads toward [what some people believe are] bad policies . . . . Personally I see no down side at all on immigration. And am not clear that his policies on taxes and trade can be any worse that what we have recently endured.
Deporting settle immigrants just becasue they entered legally does no one any good. Taxes: at least Biden did not reduce them as Trump plans to do with the "exertion" (plus add a bunch more reductions for tip income SS, overtime pay. Trumps tariffs are not worse than Biden's? I'm happy to stipulate that Biden's policies in these areas were bad and did so,
> boomer environmentalists are veritably some of the most vile, destructive, and selfish people alive. They have literally stolen my future and the future of those I love. They deserve all the insults I have to give and more.
Yeesh. I guess we see where Chau falls on the "nice guy" spectrum.
But seriously, I think this points to something else entirely. The internet, and most politicking is all talk. You can be a nice guy or a jerk, but it's all just words. At most you might convince someone of something. But it's mostly ineffectual.
In the real world, people actually have to go and do things. Maybe nice guys finish last in the real world too, but nice guys who do something beat bad guys who sit in front of a computer calling everyone names.
If you pull this thread you get to the heart of a lot of debates over the internet in general. Virtue signaling on the internet is entirely disconnected from things that signaled virtue in everyday life (going to church, making friends, being a good employee/citizen/etc).
You perhaps make a valid point. But I think your implicit criticism of Chau here is unfair.
There is indeed a marketplace of ideas - Chau doesn’t dispute that. Within it, promoting better ideas is what Chau is doing.
His imo valid critique of Klein and Thompson, who are very clear that their book is targeted towards Democrats. But they are also clear that they want to effect change towards pro-abundance within Dem circles of public policy.
And Chau’s correct critique is that their total refusal to punch left *despite* having the correct public policy on their side means they will surely not succeed.
But contrast, e.g. Josh Barro is a center-left partisan Democrat who seems more willing to punch left:
I read this very differently. Perhaps uncharitalbly, but after reading and rereading Chau, what I see is:
Barro is a social scientist. He's not "punching left" in that article, he's (nicely) saying Klein and Thompson are likely just full of shit. That is, they're a couple of journalists who don't know anything. And their "Abundance agenda" that is a fairytale.
He's making a factual counterclaim: K&T think this approach will lower energy prices, but it's likely to raise them.
He's saying that K&T aren't actually with the 80% on this issue. They can say they are, but their prescription of fire-hosing government subsidies at impractical technology has, so far, only done what industrial policy usually does, which is create bad, expensive outcomes.
Chau is offering nothing that I can see. He completely and uncritically accepts that K&T are with the 80% here, and excoriates them for not arguing more stridently.
That is, I see Barro contributing to the marketplace of ideas. He's saying, "Guys, that's a nice sales pitch, but it's not believable to either the average person or to me, who has more than a casual knowledge of how policy actually works"
What is Chau's contribution here? He's basically just saying "Argue harder!" It's seems the equivalent of "If we just keep yelling that Trump is Hitler", people will believe us.
“He's making a factual counterclaim: K&T think this approach will lower energy prices, but it's likely to raise them.”
No, his bigger claim is that if they are right and believe they are right, there is no need at all to forcibly restrict fossil fuel production, since it will go away when their much cheaper energy shows up in the next 25 years, and therefor they should stop advocating anti- growth fossil fuel restrictions.
Separately he says he thinks what they believe is unlikely to occur (and I agree with him).
But if they mean it that they are pro-abundance and mean it that they believe “clean” energy will be much cheaper than fossil fuels within 25 years then they should be adamantly opposed to the “environmentalist” left shutting down fossil fuel production. But of course they are not.
Well, on Barro, we agree on the substance, but said substance is indeed him being willing to "punch left". If not particularly hard.
On Chau, he accepts that K&T are genuinely pro-growth. and he attacks them for being unwilling to criticize most of the leftist policy positions and the harder leftist groups that are anti-growth. And criticizes them for thinking that the harder left is going to come around to pro-growth views.
To me, Chau's claim of "But underlying this unbalanced political economy is the fact that only one side is willing to make the moral accusations necessary to break existing footholds" is literally him saying that K&T are unwilling to punch left.
So to me, Chau and Barro are making similar arguments. I do agree that Barro makes his case more persuasively and specifically.
No amount of "moral accusation" is going effect a change in "political economy".
Because what actually underlies a political economy are economic and legal relationships.
