And that’s mostly true when it comes to pleas for federal funding for Great Lakes restoration. Less so if you propose regulating nutrient runoff from farms in Ohio that cause algal blooms in Lake Erie, or clean up of the toxic Detroit River which is a perpetual low priority.

But now comes an issue that should be the equivalent of a layup for region’s commissions, collaborations, non-profit advocacy groups and agencies to rally around. The same folks who trek to Washington every year to lobby for those federal dollars.

It’s the renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America by a petulant President Trump, who had a tantrum because Canada rebuffed the U.S. on a trade deal.

I was expecting immediate outrage and it came, from Canada. The U.S., not so much so I decided to do an impromptu canvas of the region.

The International Joint Commission (IJC) is the U.S. and Canada group that advises the two governments on trans border water issues. I wasn’t expecting a substantive response as historically, IJC eschews controversy and anything close to politics and that’s what I got, next to nothing.

The question asked was, will the U.S. commissioners comply with Trump’s name change order in its external communications? A response came quickly saying IJC doesn’t comment on political matters, followed by its mission statement.

Since my question wasn’t addressed, I took another try and got a terse reply saying there would be no further comment.

But there’s another U.S. and Canada commission, the Ann Arbor-based Great Lakes Commission (GLC). It’s comprised of the eight Great Lakes governors and Canadian premiers from Ontario and Quebec. Unlike the IJC, GLC has no ties to the federal government. Surely, they’d have a comment. Nope, no response times two.

To be fair, Ontario’s conservative Premier Doug Ford denounced the name change. Ford has been a frequent Trump critic over the president’s derogatory Canada statements.

Photo: Gary Wilson

Michigan

What about Michigan, the Great Lakes state? The de facto leader of the Great Lakes states on policy issues. A Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) spokesperson sent back the mission statement without addressing the name change question. Worth noting, an EGLE executive usually represents Michigan on the Great Lakes Commission.

Off to the non-profit advocates.

The Healing Our Waters (HOW) coalition is based in Ann Arbor and oversees Great Lakes restoration activities, including an annual trip to Washington to lobby for federal funds. So it’s not like it’s a D.C. outsider and one would expect it to have a comment on the Ontario to America name change.

Twice a day monitoring of the HOW website, nothing.

The Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes is run by Joel Brammeier, one of the more independent thinkers in the region based on my contact with him over the years. Brammeier will deviate from the regional script on occasion. I was hopeful.

Alliance spokesperson Don Carr responded, “politicians can fight about names.” He went on to say they are currently focused on reversing the Trump administration’s unexplained work stoppage on construction of the Brandon Road project to prevent invasive carp from entering the Great Lakes. Opportunity missed.

Courage, convictions

One group had the courage of its convictions, Great Lakes scientists.

Their response to the Lake Ontario name change didn’t require deep analysis and soul searching. Specifically, it came from the International Association of Great Lakes Researchers (IAGLR).

One day after the name change order from President Trump, IAGLR had a response. “It’s Lake Ontario – Then, Now and Always” the U.S. and Canada scientists said.

The release said “IAGLR will continue to use the name Lake Ontario in all its publications, conferences, communications, and scientific activities, regardless of the U.S. federal designation directed by the August 27 executive order to rename the lake.”

In a later email exchange, spokesperson Paula McIntyre told me IAGLR felt a responsibility to respond to the name change. And it was based on “upholding scientific integrity and rigor while ensuring our publications accurately reflect the research on Lake Ontario,” McIntyre said.

Note to those reticent or waffling, see, that wasn’t so hard.

Hope

I was hopeful that the Great Lakes intelligentsia - those NGO’s, collaborations, commissions and others working in the Great Lakes space would have a response along the lines of the scientists.

But I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t as I remember canvassing the region for comments on the Flint water crisis as it unfolded. To be sure, Flint was outside the scope of work for the groups contacted. But it was about drinking water quality and was so egregious, surely they would have at minimum a statement expressing concern.

The consensus was it was out of their lane, not much to say. To their credit, the not much to say folks have since come around on water equity.

The egregious Lake Ontario name change is another opportunity to get on the right side of the issue, there’s still time.

~ gw

n.b. For a legal perspective and analysis on the Lake Ontario name change, check out Traverse City attorney Jim Olson’s post. jim901.substack.com

Trump’s response was to float on social media that he was considering renaming Lake Ontario, Lake America. As he did by executive order in 2025 with the Gulf of Mexico which became, at least in the U.S., Gulf of America.

Presidents have some level of authority to make such changes. President Barack Obama in 2015 renamed Mt. McKinley in Alaska Mt. Denali, returning the peak to its proper indigenous name. The state of Alaska had requested the change decades ago. No tantrums were involved, Obama was just trying to do the right thing by historical standards.

Does it matter?

What does it matter if there’s a Lake Ontario name change?

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, a rose by any other name is still a rose. Meaning, what you call a place or thing can be arbitrary, as with Trump’s action. But it doesn’t change the place’s essence or original nature.

And Lake Ontario’s name goes back to indigenous people who preceded European settlers. A loose translation is the lake of shining waters.

The Detroit River at Wyandotte

Photo: Gary Wilson

Reaction

Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford told The Hill that Trump’s move was a “lot of rhetoric” and said he’s focused on “protecting Canada’s sovereignty.” Ford is a conservative who has taken a strong stance against Trump’s tariff policies.

Veteran Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and Canadian Mark Mattson was prudent with his comments on a name change. Writing on Substack, Mattson said, “it all feels like noise covering up the story that matters most.”

Mattson’s larger concern is, “can our shared history on Lake Ontario be treated like a bargaining chip in a trade fight?” Referring to the collapse of trade talks between Canada and the U.S.

From the U.S. side, veteran policy expert Michigan’s Dave Dempsey has the long view on Great Lakes issues, and worked on them in the Obama administration with Canadian counterparts.

“The name change matters only as a barometer of Trump’s desperation. Renaming Lake Ontario will have no effect except to further distance Canada from the U.S,” Dempsey said in an email.

He added, “besides, it is not ours to rename. It’s a lake shared with Canada and multiple indigenous nations.”

Speak out

I’m for speaking out publicly on Trump’s name change folly. Egregious statements need to be rebuked.

And I’m speaking to you, Michigan Gov. Whitmer and New York Gov. Hochul. Historically, Michigan’s governor has been the de facto leader of Great Lakes governors who look to Michigan to lead.

I grew up in an unincorporated area of Downriver Detroit that bordered Wyandotte and the Detroit River. Both were anchors in my early years. As was Canada, a mile or so away and we visited often.

Wyandotte’s name origin dates back to indigenous people and it would be hard to fathom an arbitrary name change for selfish political reasons.

Standing on principle has become a rare commodity. Too many times we’re willing to compromise for a perceived greater good that may not materialize. Especially in the U.S. which has an unstable federal government. Challenging the president on Lake Ontario would be a good opportunity to reverse course.

I’m speaking to you, the Great Lakes intelligentsia and collaborations that advocate for the lakes.

~ gw

So routine that I’ve mostly stopped reading them. But a recent New York Times story titled ‘How Trump is Trying to Crush California’s Environmental Policies’ was a must read.

You see, California could be the environmental conscience of the U.S., if such a title existed. It’s best known for setting strict automobile emission standards that other states choose to follow. But its environmental consciousness is deeper than regulating air polluting vehicles. And its genesis is rooted in a 1969 disaster.

Santa Barbara

In January of 1969 an oil pipeline ruptured off the Pacific Ocean coast of Santa Barbara. Oil spread over miles and killed over 3,000 birds by official count.

The Santa Barbara disaster along with the Cuyahoga River catching fire are generally thought to have been the spark for the environmental protection that exists today.

And I mean no disrespect to naturalist John Muir in California, who was ahead of the environmental protection curve well before millions of autos were on the roads. Or environmental pioneer Aldo Leopold in the Great Lakes region.

A conservative Republican and a young Democrat

A conservative Republican president from California, Richard Nixon, got the message after the Santa Barbara disaster and took action that led to creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon proclaimed that environmental protection should be a priority that transcended political parties. For those reading this who remember Nixon, think about that for a minute.

By 1976 a 36 year old Democrat, Jerry Brown was California’s governor and his concern for the environment was rooted in his deep spiritual studies of Catholicism and Zen Buddhism, according to a biographer.

A top priority for Brown was protecting the 840 miles of California’s coast and he succeeded. In 1976 legislation was enacted creating the California Coastal Commission, whose mission was and is to “protect the state’s coast and ocean resources as well as public access to the shore.”

And the commission was more than yet another think tank or advisory body. The law provided the legal basis for the commission’s work and while there were efforts as administrations changed to weaken its authority, its work continues and it is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

California’s Pacific Coast

A Prime Trump Target

As reported by the Times, the California Coastal Commission is now a prime target of the Trump administration, for me, bringing back memories of DOGE. The quasi-government initiative best known for arbitrarily eliminating staff at federal government agencies in the early days of the second Trump presidency. A chain saw brandished by DOGE’s leader Elon Musk was its symbolic calling card.

DOGE has since faded deep into the background but it doesn’t mean public agencies are safe from Trump’s scrutiny and slash and burn tendencies.

The authority of the California Coastal Commission is a prime Trump target as the administration wants oil pipelines and rigs in places where they are not currently allowed. Trump has NOAA gathering information and comments, according to Times’ reporting.

Keeping California’s Pacific Coast as close to clean if not pristine and accessible for the public in the modern world has to be one of the great environmental accomplishments.

I say that from the perspective of Michigan, which lacks California’s environmental ethic. And is still trying after more than a decade to figure out what to do about the 73 year old Line 5 oil pipeline in its treasured Straits of Mackinac. Which is as important to Michigan as the Pacific Coast is to California.

There is no near term remedy for Line 5 as its future is mired in lawsuits and regulatory proceedings. And relief may not be on the horizon on arrival of a new governor in January.

The front-running candidate in November is the current Secretary of State, Democrat Jocelyn Benson.

Benson’s campaign declined to answer questions from Bridge Michigan about Line 5. In a statement it said she would “explore every option to ensure we are protecting our Great Lakes and diversifying our energy sources,” Bridge reported.

It’s hardly reassuring that a leading gubernatorial candidate won’t articulate a position on arguably the greatest environmental threat to Michigan and the Great Lakes. And “explore every option” rings hollow as the options have been known since 2018.

Michigan and the federal government also can’t figure out a way to clean up the millions of cubic yards of toxic pollutants from the 1950’s in the Detroit River. In spite of billions of dollars of funding that has been available over the last 16 years.

Disparate politicians

To most, it would be hard to imagine two politicians more disparate than President Richard Nixon and California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Nixon, a conservative Republican who was forced out of office. And Brown a liberal Democrat labeled “Governor Moonbeam,” who governed California for 16 years in two separate stints ending in 2019.

Nixon laid the framework for environmental protection of the country, and Brown defied the odds by getting legislation passed to protect California’s coast, which like the Great Lakes is a national treasure.

Former Gov. Brown commenting on the recent Times story, called Trump’s behavior “destructive” and said “It’s completely against a traditional Republican doctrine of respecting states’ rights.”

I suspect environmental pioneer John Muir would be appalled if he knew that Trump would weaken protections for California’s Pacific Coast.

We should all be appalled.

~ gw

Photo: Pexels

n.b. My review of Jerry Brown’s biography, Man of Tomorrow by Jim Newton for the Society of Environmental Journalists. https://www.sej.org/publications/bookshelf/man-tomorrow-relentless-life-jerry-brown

The theory asks what a person who is objective and uses good judgement would do in a specific situation. Would they act with the care and common sense society has a right to expect?

The theory is mostly associated with legal matters, but I believe it has utility and validity in other areas of our collective lives.

The specific situation for my purposes here is the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline that runs under the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes. The 73 year old pipeline has been in the spotlight and publicly seen as a threat to the lakes since approximately 2013.

