Echo

Breaking the seal of the electronic confessional

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Awhile back in this space I groused about Minnesota officials resurrecting the “confessional style” of public hearings. That’s the one where the public shows up and one at a time people privately give comments about controversial issues to representatives of the decision makers. My beef is that such a process robs people of interaction and the synergy that real discussions often produce. It also insulates decision makers from the people affected by their decisions. Now the magic of digital communications has apparently created an electronic version of this wayward attempt to generate input into crtiical public decisions.

Echo

Can you hear me now? Great Lakes webinar blues.

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(Editor’s note: The frustration expressed in this column prompted Echo to create a series of forums for an interactive discussion of the Great Lakes Water Quality Initiative.)

By Jane Elder

I suppose in the electronic age that using the Internet to gather public input on major policies decision seems like a good idea. Webinar is one of those words that has emerged in the lexicon of the digital age, but my experience is most do not fulfill the expertise and critique functions of seminars nor do they take full advantage of the capacity of web-based communications to really engage public audiences. This week’s attempt to cover eight topics of significant import in the Great Lakes water quality agreement in six two-hour sessions over three days is evidence of how imperfect these technologies can be in promoting dialogue and meaningful input, even if the convener’s intent is good. I’m not a Luddite but I’m no technological whiz. My webinar journey looked something like this.

Echo

Gulf oil spill could swallow greatest of lakes

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Granted, offhshore oil drilling of the kind that created the Gulf mess is prohibited in the Great Lakes.  But if such an accident had occurred on the sweetwater seas, just how large an area would it cover? Check out this site to see the extent of the spill superimposed on your hometown. When you’re through gasping, stick the name of any of the Great Lakes into the slot for location and hit the “Move the Spill” button.  If you mentally flip the spill outline and shift it a bit to the west, you can see that even Lake Superior would be pretty well swallowed by the slick. The other Great Lakes would be smothered. The producer of this tool says the image is based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and updated at least once a day.

Echo

Beer + Great Lakes = photo contest

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Echo reporter Andrew Norman broke a big story this spring: People like beer, and the Great Lakes are full of its primary ingredient. That story has sources from some of the region’s small breweries hailing the region’s versatile water, which lends itself to a diverse set of beer styles. But beer giant Budweiser also has love for the lakes, and is once again partnering with the Biodiversity Project’s Great Lakes Forever program to sponsor their sixth annual photo contest. The contest has professional and amateur categories, and the top prize is a kayak and a Garmin navigation system. Plus, the best photo will be immortalized on history’s most timeless canvas, the beer coaster — thousands of which will be distributed to bars across the region.

Land

Guilty secret: I owned purple loosestrife barrettes

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The term “invasive species”  is a new one in my life. I was raised to love nature. The idea that something that is growing out of the ground on its own has no business doing so was never considered. A case in point: The Purple Loosestrife Festival. This was something we looked forward to each year in rural Hillsdale County, in southern Michigan along the Ohio border.

Echo

VIDEO: Gulf oil spill has Great Lakes political blowback

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It has been a month since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the political reverberations have finally made their way to the Great Lakes. The Michigan Democratic Party on Monday released a video stating that drilling in the Great Lakes could lead to the same kind of disaster here. The two minute video shows graphic images of dead wildlife set against a spooky soundtrack and stark quotes. It then superimposes drilling rigs on Michigan landmarks such as the Mackinac Bridge, Grand Hotel and the RenCen. That’s a threat long banned in Michigan.

Echo

Michigan Conservation Voters grade lawmakers’ environmental votes

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Today the Michigan League of Conservation Voters slapped a big fat zero on 12 Michigan legislators for lousy environmental voting records. The scores are in the non-profit group’s 2009-2010 Environmental Scorecard, a report that rates the state’s elected officials based on their voting record on bills that would affect the state’s natural resources and its citizens’ environmental health. You can read the 20-page report here (PDF) or search for your Senator or Representative here. Those earning the zero-percent “Dis-Honorable Mention” include Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) and Sen. Gerald Van Woerkom (R-Muskegon). Van Woerkom is chair of the Senate Agriculture and Bioeconomy Committee and vice chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee.

Echo

Scientists to Congress: Count carbon from burning biomass

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Echo recently covered the prospect of the Great Lakes states supplanting their steady diet of coal with biomass — that’s trees, crop waste and other plants that can be burned for energy. It’s an attractive but tricky plan. If done right, it could be a “carbon-neutral” fuel because crops can be managed to absorb carbon dioxide and the vegetation would theoretically decompose and release its carbon anyway. If done wrong, we’ll rack up a carbon debt from still-recovering forest resources instead of fossil fuels. If it wasn’t already complicated enough, try figuring out how biomass emissions ought to figure into Senate climate legislation released this month by Sens.

Echo

Where are the Lake secrets in Outside Magazine’s state secrets?

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Outside Magazine this month tells outdoor travelers to ignore the obvious big name national parks and seek out the lesser used state parks, national lakeshores and recreation areas. Only one of the nine public lands the magazine profiles is in the Great Lakes region – Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Here at Echo we find that a particularly unimaginative choice. Not that we don’t like Pictured Rocks – by all means get there if you haven’t been already. But it’s hardly an unknown destination, at least among regional outdoor lovers.