I see K&T and Barro as competing preachers. K&T give the nice, New Testament sermon to the left. Chau wants the moralistic Old Testament sermon to the left.
But fundamentally, they both miss the point that what is needed is not moralizing but concrete policy. They don't seem to even conceive of the true political economy at work here.
Now you are conflating Chau and Barro, so not sure what you are saying there.
Barro is of the left, the emits moderate wing thereof. Chau is not of the left.
I disagree with you that Barro’s public policy wouldn’t work. Just because I agree with you that it wouldn’t work as well as what you and I might favor, it definitely wouldn’t work.
But if by”political economy” you really only mean short term realpolitik of what is possible on the left, then I hear you. But if folks like Klein and Barro don’t even try, then of course there is zero chance of it happening, rather than merely a low chance.
"Leo Durocher said “Nice guys finish last.” Brian is too young to know to use that quote."
People easily conned by frauds and hucksters may finish last but nice guys who are good at finding other nice guys to associate with tend to do quite well in business, family and life. Definitely not last.
That's a bit of a strange review by Bryan Chau. Klein and Thompson are scribblers and talking heads; they're not hard-boiled political operatives like Karl Rove or whoever, so disagreeableness is only a useful asset if either intends to try to carve out some type of Sean Hannity-esque career on the left, which neither one seems interested in, thankfully.
Secondly, the unions, banks, and environmental orgs Chau mentions as being as more influential and dug-in factions: these guys have revenue streams to protect. They can and should be disagreeable in order to be effective at that. K&T don't. Fundamentally, the issue is one of concentrated benefits vs distributed benefits: the unions are attempting to swap votes in exchange for economic rents that are shared only among members. K&T are trying to sell ideas where the benefits are distributed broadly, including people from opposing political factions. They can't play Jimmy Hoffa here, because they have nothing to trade; they can only use persuasion. I don't think being overtly disagreeable is useful in that effort.
Nonetheless, I too am skeptical about K&T's odds of success. Like the Noah Smith quote included, I think the left has become too wedded to feeding the ressentiment and status anxiety of the activist left to adopt any policies that might result in greater profits for business interests any bigger than a mom and pop pizza parlor. They're going to have to lose some more elections before these people lose their current status.
I think Chau is 100% correct to decry Boomer environmentalists.
I would take it one tiny step further. The minority of them who are pro-nuclear might at least be sincere in their AGW catastrophism. Still wrong, of course, but sincere.
The large majority who are anti-abundance and cite AGW as the reason, but are not only not pro-nuclear but rabidly against it, deserve even more derision than Chau grants. Hopefully there is a special circle in hell reserved for them.
Lab leak: The problem was that it "looked like" a conspiracy theory designed to deflect attention from what to DO about the virus. As with most pandemic issue the Presidents' behavior exacerbated other problem.
Knowing the virus had been specifically modified to be more infectious than a naturally occuring mutation (note that this is NOT a comment on how or why that occured) could have made a significant difference in the pandemic response. It would certainly have helped explain the vast deviation from prior protocols that Facui and Birx were demanding, assuming that people could overlook their role in facilitating gain-of-function research.
No, Abundance people have a lot of work to do persuading people. I agree they should first try persuading elites, but the genderal public is not clamoring for:
There’s a meeting to gather a friends group for the local state park. There’s a group of folks out netting songbirds and tagging them, so as to count them and learn how much they are dwindling. Ditto Christmas bird count. Ditto butterfly count. There’s a campaign to get the chemical company to stop shutting plastic into the bay so that everybody’s livelihood isn’t threatened. There’s 40 (!) years of pushback on a dam that the state finally came out and admitted no one needed except the contractors who were going to profit from the bonds - that’s a hell of a lot of volunteer hours, many thousands, and takes dedication to fight that long for property rights, livelihoods, and wildlife. There were the folks who showed up year after year, to ask the forest service not to clearcut (and erode streams) in the national forest all the while losing money while doing it, and established a relationship with NFS that has benefitted both the forests and the wildlife enthusiasts. There were the folks who sought easements to keep land in working timber after the paper companies pulled out - see Colony Ridge for the wonderful counterfactual when the fragmentation of the forest proceeds apace. (Yay, meth labs in trailers, I guess, is the libertarian response.) A citizen-led campaign to restore the sporting goods tax to fund the parks and wildlife department in a state that’s doubled in population and whose parks have to turn people away of a weekend, and where millions of people like to hunt and fish. That’s long, decades, after the original campaign to get the funding, which was promptly taken away by crooked legislators who found a “loophole” in the law. There’s a group of people begging the DOT to leave a median of vegetation when they plow a road through a national preserve, a road no one asked for except a always those who profit from building it.