That’s when a National Wildlife Federation (NWF) executive brought it up at an annual Great Lakes conference. He was trying to raise awareness of the pipeline’s existence and threat to the lakes it posed.

I was there reporting for Great Lakes Now (GLN). Our initial reaction when asked by the NWF executive for coverage was probably a blank stare. Followed by, What pipeline? An oil pipeline? GLN did a brief segment as a courtesy.

Since, the pipeline’s prominence related to protecting the Great Lakes has come to be one of the great, unresolved issues.

The issue isn’t the threat, that’s known. It’s what to do about it. And Michigan’s governor in 2014, Rick Snyder (R), had a plan. He formed a pipeline task force (anti-pipeline advocates groaned) to research the issue and recommend.

Michigan Gov. Snyder proposed the tunnel solution, Gov. Whitmer succeeded him and hasn’t opposed it

The outcome, Snyder told me in a 2018 exit interview, led to an agreement with Enbridge to construct a tunnel under the straits to transport oil. The agreement was ushered, some would say hurriedly, over the bureaucratic hurdles and shortly thereafter became incoming Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) responsibility when she took office in January 2019.

Enbridge was targeting a 2024 completion date for the approximate $500 million project. It’s 2026 with 2027 looming and not one shovel of dirt has been turned over.

The tunnel plan has been mired in unresolved lawsuits at the state and federal levels. Permit processes and contentious disputes over them are still playing out. For example, the Michigan Supreme Court recently ruled that the state’s Public Service Commission didn’t exercise proper diligence when it approved tunnel permits. It will have to start over.

Meanwhile at the federal level the Army Corps of Engineers, representing the executive branch of government has given the tunnel a green light.

Concurrently and separate from the proposed tunnel, lawsuits remain on the dockets of state and federal courts about the continued operation of the existing pipeline. Our legal systems are like slow moving freight trains. They creep along and are seemingly oblivious to the urgency required by the cases before them.

But what about reasonable people - ordinary citizens who are simply leading their lives and don’t want the Straits of Mackinac despoiled with oil? Who expect elected officials, regulatory agencies and the courts to act expediently to a threat.

What would they think?

I don’t have an answer but suspect they might say, what’s taking so long? The problem and options are known but it’s a slow walk to action.

• Shut down Line 5 because oil pipelines have a shelf life and at some point, now with Line 5, their continued service doesn’t make sense.

• Or, we’ll still need the oil so why not full speed ahead on the tunnel? That was Gov. Snyder’s position and Gov. Whitmer hasn’t opposed it.

• Or no, fossil fuels are or should be a relic of the past. On to clean and renewable energy sources.

Back to my opening question about acting with care and common sense that society would expect.

Unfortunately, those responsible haven’t been that reasonable. Too often they’re embroiled in politics and the next election cycle. They’re trying to appease a political base. The result is dysfunction and inertia and Line 5 is a poster child for both.

While reason is cast aside, oil continues to flow through the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes. The lakes that were officially designated a ‘national treasure’ in 2004.

~ gw

n.b. Linked below, my 2018 exit interview with Gov. Snyder where he comments on the process that led to the tunnel.

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2018/12/19/snyder-exit/#transcript

After hitting the button on the espresso machine in the morning, I go to the New York Times to check the state of the world.

Normally I gravitate to the hard news, subjecting myself to the dysfunctional state of the federal government, and there’s no shortage of that coverage in the Times. But it’s Sunday, maybe start with a story on the softer side and voila, one appears about Michigan’s premier elite vacation spot, Mackinac Island.

The headline read, ‘The Messy Dispute Over Fares That Could Cut Off Mackinac Island.’ First, some background for the less Michigan-centric readers.

Mackinac Island lies between the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas.

It’s only accessible by boat, doesn’t allow cars and is a toney vacation retreat known for its fudge. Peak season nightly hotel rates range from $225+- at the low end and $800 and up at the high end, according to travel industry sources. And yeah, there’s no camping allowed.

I spent a night there years ago on a reporting assignment and stayed in a tiny but serviceable hotel near the docks, the low end of the price continuum.

Mackinac Island

The essence of the Times story centers on the fares that the ferry service charges. It wants to raise rates, no surprise, and it’s the only ferry in town. If it doesn’t get its way, owners say they may have to discontinue service beginning in 2027.

Island municipal officials are opposed to the increase and the issue has mushroomed to the point that state government is involved including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and a federal court. ‘The dispute is a tangled, multifaceted mess,’ the Times reported.

I’ll add that the Times story is not a quick hit 600 words about the issue - party A says this, party B wants something else and party C is intervening. It has extensive quotes from locals plus comments from Gov. Whitmer and the judge overseeing the lawsuit.

The cherry on the reporting sundae is an impressive photo layout featuring vacationers, concerned business owners and the grandeur of the island and surrounding waters. The Times layout could be Pulitzer Prize worthy if there’s a leisure travel promotional category.

My first take was, why is the Times devoting so many resources and space in the Sunday edition to what is a common and elementary business dispute?

‘A first world problem’

Then while on a third shot of espresso, I saw another angle.

The whole issue is a first world problem, though that’s not how the Times presented it. Which was more along the lines of if ferry prices increase will it drive down the number of visitors and take with it the island’s economy?

People with deep enough pockets to travel hundreds of miles to a remote island resort and pay $500/night (mid-range) for a hotel, can afford the cost of the ferry. To suggest otherwise would be like going to an expensive five star restaurant in Manhattan. You’re unlikely to complain about the price of the dessert.

On the issue, If the state is so concerned about a price increase it could subsidize the ferry operation, which I suspect would not amount to a number that would even make a line item on the budget. Or the state could start its own ferry service and operate it at cost. Better yet, stay on the sidelines and let capitalism run its course.

Back to the Times’ photo layout.

As I took a closer look at the vacationers, I did not see one Black face. And census bureau estimates for the island say approximately 45 of 500 or so residents are Black. The brownish faces in the layout were likely facilitated by the Sun.

Meanwhile Black and Caribbean hospitality workers secure visas and flock to the island for seasonal work. See the disconnect?

And it’s worth noting that the sitting Michigan governor has access to a palatial summer residence on the Island.

Over to the occasionally progressive Governor Whitmer.

While addressing the cost of a ferry trip for the vacationing elite, how about finding ways to make places like Mackinac Island more accessible and welcoming to varying ethnic groups and those with limited financial resources.

Maybe Whitmer, or her successor come January 2027 should pay more attention to places like Detroit’s Belle Isle and similar sites around the state. While Belle Isle lacks touristy, over priced fudge, it is a welcoming get away destination for Detroiters, no matter one’s tax bracket.

A price hike for a ferry ride to Mackinac Island should be among the least of the state government’s concerns.

~ gw

Photo: Courtesy of Unsplash

It’s plain English and doesn’t get more basic than that.

Safe water

This space is about water and that means guaranteeing safe drinking water at the federal, state and local levels. And at the highest level, that’s an American success story.

Yes, there have been failures - Flint and Benton Harbor - in recent times in Michigan. But overall, the system works. Especially when you consider that “one in four people globally still lack access to safe drinking water,” according to UNICEF.

When it comes to having a financial safety net on drinking water for people who can’t afford to pay, it’s a different story. The baseline is if you can’t afford drinking water, too bad. Your local provider, likely a municipality, will shut your water off.

Which former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said was the equivalent of “effectively evicting (people) and putting them on the street.” Lightfoot ended shutoffs in Chicago, I reported in 2019.

‘Widespread water shut-offs in US city of Detroit prompt outcry from UN rights experts.’

U.N News

And the shutoff drama has been playing out in Michigan for a decade and more, most notably in Detroit where in 2014 the United Nations intervened.

The international body sent special rapporteurs - experts - to document the harm caused by shutoffs for those with the inability to pay. The intervention is the type that most of us think only happens in some remote, other-worldly undeveloped nation.

It happened in Michigan, a state surrounded by the Great Lakes with groundwater the equivalent of another Great Lake. A state known for its soft oversight of water withdrawals for bottled water where extracting companies pay a pittance for the public’s water, then sells it back to the public for profit.

A Detroit problem

For years the affordability issue was conveniently thought to be a Detroit - it’s them not us - problem. But recent research revealed it’s a statewide issue.

And for 10 or more years there’s been a movement afoot to address the affordability issue. State Sen. Stephanie Chang (D) has led the effort at the legislative level with local (Detroit) and statewide water rights advocates leading the way.

To date it has been no sale with Michigan’s legislature and Michigan Gov. Whitmer (D), who supports affordability in theory but hasn’t made it a priority, in spite of campaign pledges.

Abdul El-Sayed

Now suddenly comes a potential third player, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who just became the Democratic Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate in the November election.

I’ve been aware of El-Sayed because of his work for former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on public health and water issues dating back to 2021. In my 2021 reporting for Planet Detroit, El-Sayed said ending water shutoffs is Detroit’s “first order goal” and that it’s “critical” that water is affordable.

He also expressed hope that then President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan would “pass with a real investment with equitable access to drinking water.” The end product came in subsequent legislation that emphasized water infrastructure but not affordability.

Now, El-Sayed has been thrust onto a national stage as Democrats want to take back the Senate in November and winning in Michigan is key.

Everything he says and advocates for will be scrutinized, criticized and praised and condemned by entities seeking political gain. Republicans will play hardball and will undoubtedly challenge him at every turn, based on facts or not, given the current leadership of the party.

Will El-Sayed dare to campaign on a water affordability agenda? By campaign, I mean do more than have it as a talking point on his campaign website.

Should advocates pressure him? Or hope for the best if he’s elected. And even if he’s elected, as a nascent senator he’ll initially have little clout when it comes to legislative priorities.

I base that statement on a comment from President Barack Obama after he was elected to the Senate. Similar to El-Sayed, Obama was a politically young rising star. Asked for his legislative priorities, a pragmatic Obama responded that he was the 99th ranking senator from the minority party, Translation, he’d have little influence on legislative priorities.

Back to basic responsibilities of government - public health and a safety net, help for people in need.

After the primary election El-Sayed thanked supporters for joining what he called a movement “built on the foundation of what this government was supposed to be in the first place, government of the people, by the people,” Bridge Michigan reported.

If elected in November, El-Sayed has an opportunity to advance the cause of a financial safety net that includes affordable drinking water.

It’s the least the federal government is supposed to do.

~ gw

That action follows a delay from December 2025 that lasted through April. The Army Corps is not saying why the delay is taking place, except that the project is under administrative review.

On a whim, I started thinking about the early days of action to stop the carp.

They date back to the early 2,000’s when an electric barrier was installed as a stop gap measure. A permanent barrier came in 2009 and in my fact-check searches a 2011 press release popped up.

In it, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) along with then Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) introduced legislation calling for the Army Corps to develop a plan to separate the Illinois River from the Great Lakes. The separation was to be the ultimate solution.

“Every day, Asian carp pose a greater risk to the Great Lakes ecosystem and the 800,000 jobs it sustains. There is no time to waste,” the senators said. Again, that’s 2011. Sen. Stabenow has since retired and Sen. Durbin steps down in January.

Michigan congressional delegation at the Brandon Road Lock 2019.

Sen. Stabenow center, red. Photo: Gary Wilson

The plan proposed by the Army Corps would have cost in double digit billions of dollars, taken a decade or more and it eventually collapsed under its own weight.

It was replaced by today’s smaller in scope endeavor at the Brandon Road lock choke point that would cost $278 million. It eventually morphed into a $1.1 billion dollar project with an estimated completion date in the early 2030’s. Worth noting, the project, if completed, will not guarantee that carp won’t reach the Great Lakes. It reduces the risk.

Foot-dragging on the current project occurred at the state level too as Illinois was slow to take responsibility for required funding for the project. Michigan governors eventually jump-started the project with funds, but the other Great Lakes states stayed on the sidelines. Though they, especially Ohio, would have benefited if the carp were stopped.

My reason for the brief history lesson is that the slow walk connected to stopping the carp advance, and doing something about the aged Line 5 oil pipeline that threatens the Great Lakes needs to end.

