Ideas&Issues
6D
S U N D A Y , O C T O B E R 12 , 20 14
WWW.TUSCALOOSANEWS.COM
TOMMY STEVENSON
LARRY CLAYTON
THE PORT RAIL
AT LARGE
Tide losses aren’t worth raging lament
Never really knew I was Hispanic
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hen I read something that interests me, I am invariably curious about the author. So, in the interest of transparency, here’s a bit about me for those of you who read The Port Rail with some regularity. When in the Navy, and at sea, I would sometimes go to the rail and spend a few minutes just watching the sea as we plunged through it, kicking up a bow wake, and letting my mind and imagination wander over the open spaces. I don’t know that I went to the port side — the left when facing the forward part of the boat, in landsman’s terms — or starboard side, any more than one to the other. I thought “the port rail” sounded like a nice phrase for a piece of writing, given to reflection and opinion. When at the port rail, my imagination and thoughts were free to float away from the quotidian cares of my job as weapons officer, officer of the deck and the multiple other little jobs of a junior officer on a small ship. So I named my blog (laclayton.com) “The Port Rail,” and we did the same for this column. I always thought of myself as pretty much a normal American. I was born in New Jersey and lived a pretty long time there, until I escaped the Garden State and went south to college. My dad was a Southerner, and I always felt a genetic tug to the land of my father. My Confederate-inclined aunts and uncles, all from South Carolina, much approved of my move South, never having totally forgiven my father and mother for allowing me to be born in New Jersey. There was a slight interlude in this otherwise pretty routine scenario. When I was about 2 and a half, my dad was transferred to Lima, Peru, part of moving around the U.S. and Latin America in his long career with a multinational company, W. R. Grace & Co. He met and married my mother in Iquique, Chile, back in 1930. She was a beautiful, dark-eyed girl who married the dashing gringo chemist, and they eventually had three children, me being the last. Until I was 9, I lived in Lima, in the barrio of San Isidro, running around the streets, playing with my friends, some half-Peruvians, half -gringos, half -Swiss, halfItalian — it seemed we were all half-something or another. We played and fought in Spanish and English, most of us bilingual or even trilingual, never thinking much about it until we went to school. SEE PORT R AIL | 8D
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Regulatory THREAT EPA’s proposals will kill manufacturing jobs
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ast month, a U.S. House science committee hearing on President Barack Obama’s proposed greenhouse gas rules was interrupted when the lights in the room went out. The irony was lost on no one. If the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions are implemented, the result could be a slowmotion power failure for the United States. The EPA’s rules will make it harder to produce energy and more expensive to buy it. This will mean fewer jobs for our workers and higher prices for their families. My organization, Manufacture Alabama, represents hundreds of companies of all sizes and types. They create the technology, infrastructure and products that power our economy and, yes, protect the environment. We already start at a disadvantage. High corporate tax rates and burdensome federal regulations make it significantly more expensive to manufacture in the U.S. than overseas. But we enjoy a competitive edge in one area — energy. It’s abundant, cheap and reliable. This is
especially true in st ates l ike A la bama, which rely on plentiful coal and inexpensive natural gas. T he EPA plan calls for a 30 percent cut in greenGEORGE house gases by CLARK 2030. It would artificially and arbitrarily cap carbon dioxide emissions in Alabama and every other state, even during peak summer and winter months. According to the National Mining Association, “Over 20 percent of the country’s coal-powered electricity (would be) removed from the energy grid by 2020, if not sooner.” Recently, Alabama Power announced it would retire two coalfi red units and convert other units to natural gas. Jobs will be lost. So will power. These facilities were needed last winter to meet peak usage demands. Americans insist on reliable energy. Coal currently meets about 40 percent of our energy needs. It doesn’t take a scientist to do the math.
There are other unintended consequences. The chemical industry is a major user of natural gas. Their products are the building blocks of nearly all manufacturing. When gas is diverted to replace coal, everything from toothpaste to automobiles will be affected. Nationwide, the EPA regulations could cost 224,000 jobs annually and reduce GDP by more than $50 billion a year, according to a U.S . Cha mber of Commerce study. “Regions of the country such as the South and Alabama will be more dramatically and adversely impacted,” wrote Gov. Robert Bentley in a letter to the EPA. We’re already seeing the effects. The National Association of Manufacturers has found a drastic reduction in construction permits caused in part by uncertainty related to the new rules. The group also predicts a cutoff of research and development investment in, of all things, environmental technology. In the cruelest irony of all, by ceding energy production to highpolluting nations, we make it harder — not easier — to protect Planet Earth. SEE I DEAS | 8D
ECOVIEWS
Too much bacon? Controlling wild pigs’ spread S ome folks would say there is no such thing as too much bacon. They might agree, however, there is such a thing as too many pigs. Sarah Webster, a University of Georgia graduate student, conducts research on wild pigs. Studies by Webster, Dave Keiter and others in Jim Beasley’s research program at the Savannah River Ecology Lab, address the numerous problems associated with the increase in wild pig population throughout much of the country. Sarah’s goal is to gain a better overall understanding of wild pig population structure and ecology. The terms “wild” or “feral” pigs, hogs and swine are interchangeable. According to Webster, these nonnative, free-ranging “pigs were fi rst domesticated from Eurasian (sometimes known as Russian ) boars
approximately 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. They were brought to America by settlers and first released in the 1500s.” Feral pig populations are growing at a disturbing rate. In WHIT 1982, they ran wild GIBBONS in 16 states, including all of those in the Southeast. In 2004, they occurred in 27 states. They are now found in 39. At least 5 million wild pigs are estimated to be in the United States, the highest numbers being in California, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida. The first concern someone might have when encountering a feral pig in the wild is whether it will attack.