The people who drew attention to the world’s largest mammal colony, and the people who went down into caves generally, and discovered all tge life therein … and then the people who put their money where their mouth is and donated to buy up land around that colony, so as to keep bat/human interactions to a minimum.
There’s the folks who took on the guy who was emptying the aquifer to the tune of a million gallons a day, to raise catfish - the aquifer that is the drinking supply for dozens of counties. And which led to the first aquifer authorities (though their authority has no teeth, yet it has borne fruit). There’s the addition over the years to add to our one national park. There’s the habitat saved for a bird of which there were once about 25 remaining, which habitat supports a panoply of other species.
There’s the lady who thought that a city the size of Houston could afford to have *one* walking trail, which is unsurprisingly very popular. There was the point when those in the state capitol had a decision to make, keep swimming in the swimming hole that is the heart of the city - or let it go forever …
You could easily write a book a hundred volumes long, for the nation as a whole. And my state is hardly known for its friendliness to the environment lol! Brian Chau probably thinks there is no such movement, here. But I suspect he has no interest in nature and thus doesn’t know these sorts of people generally.
The one thing they all have in common? Grey heads all, Boomer and pre-Boomer. You may have a litter pickup somewhere near you this spring. You’ll find grey heads overrepresented. Maybe invite Brian Chau.
Big Bend is our Big Park. Guadalupe Mtns. is equally lovely, but smaller and still more remote (though getting less so, they had put up ugly lights on the highway, I noticed last time). Most Texans have not been there. Be sure to go if you are in the vicinity of Carlsbad (which park is actually dark skies) - it's part of the same reef. GMNP has a lovely peaceful campground but there is nowhere else to stay. It was developed in the no-lodge, leave-it-alone period. Hike into McKittrick Canyon, if in fall the color is spectacular. Ditto the Devil's Hall trail. You can hike up Guadalupe Peak and sign the book that you've stood on the highest point in Texas. Some men in wheelchairs did it once. I've never been up there; our stays in the park have always been "on the way somewhere" or we had other business in the area to attend to, and just slept at the campground.
The park is in part owing to the advocacy of - wait for it! - an Exxon geologist, a legendary one. His cabin lies near the end of McKittrick.
If you go, don't miss the nearby (in TX/NM) terms Sitting Bull Falls, for a swim and picnic.
Big Bend is awaiting an addition by a perfectly willing seller, the money is there and everything. Support of Cornyn and local pols. Mike Lee has stopped it.
Guadalupe has had that same opportunity, but the owner gave up waiting on the political winds to shift. But at least some of the ranchland around it is conservation-easement protected so hopefully it will never have the sort of clutter that e.g. Bryce has around it.
This Tove K. thinks that President Trump, who having never run for any office got elected President on his first try, and then subsequently re-elected, only got there through a series of lucky strikes (twice?), and has "grandiose delusions," and only by accident didn't end up a complete failure. She evidently believes it is a grandiose delusion to think our borders should be policed, the abuses of wokery should be stopped, the billions of grift should be ended, we shouldn't be engaged in endless wars, and the administrative state should be reined in and made subject to the executive authority of the President under Article II of the Constitution. Her characterization of the President would seem to reflect a establishmentarian mindset on steroids.
According to their Substack bio, Tove K. and her husband live with their six children 'as much as possible' from their land 'in the outskirts of civilization' in the countryside of southern Sweden. Presumably that location and lifestyle insulates them from the risk of bombings and other delightful consequences of mass migration into Sweden. I would think her characterization of the President reflects traditional Swedish culture and her personal circumstances, i.e., it is completely baseless and is an attempt to rationalize something she has no willingness or ability to understand.
I doubt it even goes that deep. Tove is an unclear thinker, and frequently makes internally inconsistent arguments in addition to those not consistent with reality. I doubt she thought through it at all.
I’m fascinated why it is AK gave such a person’s ideas the platform of including in his blog.
I wonder that, too. I used to be subscribed to her ‘stack, but I eventually gave up since most every post had frustrating logical nonsequitors. I will pop over and read when AK brings something up, but am usually disappointed.
