Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Threatening Agriculture - 10.27.09

Michigan’ s agricultural extension programs have been helping the state’s farmers for nearly a century. Now, the program may be threatened with extinction. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry explains.

Hear Audio Story   

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has not specifically said she will veto funding for agricultural extension programs, but she has been strongly hinting that she might do exactly that.

And it would be very hard to imagine anything worse that could come out of the dangerous game of chicken our so-called leaders have been playing for months with the state budget, and with us.

We aren’t talking about much money here. The network of Agricultural Extension programs and offices and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Stations get a paltry $64 million from the state. That compares to nearly two billion dollars Michigan taxpayers spend each year on prisons. But if the governor vetoes funding for agricultural programs, that will mean statewide devastation.

That‘s the word Jeffrey Armstrong uses to describe it. He‘s the dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. It would mean, for one thing, the loss of millions more in federal matching funds for our second biggest industry.

“The Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station system and MSU extension are providing the research, development, and education for Michigan’s emerging green economy,” Armstrong said.

If that funding is eliminated, or even if it is withheld, he says it would “destroy our ability to build the one economic sector in which Michigan has an advantage,” he says.

What that would mean is that MSU would have to shut down its 83 extension offices -- one per county - plus 15 agricultural and biological research stations and some other programs.

That would also mean a loss of nearly three thousand more jobs. Now, if you are a city dweller like me, you may think that what we are talking about here is a bunch of 4-H clubs.

Well, they do fund those clubs, which reach a lot of urban kids as well. But MSU’s agricultural extension programs are also helping the City of Detroit to convert brownfields into places that grow crops for energy production. They are helping seven thousand families eat better and assisting others with child care and breast feeding.

Extension programs have developed a method they say is close to wiping out the Emerald Ash Borer. In Macomb County, they’ve helped more than a hundred families avoid foreclosure.

That’s only a small sampling of what these programs do.

They have been run for a century by Michigan State, which was founded in 1855 to improve agriculture and help bring the benefits of what were called the “applied sciences” to everyone in our state. Now, Michigan is struggling to cope with a huge budget deficit.

The state still hasn’t finalized a budget that was supposed to have been done a month ago. Last week, the state unexpectedly withheld the October payment from the extension services. The governor’s office won’t say if she plans to kill the programs entirely.

Republicans were quick to denounce her for this, and just as quick to say they still won’t agree to new revenue, no matter what.

What is very clear is that destroying these programs will have a devastating effect on the common good. Last time I checked, that’s what those we elect to serve us are supposed to be looking after.

Something seems to have gone terribly wrong.

Essay: The Governor's Park - 10.20.09

On Thursday, the state will rename Tricentennial State Park in Detroit as the William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks it is a long overdue honor…

Hear Audio Story   

There’s going to be a ceremony in Detroit Thursday afternoon that ought to please anyone who knows the history of our state. The governor will be there, and the mayor, the head of the Department of Natural Resources, and some other dignitaries.

They will be there to rename and dedicate the former Tri-centennial State Park, which will now become William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor. That’s an honor both much-deserved and frankly overdue. As Dave Dempsey observes in his excellent and even-handed biography, William Milliken, Michigan’s Passionate Moderate, the man was not only the state’s longest-serving chief executive, but “the greenest governor of the twentieth century.”

Dempsey has been leading a campaign to name a state forest in honor of Milliken, and that still may happen. But it is also fitting that they are naming a park and a harbor in Detroit for him. Besides his environmental record, he cared about and did more to help the Motor City than any other governor in my lifetime.

He did that even though that was bitterly opposed by his fellow Republicans in the legislature and elsewhere. Frankly, most of them didn’t care much for his environmental initiatives either.

He once tangled with Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway and a major contributor to the GOP. Milliken insisted that the phosphorous content of laundry detergent be severely limited, because it was killing our state’s waterway. Van Andel was incensed.

This, he complained, would cost him a lot of money. Milliken held his ground. That decision was a major factor in saving Lake Erie. Within two years, phosphorous dumped into the Detroit River had declined by 40 percent.

Over his fourteen years in office, Governor Milliken signed dozens of major environmental and conservation-related bills. He was the first person to sign a petition for the 1976 referendum that required deposits on beer and soda bottles. Before that, broken bottles and cans littered many a highway and vacant lot.