They are the highest order of threats to the ecology and economy of the Great Lakes region, if you believe the barrage of press releases experts and advocates of all stripes have screamed for decades.

Yet the dawdling continues.

Some day scholars will analyze how the Great Lakes were protected during the period from the early 2000’s to 2030 or so.

Best case is those responsible will get an incomplete, but a failing grade wouldn’t be wrong.

~ gw

The tunnel, if built, would replace the aged oil pipeline that dates back to 1953. Outrage from a cadre of environmental groups ensued who laid the approval at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s door step.

One prominent anti-tunnel activist wrote a narrative saying Whitmer’s move was akin to other 1953 environmental risks like use of DDT, massive fish kills because of polluted water and open air nuclear testing.

In 2024 Whitmer launched another energy initiative with roots going back this time to 1967, the restart of the aged Palisades nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan. An endeavor that had never been done previously by a company that had never operated a nuclear power plant.

I reported on the Palisades restart for Great Lakes Now in 2024. It featured comments from an international nuclear energy expert who questioned the restart referring to it as “Michigan’s travel back to the 1960’s.”

Now comes in depth reporting by the New York Times on Palisades titled, “Why restarting a nuclear power plant can be much harder than expected.”

With the subtitle - “The first U.S. attempt at reopening a shuttered nuclear reactor has been held back by run-down equipment and a lack of planning.”

Let’s pause for a second on the subtitle because it refers to a nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Michigan. Reminds me of oil pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac.

The New York Times article is a long read with a bunch of photos for context. It’s probably behind a pay wall but if you’re not a subscriber, ask a friend who is to send you a free link.

~ gw

Thus the title of this space, Gary’s Great Lakes Notebook.

It launched last year after years of writing and commenting for Michigan State University, followed by public media in Michigan, Planet Detroit and on occasion media outlets as far flung as Science Friday and Al Jazeera.

That involvement means since 2008 or so I’ve read a steady stream of press releases and news stories about the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI). The multi-billion dollar USEPA led program that spans a dozen or so federal agencies.

Taxpayers who fund federal restoration of the Great Lakes

deserve better than recycled talking points.

For the most part, the releases have been glowing accounts of “success stories” that have two reasons to be. First, to inform, to tell us that there’s been habitat restoration along a waterway or clean up of a long-neglected toxic site has begun.

The second reason is to hype the congressional bi-partisan nature of GLRI saying it transcends the normal bickering between the political parties, a hallmark of politics today.

Above: A failed $2.8 million Great Lakes restoration project on Chicago’s Northerly Island. Wave action erosion from Lake Michigan was not adequately accounted for in the design of this circular walkway. Chicago Tribune 2024 report. Photo: Gary Wilson

Over the years the messaging has become so redundant that I stopped reading the releases. I’d give them a quick scan and hit delete. The hype and puffed up claims of success - an inflated claim of 8,000 projects for example - were too much.

But recently a restoration commentary written by University of Michigan’s Mike Shriberg in The Conversation caught my eye. Because it was in The Conversation, I read it as I respect that publication.

In it, Shriberg deviates from the forever talking point script and reveals one of GLRI’s reasons for attracting bi-partisan political support. It’s because, “the initiative funds work in every congressional district in the Great Lakes watershed, so every member of Congress in the region can say they brought home federal money to make significant improvements in their own districts.”

Finally, a credible restoration source says what I’ve been saying for years.

Members of Congress are focused first on issues that bring taxpayer dollars back to their districts. It’s not more complicated than that. A true test of congressional loyalty to the Great Lakes would be to ask representatives if they’d support regulation of ag pollution.

I once posed that very question to Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine who paused then said, “we’re not there yet.” A poll of Great Lake state members of Congress would likely produce a similar response.

It gets better.

Under the heading of “secret sauce” Shriberg writes, “the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative pays for community-based work on local lands and waterways – it does not regulate industries or tread into particularly controversial territory.” The emphasis is my add.

Shriberg did it again. He told the truth.

While billions of dollars are being spent to clean up the Great Lakes, pollution to them continues apace. Hardly a winning restoration formula. Off the top, I’m thinking of the ongoing chemical pollution to the Detroit River and nutrient runoff from farms that fuel toxic algal blooms. Think 2014 Toledo water crisis. Lately, toss in microplastics.

I know Shriberg only through a previous one off exchange for a restoration story. Others in the Great Lakes restoration space tell me they respect his work, agree or not.

So thanks to Mike Shriberg for the candor. Here’s hoping it will be contagious as it’s been in short supply when it comes to accountability on Great Lakes restoration. An endeavor that succeeding generations may refer to as, what could have been.

~ gw

The agency (EGLE) approved another round of permits that brings the tunnel replacement of the Line 5 oil pipeline a step closer to reality.

You see, Whitmer, a Democrat, has only marginally opposed the tunnel option to replace the aged pipeline that currently operates in the Straits of Mackinac.

An early indicator of her view on the tunnel came in my 2019 interview where she gave a soft endorsement of the tunnel venture she inherited from her predecessor, Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican.

Whitmer said she was “mindful of the fact that the worst thing for Michigan is that pipeline staying in the water for a longer period of time and protracted litigation and exposing ourselves to risk with an unknown, without making progress in terms of a tunnel or another alternative. I think that is the worst-case scenario.”

And that isn’t the only issue where Whitmer, who ran for governor on an aggressive water agenda, followed Snyder’s lead.

Green light for bottled water

The Snyder administration approved additional water withdrawals by Nestle for bottled water in spite of the fact that public sentiment overwhelmingly opposed the withdrawals.

Legal action to overturn the decision ensued and it fell to Whitmer’s environmental director, Liesl Clark. Clark avoided a decision by dismissing the complaint made by water advocates saying it was filed in the wrong venue. Clark’s ruling was two years after the complaint was filed.

“I’m not surprised,” Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation’s (MCWC) Peggy Case said at the time. “They seem to be following right along with the policies of the Snyder administration,” Bridge Michigan reported.

MCWC is the grassroots water advocacy group that with the support of environmental attorney Jim Olson, had early success in limiting the amount of water Nestle could withdraw.

There’s more.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaking at a 2019 Great Lakes governors conference in Milwaukee. Background left to right. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.

Photo: Gary Wilson

Flint redux

The environmental justice debacle that was the Flint water crisis occurred under the Snyder administration with the USEPA playing a supporting role. It was so tragic that it received national and international attention.

In her 2018 campaign material Whitmer, without mentioning Snyder, said “The Flint water Crisis was a direct result of what happens when you run government like a business and make decisions that put pennies ahead of people. It’s also what happens when environmental injustice plagues our regulatory system and communities of color are ignored when they speak out.”

She pledged to appoint a water ombudsman to investigate drinking water complaints and that person would “have a direct line to the governor,” the campaign material said.

Fast forward to 2020 and the impoverished minority city of Benton Harbor fell victim to similar circumstances related to lead in drinking water. EGLE investigated and essentially held the city responsible, absolving the agency though EGLE director Clark at the time acknowledged the need for “potential improvements” on communications.

“Potential improvements” to communications on drinking water quality don’t inspire confidence. How about the need for better support and oversight of the disinvested cities? Did EGLE under Clark learn nothing from the Flint experience?

Clark was replaced at EGLE for Whitmer’s second term and she appointed Phil Roos to succeed her. In a statement on his appointment, Roos said he would “grow Michigan’s economy, protect the state’s natural resources, and improve the lives of Michigan citizens.” That the executive in charge of environmental protection led with growing the economy jumps off the page.

It’s not dissimilar from the USEPA under President Trump where administrator Lee Zeldin talks about “partnering with business” and at points his plans read more like economic development plans.

There’s more to the story than Whitmer following in Snyder’s footsteps on big issues.

Whitmer pledged action on drinking water affordability and did put minimal funding in her budgets. But she largely stayed on the sidelines when a real affordability plan almost a decade in the making had a chance to pass, it didn’t and hasn’t. We’ll never know but could Whitmer’s strong public endorsement of the plan and twisting the arms of legislators pushed it across the finish line?

Weak tea data center plan

Now comes the rush to attract water needy data centers and a chance for Whitmer to stand up for Michigan’s groundwater. Community activists have been sounding the environmental alarm on data centers with water use one of their concerns.

Whitmer last week released the Michigan Affordable and Responsible Growth Action Plan. It calls on data center operators to sign a pledge that they will “hold data centers accountable for their own development.”

A pledge that’s not enforceable, this one isn’t, does not inspire confidence that the state’s water resources will be protected. Especially when the state is all in on economic development and less so on environmental protection.

And the data center pledge request reminds me of Whitmer’s 2018 campaign pledges that fell by the wayside.

Michigan environmental groups gave Whitmer a lot of sway early on as one would expect after she promised them the Moon and appeared to be aggressive on Line 5.

By 2021 that trust had started to erode. Perhaps best exemplified when a large coalition of water and justice activists formally petitioned the USEPA to exercise its emergency powers to intervene on behalf of Benton Harbor residents. Requesting a federal intervention based on a state’s inaction is a big deal and they don’t come easy.

Preventing another Flint-type debacle was one of Whitmer’s top priorities and there was Flint redux unfolding on her watch.

But the boiling point for advocates was the recent permit approval for the tunnel replacement of Line 5.

Enough

Writing in The Current, anti-pipeline and tunnel activist and Oakland University professor Jeffrey Insko had seen enough. He linked the recent tunnel permit approval as Whitmer reverting back to 1953 environmental protection standards. Standards, or lack of, that allowed for massive fish kills caused by polluted water, and facilitated the use of the pesticide DDT. The Line 5 pipeline dates back to 1953.

The most scathing rebuke of Whitmer’s Line 5 permit decision came from the Michigan League of Conservation Voters (MLCV), generally seen as sympathetic to her policies.

“Governor Gretchen Whitmer had the opportunity to put the health and safety of our Great Lakes first, but instead, backtracked on a promise she made to Michiganders and instead approved a dangerous project that threatens the drinking water for millions of people and our state’s Number One economic driver,” said Lisa Wozniak, president and CEO of MLCV in a press release.

Time will tell

Whitmer is a term-limited, lame duck governor who will leave office in January. Her tenure will be judged over time based on a number of issues the least of which may be environmental protection and promoting environmental justice.

She will probably receive passing marks for being aggressive on climate change, though that work is undermined by the regressive action of the Trump administration.

In the clean energy category, along with former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, President Biden’s energy secretary, Whitmer was successful in reviving the aged, troubled and decommissioned Palisades nuclear power plant.

The decision was not supported by environmental groups especially since the plant borders Lake Michigan. And the restart puzzled nuclear energy experts who questioned the decision as once decommissioned, no nuclear plant has been restarted.

If Whitmer’s work on water conservation, protection and water justice were to receive a report card, she’d struggle to get a passing grade. Right there with former Gov. Snyder on the key issues.

~ gw

When not visiting family, I’ve walked Pere Marquette beach which is great fun in October when the crowds are gone, and done Christmas Day woods walks to escape the never-ending holiday hype. And I’ve seen downtown Muskegon go from the depths of despair 30 years ago, to today where it’s a revitalized and blossoming west Michigan city with amenities that attract emerging generations.

Photo: Justin Calkins

And a bonus, Muskegon Lake was recently removed by the USEPA from a 1987 list of toxic sites that have plagued the lake since the peak industrial era of the 1950’s. That’s a big deal even if it took forever to untangle a bureaucratic knot. So much for the Rust Belt tag.

One thing I hadn’t done in Muskegon is take the lake cruise on the Aqua Star.

I did an eco-cruise on the Detroit River, touristy cruises on Lake Michigan and the Chicago River viewing the skyline. and survived a wicked storm on a tourist boat on Lake Erie. Toss in seeing Paris from the Seine, being on the Atlantic Ocean in a small craft and on the Pacific on a Coast Guard vessel. Then there was an overnight on a trawler on San Francisco Bay. That’s a lot for a guy who doesn’t covet being on water.