Check the comments to her essay for a clue. I think her characterization of Trump as 'delusional' is the pot calling the kettle black. Her conclusion is based on Trump's niece book about him and her observations of her own children. Maybe she has time on her hands living in the countryside, although with 6 children it is hard to see how that can be. I haven't been to Sweden, but the 'expat community' in Moscow in the 1990s included a significant contingent of Swedes. Of necessity, they were invariably proficient in the English language, because why would anyone outside Sweden bother to learn Swedish?
I don't think there is any doubt that Trump is delusional. The only question is to what degree and this becomes a question because it is not at all clear how much of what he says he actually believes himself. The "stolen" election of 2020 might be the best example.
"Through such a series of lucky strikes, Donald Trump climbed his way to the presidency of the United States." Some people just seem mentally/emotionally unable to even consider that Donald Trump actually has qualities that make him a great man. Sad.
He has great leadership skills. The problem is he leads toward bad policies on taxes, immigration and trade.
All I see is a con man.
That said, I give him credit for understanding what a large minority were unhappy about and convincing them he could fix it. I'm not sure if he hit on this through great insight, luck, or a bit of both.
Or, alternatively, "he leads toward [what some people believe are] bad policies . . . . Personally I see no down side at all on immigration. And am not clear that his policies on taxes and trade can be any worse that what we have recently endured.
Deporting settle immigrants just becasue they entered legally does no one any good. Taxes: at least Biden did not reduce them as Trump plans to do with the "exertion" (plus add a bunch more reductions for tip income SS, overtime pay. Trumps tariffs are not worse than Biden's? I'm happy to stipulate that Biden's policies in these areas were bad and did so,
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/an-unfair-evaluation-of-bidens-economic
But Trump seems much worse.
> boomer environmentalists are veritably some of the most vile, destructive, and selfish people alive. They have literally stolen my future and the future of those I love. They deserve all the insults I have to give and more.
Yeesh. I guess we see where Chau falls on the "nice guy" spectrum.
But seriously, I think this points to something else entirely. The internet, and most politicking is all talk. You can be a nice guy or a jerk, but it's all just words. At most you might convince someone of something. But it's mostly ineffectual.
In the real world, people actually have to go and do things. Maybe nice guys finish last in the real world too, but nice guys who do something beat bad guys who sit in front of a computer calling everyone names.
If you pull this thread you get to the heart of a lot of debates over the internet in general. Virtue signaling on the internet is entirely disconnected from things that signaled virtue in everyday life (going to church, making friends, being a good employee/citizen/etc).
You perhaps make a valid point. But I think your implicit criticism of Chau here is unfair.
There is indeed a marketplace of ideas - Chau doesn’t dispute that. Within it, promoting better ideas is what Chau is doing.
His imo valid critique of Klein and Thompson, who are very clear that their book is targeted towards Democrats. But they are also clear that they want to effect change towards pro-abundance within Dem circles of public policy.
And Chau’s correct critique is that their total refusal to punch left *despite* having the correct public policy on their side means they will surely not succeed.
But contrast, e.g. Josh Barro is a center-left partisan Democrat who seems more willing to punch left:
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/abundance-liberals-have-a-carbon
I read this very differently. Perhaps uncharitalbly, but after reading and rereading Chau, what I see is:
Barro is a social scientist. He's not "punching left" in that article, he's (nicely) saying Klein and Thompson are likely just full of shit. That is, they're a couple of journalists who don't know anything. And their "Abundance agenda" that is a fairytale.
He's making a factual counterclaim: K&T think this approach will lower energy prices, but it's likely to raise them.
He's saying that K&T aren't actually with the 80% on this issue. They can say they are, but their prescription of fire-hosing government subsidies at impractical technology has, so far, only done what industrial policy usually does, which is create bad, expensive outcomes.
Chau is offering nothing that I can see. He completely and uncritically accepts that K&T are with the 80% here, and excoriates them for not arguing more stridently.
That is, I see Barro contributing to the marketplace of ideas. He's saying, "Guys, that's a nice sales pitch, but it's not believable to either the average person or to me, who has more than a casual knowledge of how policy actually works"
What is Chau's contribution here? He's basically just saying "Argue harder!" It's seems the equivalent of "If we just keep yelling that Trump is Hitler", people will believe us.
“He's making a factual counterclaim: K&T think this approach will lower energy prices, but it's likely to raise them.”
No, his bigger claim is that if they are right and believe they are right, there is no need at all to forcibly restrict fossil fuel production, since it will go away when their much cheaper energy shows up in the next 25 years, and therefor they should stop advocating anti- growth fossil fuel restrictions.
