The Carnegie Foundation's Tom Ehrlich recently contributed an academic perspective on how education failed to address our current economic troubles in Carnegie Perspectives. In his article he notes that "During the economic boom, many in the academy expressed concern about the extent to which greed had become a dominant motive in American life. But few of us objected to increases in our retirement accounts or pressed very hard to find out why the steady rise in the value of our homes not only seemed too good to be true, but was. In retrospect, the familiar academic strengths of skepticism and an insistence on viewing issues from multiple perspectives could have helped. Both of those qualities might have encouraged us to question the notion that the U.S. economy would keep on growing and with it the global economy."
His comment is part of a commentary that argues for more liberal arts education in undergraduate business education. What can be said for business education can also be argued for the environmental sciences, which to a large degree depends on business to solve the problems of climate change by offering alternative technologies that do not disrupt the carbon cycle. The argument for cross-disciplinary education has never been more relevant. Now that business is slumping, the hopes and dreams for a new tomorrow are resting on a green jobs and a green business revolution, which seems naive since green jobs require investment capital just like other types of jobs. Is this vision incompatible with the economic downturn, and how long do we have to wait for the economy to recover before we can see implementation of the State's climate change goals?
I observed that job creation will trump environmental wisdom every time, case in point, the widening of Hwy 50 in Sacramento. In spite of community objections to the accomodation of more traffic through these freeway-impacted communities, the environmental impact studies were waived to bring workers to the task in greater haste.
In times of financial trouble, we revert back to what we know, more of the status quo. A few months ago, when gas prices were peaking, I observed what that region could do to reduce auto transportation through this corridor. The roads were flowing unusually freely, except for a short commute window. Short term thinking always seems to win in the end as the State puts people to work creating more of the wrong infrastructure just to put money in pockets in an effort to keep this consumer economy in motion. And traffic seems to have resumed to its former levels.
Perhaps, as Carnegie leaders advocate, we need environment sciences education that focuses on the role of business, or business education that mandates environmental sciences, so the two can discover solutions that are as closely linked to the cycles of the economy as to the cycles of carbon. Sure, there are the conferences and seminars where they listen to each other, but what starts by listening does not go as far as living in the same world and breathing the same air in professional culture. And that is where things ultimately get done.
You can read Tom's argument at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives
October 22-24, 2008, Sacramento Convention Center
It you want to talk to anyone about the Delta at the end of October, you will find them at this conference.
I counted 48 presentations (about 20% of the total) and 40 posters (about 50% of the total) by UC Davis faculty and students. I think we can say that water quality, aquatic systems, environmental justice and land use and strengths for our campus.
Climate change has a daylong session. One talk, not one of ours, is entitled, "Sea Level Rise, what is the water engineer to do with all those projections?" Clearly there are those in regulation who aren't sure what do to with all this research. Is science-based decision making still the exception rather than the rule?
Applied interdisciplinary research solves environmental problems, but might there be more interpretation of the volumes of data collected over decades of monitoring? And those of you who read the Sacramento Bee know what that means, more data interpretation to fight over!
The half day Delta Smelt "workshop" in Kemper Hall last week was a fascinating look at heroic efforts to save a "vanishing" species. If there are smelt remaining in the Sac-San Joaquin Delta, and a US Fish and Wildlife researcher assured me that there are, they are getting harder to locate. That poses a big problem for research, since you can't study what you can't find. Nonetheless, studies are in progress and waiting for smelt. The UC Davis staff in Byron, California is gearing up to provide larger quantities of smelt for research purposes only. Since UC Davis researchers Joan Lindberg and Bradd Baskerville have been nurturing their "refugial population," they estimate they have provided 70,000 fish for research so far. There are no plans to turn their facility into a smelt "hatchery" for restocking the Delta, they were quick to state that they don't want to be regulated as a hatchery, however as the Delta smelt become more elusive, there is a possibility that the smelt "refugia" might someday be the last and only home for this sensitive species. A "just-in-case" plan has already been spawned for captive breeding, mostly in terms of how the refugia can improve and expand the genetic breeding of this captive population.