So on the recent trip to Muskegon I suddenly found myself with a free afternoon. Flipping through what to do material I saw a Muskegon Lake and Lake Michigan two hour trip on the Aqua Star docked off Shoreline Drive. Why not, I said.

What followed was an interesting trip, busy with boat traffic and at times a serene look at Muskegon and environs from the water. Sand dunes, water front houses, industrial remnants and boats galore that cost from a few thousand dollars to well into the six figures traversing the five mile long Muskegon Lake.

One highlight of the cruise was the exit through the channel that leads past a lighthouse to Lake Michigan. A photo op if there was one.

Photo: Gary Wilson

And voila, we’re in the “big lake” as folks in Muskegon refer to Lake Michigan. And quickly I remembered why I brought a windbreaker as the temp took a dip and the winds picked up.

The controlled chaos of boats darting around Muskegon Lake quickly ended as few of them stayed long or went far on Lake Michigan. A welcome relief.

The Lake Michigan portion of the cruise was a welcome respite as I briefly talked with one of the crew members, a young man barely 20 I’d guess. We finished chatting and I went back to gazing toward the middle of the lake where I spotted something. Or did I?

Could that be a lake freighter? All I could see was a silhouette, or maybe it was an illusion. I pointed it out to the crew member who was still close by and asked him. Hoping he would know having spent much more time than I on the lake. He turned and looked, stared for a few seconds then said yes.

That was the cherry on the sundae that took the cruise from good to great from my perspective.

Shortly after, we entered Muskegon Lake with the mass of boats darting around. I didn’t care.

Before docking I chatted (unlike me) with a middle-aged couple from Ohio who were vacationing in Muskegon. They loved the cruise and their hotel which faced the lake and provided an excellent view of Lake Michigan sunsets. They looked like they could have been vacationing in Florida or California, but they chose Muskegon.

I offer this vignette as a mea culpa of a sort. Over the years I had taken Muskegon and its place on Lake Michigan for granted. The city had attributes but remained less than, say, Traverse City. And I doubted that the downtown would ever make a recovery. My bad, maybe after decades living in Chicago I’d become a de facto elitist. They do exist here.

Maybe I forgot I was raised in industrialized downriver Detroit. Not all that different from decades ago Muskegon.

Lesson learned.

~ gw

Five years in the making, President Barack Obama’s museum and campus officially opened this week and I spent the better part of yesterday in the museum building.

A few random thoughts.

The structure is eight stories high, mostly without windows and was derisively described by one reviewer as a block of granite, which is technically true.

I’m neutral on the building but the longer I was there, the more sense it made. Keep in mind that his presidency wasn’t trying to replicate the past, and the granite building isn’t either.

It’s more than a granite building. The campus area includes a working vegetable garden and plenty of walking and green space open for free to the public. It also offers spectacular views of Chicago’s south side, the University of Chicago and Lake Michigan as the backdrop.

The displays, if that’s the proper word. Simply put, it’s President Obama and First Lady Michelle’s life mostly from his 2008 campaign and his first term presidency in 2009 until he left office in 2017. All presented in photos, video’s, historical footage, artistic renderings and replications.

It begins on the second floor which features his improbable 2008, ‘Yes, We Can’ campaign and a look back at the evolution of civil rights. The third floor has exhibits documenting his push for affordable healthcare, his signature issue, the economy and immigration reform. On the latter, Obama pushed for legislation that asked “what kind of country do we want to be.” The bill died in the senate.

The highlight of the fourth floor is a full-scale replica of the Oval Office where a museum staffer will take your picture sitting at the president’s desk.

The museum’s top floor features an artwork on the Sky Room’s ceiling that contains the thousands of words in Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march. I can’t describe the artwork, it has to be seen.

I’ll stop there as after an hour on the second floor, it was apparent that we could have stayed there all day. Another visit is in the works.

Along the way museum staff were plentiful and accommodating. In an exchange a guide said that Obama addressed the employees telling them to treat visitors like they treated him. The 200 or so public facing employees are paid $30 per hour, have healthcare and after 10 years, a pension, a staffer told me.

This brief narrative isn’t a review of the Obama Center, only a brief account of my experience. Your’s may be different.

And a disclosure, I met Obama pre-presidency and made a small donation to his 2008 campaign. The latter is unlike me. Plus, in spite of my deep Michigan roots, I may have a Chicago bias since I’ve lived here for a number of decades. And my wife also had a distant pre-presidency connection to him.

If you’re inclined to visit the Obama Center Museum and go with an open mind, you will be rewarded.

~ gw

Photos: Gary Wilson

The show was jokingly said to be about “nothing” as it lacked a plot line and the characters lacked substance. It essentially focused on the unimportant and often annoying minutiae of the casts’ lives.

It reminds me of the long, strange trip that has been the supposed cleanup of the toxic Detroit River. Close to nothing has happened related to a clean up decades after the river was put on an official list of toxic sites in 1987, and remains there today. The river contained 3.5 million cubic yards of toxic sediment then and still does.

To be fair, there have been a few small bore remediation projects since 2006. Toss in some habitat restoration and that has been the fodder for agencies and advocates to claim progress.

But none of that has moved the dial on that 3.5 million cubic yards number.

Now comes the USEPA’s Chicago Great Lakes office and Michigan’s environmental agency with a high-profile, craftily constructed announcement on Detroit River cleanup.

“State and federal partners announce $10 million investment to support continued Detroit River restoration,” read the release by Michigan’s Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).

Here’s the essence of the release.

“The Detroit River is one of Michigan’s most important natural and economic resources, and this investment marks another major step forward in restoring its health and protecting its future,” said EGLE Director Phil Roos. “Through strong partnerships at the federal, state and local levels, we are making real progress cleaning up contamination, restoring critical habitat and reconnecting communities to the river. This funding ensures that momentum continues.”

The are plenty of red flags in the release but the use of “momentum continues” stands out. There has been no momentum but inertia has been abundant.

It gets worse.

“The funding will be used to study and plan cleanup work along the Detroit River, including removing contaminated sediment from the riverbed…,” according to the release. The emphasis on study and plan jumped off the page.

In other words, it was a press conference about nothing.

Want proof?

It has been 39 years since the Detroit River was put on the 1987 toxic site list. Two years prior studying and planning via Remedial Action Plans (RAP) had begun and they were codified into the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

In the early 2000’s as momentum was building for a big Great Lakes restoration program at the federal level, the mantra was that the lakes had been studied and planned to death, it was time for action.

Zug Island steel mill as seen from the Detroit River

Photo: Gary Wilson

Now, 20 plus years later the EPA and EGLE call for more studying and planning, really?

Fast forward to 2010 and the federal Great Lakes restoration program is law and has sent $ billions to the region, much of it for restoration of sites like the Detroit River.

And progress courtesy of the funding has been made at many sites in the region, Milwaukee for example, just not the Detroit River.

But in 2022 hope was on the horizon. The administration of President Joe Biden put a billion dollars in the budget targeted at cleanup of the Great Lakes toxic sites.

The EPA said the funding offered “flexibility” that hadn’t previously existed for sediment remediation of sites like the Detroit River. Hopes were raised for the river to finally get its due.

But those hopes were dashed some few months later when, responding to an inquiry for my reporting, EPA said the existing approach that was more bureaucratic would continue. The approach that hadn’t served the Detroit River well.

By 2024 advocates for action on the Detroit River had run out of patience. A collaboration of 62 entities, including researchers, advocacy groups, and local government leaders lobbied state of Michigan legislators. They requested the state to invest $100 million to jump start clean up of the Detroit and Rouge rivers.

The funding would allow for access to federal restoration funds. Unfortunately, the state took no action and in 2024 the EPA revised its “bullish” goal of a 2030 clean up completion to one of making “substantial progress.”

The inspiration for this narrative was born out of the frustration with the recent EPA and EGLE press releases where they ignored the sorry history of the Detroit River’s toxic waste.

Perhaps they thought a puffed up media event replete with supportive talking points and the river as a backdrop would make people forget the decades of Detroit River neglect.

But the numbers don’t lie and those decades old 3.5 million cubic yards of toxic sediment remain while the agencies “study and plan.” And the elected officials in Michigan turn a blind eye to Detroit’s toxic river.

~ gw

n.b. This 800 word commentary provides a high level snapshot of the Detroit River’s status. A closer look at the issues via my reporting is available in Planet Detroit’s author archives. https://planetdetroit.org/author/garywilson/

The term’s origins are traced back to Greek philosopher Aristotle and it essentially means, once an entity achieves success, more is likely to follow. In modern parlance the baseball term “hitting begets hitting” may be apt.

In January to mark the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s first year in office of his second term, the EPA released a list of “500 wins.” They were evidence, I presume, to support the claim that EPA was on track “to fulfill the agency’s statutory obligations and core mission.”

Now comes the next version of celebrating success as the EPA in a press release recently announced “another 100 top environmental actions.” In the subhead of the release, “environmental victories” replaced actions.

“Wins, actions and victories”

The “ wins, actions or victories” if you will, are all about supporting the EPA’s mission of “delivering clean air, land, and water for all Americans under President Donald Trump’s leadership,” the release said.

As I scanned the list I noticed a pattern. Many of the 100 were neither “actions, wins or victories,” they were activities. Activities that one might be expected to do on a regular basis as part of the job. They may or not be a tiny part of a victory, but are not deserving of being on a list of “environmental victories.”

Number 9, for example. Deployed 48 air monitoring stations along the 2026 Boston Marathon course in support of emergency response preparations.

Because the activities on the list lack context, it’s hard to judge. The deployment of air monitoring stations is noble work but shouldn’t qualify as an environmental victory.

Number 13 - Conducting an audit of air quality stations in Connecticut.

Auditing is a necessary activity, but I’m struggling to see it as worthy of being declared an environmental victory or even the lesser term, an action.

Number 55 - Conducted over 200 on-site inspections evaluating and ensuring compliance of regulated facilities throughout the region.

Inspections too are important activities but hardly qualify as victories. It’s like brushing your teeth daily, it’s necessary but not worthy of a gold star unless you are a toddler.

To be sure, the list included worthy mentions.

Number 24 - Finished cleanup of Former Compounders Superfund site in New Jersey, removing 600 barrels, 1,380 containers, and storage tanks filled with dangerous chemicals.

An actual outcome to protect the environment versus an activity.

And number 17- Stopped over 93,000 pounds of potentially dangerous and unregistered pesticides from entering the U.S. through New York and New Jersey ports since January 2026.

Another outcome that protected from environmental harm.

Complicated

Environmental protection is complicated work that plays out over time, decades. It’s fraught with a lack of accountability, bloated bureaucracies, legal proceedings, the ebb and flow of funding and omnipresent political machinations. It shouldn’t be trivialized into one sentence sound bites

To properly determine the merit and veracity of the EPA’s top 100, or 500… take your pick, would require analysis by environmental scholars or an investigative environmental journalist. My wish is that one or both of those entities would take an in depth look at the “wins” list and publish the results.

Becoming aware of the EPA’s publicity blitz reminded me that the agency is not afraid to puff up its accomplishments and the puffery transcends political parties in power.

The Great Lakes restoration program (GLRI) is an example. Launched in 2010, GLRI is overseen by the EPA and includes a dozen or so federal agencies. GLRI has its own website (GLRI.US) where progress and process are tracked.

On that site EPA says “over 8,000 projects have been implemented” since its inception, and it’s widely touted as a bi-partisan environmental and economic success story.

However in 2022 a group of researchers took a close look at GLRI and found a lack of transparency. Progress reports that measured success relied on qualitative information and were written by project managers. Those reports were submitted to Congress as measures of success. Congress funds GLRI.

In 2024 the researchers followed up with a look at 5,300 projects in the GLRI database and found that only 1,574 did actual “restoration, remediation or protective action.”

The balance listed as projects were something less. Tasks like monitoring, planning and capacity building. In other words, activities like the current EPA might be referred to as “environmental victories.”

