Having gone to various meetings in California on issues of water and natural resources, I have some terrible news. Our governor called to action people who represent watersheds across the state to ASK US what is, and how to regulate, and how to protect those things called "watersheds". Do we need regulations and protections?.... And in another group of meetings by another group ... what IS open space? And, when much of our farmland and parks have been developed, how do we regulate development which has a GIANT effect on the amount of water we have and will have in the future?

I must report.... that most of the policy makers who sit around those tables have no science background and THIS is a MONSTROUS problem. "Why ?" you ask. Well, much of what we do impacts negatively the ecology in ways most people cannot follow.... from a microscopic to a macroscopic perspective.

I think the example of the food industry, which is regulated by the FDA and USDA points out why doing science in school and college is important.... and bringing that background into these jobs is essential. Even the best businesses who have the best intentions and internal controls, they NEED regulations and regulators to watch for mistakes.... because they happen. And because the hygienic procedures of the lab, slaughter houses, storage facilities are not a 'natural' method in everyday life.... What you may do in the home is different from what you must do in a large operation with the chances for contamination and its impact on the public, so high.

But, the EPA has purview in ground water contamination issues. As an example... Someone spilling a cup of ..say, insecticide in their back yard may not understand the magnitude of that spill to his dog who eats grass, let alone the leakage of MTBE in the aquifer and what it MAY do to the population (him personally). TOO MANY people, regulators, and the person on the street, just don't get it.... they can't see how it might affect them. What happens to them in everyday life, cannot be easily connected to the HUGE picture of, say, the watershed or the thousands of acre feet of water underground. It is just too big for the normal person.

The frightening reality is that people, who WANT to do good, may times do not have the expertise.... your representative, your congressperson, the business person, the appointed lawyer .... The EPA must be an agency full of boring scientists whose lives revolve around our protection. It needs to be their life's work just to monitor the environment so that we can have a future.

I agree with tardlgrade. Most people lack a strong enough scientific background to understand what's going on. We end up using emotional pleas to get people to act on these issues because they don't have the background to understand the destruction that is happening. Unfortunately, whoever has the most dollars wins the emotional wars. So jobs take priority over the environment. People do not know that this is a false choice. The only way out of this predicament is to wage all out class war - the rich control the air waves (And tree hugger, by the way - you are taking money from wal mart - the most environmentally destructive company ever - the one that has put more mom and pops out of business - the one that has prevailed in preventing the minimum wage from increasing). We need higher upper income marginal income tax rates and higher minimum wage before things will get better.

"The EPA must be an agency full of boring scientists whose lives revolve around our protection. It needs to be their life's work just to monitor the environment so that we can have a future."

Lets face it. America isn't goint to have a future. The kind of money you are talking about has already been spent in Iraq and there's nothing left, unless these scientists will be willing to work for the ever cheaper, but freshly printed dollars the Fed is miniting daily, while foreign central banks are selling their dollar reserves.

This is only election year politics, just more the the McSame Old. The fix is already in and its just a shell game for the few crumbs still left on the table to be handed out to republican cronies in industry turned "scientist" to foster the charade of progress. This will be passed on as fodder for the Fox "News" Network and other propaganda machines so that the "Concern for the enviornment box" has been checked off as something voters don't have to worry about at election time. Things won't seriously change until pollution levels in the groundwater reach the point where even the politicians have to head to their offshore villas.

The US has decided to become a backwater to true environmental legislation that being done in Europe and Japan, where more and more science is gravitating to anyway, because of the increasing level of anti-science propoganda being put out to sustain, what are basically unstainalbe industrial and envionrmental policies, and because the american educational system has become too weakend to produce the quality or numbers of scientists you are talking about to have sufficient impact. In the US its even become "controversial" to teach evolution, even though it is the central paradigm in all of biology, medicine, and environmental studies. How can US students compete, when they have to learn in undergraduate and graduate school, what Eruopean, Japanese and other students are being taught in juinor high? Get serious.

The no child left behind and progress on pollution propaganda has become essential for industry and the political elites to continue to pursue pollute and ignore policies and politics. American industries have become so complacenent and weakend that that they can't compete without them. Notice how t H1B visas, which allow foreign scientits to continue to work in the US, had to be extend via emergency DHS for the lack of technical capacity (and of course wage advantages for corporations hiring workers).

Of course you can always delude yourself to feeling good by buying into all those commercials that the oil, mining, and energy companies are making about how you have nothing to worry about because they are everyday improving your environment and that somehow, miraculously 2-4 years of McSame Old, will instantly translate into a new measure of McSanity (but please, don't look too closely at McSame Old's enviornmental record or his penchant for letting envionmentally damaging regulations stand in the way of his favorite industries lest you spoil your slumber).

Unfortunately, for Americans, the reality of what our environment has become in the last 20 years is a lot more depressing, just like the increasing number of military recruitment ads so essential to improve the enviornment in Iraq.

McSame Old, McSame Old, with no hope in sight. For after all, every one is too bitter anyway to have any time left to contemplate the truth.

Just remember when they define so-called stewardship that means you dismember and destroy the EPA's library that contained science and data collected from the EPA founding. And for all practical purposes all the scientists were taken out and shot already. That is why they do not appear on any committees etc. And no scientific method means that we will regress as Russia did under Stalin. All that matters now is the national security state. Basically, there will be nothing left to defend in the end with these assholes.

The Chairman of the House Rules Committee, David Dreier, was Arnold's major transition manager in his campaign for governor. Remember they we pictured at the White House smoking cigars together over Bushes inauguration. Yes California is in danger. Thank God for Jerry Brown!

The Environmental Stewardship and Cooperative Conservation Workgroup is asked to review recent EPA efforts and make recommendations on how EPA can pursue these priorities most fruitfully (PDF)

http://www.epa.gov/ocem/nacept/workgroups/pdfs/final-nacept-charge-es&cc-05-12-06.pdf

Notice how these so-called working groups follow up on already released reports.

One of the goals is to "Mainstream stewardship in EPA decision processes." The current scientific and democratic process will not do in other words. Let the auto executives "mainstream" their air quality needs by all "fruitful" means necessary!

I accept that most people lack a sufficient science background. I think the problem runs deeper than that. First, people have tremendous difficulty with the relative sizes of numbers and units. Most people don't know the relative size of a horsepower and a watt, or a megajoule versus a kilowatt-hour. Many people, even with computers, don't know what kilo- mega- giga- and terra- mean. Beyond that, the way these numbers are commonly twisted by dishonest scientists, companies, and politicians has made many people distrust both what scientists say and their ability to be right about things and know what is going on.