A sow with piglets might protect her young, as many mothers do, and reports have been made of boars charging people. My own experience with dozens of wild pigs I have met over the years in forests, fields and swamps is that they just want to get away. The two main dangers from wild pigs are less exciting than being attacked and more insidious — property damage and disease transmission. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wild pigs are known to carry “over 30 diseases and 37 parasites that can be transmitted to livestock, people, pets and wildlife.” Webster notes that these include the infectious bacterial diseases brucellosis (undulant fever) and leptospirosis, to which people and dogs as well as farm animals are susceptible. S a rcopt ic ma nge, sa l monella ,
pseudorabies caused by a virus and toxoplasmosis caused by a parasitic protozoan are other unsavory diseases that can be spread by wild pigs not only to domestic livestock but, in some instances, to people. Domestic pigs, the ones we get bacon, ham and barbecue from, are kept in contained areas and regulated by a variety of federal health safety standards. Pigs become a nuisance when they become feral with no controls on their activities. Property damage is a significant problem, and the impacts are usually obvious. Pigs uproot native vegetation and wildlife habitat, golf courses and agricultural crops by “feeding, rooting, wallowing and trampling.” The annual damage caused by wild hogs is estimated to be as much as $1.5 billion. SEE E COVIEWS | 8D
ou can’t win them all. Of course, that is not the belief among members of the Alabama Crimson Tide football nation, where perfection is the expectation each and every year. That is why the 23-17 loss to Ole Miss a week ago Saturday was so devastating. When Rebel defensive back Senquez Golden went up and wrestled the ball from Tide tight end O.J. Howard on a Blake Sims pass to the back of the end zone with 37 seconds left in the game, there was the immediate sense among the Tide faithful that all was lost for the 2014 season. But although the dream of a perfect season was dashed in Oxford, upon further reflection, perhaps all is not lost. As has been pointed out, in two of the three seasons in which Alabama won the national championship under coach Nick Saban, the goal was accomplished with one loss. In fact, when the polls came out last week, the Tide found itself ranked seventh, the highest of any one-loss team. And with two higher-ranked teams, Mississippi State and Auburn, still to be played, Alabama would need only a bit of help to rise to the top and a place in the new four-team playoff leading up to the national championship game next January. Playing in the Southeastern Conference’s western division, the most fearsome collection of teams in all of college football, Alabama also still must play Texas A&M and LSU, both of whom have also been ranked in the top 10 this season. There is absolutely no margin for error, however, and the Tide will probably have to run the table, including a win in the SEC Championship Game in December, for the dream to come true. (Of course, if the Tide lost yesterday at Arkansas, all bets are of f a nd a l l of t he above is moot.) Alabama fans take defeat notoriously hard, and while I have seen no reports of violence or suicide in the wake of the Ole Miss debacle, the fan base has been in a blue funk since the loss. I shared that depression, at least initially, but have to admit I learned my lesson early — more than half a century ago today, in fact. Oct. 12, 1963, was unseasonably raw and wet. A cold drizzle was falling both in Tuscaloosa, where the third-ranked Crimson Tide was t a k i ng on t he F lor ida Gators, and in Hueytown, where I was a 15-year-old rabid Alabama fan. In those days before saturation television coverage, I followed the game on the radio as the Joe Namath-led Tide fell behind Florida 10-0 in the fi rst half and struggled to put a touchdown on the board in the third quarter. Alabama missed the extra point, and that’s the way the game ended, 10 -6, Florida. It was the fi rst of only two games that A labama would lose in Tuscaloosa under legendary coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant. I was devastated and wanted to take out my rage and anguish on something. Exactly a year earlier, my preacher father had been on a mission trip to South America and among the gifts he had brought back was a genuine Argentinian boleadoras, used in cattle herding on the Pampus. It was fabricated of three 4-foot lengths of braided rawhide joined at one end and containing three baseball-sized round rocks at the other ends. The rocks were a fi xed to the rawhide strands by thin membranes of leather. SEE AT L ARGE | 8D