When I reported on the findings by the researchers where so few “projects” were actual projects, the EPA’s Great Lakes office in Chicago did not respond to a request to comment. Previously the EPA stood by its processes when asked about the researcher’s finding of a lack of transparency in GLRI reporting.

We all like a good success story and it should be celebrated when it’s real.

But let’s not cheapen success by reducing its value to that of a participation medal.

~ gw

Barlow remains true to form in her new release, Earth for Sale: The Fight to Stop the Last Plunder of the Planet. (ECW Press)

In a concise 186 pages Barlow “exposes the danger” of governments giving responsibility for climate action to “powerful private interests,” the same entities that have brought the planet to the brink, she wrote.

Barlow has a long career as an international environmental and social justice advocate, and is best known for her work advising the United Nations on the human right to water.

Her previous works on water include Boiling Point and Whose Water Is It, Anyway?

I recently interviewed Barlow pegged to Earth for Sale’s release where she addressed questions on privatization and financialization of Earth’s resources. She explained the concepts of water offsets, water pollution trading and ocean grabbing. And Barlow made the case for continuing the fight against bottled water in spite of regulatory inertia and consumer demand.

The interview was conducted via email and edited for length and clarity.

Gary Wilson: Earth for Sale’s premise is that most of us on the planet “agree on the need for climate action, yet we are often divided on how to stop the destruction of the natural world.” Your concern is that governments are abdicating their responsibility in favor of corporate interests. Can you elaborate?

Maude Barlow: Governments are either saying that the climate and biodiversity crises are not real (the Trump administration) or that they don’t have the funds to clean up the damage that’s been done. So they are openly contracting out their responsibility to care for their forests, wetlands, waterways and wildlife to the private market hoping to attract large pools of private funds to invest in nature.

The problem of course, is that private investors will need to turn a profit from these investments and they are now making money cleaning up the very mess their corporate sponsors made in the first place.

Financialization

GW: Historically when we talk about climate and responsibility for the dire straits we’re in, our knee jerk reaction has been to blame fossil fuel companies, big oil. Now, you throw global equity funds, asset managers and private water utilities into the mix with a combined total of 45 references to privatization and financialization. Most will understand privatizing. But financialization warrants an explanation.

MB: This is crucial to the story. The same corporations and industries that brought us to the ecological brink are now - with the support of governments, the UN and the World Bank - taking over the climate and biodiversity file. Their answer to the crises: bring nature into the market, put a price on it and let the market - not governments - decide its fate.

The financialization of nature is the process of converting nature, ecosystems and the so-called “services” they provide, into tradable financial assets that then compete on the open market. Instead of government regulation, nature is now “protected” by its ability to make a profit. The way it works is that a company or industrial operation can continue to pollute as long as it promises to “offset” its damage elsewhere. Because there is so much money to be made from plundering nature, the big equity funds and asset managers have become deeply involved, claiming to support “sustainable” investments, when in fact, the system is allowing more and more exploitation of resources.

The financialization of nature is like giving the fox responsibility for the hen house. Are we better off with nature being “protected” by private capital? Our waterways are more polluted than ever, our forests and wetlands are being decimated and our air more fouled and dangerous. We desperately need governments to rein in the power of big corporations and billionaires and protect the living world upon which we all depend to survive.

GW: The water chapter is titled, The Fight for Blue Gold. Blue Gold as a metaphor for fresh water. In it you reference diverted water, dammed rivers and “greedily pumped groundwater” among the major concerns. These are legacy issues that didn’t just recently emerge. Why haven’t we addressed them? It’s not like the U.S. and Canada lack expertise and resources.

MB: Of course it comes down to political will. Our two countries have found this will in the past with the creation of the International Joint Commission and several key agreements such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. At various times, the Canadian government has pulled back funds for Great Lakes protection and at other times, the US has done the same. But the spirit of cooperation is still incredibly strong.

However in this time of deregulation, we are exposing the Great Lakes to new threats such as the hundreds of AI data centres either existing or planned in the Basin as well as the search for new fracking sites. The St. Lawrence River is in serious danger with habitat degradation, warming and over-extraction of its groundwater. And of course, in both our countries, the search for critical minerals and new energy sources endangers water that is no longer protected by federal law.

Bottled Water

GW: In my 20 years of reporting, bottled water has been a poster child for corporate taking of a natural resource. Activists in Michigan had early success in limiting Nestle’s water withdrawals but over time, Nestle and its successors prevailed as determined by the state of Michigan’s rulings. Big box stores have entire aisles devoted to bottled water because there is public demand for it. Isn’t the bottled water issue settled?

MB: We must not give up the fight against bottled water! We have the right to safe and clean, public water in our communities, and to have to rely on plastic to bring us water should not be accepted as normal. The world is drowning in plastics and yet the bottled water industry is set to explode with predicted sales to reach US$600 billion in five years. People and communities are subsidizing the huge profits these companies make for bottling their water, so of course, why would they want to encourage legislation that would stop water pollution?

GW: In Earth for Sale, you use terminology in the water chapter that some may not be familiar with - water offsets, water pollution trading and ocean grabbing. At a high level, will you provide a brief explanation of each and why you’re concerned about them?

MB: Water offsets act the same as carbon and biodiversity offsets. Carbon offsets give a polluting company a tradable credit for every metric ton of greenhouse gas they claim to have prevented elsewhere, such as by planting trees. Biodiversity offsets place a value on an animal, plant or habitat that allows a company to continue to harm an ecosystem as long as it “offsets” its damage by, say, recycling plastic in a poor community of the global South.

Water offsets allow a corporation to continue to pollute or over-extract water and get a tradable credit for, say, digging boreholes in Africa, or investing in “green” energy such as lithium production (which destroys local water). Poor countries in need of funds openly tout “cheap water” as an incentive to invest in their monoculture tree plantations or mass alfalfa export operations. Bottled water companies can claim to reach their “water neutrality goals” by buying from companies that own the land and water, who, in turn, make money selling credits to those bottled water companies.

Water Pollution trading, another form of water markets, is also called “water quality trading” or “water nutrient trading” by proponents. Water pollution trading is a market-based approach to protecting lakes and rivers overloaded with industrial, human and animal waste. It allows a polluter to maintain pollution levels that are higher than allowed by local regulations, by selling credits to another source. That source, in turn, uses the credits to reach its own regulatory compliance. Many of the projects centre on lakes that are contaminated with eutrophication, nutrient overload that depletes oxygen in the water.

One of the world’s largest and oldest projects is in the Chesapeake Bay. Claiming to help offset the ecological damage to the bay, the EPA supports this “market-based approach,” explaining, “Trading can allow one source to meet its regulatory obligations by using pollutant reductions created by another source with lower pollution controls.” Food & Water Watch reports that pollution trading has allowed giant factory farms to continue to dump huge amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into the waters of the bay.

Ocean grabbing is one of the newest forms of nature grabbing in the planet’s oceans. Blue carbon refers to the carbon sequestered in coastal ecosystems, mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes. To make a profit from this sequestered carbon, blue bonds have been created to provide a new opportunity to generate credits for companies wanting to offset their own negative carbon or biodiversity footprint. There is big money to be made from “protecting” these coastal ecosystems, including aquaculture, ecotourism and the search for rare earth minerals on the seabed. Already in the name of the blue economy, small-scale fisher peoples are being displaced for commercial operations.

Adam Smith redux

GW: You close the Blue Gold water chapter citing 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations. Paraphrasing, Smith warned against privatization of what is produced naturally. Will you explain the relevance of Smith’s words all these centuries later and why you cite him?

MB: Smith was saying that those who did not do the work, get to reap the reward. We live in a world where, soon, a cohort of trillionaires will walk among us. They live above any law anywhere and are reaping huge fortunes from polluted water, dying species and out-of-control wildfires. When will we say, enough?

GW: Here’s the, it’s the economy, stupid, question. In recent years increasingly I’ve seen references to environmental protection linked to economic growth as if they go hand in hand. For example, Trump USEPA administrator Lee Zeldin talks about meeting the agency’s mission while “energizing the greatness of the American economy.”

Similarly in Michigan, the head of the state’s environmental agency under a progressive governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said when appointed - “We have a tremendous opportunity to seize the moment and take action to grow Michigan’s economy, protect our land, air, and water — today and into the future…” Isn’t there an inherent conflict of interest? Won’t the economy always win?

MB: Yes, there is an inherent conflict when the economy is favoured over the environment. We can actually have both a healthy environment and economy but not if we continue to cut government protections for our natural resources and hand the responsibility for the environment to the very people who are destroying it.

There is no life worth living on a dying planet and we must wake up to this soon. The AI boom is a perfect example of the economy (for the rich) taking clear precedence over the environment. The water destruction alone will take a long long time to heal and meanwhile, local farms and economies are being devastated.

And, as the climate crisis hits in the form of floods, hurricanes and fires, who will insure our homes and businesses? Taking care of the environment is job number one for a healthy economy.

GW: For a family in Ottawa or Detroit that doesn’t know or care where its water comes from - as long as it’s abundant, affordable and clean. What would you want them to take away from Earth for Sale?

MB: The planet is running out of clean accessible water. The UN reports that demand is already exceeding supply and that it is getting exponentially worse. We can all wait until it hits us or we can take proactive measures to protect water and the human right to water everywhere. We can start that process by saying no to the corporate capture of nature and water.

GW: Final thoughts for the residents of the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces?

MB: We have created something special here - a family of two nations, two provinces and eight states - who care for these precious lakes and one another. May this be a blueprint moving forward in the spirit of cooperation and respect. In spite of my concerns about the world, I have great hope and want to pass it on to the younger generation.

~ gw

n.b. The Maude Barlow interview is the last of the author interview series, Previously featured were Dave Dempsey and Guilio Boccaletti. Thanks to the authors for contributing.

If you’re a Great Lakes devotee you know it is, technically. If you have only a passing interest in the Great Lakes or none at all, you might have to do some research.

Don’t feel bad if you aren’t sure.

Duluth borders Lake Superior and its mayor has you covered as he recently questioned the state’s Great Lakes status.

“Minnesota struggles to see itself as a Great Lakes state,” said Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert. Some quick Minnesota research revealed Minnesotans tend to see the northern section of the state as focused on agriculture.

For perspective, Minnesota’s exposure to Lake Superior is a mere 189 miles. The Lake Superior watershed in Minnesota is a thin thread less than 20 miles wide.

Professionally, I know Minnesota is a Great Lakes state. Personally, I’ve forever seen it as it presents itself, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” or its official name, the North Star State.

The cherry on the sundae is that the Mississippi River flows through the state’s largest city, Minneapolis, which makes it hard to identify with the Great Lakes.

Similarly with New York when I think of water the Atlantic Ocean, the Finger Lakes and Niagara Falls are top of mind. The Empire State, as it’s known for its financial prowess, has 300 miles of Lake Ontario shore but I associate that with the province of Ontario, Canada

What about Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania? Each with well less than 100 miles of Great Lakes shoreline? Are they or should they be Great Lakes states as they are by today’s measure?

I will concede Illinois where I live only because of Chicago’s gravitas as one of the most prominent U.S. cities. Indiana and Pennsylvania, no.

Michigan

My point is that there’s only one Great Lakes state, Michigan.

It has a border on four of the five lakes and 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline. That’s more than the other seven states combined. From anywhere in the state you are not more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.

And Michigan has a respectable track record of governing with the Great Lakes in focus. Over the past 20 plus years it has led on issues that affect the region. Here’s a snapshot look at the current and the two preceding governors.

Jennifer Granholm, 2003-2010. Granholm, a Democrat, led on passage of the Great Lakes Compact that largely prevents diversions of water to arid areas in the country. The Compact, while imperfect, is a landmark agreement. Granholm was also instrumental in securing ballast water regulations to keep aquatic invasive species at bay.