Yet as his biographer noted, more important than any single law was the perception that Milliken was the guardian of our natural resources. Once, when he was advised that a particular position might hurt him politically, he told an ally on the Natural Resources Commission to go ahead and do what she thought was right.

“Good government is good politics,” he said.

Fortunately, this won’t be a posthumous dedication. Milliken, who is still alive and well at age 87, will be there too.

I don’t know what he will say, but I remember something he said at a banquet a dozen years ago: “The truth is that the quality of human life in Michigan depends on nature. The natural beauty of our state is much more than a source of pleasure and recreation.

It shapes our values, molds our attitudes, and feeds our spirit.

“In Michigan, our soul is not to be found in strip malls. Rather, it is found in the soft petals of a trillium, the gentle whisper of a headwater stream, the vista of a Great Lakes shoreline, and the wonder in children’s eyes at seeing their first bald eagle.

“It is that soul we must preserve.”

Congratulations, sir. You did your part.

Essay: Saving the Lakes - 9.9.09

The nation’s focus may be on health care, but behind the scenes, the Obama Administration is close to winning passage of a massive bill to clean up the Great Lakes. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at why the bill is so important…

Hear Audio Story   

Virtually everyone knows that the Obama administration gave the auto industry at least a temporary shot in the arm earlier this year with its cash-for-clunkers program. But the President is about to do something else for our region which may be even more important, long-term. Specifically, clean up the Great Lakes.

Nearly lost in the sound and fury of the battle over health care has been the administration’s quiet and steady insistence on repairing the Great Lakes, which are, by far, the most important source of fresh water in the entire hemisphere.

President Obama asked Congress for an added $475 million dollars for Great Lakes restoration and cleanup next year. Earlier this summer, the House of Representatives approved that entire sum.

The Senate should vote on that bill later this month, and there is some indication they may cut that amount a little bit, but not much. They shouldn‘t cut it at all. The lakes are in danger, from lingering industrial pollution and vanishing wetlands. Most of all, their ecology - and ours - has been seriously threatened by invasive species.

Most people know about the zebra mussels that clog up pipes and drains, but the tiny quagga mussels are even worse. They lie on the bottom of the lakes and filter out food sources so completely the lakes are becoming depopulated with fish, destroying recreational fishing opportunities and threatening tourism.

President Obama is trying to do something about that. “He really cares about the Great Lakes because he knows them,” Congressman Dale Kildee from Flint said yesterday.

Indeed, the former Illinois senator is the first President from this region since Michigan’s own Gerald Ford. What is especially encouraging is that he intends to put all the new money under the control of one authority, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That will help ensure it has maximum impact.

This move has made environmentalists cautiously happy. Robert Burns, the leader of the Detroit branch of the Riverkeeper Alliance, told the Windsor Star newspaper that the government has done nothing this significant for the water system, ever before. “This is a major down payment on repairing the Great Lakes,” he said.

But he also knows that as exciting as this is, it won‘t be enough. He and other experts have estimated it will take about $20 billion in total to restore the Great Lakes to where they need to be in terms of environmental quality for our future.

That’s a lot of money in times of massive deficits, but it is clearly worth it. Banks and auto companies can bounce back after bankruptcy, as we have seen this year. If we screw up the Great Lakes beyond repair, we may be done as a species.

The money now in the pipeline also should help our economy: The EPA intends to rely on state and community organizations to get the job done. “If we show we can do projects that produce measurable impacts, there may be more money down the road,” Riverkeeper Burns said. In fact, the House bill indicates the President is thinking in terms of a five-year spending plan. Let’s hope that for once, Congress is capable of a sustained attention span.

Essay: High-speed Rail - 8.24.09

Governor Granholm announced today that the Michigan Department of Transportation is seeking hundreds of millions of federal dollars to help bring high-speed rail service to the state. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about whether or not that makes sense...

Hear Audio Story   

Governor Jennifer Granholm is taking an Amtrak train today from Dearborn to Jackson. Once she gets there, she plans to talk about high-speed rail, which she is boosting as a transportation option of the future. The question is, does that make sense?

The answer, I think, is yes -- and I am not a big fan of mass transit in general. On a local level, mass transit is one of those things that sounds better than it really would be. You can find passionate advocates of building a light rail system in every town.

They believe fervently that it would be good for the environment, and that it would be heavily used.