Separately he says he thinks what they believe is unlikely to occur (and I agree with him).
But if they mean it that they are pro-abundance and mean it that they believe “clean” energy will be much cheaper than fossil fuels within 25 years then they should be adamantly opposed to the “environmentalist” left shutting down fossil fuel production. But of course they are not.
We seem to respectfully disagree.
Well, on Barro, we agree on the substance, but said substance is indeed him being willing to "punch left". If not particularly hard.
On Chau, he accepts that K&T are genuinely pro-growth. and he attacks them for being unwilling to criticize most of the leftist policy positions and the harder leftist groups that are anti-growth. And criticizes them for thinking that the harder left is going to come around to pro-growth views.
To me, Chau's claim of "But underlying this unbalanced political economy is the fact that only one side is willing to make the moral accusations necessary to break existing footholds" is literally him saying that K&T are unwilling to punch left.
So to me, Chau and Barro are making similar arguments. I do agree that Barro makes his case more persuasively and specifically.
No amount of "moral accusation" is going effect a change in "political economy".
Because what actually underlies a political economy are economic and legal relationships.
I see K&T and Barro as competing preachers. K&T give the nice, New Testament sermon to the left. Chau wants the moralistic Old Testament sermon to the left.
But fundamentally, they both miss the point that what is needed is not moralizing but concrete policy. They don't seem to even conceive of the true political economy at work here.
Now you are conflating Chau and Barro, so not sure what you are saying there.
Barro is of the left, the emits moderate wing thereof. Chau is not of the left.
I disagree with you that Barro’s public policy wouldn’t work. Just because I agree with you that it wouldn’t work as well as what you and I might favor, it definitely wouldn’t work.
But if by”political economy” you really only mean short term realpolitik of what is possible on the left, then I hear you. But if folks like Klein and Barro don’t even try, then of course there is zero chance of it happening, rather than merely a low chance.
"Leo Durocher said “Nice guys finish last.” Brian is too young to know to use that quote."
People easily conned by frauds and hucksters may finish last but nice guys who are good at finding other nice guys to associate with tend to do quite well in business, family and life. Definitely not last.
That's a bit of a strange review by Bryan Chau. Klein and Thompson are scribblers and talking heads; they're not hard-boiled political operatives like Karl Rove or whoever, so disagreeableness is only a useful asset if either intends to try to carve out some type of Sean Hannity-esque career on the left, which neither one seems interested in, thankfully.
Secondly, the unions, banks, and environmental orgs Chau mentions as being as more influential and dug-in factions: these guys have revenue streams to protect. They can and should be disagreeable in order to be effective at that. K&T don't. Fundamentally, the issue is one of concentrated benefits vs distributed benefits: the unions are attempting to swap votes in exchange for economic rents that are shared only among members. K&T are trying to sell ideas where the benefits are distributed broadly, including people from opposing political factions. They can't play Jimmy Hoffa here, because they have nothing to trade; they can only use persuasion. I don't think being overtly disagreeable is useful in that effort.
Nonetheless, I too am skeptical about K&T's odds of success. Like the Noah Smith quote included, I think the left has become too wedded to feeding the ressentiment and status anxiety of the activist left to adopt any policies that might result in greater profits for business interests any bigger than a mom and pop pizza parlor. They're going to have to lose some more elections before these people lose their current status.
Isn’t that already Hayek’s Law: Why the Worst Get on Top?
I think Chau is 100% correct to decry Boomer environmentalists.
I would take it one tiny step further. The minority of them who are pro-nuclear might at least be sincere in their AGW catastrophism. Still wrong, of course, but sincere.
The large majority who are anti-abundance and cite AGW as the reason, but are not only not pro-nuclear but rabidly against it, deserve even more derision than Chau grants. Hopefully there is a special circle in hell reserved for them.
Lab leak: The problem was that it "looked like" a conspiracy theory designed to deflect attention from what to DO about the virus. As with most pandemic issue the Presidents' behavior exacerbated other problem.
Yeah, Thomas, tell yourself anything you like to believe.
Knowing the virus had been specifically modified to be more infectious than a naturally occuring mutation (note that this is NOT a comment on how or why that occured) could have made a significant difference in the pandemic response. It would certainly have helped explain the vast deviation from prior protocols that Facui and Birx were demanding, assuming that people could overlook their role in facilitating gain-of-function research.