Rick Snyder, 2011-2018. Snyder, a Republican, succeeded Granholm and secured funding to jump start construction of a new Soo Lock that is key for transport of raw materials to lower Great Lakes industries. He also secured funding to support construction of an Invasive (Asian) Carp barrier in Illinois. And his staff guided the region though the first test of the Compact in Wisconsin, which validated the legitimacy of the process even if anti-diversion advocates didn’t get their desired outcome. As I watched that process unfold in person, there was a clear deference to Michigan by the other states.

Gretchen Whitmer, 2019-2026, a Democrat, campaigned on leading on Great Lakes issues and taking action on the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline. Her administration revoked the easement that allowed the pipeline to operate so a campaign promise was kept. Line 5 continues to operate and the issue remains mired in seemingly never ending legal proceedings but the effort was made. Whitmer also continued the funding for the carp barrier in Illinois.

Only one

I would reorder the existing Great Lakes region, usually known as the Rust Belt to the rest of the country.

• Michigan would be The Great Lakes State for obvious reasons previously stated.

• There would be three Core Great Lakes States - Wisconsin, Illinois (Chicago) and Ohio. Core states are based on geography and engagement on Great Lakes issues.

• Minnesota, Indiana, Pennsylvania and New York become Adjunct Great Lakes States. As in, ‘connected to a larger, more important thing, but not an essential part of it.’

On regional governance the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers have authority to approve or deny requests to divert water. Each state’s governor has a vote. In my reorganization, Michigan and the core states would have voting authority, the adjunct states would serve in an advisory role.

The Great Lakes Commission is comprised of the eight states and serves in an advisory role. The commission’s recommendations determined by a vote would include Michigan and the core states. Minnesota, Indiana, Pennsylvania and New York would advise.

For both groups, the governor of Michigan would be the permanent chair with a vice-chair from the core states on a rotating basis.

Eight miles from Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline.

Photo: Gary Wilson

Akron, Ohio

I didn’t simply wake up one morning and think of this overhaul of the Great Lakes pecking order. It’s grounded in my years of commenting, reporting and seeking information from the states. Michigan and the core states were good at communicating their Great Lakes positions, my proposed adjunct states much less so. I also received valuable input from trusted policy experts and advocates.

Another perspective came from the three years I lived in Akron, Ohio.

Akron straddles the divide between the Lake Erie and Ohio River watersheds 30 miles from Lake Erie, and has a stronger connection to the historic Ohio and Erie Canal and the Ohio River.

In Illinois it’s said south of I-80, 30 miles from Lake Michigan you may as well be living in - pick a mostly rural, ag-centric state.

This post also took inspiration from a Michigan State University (MSU) policy paper that described Great Lakes governance as “messy with overlapping systems” that are “overwhelming even to attorneys and policy makers.”

The MSU paper said because of the governance structure, “coordinated responses to the Great Lakes Basin’s most pressing environmental issues have often proved elusive.”

Change is difficult especially, I suspect, for entrenched bureaucracies like the Great Lakes Commission, founded in 1955 when Dwight Eisenhower was president.

Questioning the bureaucracy

I’ll close with this vignette.

In 2013 then Michigan governor Rick Snyder organized a meeting of Great Lakes governors on Mackinac Island. Regular meetings of the governors had lapsed and Snyder wanted to revive them. To generate interest and attendance by the governors, Snyder included an economic component in the agenda to complement the Great Lakes issues.

Attending in addition to Snyder were Pat Quinn - Illinois, Mike Pence - Indiana and Scott Walker - Wisconsin. An all Republican lineup except for Quinn. The other governors sent representatives.

I covered the event and there was a fair amount of media access to the governors.

In a media scrum, a youngish reporter was quizzing Illinois Gov. Quinn about why the lakes had so many commissions. Referring to the Great Lakes Commission, the International Joint Commission and other bureaucracies. Quinn did his best to explain the complicated bureaucracy but I sensed he may have been thinking the reporter had a valid point.

In the 13 years since that Mackinac Island conference, not much has changed with the “messy” governance of the Great Lakes.

Antiquated bureaucracies die hard.

~ gw

n.b. This post intentionally focused on the Great Lakes states. Understanding that the federal governments in the U.S. and Canada and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have a significant role in their governance. As do indigenous peoples of the two countries.

Dare to challenge the death zone a few thousand feet below the peak at 29,032 feet. It’s so named because at that altitude the human body starts to shut down.

I paid little attention to Everest until I read Jon Krakauer’s seminal book Into Thin Air where he chronicled the tragic events on the mountain in 1996. Eight people died attempting to reach the summit. Krakauer was an experienced high peak climber, a journalist on assignment and was on Everest as events unfolded.

In his book, Krakauer put a spotlight on the fact that a number of those who attempted to summit Everest in 1996 were marginally qualified, but shelled out big bucks to guiding companies to get them to the top.

There were multiple contributors to the tragedy and one was that some of the guided climbers lacked the skill required by the mountain when conditions became unbearable. Or when they couldn’t or refused to recognize their limitations and the need to descend while they were still able.

Thus began in earnest the guiding industry that has mushroomed in the last 30 years, with multiple companies collecting fees from $50,000 to $150,000 depending on the service and amenities you want.

The commercialization of Mt. Everest, my term, is chronicled over 30 plus years in Will Cockrell’s 2024 release, Everest Inc. The book’s subtitle speaks volumes; The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry At the Top of the World.

To fully understand the complexities, and there are many, of Everest’s commercialization it helps to start with Karkauer’s Into Thin Air. But Cockrell’s Everest Inc. includes the basics on Krakauer’s work if you want to take a shortcut.

The essence of Everest, Inc. is that Mt. Everest has become a de facto corporation with all the good and bad aspects that come with corporations.

A subset of Everest’s commercialization is the disrespect for the mountain in that it has been trashed, literally.

Those deep-pocketed wanna be climbers left behind their empty oxygen bottles, trash and human waste as they descended. Only in recent years has there been an Everest clean up campaign mandated by the Nepal and China governments. The Everest summit is accessible from both countries but via Nepal is the preferred route.

Uniform patches

In spite of the magnitude of Mt. Everest, followers of the climbing season and its commercialization are few compared to major league baseball, where commercialization has been on steroids.

Every team now has a sponsor patch on its uniforms, once considered off limits. For the Detroit Tigers it’s Meijer, the grocery “supercenter stores.” For the two most iconic teams, Yankees and Dodgers, it’s the patch of an insurance company and financial adviser firm respectively.

I can think of only one reason for a sponsor patch on a major league baseball uniform: money. It’s expensive to field a World Series winning team like the Dodgers who are paying 14 of their players over $5 million per year in cash salaries. And there will be more via deferred compensation.

What about college sports? Surely esteemed universities would hold the line on commercialization. But no!

The NCAA, governing body for college athletics, recently approved sponsor patches on uniforms. And high profile football programs including Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama and more have sold sponsor rights to the playing surface. The University of Michigan remains a holdout, at least for now.

But surely our taxpayer funded national parks like Yellowstone would be free from blatant corporate funding and commercialization?

Not exactly.

Corporate funders to Yellowstone among them ConocoPhillips (oil) Coca-Cola, Canon, Michelin and Toyota channel their contributions through Yellowstone Forever, a 3rd party non-profit philanthropic entity.

Props to those companies but they’re not poets. They see value for their brands by associating with Yellowstone with hopes that it will put them in a favorable light with customers. .

Water

Water for sale? Surely, we as a self-declared civilized society wouldn’t sell our water. Setting aside that the public pays for the water consumed daily.

We already do. The sale of water that’s supposed to be held in trust by governments for the people is easily acquired for a song by bottled water companies to be packaged and sold to, the public.

Go to any big box store and there will be an aisle or two dedicated to water for sale in various package sizes. And the public willingly pays or the store wouldn’t dedicate the space to it.

Meanwhile Michigan for example, has a drinking water affordability problem where some significant number of citizens can’t afford the water that comes from the tap. Efforts to remedy the problem have languished in a dysfunctional legislature and executive branch.

Even the Great Lakes may be for sale as Dave Dempsey has written in two editions of his Great Lakes for Sale book.

In fact, Lake Michigan water is already being sold and it’s all legal. By geography, much of greater Chicago wouldn’t be allowed access to water from Lake Michigan. But a decades old Supreme Court decision allows Chicago to draw water as can a certain and increasing number of suburbs.

And Chicago will be selling water to an exurb city with hopes of more to come as it seeks revenue sources to bolster its struggling finances.

And what about that Supreme Court decision? While it limits the amount of water that can be diverted from Lake Michigan, recent Supreme Court decisions have proven that nothing is forever. It’s not hard to imagine arid areas far from Chicago and the Great Lakes wrangling to get a case before the Supremes in hopes of tapping the Great Lakes.

My point in this ramble is that little is sacred now in our society that’s fixated on consumption and politicians who measure success based on economic growth.

Revenue generating patches on baseball uniforms may be harmless but despoiling Mt. Everest by ego-driven amateur climbers isn’t. Neither is the blatant tolerance of commodification of water to sell in plastic bottles when many can’t afford essential for life drinking water.

Since 2016 and especially since early 2025 there’s ever-increasing chatter from credible observers that the U.S. is in decline. That its star that has shone brightly for a hundred years on the world stage is dimming. For proof, look at the way long time neighbors and allies Canada and Europe are distancing themselves from the U.S. And how quickly it has happened.

The dimming star theory may or not be the case. But our everything for sale, gross consumption and disregard for the rule of law mindset is an indicator.

I’ll close with this. Noted Canadian water rights activist and author Maude Barlow’s new book will be released soon. Earth for Sale: The Fight to Stop The Last Plunder of the Planet.

It doesn’t get more dire.

~ gw

Post script: For an insider’s look at the 1996 Everest tragedy, I recommend a 2020 interview with Neil Beidelman who was a guide on the mountain assisting clients and lived the experience.

Beidelman describes in detail what happened, who was accountable and talks in depth about the efficacy of guiding novice climbers.

But a most welcome subset was book authors, and they’ve recently been top of mind as I interviewed two in the last month. Both were pegged to the release of new books. The Great Lakes region’s Dave Dempsey and Europe’s Giulio Booccaletti.

A third interview with a prominent Canadian author is on the horizon.

I’ve known all three over the years so there’s a familiarity, what to expect and they don’t disappoint. Stylistically, Dempsey is a sparse writer. He elaborates and takes a deep dive when necessary, but leans toward being concise in a way that you understand the message conveyed.

Boccaletti, a scientist, is a deep explainer of the details and that can be a challenge. But details are there for a reason. They support complex premises or historical events and once I got into a groove with his style, I found it rewarding.

The Canadian author will fall somewhere in the middle. Above all, she will be candid, then an explainer and she will bring enthusiasm and an occasional hard edge to the work.

I’m pleased to feature them in this space.

The recent interviews prompted me to look back at the 20 or so author interviews I’ve done including a couple of filmmakers.

Disclosure: My wife has written three books, two of them award-winning. So I’ve been on the inside of what it takes to go from an idea to a published work. It’s a daunting task that plays out over time but is ultimately rewarding. Thus, my affinity for authors.

A short list

Here, a short list in addition to Dempsey and Boccaletti of authors out of the 20 interviewed and a comment or two - something that struck me about them or the work.

Elizabeth Kolbert

On a chill, rainy day in 2022 I was scheduled to interview Elizabeth Kolbert. She was on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston speaking on her book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Kolbert was more than a little late and walked into the hotel lobby sans umbrella soaking wet. I wasn’t sure what to expect. She seemed hurried and I feared a less than rewarding interview.

What she delivered was spot on, unhurried responses to my questions. They were well considered, concise and she pushed back when appropriate as I would expect from a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Interview complete and Kolbert said, do you have what you need? I did and after parting pleasantries, off she went to her next event. What a pro.

The interview is here. https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2022/10/19/great-lakes-chicago-river-asian-carp-elizabeth-kolbert/

Jane Elder

Jane Elder had a long and successful environmental advocacy career by the time I first encountered her. It was at a meeting of advocates with the head of the USEPA’s Great Lakes office in Chicago. The meeting, from memory, seemed perfunctory until Elder pointed out deficiencies in the agency’s Great Lakes work. I took note.

