For 30 years, I was an appraiser and a frequent expert witness on the value of property. Sometimes government agencies would condemn property under eminent domain, and I would estimate what the agency should pay the owner; at other times, I estimated the value of land or easements given to a conservation group such as…
Category: Wallace Kaufman
White Moose and Public Sacrifice
What ethical and legal claims can religion can make on resources and the property of others who do not share the faith? We begin with hunting. Every hunting season brings outrage and lament at the news that a hunter has killed a “white moose.” The animal killed could be elk, deer, or any animal that…
The Future of Wildlife Funding: Hunters and Non-hunters
This post by contributor Wallace Kaufman is a reply to Sterling Burnett’s post, “Where Are the Eco-tourists’ Dollars?” For openers, let me suppose that I am a lion, a giraffe, or a Cape buffalo. I ask myself, “Who is going to save me from a poacher?” And “Who will put up the most money to…
Hunters’ Last-Ditch Defenses
By Wallace Kaufman This is the second part of a three-part article. For Part I see Hunters and Their Money Are Fading. For Part III, see Will the Anti-Hunters Pay for Their Pleasure? How much hunters cherish killing is demonstrated by their own boasts of how much they spend on the pleasure. Pleasure is the…
Hunters and Their Money Are Fading
By Wallace Kaufman This is Part I of a three-part article. For Part II, see Hunters’ Last-Ditch Defenses. For Part III, see Will the Anti-Hunters Pay for Their Pleasure? Many or most readers will soon strongly, even angrily, disagree with the conclusions of this essay, so let’s begin where we almost certainly agree. Hunters and…
To the New York Times: No, Bottled Water Is Not Sucking Florida Dry
Florida has a water problem that is revealing something very self-destructive about environmental groups and science journalism. Case in point, the September 15 New York Times article by Michael Sainato and Chelsea Skojec headlined, “Bottled Water Is Sucking Florida Dry.”
The water bottler, of course, is the Swiss multi-national company Nestlé. The opinion piece jumps on the bandwagon whose riders have for decades ballyhooed Nestlé as the archetypal evil corporation. Says the article’s subtitle: “The state’s aquifers are shrinking, yet corporations want to appropriate even more of them.”
The Times’ writers egregiously omit the most important facts while larding the piece with innuendo and misleading or untrue but self-serving statements. Example: “The state and local governments have continued to issue water bottling extraction permits that prevent the aquifer from recharging.” Is it quibbling to note that the aquifers do recharge, but apparently not 100 percent? More seriously, it’s simply false to say the bottling of water prevents the full recharge since bottled water is about 1 percent or less of total extraction.