Heavily used, that is, by people other than themselves. But mass transit doesn’t make sense for lots of us. Take me, for example. I started my morning in the Detroit area, and have to go to four widely separated places in Toledo. Then I have to pick up an elderly woman, make a stop in Monroe and go back to Detroit.

Even if any kind of mass transit were available to do all that, it would add hours to my wait time. I’m not going to be interested, as long as I can get access to a private car, even if it runs on coal oil and hamster sweat.

But high-speed rail linking different cities is something else again. I have traveled on the famous bullet trains in Japan, and Europe, and loved them. And I suspect the vast majority of Americans would too. Airplane travel long ago lost its charm and convenience. If I could take a fast train to Chicago or Washington I would, in a heartbeat. I have no fear of flying, but have driven to both those places recently just to avoid the hassle of airports.

Yes, high-speed rail would be expensive. I think any plan to get us there must invest heavily in making sure the track and roadbed are in shape and other safety precautions are in place.

All it would take is one nasty high-speed derailment to sour the public on trains for a long time to come.

Last month, Governor Granholm and representatives of seven other Midwestern states signed what they called a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to fund a high-speed rail line they are calling the Midwest Corridor.

What they want to do next is get as much as possible of the $8 billion dollars that President Obama has made available for high speed passenger rail. In fact, the deadline for Michigan’s application for this money is today, so let’s hope we used adequate postage.

Not surprisingly, the President hasn’t asked my advice, but if he did, here’s what I’d say. Instead of parceling out that $8 billion a little bit here and there, use as much of it as possible to build one demonstration line -- preferably, the Midwest Corridor.

Build it right, and show everyone how well high-speed rail would work, so they can see if they want to build other lines across the nation. Build this line, and let’s see if they will come.

In a world of disappearing fossil fuel, it ought to be worth a try.

Essay: Seaway Anniversary - 7.8.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is thinking about the birthday of the Saint Lawrence Seaway…

Hear Audio Story   

You probably haven’t heard much about this, since Michael Jackson is still dead. But this summer is the 50th anniversary of something that has been both a great benefit and an environmental nightmare: The St. Lawrence Seaway. We don’t often think about it, but we should, because a couple of major decisions need to be made that will strongly affect our future, and that of the Seaway.

The bottom line is that the Seaway never lived up to its promise of being a passageway to economic growth. That’s not to say that it didn’t add something; it did, but never as much as promised.

However, the St. Lawrence Seaway also did something terrible that wasn’t foreseen at all. It led to the introduction of at least 57 invasive species into the Great Lakes, which have done horrible damage and changed the lakes ecology forever.

The most famous of these are the now-ubiquitous zebra mussels, which have clogged and choked water pipes and drains throughout the Great Lakes. There are also junk fish like the round goby, which drive out native fish species, and many other parasites, like the virus that causes fish to bleed to death.

In a way, it is unfair to blame the Seaway for invasive species; we have only ourselves to blame. We discovered early on that these things were coming over in the ballast water of ocean-going ships. Pretty much all we needed to do was insist they meticulously flush their ballast tanks before entering the seaway. Former State Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema had an even better idea: Make the ships add chlorine to their ballast water.

But environmentalists opposed Sikkema’s idea, and lobbyists didn’t want to make commerce any more expensive. Ships‘ ballast water was exempted from regulation by the Clean Water Act of 1972. Later, when Congress passed laws requiring ships to flush their ballast tanks, those laws weren‘t enforced by the Coast Guard.

The result was an ecological nightmare.

Ironically, the St. Lawrence Seaway never lived up to its economic potential either. When it was formally opened, it was heralded as one of the wonders of the world. It was expected to carry 50 million tons of cargo each year. But that never happened.

Thirty years ago, traffic on the seaway peaked at 23 million tons -- less than half that. Since then, traffic has dwindled. Nowadays, less than 10 million tons a year pass through the locks. True, the seaway did help the Midwest join the global economy.

But it could be carrying a lot more cargo. Marcy Kaptur, the longtime congresswoman from Toledo, thinks she has an answer. Modern oceangoing ships are bigger than in 1959 -- many just too big for the Seaway. She’d like to see our government and Canada’s spend billions to widen and deepen the locks.

That’s a proposal worth examining, but only if there is ample evidence it would pay off. And nobody should support any Seaway bill that doesn’t add strong new measures against invasive species. The Great Lakes are the most important source of fresh water this nation has. If we ruin them, we will be finished.

Let’s try not to forget that.