Fast-forward to her sort of end of career book, Wilderness, Water and Rust: A Journey Toward Great Lakes Resilience. I interviewed Elder in 2024 on its release for a couple of reasons. She combined her professional environmental work with her personal life experiences because they are intertwined. And she had the audacity to include Rust, in the title. As in the Rust Belt, a term eschewed in the Great Lakes region but commonly referenced elsewhere.

The interview is here.

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2024/06/03/wisconsins-jane-elder-chronicles-personal-and-professional-great-lakes-journey-in-new-book/

Sally Cole-Misch

In 2020 my Great Lakes Now editor asked me to take a look at Sally Cole-Misch’s book, The Best Part of Us, as an author interview candidate. It was a novel about a generational conflict between owners of a vacation home in Canada and the local Ojibwe chief who claimed the land. The backdrop was the Lake Huron area.

I was reluctant because I rarely read fiction, but I took a look and said yes. What I discovered was an engaging work by Cole-Misch as she put a spotlight on our often overlooked but undeniable connection with nature. While raising questions about who, if anyone can really own land. Spoiler, we’re still grappling with the question, she said.

I remain wary of fiction but am grateful to have read The Best Part of Us.

Interview here

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/09/04/great-lakes-author-conflict-culture-novel/

Flawed process

Lists like this are inherently flawed as they are not all-inclusive. Following, authors interviewed and not mentioned above but who are no less worthy of a mention.

Jerry Dennis for The Living Great Lakes, the book that drew national attention to the lakes. Peter Annin for Great Lakes Water Wars chronicling diversion threats of water to arid areas, and Erica Gies for her expansive and “quietly radical” Water Always Wins.

And two Filmmakers. Detroit’s dream hampton for Freshwater on water, life and justice. And Boston’s Mary Mazzio for Bad River, on the Line 5 oil pipeline in Wisconsin.

My thanks to the authors for the time and courtesy extended.

~ gw

Note: dream hampton does not capitalize her name.

Photo: Penguin Random House

His 2022 Water: A Biography, did nothing less than chronicle water and its role in societal development from early human settlements through the millennia to modernity. Now comes The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World. (Princeton University Press)

Boccaletti is the scientific director of the Italy-based Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. He has a PhD from Princeton University where he was a NASA Earth Systems Science Fellow and divides his time between Milan and London.

The Environmental Republic asks and answers the question about the best political system to grapple with and sustain the environment. The answer is in the book’s title, a republican government. Note the lower case r, meaning a government of the people, not a political party.

In an interview, I asked Boccaletti to elaborate on his new work. He responded with a trove of thought-provoking narratives that inform, question and “above all else, examine the rules we have given ourselves.”

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Gary Wilson: It’s been a while since we talked about Water: A Biography and you’ve obviously been busy. Let’s start with the title of your new release where you say, ‘Why Citizens Will Save the World.’ That’s a strong declarative statement. How was its use determined?

Giulio Boccaletti: The Environmental Republic is fundamentally a hopeful book. The pursuit of the political project I describe will deliver a world in which people are able to author their life together, of this, I am convinced.

I do not accept that we face the inevitable consequences of external forces that govern the economy and I don’t believe, as some seem to, that the problem can be reduced to a few malevolent actors. The pathologies we observe are the product of our collective attempts at fulfilling our desires. The question is whether we are succeeding at a high cost—environmental crisis as the inevitable consequence of development— or whether in fact our institutions are incapable of correctly representing what we want.

I would argue we are not fully succeeding at governing our societies, and this requires above all else to examine the rules we have given ourselves: less time spent on technology and plans and more on the political institutions that are supposed to deliver the results we seek.

The republic of the title is not “environmental” because it deals with the environment. It is “environmental” because it recognizes that our societies are located somewhere, and that place—what happens there, how it functions, what it does to us, what we expect from it—has a special, irreplaceable role to play in our life together. It is profoundly political, then, in the sense that what happens in our home is what we allow ourselves to let happen there. In this sense, the declarative subtitle contains a “why” that is not simply a causal why, but an Aristotelian “why”: the ultimate “why”—the purpose of citizenship is to solve the problems we face in our home. If we fail, it will not be because our problems are intractable but because, in fact, we have not acted as citizens.

This does not mean that the solution will be the “optimal” solution according to some particular analysis. The facts of the world are not the only politically salient factor in constructing a general will. How we feel, what we believe, what we think of each other, those are politically as important as empirical observations.

But if we pursue a true republic, we will arrive at a solution that is legitimate, because it is the one we have chosen together. Legitimacy comes from placing people’s sovereignty at the heart of authoring our future. It comes from being deliberate about defining the “we” that drives our action, from recognizing that we are part of a whole, and it comes from the realization that the pursuit of legitimate institutions is the only possible answer to all the crises we face.

GW: The book takes deep dives into controversial topics including the political realm which, given that you are a scientist, takes you out of your lane. What prompted the book and that approach?

GB: We are living through unusual times. In several points in the book I invoke Hannah Arendt, someone whose writing has challenged me and inspired me over the years. Taking a leaf from her playbook, I refer to this as a “revolutionary” period.

Revolutionary not because it will necessarily end in chaos, but because it forces us to re-examine the foundations of our civic compact. Whether this ends in revolt and the exercise of unconstrained power by a few opportunists, or whether it becomes the search for a “space for liberty” as she would have said, is entirely dependent on all of us. We need a self-aware citizenry, capable of mobilizing its own sources of power to effect change. This is what motivates my writing.

I don’t believe disciplinary lanes have much to do with such public debate. The book is not written for academics but for the general public. The responsibility of thinking about politics and the nature of our political institutions is not a task that comes with a PhD, but a responsibility that comes with being a citizen. It is a pathology of contemporary intellectual discourse that we believe only those who are professional academics in a particular discipline are allowed to theorize or reflect on what the rest of society needs. It confuses analysis with taking responsibility for what we believe. Most intellectual progress over the course of history would not have happened had it just delegated to a few professionals.

I don’t want to be misunderstood: the book rests on ideas and concepts that have been worked through for years in academic circles. They have been challenged, debated, problematized. This has made them robust, allowing me and others to stand on a solid basis to then argue their implications.

But this book is not an exposition of professional analysis, it is the result of experience, of someone who has concluded that we spend far too much time debating science and not enough talking about political institutions. It is partly biographical for this reason, the product of someone who started out as a physicist, spent a couple of decades dealing with economic and financial problems in confronting environmental phenomena, and has concluded that there is no solution without a set of political rules that enable us, together, to address what happens to our home.

Science, technocracy and “shallow moralizing”

GW: In the introduction you used a cautionary tone related to reliance on science and blindly accepting technocratic management. Then you touch the third rail - the “shallow moralizing and apocalyptic rhetoric of some activists.” What’s your concern about all three? Especially the latter.

GB: As mentioned, I have been working on environmental issues for close to three decades, so the book is a personal reflection on the environmental movement I have known over the course of that time.

I am a scientist by training. The authority of science is invoked often to justify fundamentally political visions of our future. It is a mistake. The authority of science in society is a precious, fragile thing, and it comes from illuminating phenomena, not by defining imperatives. By placing science as the sole source of authority of a political synthesis, we risk undermining its legitimacy rather than driving change. All that those wanting to stop all debate have to do is to doubt the science. Pushing the authority of decision making onto science is also a dereliction of duty. Instead, the question we should be asking is this: what are the political institutions we need to absorb the results of scientific inquiry and support a process that gets us to a legitimate decision?

The reliance on science has an origin. In the early 1990’s at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro the nations of the world agreed on three treaties—the convention on climate change, the one on biological diversity, and the convention to combat desertification—which together represent the international architecture of our environmental governance.

Central to all three was the instrument of the counterfactual based on scientific analysis: we use models of reality that capture everything we know about the world and construct scenarios of the future, in the hopes of convincing everyone not to go there, to regulate our actions before those scenarios come to pass. That technocratic approach was then translated in political terms as a broad application of the precautionary principle: “we should act before it is too late”.

The problem is that this approach has failed. Emissions have continued to increase every year and biodiversity continues to decline. Desertification advances at an alarming rate. If that was the solution, based on the subordination of national action to international technical agreement, it is not working.

The problem is that scaring people into action belies a remarkably simplistic political philosophy. It assumes that we make collective decisions because “science says so” or that facts have normative value, no matter the individual experience. This frustrates some activists, who tend to divide the world into those who understand facts and those who are wrong, evil, or misinformed. But they are mistaken. They believe they are simply engaged in a propaganda war, when in fact there are substantive political issues to wrestle with.

Much of the book is about offering an alternative to this way of thinking. Not because the science is wrong. I am a scientist. I can assure everyone that the science is accurate: we do not have a better explanation for what is happening than our own impacts on the world, and those future scenarios are consistent representations of what could happen.

But deriving political imperatives from those is a fundamental misunderstanding of what politics is. Politics is not about convincing everyone to accept the same facts or think in the same way; it is the process by which we are able to come to a synthesis and move forward despite disagreements. What we need is more politics and less apocalyptic morality.

Authoritarianism rising

GW: You express concern about the rise in authoritarianism in governments, saying it has led to “first order problems that define our reality today.” Authoritarianism is referenced 13 times between pages 8 and 201? Can you elaborate on your concern, especially related to environmental issues?

GB: Authoritarianism is the exact opposite of the republican tradition I offer in the book.

In a party-political sense, many in the environmental movement think it is only a problem of the right, but in fact I would observe that the fascination with authoritarian decision-making has become a common feature across the political spectrum. It goes hand in hand with a managerial view of society, one in which the opinion of those who “know” is politically more salient than what people experience and feel.

Authoritarianism may seem like an attractive proposition to some. China or Saudi Arabia are often admired for their ability to “decide”, to “get things done” when compared to democracies (confusing the nature of political institutions with their performance). But subordinating the liberty of citizens to the decision-making authority of a few is a recipe for disaster for most people in society. Thousands of years of history across all continents show this repeatedly.

Republicanism is about the pursuit of non-domination, an idea with deep historical roots. In the book I make the case that it is a common feature of the human experience across cultures. It is a particular definition of liberty, distinct from that of the liberal tradition of the likes of Jeremy Bentham, so common in western liberal democracies today. According to the latter we think of liberty as a negative concept, of not being interfered with: “I am free because I am free to act”.

But the republican tradition argues that this is a misrepresentation of what freedom is. The slave of a benign master, one who lets them do whatever they want, is free by that liberal definition. But if I have a master, I cannot possibly be free because someone else holds power over me and can always take away my freedom to act. Freedom is not a property of actions: it is a property of the person. In other words, I am not free because I am free to act; rather, I am free to act because I am free. The republican tradition is about building political institutions that enshrine this view of liberty at the heart of the relationship between the individual and the state.

This matters a great deal when dealing with the environment, because all environmental issues are extensive and collective, and therefore require mutual limitations. Environmental phenomena connect geographies; they have causes in one place that have consequences in another.

Think of pollution in a river, or our own emissions causing a change in climate globally. The response must therefore be coordinated and collective, thus limiting people’s individual ability to do certain things. It is for this reason that addressing environmental issues is often described as a collective action problem. What some environmental activists would like is to achieve those limitations by subordinating our will to a plan that descends directly from scientific fact. It is a world in which we delegate decisions to philosopher kings, an authoritarian ideal.

But there is an alternative, one in which we build institutions for the purpose of helping us to come to a decision, together. These institutions do not ignore science, but subordinate all choices to the sovereignty of a free people. That is a republic.

GW: Your premise assumes stable governments will adhere to republican principles. The U.S. government has now leaned hard toward authoritarianism and is marginally functional based on traditional norms. Its stature on the world stage is in decline, The Guardian reports. On the environment, the USEPA’s mission under Trump has been turned upside down as best evidenced by the recent deconstruction of the Office of Research and Development, the New York Times reported. Why should another country invest in republican principles on the environment with the U.S. on the sidelines?