Lessons learned about captive species were brought to this forum by Phil Hedrick from Arizona State University. Hedrick was involved in breeding winter run chinook in the Sacrmento River and topminnows from various Arizona springs. Endangered species are known to have frequent inbreeding and less genetic variation than what is desired for ensuring healthy populations in the wild. When fish hatcheries began studying their spawing populations, it was discovered that 41% of the product of one hatchery was from a single female ancestor. After developing a protocol for returning spawners, they were able to improve the genetics of their releases, which is important to keeping the population resistant to disease. By the mid-1990s, it was possible to trace the fish lineage using genetic markers called "microsatellites." The method uses DNA sequences to verify that the crosses made in the breeding program were successful.
Before a captive population can be reintroduced, it has to exhibit "genetic fitness." Since captive breeding often reduces fitness by encouraging captive adaptations, efforts must to be made to preserve the wild adaptions and minimize any new captive adaptions. This is done by starting with a large captive population, minimizing kinship during breeding, and keeping replicate populations as a safeguard. It also helps to breed in a simulated environment that is as close as possible to their natural habitat. The lower the number of generations that are bred in captivity, the less the population can adapt to captivity, and the higher the success of reintroduction. If a captive population is released while there is still a wild population to breed with, the captives might transfer undesireable traits to the wild fish, further weakening them. So as long there are smelt in the Delta, the captive population will be swimming only in circles (meaning in a tank). If the program breeds more fish than needed, they will be allowed to die a natural death, presumably from old age, which for a captive smelt is about two years.
If the worst case scenario for the smelt is realized, who is going to take action? It might be up to the Department of Water Resources, who is bringing in power, back up generators, and major improvements to the smelt breeding facility to shore up the breeding capacity. There are 44 multi-family groups of smelt capable of producing up to 7000 eggs. These will be transferred to the facility once the improvements are completed. A spawning pedigree is being developed for 2009 and more wild fish will be brought in to augment the genetic fitness if permits can be issued for taking these. (No mention of the cost of these extraordinary efforts.) The Bureau of Reclamation is partnering with US Fish and Wildlife to study how the export pump screens can be improved to exclude the smelt, which they hope will eliminate the pumps as one of many causes for the smelt's demise. The smelt might be done in by their preference for a species of zooplankton that no longer predominates, overtaken by an invasive species from the release of ship bilgewater.
If they release captive smelt, would they survive? With limited food due to changes in the Delta ecosystem, the smelt today are smaller than they used to be. You can't release them until they at least learn to feed, and will they know where to hide from predators when the trucks drop them off in Suisun Bay? Once released, it might be impossible to track them and determine their fate. A previous study of larger electronically-tagged fish released near Stockton last summer ended with the expensive fish dead on the river bottom, suspiciously near the waste treatment plant outlet.
If the smelt habitat could be restored, how long might that take? If it takes ten years for the export pumps to retrofit for the smelt, will the smelt become another aquarium species waiting to get fed at the same time every day?
And what does this have to do with climate change? If the smelt survive the loss of their favorite food and habitat, and manage to avoid getting sucked into the export pumps, it may be the heat that finally does them in for good after these investments have been made. They have been referred to the environmental community as an "indicator fish", the canary in the coal mine, a warning system for rapid change. One of the last questions asked in the smelt meeting was, "Could you breed a smelt that could survive higher temperatures?" Can you imagine asking, "Can you breed a canary that can live in poison gas in a coal mine?" The fish has already indicated, the sport fisherman have heard the warning and sued for action. Will breeding a more adaptive indicator satisfy the laws protecting this species? In the uncertain Delta, every solution is worth considering, for at least a moment.
Photo courtesy of US Bureau of Reclamation
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The John Muir Institute of the Environment has been hosting a Speaker Series entitled, Climate Change Solutions and Implementations since January. It is now wrapping up with a panel discussion, May 22, at UC Davis. We have summarized all the presentations into bulleted highlights that you can view on our web site: http://johnmuir.ucdavis.edu/events/climatesolutions.html
Our panel discussion is an attempt to create a "climate change commons" where solutions in common can be identified.
The posters provide the background on the series, and we welcome anyone to post here about these presentations and their relevance to the academic and cooperative extension community.
More later on the final outcomes of the panel.
If there is interest, I would like to add stories about people engaged in climate change activities at UC Davis.
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