No, Abundance people have a lot of work to do persuading people. I agree they should first try persuading elites, but the genderal public is not clamoring for:
YINBY/NEPA/regulatory reform,
taxes on net CO2 emissions,
deficits only to finance public investment,
sharply higher merit-based immigration,
freer trade except for strategic items from China
Brian Chau? Hmmm.
There’s a meeting to gather a friends group for the local state park. There’s a group of folks out netting songbirds and tagging them, so as to count them and learn how much they are dwindling. Ditto Christmas bird count. Ditto butterfly count. There’s a campaign to get the chemical company to stop shutting plastic into the bay so that everybody’s livelihood isn’t threatened. There’s 40 (!) years of pushback on a dam that the state finally came out and admitted no one needed except the contractors who were going to profit from the bonds - that’s a hell of a lot of volunteer hours, many thousands, and takes dedication to fight that long for property rights, livelihoods, and wildlife. There were the folks who showed up year after year, to ask the forest service not to clearcut (and erode streams) in the national forest all the while losing money while doing it, and established a relationship with NFS that has benefitted both the forests and the wildlife enthusiasts. There were the folks who sought easements to keep land in working timber after the paper companies pulled out - see Colony Ridge for the wonderful counterfactual when the fragmentation of the forest proceeds apace. (Yay, meth labs in trailers, I guess, is the libertarian response.) A citizen-led campaign to restore the sporting goods tax to fund the parks and wildlife department in a state that’s doubled in population and whose parks have to turn people away of a weekend, and where millions of people like to hunt and fish. That’s long, decades, after the original campaign to get the funding, which was promptly taken away by crooked legislators who found a “loophole” in the law. There’s a group of people begging the DOT to leave a median of vegetation when they plow a road through a national preserve, a road no one asked for except a always those who profit from building it.
The people who drew attention to the world’s largest mammal colony, and the people who went down into caves generally, and discovered all tge life therein … and then the people who put their money where their mouth is and donated to buy up land around that colony, so as to keep bat/human interactions to a minimum.
There’s the folks who took on the guy who was emptying the aquifer to the tune of a million gallons a day, to raise catfish - the aquifer that is the drinking supply for dozens of counties. And which led to the first aquifer authorities (though their authority has no teeth, yet it has borne fruit). There’s the addition over the years to add to our one national park. There’s the habitat saved for a bird of which there were once about 25 remaining, which habitat supports a panoply of other species.
There’s the lady who thought that a city the size of Houston could afford to have *one* walking trail, which is unsurprisingly very popular. There was the point when those in the state capitol had a decision to make, keep swimming in the swimming hole that is the heart of the city - or let it go forever …
You could easily write a book a hundred volumes long, for the nation as a whole. And my state is hardly known for its friendliness to the environment lol! Brian Chau probably thinks there is no such movement, here. But I suspect he has no interest in nature and thus doesn’t know these sorts of people generally.
The one thing they all have in common? Grey heads all, Boomer and pre-Boomer. You may have a litter pickup somewhere near you this spring. You’ll find grey heads overrepresented. Maybe invite Brian Chau.
I thought Texas had two National Parks, Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains, though the latter is almost in New Mexico.
Big Bend is our Big Park. Guadalupe Mtns. is equally lovely, but smaller and still more remote (though getting less so, they had put up ugly lights on the highway, I noticed last time). Most Texans have not been there. Be sure to go if you are in the vicinity of Carlsbad (which park is actually dark skies) - it's part of the same reef. GMNP has a lovely peaceful campground but there is nowhere else to stay. It was developed in the no-lodge, leave-it-alone period. Hike into McKittrick Canyon, if in fall the color is spectacular. Ditto the Devil's Hall trail. You can hike up Guadalupe Peak and sign the book that you've stood on the highest point in Texas. Some men in wheelchairs did it once. I've never been up there; our stays in the park have always been "on the way somewhere" or we had other business in the area to attend to, and just slept at the campground.
The park is in part owing to the advocacy of - wait for it! - an Exxon geologist, a legendary one. His cabin lies near the end of McKittrick.
If you go, don't miss the nearby (in TX/NM) terms Sitting Bull Falls, for a swim and picnic.
Big Bend is awaiting an addition by a perfectly willing seller, the money is there and everything. Support of Cornyn and local pols. Mike Lee has stopped it.
Guadalupe has had that same opportunity, but the owner gave up waiting on the political winds to shift. But at least some of the ranchland around it is conservation-easement protected so hopefully it will never have the sort of clutter that e.g. Bryce has around it.