Essay: Emissions Standards - 5.20.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry shares his thoughts on the new fuel efficiency and emissions standards that were announced by President Obama yesterday...

Hear Audio Story   

President Obama has made it official: The government is going to require fuel efficiency and emissions standards for cars that are far higher than anyone could have imagined only a few years ago.

Current standards require new cars to average 27.5 miles per gallon; trucks have to get 23 miles a gallon. But here’s what those figures will be just seven years from now: Cars will have to average 39 miles per gallon. Trucks will have to get 30 miles per gallon.

I have never even driven a car, other than a hybrid, which got that kind of mileage. But that is going to be the required standard, less than seven years from now. For years, the automakers have fought savagely against increased mileage standards.

Their bulldog on Capitol Hill was Congressman John Dingell, Detroit’s human truck, as they called him. He’s been in Washington and on guard for the automobile industry since 1955.

Yesterday, here’s what he had to say about the agreement: “This is a remarkable environmental and national security accomplishment in an era that requires aggressive action to combat global warming and free our nation from foreign oil.”

Six months ago, if you showed me those words, I would have thought they came from Ralph Nader, or Greenpeace.

So - why does everyone all of a sudden think these drastically heightened fuel economy standards are a good idea? For a number of reasons, perhaps the biggest of which is that it doesn’t make any sense to have different state standards for emissions.

There are plenty of areas where the states should have broad leeway to make their own laws. But we all share the same atmosphere. California cannot prevent Nevada air from blowing across the state line. From the automakers’ point of view, having different standards for fuel economy doesn’t make sense either.

They are barely staying alive. They can’t afford, as Congressman Dingell said yesterday, “to be concerned about meeting a patchwork of different state standards.”

For years, California has had far tougher fuel standards than the rest of America. What Detroit wanted was for California to be forced to back off. But that isn’t happening. The nation’s biggest state is immensely rich, and immensely powerful, politically and otherwise.

Plus, for all intents and purposes, Chrysler and General Motors are wards of the government. They are depending on federal financing to keep them going, and help them through bankruptcy.

They are in no position to rock the boat. We are facing a new world here, and Detroit is going to have to be brave. What nobody knows, however, is whether the automakers can possibly achieve these fuel efficiency targets in less than seven years.

In past years, targets have been set, but then amended, pushed back, watered down. It’s possible that the mentality in the boardrooms is, as Free Press columnist Tom Walsh said yesterday, to say anything about 2016 that you need to say in order to survive.

Possibly. Yet things aren’t what they used to be. Every day, Michigan sees a little more clearly just how true that is.

Essay: Powering On - 5.12.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about our state’s energy needs...

Hear Audio Story   

If you are worried about the Michigan economy’s ability to rebound, you’ll be happy to know that someone does have faith.

Someone believes firmly that we are going to be growing again, and not only that, they are willing to put up the money to prove it.

I’m talking about the energy companies. They’ll admit that consumption is down, but they don’t expect it to stay that way. And since it takes a little longer to build a power plant than it does to order a hamburger, they have filed a bunch of requests to build new coal-fired plants, plus at least one new nuclear reactor.

Now it is an article of faith among environmentalists, liberals and other like-minded people that so-called old school energy projects are bad. Think air pollution, hydrocarbons, Three Mile Island. What we should be doing, they say, is renewable energy. Wind, and solar. And of course they are basically right. We should make better use of wind power than we do. If solar power can be harnessed in an effective way, I am all for that. Governor Jennifer Granholm is a tremendous advocate for wind power.

So much so that she has ordered the approval process for conventional plants slowed down, if not entirely stopped. That may sound like a good idea, but in fact I think it’s very risky.

Preventing new conventional plants from being built now could actually cause an environmental hazard in the future. And here’s why. Wind power is wonderful, but experts doubt that it can ever generate more than a small fraction of our energy needs.

Nor has Michigan poured massive resources into developing wind power, in large part perhaps because the state is broke.

Eventually, when the economy revives, we are going to need more power. Where do you suppose the electricity is going to come from for all those plug-in hybrids we hope to be buying?

Americans are a spoiled lot who like their creature comforts. Thirty years ago, we had a President who appeared on television wearing a sweater and suggested we turn the thermostat down and get used to being colder. When he ran for reelection, he lost 44 out of 50 states. Politicians learned from that.