GB: Republicanism is not exhausted in the institutions of the state. A republic is a system that balances individual liberty and collective responsibility. Citizens are an integral part of the republic; they are not just the beneficiaries of the freedoms gifted by the state. For a republic to function we need multiple intermediate bodies, political parties, labor unions, associations, civil society organizations and local authorities.

The question of whether the United States will be able to survive the expansion of executive powers pursued by this administration has a lot to do with the ability of those other institutions to mobilize. This administration is indeed dismantling policies and institutions that mattered to part of the political spectrum. That it is not committed to the outcomes environmentalists care about, is less important than the fact that it does not appear fully committed to the rule of law and to basic principles of due process.

It is above all the reduction of the space of liberty that should concern everyone, including environmentalists. All forces in society, environmental or otherwise, should be singularly focused on the risk of unchecked expansion of state power and on the question of how popular sovereignty can limit the reach of the state.

Republicanism is not a solution to all of our problems, but without its boundaries, nothing else will work. I am not American, although I lived for a long time in the United States. The American republic matters not just to Americans. Without resorting to naïve exceptionalism, the idea that you might be able to construct a vast, vibrant, effective republic in the modern world is enduring. It has inspired people across the world for over two centuries.

But we should be clear: it would not be the first time in history that instances of self-government, even long standing ones, fall prey to the unchecked thirst for power of some, while citizens are distracted by other things. On the other hand, the failure of the American republic to correct itself would be a tragic loss for political culture and it is far from a given.

It depends entirely on the ability of American citizens to exert their sovereignty, not just in elections but as the only power that, when organized, can check the power of the state. As John Philpot Curran, an 18^th century Irish politician, famously said: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance”.

GW: The optimist or pessimist question. Over time, decades, will The Environmental Republic with citizens saving the world become viable and widely accepted? Or a worthy concept relegated to the history books?

GB: To live in a society of free people: that has been the engine of action for centuries, across cultures and time. The fundamental pursuit of the human condition has always been and still is the ability to author one’s life in a community, free from domination.

In the book I explore the origins of the idea of the republic and its occurrence across cultures, from the pastoralists of southern Oromia in Ethiopia to the Asanteman, from the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee to the Roman tradition, from China to India. I am now convinced that the pursuit of a republic in its fundamental elements is an emergent property of organized societies, always set back by the pursuit of power of some, over others. This dialectic relation appears to be a constant in history.

Thousands of years of history, then, suggest that the pursuit of a republic is not going anywhere, so I do not think pessimism or optimism are useful categories in this context. They imply a prediction, a mechanistic, materialist view of how events will inevitably evolve. They imply that our story is not defined by immutable laws of nature. But our story is not a mere chronology. It is a story of actions by people with free will, of res gestae as would have been described to them by my compatriot Benedetto Croce. If I had to choose, I would say I am an optimist because I am fundamentally progressive. I believe we can improve the human condition together. But above all, the message of the book is that, as we see over and over in history, it is up to us.

United States in these times

GW: Last thoughts for readers in the U.S.?

GB: I Love the United States. I lived in the U.S. for over a decade. I trained in the U.S. and pursuing a PhD at Princeton University changed the course of my life.

I had the privilege of conducting research at MIT, arguably the most prestigious technical and scientific school in the world at the time. I got my first job out of academia in the US. I then worked for The Nature Conservancy, a quintessentially American institution that has defined conservation practice for much of the world. I co-founded a space tech company in the US. The story of my life and the directions I have taken are inseparable from the opportunities that the United States has given me.

It is for these reasons that I think of the U.S. as a country that matters to all of us, because it is the product of a tradition that matters. I am of course worried by what I have been seeing. It is rather extraordinary to witness the speed at which institutions can be demolished if one does not really care about the consequences.

Sometimes people invoke fascism when describing some of the elements this administration is pursuing. Italy, my own country, has had the misfortune of inventing fascism, both as a word and as a credo, so it is worth reflecting on this analogy. People today forget just how incoherent fascism was. It wasn’t a real theory or an ideology.

Mussolini was an opportunist, who repeatedly changed his mind and his allegiances with the sole objective of staying in power. He did establish one coherent principle though: violence was the heart of his political offering. And that is above all what should be kept in focus. Things begin to deteriorate when political differences are resolved by the exercise of violent coercion of some over others.

It is worth remembering that in Italy, Mussolini’s regime happened because people were asleep at the wheel. As with many authoritarians, he was voted into office. He simply never left. Over time he encouraged bands of affiliated black shirts to suppress dissent. When some of his thugs killed Giacomo Matteotti, a leading opposition figure in 1924, he took a step back from the brink, initially claiming he had nothing to do with it.

But within six months he realized he could say pretty much anything, took full political responsibility for everything that was happening in the country, and established his dictatorship. Many powerful businessmen supported him, because they thought they could benefit from Mussolini’s leadership, despite his colorful rhetoric. They thought they could ultimately control his actions.

They were wrong, of course, because unlike them Mussolini understood that economic power is not real power. Power is its own thing, supported by the control of violent coercion. That is what gives an individual control over a nation.

But this does not mean that America is on this track. I am conscious of the extraordinary degree of subsidiarity of the American political system. Its vast landscape and its broad coherence are a powerful counterweight to the centralizing tendencies of any administration.

It was true at the time of Thomas Paine and James Madison and may well be true today, despite all the technology, because we are physical beings who move in space and live close to each other. But it does require the “eternal vigilance” that John Philpot Curran talked about.

A republic is not preserved solely by the institutions of the state. It is preserved by its citizens, whose sovereignty it represents. And it is lost if those citizens stop showing up. If they spend their time in furious indignation, watching a screen whose images are chosen by algorithms they do not control instead of being present, debating with others what they should be doing about their home.

That is the environmental republic.

~ gw

Jacket cover: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium via Princeton University Press

Dempsey’s new book, From Rebel to Realist, examines the career and life of Rep. Bob Carr, a Democrat who was first elected to Congress in the Nixon Watergate era. Carr, 31, sensed it was time for change, nothing short of a disruption of the staid ways of the U.S. House and he was going to be a change agent.

With the rigor of a historian. Dempsey documents how Carr and incoming colleagues challenged the order of the House and its iconic leaders. And they were successful, to a point. But over time, things changed and Carr had to adapt.

I asked Dempsey to explain and he agreed to an interview.

He talked about his reasoning for the book, the inner workings of Congress, the barriers Carr faced in trying to reform it and the consequences for being a young rebel who bucked the system and its leaders. He included his take on how Carr would view the current dysfunctional Congress that defers to the executive branch abdicating its role in the check and balance system

Bob Carr died in 2024 at 81.

The interview was conducted via email and was edited for length and clarity.

Gary Wilson: We should start by disclosing that you served two years on Rep. Bob Carr’s staff, 1980-1982. So you have not only an insider’s perspective but also the advantage of distance, as he left Congress in 1995. What prompted you to chronicle his life and career now?

Dave Dempsey: Two things. He passed away in the summer of 2024, and his family asked me to go through his papers, including personal journals that his daughter shared with me. I found a story about Congress that I think has relevance today. Also, it was time for me to wrestle with what his life and career meant. The subject has been on my mind for years.

GW: In the introduction you wrote that your research led you to write about the “roller coaster trajectory” of Carr’s political career. Plus it provided a view of where Congress and the country “traveled from the early 1970’s to the mid 1990’s.” Can you elaborate on both?

DD: Bob had two Congressional careers. In the first, he served three terms and shook things up in the U.S. House. Then he suffered a shocking defeat that caused him to rethink his approach. Two years later he won re-election and was an almost completely changed officeholder. He focused on bringing home federal dollars to the district and to Michigan, and was darned good at it. And then his career ended in a crushing defeat in the 1994 U.S. Senate race. Some people said that it was because he was a chameleon.

It happens that the 20-year span in which Congress was his professional home was the end, at least for decades, of Democratic dominance of the U.S. House. Why did that happen? Changes in the populace for sure, but also the unintended consequences of the House reforms that Bob and other rebels of the class of ’74 pushed through.

GW: The “chameleon” charge sounds harsh. Was that a fair assessment or election campaign rhetoric?

DD: It’s too harsh. The word implies a constant flip-flop to stay in office. Carr may have drifted to the right during his final terms in Congress, but the bigger change was that he chose to focus on what I’d call ‘good’ pork barrel funding rather than larger issues.

GW: You took readers deep into how Congress functions. Often derisively referred to as how the sausage - the legislation - is made. Why was that important in order to understand Bob Carr the legislator?

DD: You can’t understand life in Congress without having a sense of that. And Congress was his world.

Besides, I think every citizen should know as much about how a law is made as he or she knows about how a professional basketball player makes a perfect pass. (cont.)

GW: Do a search for the most prominent Michigan members of the U.S. House from 1970-2000 and Carr’s name appears along with stalwarts like John Conyers and John Dingell - Democrats and William Broomfield, a Republican. How did he stack up against those peers?

DD: Good question. Let’s focus on John Dingell and Bob. Carr displeased Dingell in his first Congressional stint, taking positions in areas of Dingell’s expertise (the auto industry especially) without consulting him much. In his second stint, he worked closely with Dingell. He recognized the importance of working with the dean of the house.

Bob did a lot of interesting things in Congress, but there’s only one John Dingell.

GW: If Carr could see the current state of Congress, which is deeply divided, marginally functional and subservient to the president, how would he react?

DD: I don’t have to guess. He lived long enough to see the mess in which Washington now exists. He hoped to live long enough to see Trump defeated in 2024 (but died in August). He saw Trump as an existential threat to our government and society.

But –and this is important – he was not terribly dismayed by Congressional gridlock. At least in his later years, he concluded that the Constitution was written as much to prevent bad ideas from becoming law as it was to facilitate good ideas to become law.

GW: As I read about Carr’s “rebel” phase early in his first term, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York came to mind. Or for Republicans the Tea Party representatives who challenged President Obama on spending. Similarities?

DD: Great similarities. Bob was part of the Class of ’74, when dozens of young Democratic freshmen were swept into office as voters reacted to Watergate. He took it as a mandate to change the way Congress functioned. He was very public about the ethical breaches and arrogance he saw in the Capitol. In that regard – and charisma – he reminds me of Ocasio-Cortez. It’ll be interesting to see whether she mellows or moderates to get things done and/or to get re-elected.

But that kind of candor also cost him. When he dared blast the Democratic speaker of the house, Carl Albert, it generated a backlash against him that he said took years to overcome.

GW: Are there any Bob Carr type politicians emerging in Michigan? Perhaps Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin? Others?

DD: I don’t see any. Slotkin is an effective Senator but I don’t think you’d ever see her outspokenly attacking her own party’s Congressional leadership. If there aren’t any Bob Carr type politicians emerging in Michigan, it’s partially because we’re not electing 31-year-olds like Carr was in 1974. We’re electing and re-electing octogenarians. They tend not to be firebrands.

GW: What do you hope readers will take away from Rebel to Realist?

DD: On one level, an understanding of how a person and public figure operated in the Congressional environment during a remarkable period in our history. On another level, trying to understand the balance between principle and pragmatism. As we age many of us come to see that life is not all black and white. But how far do you go in altering your positions without losing touch with your principles?

GW: In his comments on From Rebel to Realist, Michigan U.S. Sen. Gary Peters said Carr “brought people together to find the middle ground necessary for lasting progress.” Is that even possible in today’s toxic political environment?

DD: It’s a long shot. Polls show that a large number of conservatives view liberals not just as people with a point of view different from their own but as the enemy, and vice versa. It’s hard to find middle ground with an enemy.

Actually, Peters has come as close as anybody, working out a few constructive bipartisan deals, such as a Great Lakes Coast Guard program to examine the impacts of oil spills in freshwater environments and help develop effective responses.

~ gw

Book cover art: Eugenia Collazo

From Rebel to Realist is available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Dave-Dempsey-ebook/dp/B0GSKZYXRL

More here on Dave Dempsey’s books.