Guest Column

Climate change is here. It’s already influencing economic decisions and conditions across the world.

Yet most of the analysis on the impacts of climate change has been so large or abstract—the global impacts of weather patterns or rising sea levels—that the results often hold little value for an average family or small business.

Locally, there has been little research on the direct impacts that climate change will have on Montana communities.  Fortunately, more analysis is starting to take place at the state and local level. 

Health Care

In Whitefish, Montana, the average yearly cost of taking care of a Medicare patient over a three-year period ending in 2006 was $3,950.

Across the country in the Florida Panhandle town of Graceville, the cost of tending a Medicare patient during the same time was nearly $15,500.

People in Graceville are poorer than people in Whitefish, it’s true. But the difference in cost of caring for a Medicare patient in these two towns is astounding — more than four times more expensive in one rural Florida hospital than in one town in rural Montana.

The map above shows the wide range of costs in caring for Medicare patients among 2,990 rural and exurban hospital service areas. The map, the first of its kind, is based on a remarkable set of data collected by researchers at the Dartmouth Medical School. Doctors and economists there take a sample of Medicare costs from every hospital. They account for differences in race, sex and age from place to place, but not income. What they have discovered are large differences in medical costs from one part of America to another.

News Nugget

According to a new report out this week from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, fewer Americans believe that world temperatures are warming and fewer and fewer see climate change as a very serious problem.

Of the 1,500 adults polled, 35 percent said global warming is a serious concern, down from 44 percent in April of 2008. And, 57 percent said they think there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature is on the rise. That is down from 71 percent in April of 2008.

Respondents in the Mountain West have had the biggest change in attitude, according to the poll. In this year’s poll, 44 percent said they believe the earth is warming. In 2008, that number was 77 percent. That’s a 31 percent drop. The region with the next biggest change was the Great Lakes region, which saw a 20 percent drop.

The Mountain West also had the biggest drop in the the concern over climate change. In 2008, 44 percent of regional respondents said climate change is very serious problem. Today, that number is 26 percent—down 18 percent. Both the West and the Great Lakes region also saw the biggest declines in the percentage of respondents who believe global warming is caused by humans.

WASHINGTON TO THE RESCUE?

Unnoticed by many, two members of Congress from Washington have decided it’s about time to do something to resolve the seemingly endless debate over the future of our last roadless lands.

Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Jay Inslee, both Democrats, have re-introduced the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act (S.1738, H.R. 3563) to codify the Clinton-era Roadless Rule that has been on a legal roller coaster for the past nine years.

OIL SHALE

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday a new set of experimental oil shale leases with stricter controls than Bush-era leases, and he’s calling for an investigation of an 11th-hour move by the previous administration that critics saw as a giveaway to energy companies.

Salazar said he had “serious questions” about whether the January 15 lease addenda, which opened up 50,000 additional acres to oil shale leasing for six companies, “are in fact legal or whether or not they should be rescinded.”

He asked for the department’s inspector general to launch a probe into the Bush move before his office would take action on it.

Guest Column

In 2009, we celebrate the centennial of the arrival of the great American conservationist Aldo Leopold to the Southwest as a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. Over the course of a diverse and influential career, Leopold eloquently advocated a variety of critical conservation concepts including wilderness protection, sustainable agriculture, wildlife research, ecological restoration, environmental education, land health, erosion control, watershed management, and famously, a land ethic.

Each of these concepts resonates today – perhaps more so than ever as the challenges of the 21st century grow more complicated and more pressing. But it was Aldo Leopold’s emphasis on conserving whole systems – soil, water, plants, animals and people together – that is most crucial today. The health of the entire system, he argued, is dependent on its indivisibility; and the knitting force was a land ethic – the moral obligation we feel to protect soil, water, plants, animals, and people together as one community.

After Leopold’s death in 1948, however, the idea of a whole system broke into fragments by a rising tide of industrialization and materialism. Fortunately, today a scattered but concerted effort is underway to knit the whole back together, beginning where it matters most – on the ground. Leopold’s call for a land ethic is the root of what is being called a new agrarianism – a diverse suite of ideas, practices, goals, and hopes all based on the persistent truth that genuine health and wealth depends on the land’s fertility.

Transportation Policy

The proposed streetcar in downtown Boise has generated a lot of comment and controversy. But even with all the news coverage and discussion there still seem to be a number of questions. I try to get to the most important ones in a series of trolley FAQs:

Just where exactly is Boise getting the $60 million to pay for this thing?
Earlier this year President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law. As part of that Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation is making $1.5 billion available to state and local governments through the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) Discretionary Grants Program. TIGER grants can be used for most any kind of transportation related project, but it must also achieve certain outcomes such as increasing livability, sustainability, economic competitiveness, and job creation. Grants will be announced as soon as possible after September 15, 2009, but not later than February 17, 2010.

If the City of Boise gets the grant those funds will partially cover the start-up costs. To generate the remaining monies needed they are considering the establishment of an LID or Local Improvement District. Under the LID, the City would levy an additional tax on businesses along the streetcar route. There is still no consensus among business owners as to whether there is support for the creation of an LID, but Idaho state law 50-2601 allows Idaho municipalities to create LIDs (or BIDs - Business Improvement Districts) with a simple majority vote of the Council. The Mayor and Council will then have to cobble together funds from the City’s general fund and CCDC to pay for ongoing operations. 

DOC SHOCK

For residents of the West’s gas patch, the story is a familiar one. Gas companies roll in, wanting to drill. Homeowners find out they may own the land, but they don’t own the gas reserves underneath.

The drill rigs appear. For some, a battle ensues. Some complain of environmental problems. Some complain of health problems.

Outside the gas patch, the story of the battle between natural gas companies and residents is less well known, but a new documentary may help change that.

Santa Fe, N.M., filmmaker Debra Anderson set out to capture the stories of residents of western Colorado and New Mexico in her documentary Split Estate. The film is scheduled to run Oct. 17 and Oct. 22 on Planet Green, a Discovery Communications network.

Guest Column

There is increasing interest in resolving multiple-use conflicts through place-based (national forest-specific) legislation. Throughout the West, divergent interests are negotiating how they would like particular forests to be managed. Many of these proposals include provisions related to wilderness designation, economic development, forest restoration and funding mechanisms, among others. But unlike more typical collaborative efforts, some groups are seeking codification of their agreements.

Numerous factors have precipitated this interest in going to Washington in search of legislation, including perceptions of agency gridlock, unresolved roadless and wilderness issues, and the disarray that now characterizes forest planning.

Nowhere is the place-based approach more apparent than in Montana. [more]

YES, NO, MAYBE

Following a review of 77 controversial Utah gas leases, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has put a halt on eight of them, deferred 52 of them and is allowing 17 of them to go forward.

The decision follows the recommendations outlined in an interagency report on the leases, which Salazar found had been rushed through by the Bush administration without adequate review.

“I think the report demonstrates that there was a headlong rush to leasing in the prior administration and it ended up taking the kind of shortcuts that we have discovered here,” Salazar told reporters on Thursday. “There were areas that should not have been leased because of the ecological values.”