What I fear is that when our state’s energy demands start outstripping supply, we’ll suddenly authorize crash programs to build them, which will be far more worrisome from a safety standpoint.

Without any doubt, Bill Milliken was the most environmentally friendly governor we’ve ever had. Last month, he and two other former governors, Jim Blanchard and John Engler, co-authored a article strongly urging Michigan to expand its nuclear energy capacity, starting right now. They pointed out that despite all the fears, that nuclear has been a remarkably clean and safe form of energy. Yes, we need to find a permanent storage site for the spent fuel rods.

But they make a good case that, in their words, “nuclear energy can help power Michigan’s economic turnaround.” We are being forced these days to reexamine a lot of old assumptions.

Maybe this is another taboo we should reexamine as well.

Essay: Bring Back Pork - 5.8.09

President Obama’s point-man for helping Michigan communities that have been hit hard by the auto crisis is in the state today. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about what Ed Montgomery can do to help our state...

Hear Audio Story   

Ed Montgomery, who the media insist on calling the “auto czar,” is in Michigan today. I would know this if I never turned on the radio, because I have been deluged with press releases from politicians rushing to be in the great one’s presence.

Gary Peters, a highly ambitious, newly elected congressman from a swing district in Oakland County, sent me one with the headline, CONGRESSMAN TO JOIN DR.ED MONTGOMERY AT MEETING IN WARREN. Be still, my beating heart.

When he gets there, the freshman Democrat plans to take part in a mass panel which will advise the czar, quote, “on ways the federal government can alleviate the impact auto industry restructuring will have on workers, business and communities.”

I’ll bet this will all come as a great revelation to Dr. Montgomery. After all, he is only a brilliant scholar who has been a Deputy Secretary of Labor, and an economics professor at Michigan State. If you think I am being a trifle sarcastic, you are right. He knows a great deal about what’s happening in the industry, and to Michigan.

Naturally, this didn’t stop every single member of our congressional delegation from signing a mass letter, telling Dr. Ed they “wanted to share with you those areas we feel are of immediate importance to our state,” and then suggesting he get the government to launch close to twenty massive federal spending programs.

Here’s a sample: “Please call Transportation Secretary (Ray) LaHood to urge him that Michigan gets its maximum allowed ($300 million) in discretionary spending.” I am sure he’ll tell them, “Hey, no problem. I’m on it. The feds have lots of dough. No deficit here.”

Meanwhile, the state’s remaining newspapers gave him a further round of orders and requests. If this were India, I think we’d all show up wearing dhotis and holding begging bowls.

Here’s something to keep in mind. Montgomery is NOT an auto czar. His actual title is, Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers. Think of that scene in Gone With the Wind where one weary old doctor without enough medicine is trying to cope with thousands of wounded and sick soldiers.

Montgomery is bringing us a little something: $10.3 million dollars in Brownfield Grants designed to create jobs and, he says, revitalize communities. The Small Business Administration is also expanding its loan program, which could help some dealerships, repair shops and parts suppliers.

But there is no magic bullet. Here’s an idea, however: Pork.

Carl Levin is now chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of the most powerful men in Congress. So, why can’t we get some more Pentagon spending in Michigan? I was down in South Carolina a few years ago and Strom Thurmond had directed billions there. So -- why can’t we use some of our excess factory capacity to make tanks and trucks and airplanes? Revive the old Arsenal of Democracy. Worked quite well during World War II, which, come to think of it, was the last war we really won.

So the ball’s in your court, Senator:

Tell us why that’s a bad idea.

Essay: Chrysler - 4.30.09

Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is rooting for Chrysler...

Hear Audio Story   

I have a confession to make. I’ve tried to remain neutral as I have assessed the battles for the future of the auto industry. I’ve never owned a Chrysler, and have seldom driven one.

But I have to say I have an emotional soft spot for Chrysler, and want them to make it. That wasn’t always the case.

Back in 1979, when I was a young reporter on the fringes of Chrysler’s first near-death experience, I thought they ought to be allowed to fail. The company had been so poorly mismanaged for so long, and its cars were such clunkers, that I thought it didn’t deserve to survive. I knew something of its history.

Chrysler had a meteoric rise throughout the 1920s, and shot past Ford to become the nation’s number two car maker.

After that, it drifted into decline. I am sitting here looking at a excellent book, “Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation,“ by Wayne State University history professor Charles Hyde. The cover has a photograph of an extremely ugly car, a 1937 Chrysler rolling off the assembly line with a beaming Walter P. Chrysler himself at the wheel, the millionth car Chrysler had built that year. Lined up next to the car are Chrysler’s top executives.

Every one of them is a pasty-faced, fat, unlovely old man in a drab and ill-fitting suit. That’s how Chrysler was seen when I was young. It was a car for the old, the poor, the unstylish and usually undereducated. Chrysler’s luxury car, the New Yorker, was a joke compared to a Cadillac or a Lincoln Continental.

Hundreds of thousands of Chryslers came trundling off the assembly lines at cavernous old factories like Dodge Main in Hamtramck. The company then stacked them up in parking lots till they could pressure dealers into taking them.

That nutty system almost did the company in. But they were saved, not so much by the government loan guarantee, but by Lee Iacocca, who reinvented Chrysler as a manufacturer of minivans, trucks and sport utility vehicles. For my money, two of the sexiest cars on the road today are the Satellite Sebring and the Crossfire.

They also have had a hit with the fun and highly functional PT Cruiser. Exactly ten years ago, this week, however, Chrysler took the fateful step of selling itself to the Germans. Daimler, that is. Though it was billed as a marriage of equals, it was anything but.

Daimler chewed Chrysler up and spat it out two years ago, palmed off to a venture capital firm. Then came last year’s financial hurricane, and the collapse of the car market.

Give Chrysler management credit for this. They went out and found Fiat, and worked hard at putting together this new alliance, to give themselves a chance to survive.

But ... will it work?

Will being a captive of the Italians prove better than being a captive of the Germans? We won’t know for awhile, but we do know that Chrysler has been left for dead before.

And then somehow, it has always sputtered back to life.

Essay: Earth Day - 4.22.09

Today is Earth Day… which has Michigan’s Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinking about, what else, our environment…

Hear Audio Story   

The first Earth Day was thirty-nine years ago today, when I was a college freshman at Michigan State. One of my science professors shrugged it off as a hippie fad, soon to be forgotten with all those be-ins and teach-ins and love-ins.

Well, guess what. The good news is that it Earth Day is still here. The better news is that we are still here too, which wasn’t necessarily a sure thing back during the cold war.

Today, twelve thousand trees will be planted throughout the Upper Peninsula by dozens of religious congregations. Tree-planting seems to be a theme of this Earth Day; yesterday, the Student Conservation Association planted trees in a muddy marsh along Maryland’s Anacostia River. They had some help.

Among the volunteers was a guy whose wife grabbed the biggest sapling. “Look how big our tree is, honey,“ she crowed. Her husband, the President of the United States, was happy to let her have it. He planted a smaller tree with purple flowers.

For the last eight years, it often seemed like Earth Day itself was an act of defiance against a government that seemed frozen in the ice of its own ideological indifference, if not outright hostility, to the environment. That’s clearly not the case any more.

The Environmental Protection Agency has reversed a Bush-era decision and has issued the common-sense ruling that greenhouse gases are in fact hazardous to human health. That isn’t the same as regulating them, but it lays the groundwork.

The burden of proof seems to be shifting from the environmentalists to the polluters. There was a little-noticed but very welcome decision in Michigan the other day. One of the state’s most notorious polluters is the vast Vreba-Hoff factory dairy farms in Lenawee and Hillsdale counties in Southern Michigan.

They have been cited over and over again for the amount of liquid manure they produce and pump into nearby fields. They now owe $223,500 in fines for this. Yet Vreba-Hoff had the chutzpah to say they couldn’t pay unless they were allowed to expand their operation and add more cows! This week, Ingham County circuit judge told Vreba-Hoff to pay up within a month.

Yet though there’s a welcome shift in the climate, we face some new problems when it comes to protecting the earth.

President Obama is thought of as being pro-environment, and he is. But that has its downside. Some will be tempted to say, ‘well, since our government is now on the right side, I don’t have to worry so much.“ That couldn’t be more wrong. All Washington can do is give us the ability to be better stewards of this earth.

What may be a bigger problem is money. Michigan Is broke, and the governor is trying to turn over responsibility for wetlands protection to the feds, who aren’t set up to do that.

You’ll see more of that sort of thing as the budget battles continue. We are a much more environmentally conscious state than on that first Earth Day long ago. So let’s make sure we don’t slip back into the primordial and political ooze.