Climate Change Hysteria

This man is correct:

Throughout my 40 year career as a meteorologist, I have tried to live up to the responsibility I inherited from my predecessors. I was taught to strive for objective truth, irrespective of where the data would lead.

Science is not a belief system based on feelings or subjective motives. It is about facts, evidence, theories and experimentation in search of a conclusion.

The impassioned speech by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to Congress last week revealed volumes about the intent and commitment of those pushing the Green New Deal. I can’t help but question if their positions are based on facts.

Ocasio-Cortez’s statements about adverse climate effects and policy proposals reflect a lack of knowledge about energy policy and the geopolitical and financial impacts of abandoning fossil fuels in a quick and reckless manner. “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” she said earlier this year – a statement clearly designed to elicit panic but hardly based on fact.

In this age of political hysteria, we must all educate ourselves on the facts – the actual science. Unfortunately, there seems to be a total lack of awareness about important issues that scientists like myself – who aren’t paid by research grants – are concerned about.

Instead, climate science is being used as a political weapon, and the voices of scientists like me are being ignored or even vilified. I was under the impression that in the United States, all voices and arguments should be heard. Climate science is not settled science. If it was, why would there be a continuous flow of money to research it? 

Read the whole thing.

Textbooks Instead of e-Books

There's a world of difference between K-12 students and college/university students.  K-12 students are, for the most part, compelled to attend school, whereas college/university students are all volunteers.  In the US, the vast majority of K-12 students are guaranteed a free education, whereas college/university students must pay for theirs.

The two differences stated above delineate why e-books may be the book of choice for college/university students but have no place in K-12 public education:

As classrooms across the country embrace digital textbooks, one Sydney school has declared the e-book era over and returned to the old-fashioned hard copy version because it improves comprehension and reduces distraction.

For the past five years, Reddam House's primary and junior high school classes have used e-textbooks on iPads. But the consistent feedback from the students has been that they preferred pages to screens.

Teachers also found the iPads were distracting and did not contribute to students' technology skills, prompting the school to announce that students should no longer use digital textbooks, and must revert to hard-copy versions instead.

Why anyone would expect any different outcome is far beyond me, but I still congratulate this particular school for believing the facts over their prejudices and restoring dead-tree books to classrooms.

Dr Margaret Merga, a senior lecturer in education at Edith Cowan University, said an analysis of all the research into differences in book formats has found that understanding improves when information is read in a paper rather than a digital format.

Research into why young people prefer hard-copy textbooks "points to greater perceived comfort, comprehension, and also retention of what's been read," she said. "Some have found that there's less immersive involvement [in digital text]."

There is one legitimate concern about dead-tree books:

As for the weight of the textbooks in backpacks, Mr Pitcairn said students could leave them in their lockers or use a digital version at home. "I've noticed that students prefer their textbook in both places," he said.

My solution to that would simply be for schools to stop buying behemoths!  My students marvel at the tiny algebra book I have from the 1940s and the moderately-sized book I have from the 1980s.  The Integrated Math 1 book my (mostly freshman) students use today is so large that it has to be split into two separate volumes, and each of those volumes dwarfs my 1980s textbook.  Does anyone reading this believe that today's math textbooks are more challenging than those older books?  If they're not, then what justifies the huge size?  Bring books back down to a legitimate size.  So many K-12 textbooks nowadays come with an "online component" that there's really no need to try to cram so much crap into a textbook.  A lot of the "extra" stuff can be put in the online component that students can access at home if they want or need to.

College/university students should have the option of purchasing dead-tree or online versions of their texts.  If cost is an issue, perhaps the online version would be preferable--but the student should know up front about the reading comprehension research regarding e-books.  But college/university students are adults, they're volunteers, and they're more academically capable than the average K-12 student.  Let them make the choice for themselves.

I'm in California.  Textbooks are not my usual area of activism.  How would I start a movement to shrink the size of textbooks?  Who's with me on this?

Unconscious Bias

Call it "unconscious bias" or "implicit bias" or "hidden bias", the result is the same--whitey is a bad person and is responsible for the racial achievement gap.

I've written about unconscious bias, including some training I had to sit through, in several posts.  Honestly, a quick perusal of these posts would bring you up to speed.

I suppose it wouldn't shock you that I agree with Ben Shapiro on the idea of unconscious bias:

Racist Teachers?

Are there disparities in school discipline between races?  Absolutely.

The fun part comes in determining the reason(s) for such disparities.  Is it because school staff are racist?  Or are there disparities in behavior between students of different races or ethnic groups?

Let's take a look at some new information coming out of Washington State:

When examining school discipline disparities, data consistently show that Asian-American students, compared to other racial and ethnic groups, have the lowest rates of suspensions and expulsions.

But educators and researchers have long said the numbers don’t paint an accurate picture of what many students who fall within the Asian category experience in school because the classification itself is such a gross generalization of the many ethnicities and nationalities in that category, which makes up nearly half the world’s population.

It is against this backdrop that a team of researchers from UCLA, the University of Washington and Lewis & Clark College in Oregon released findings this month showing that discipline outcomes varied considerably among Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups. Students from Southeast Asian countries, like Vietnam and Cambodia, had suspension and expulsion rates that were 2 to 3 times higher than those from China, Japan and other East Asian countries, according to the study.

The study also found that rates for Pacific Islander subgroups — which include students from Hawaii, Guam, Samoa and other Pacific islands — were significantly higher than any of the Asian subgroups. The research focused on Washington state because it is the only state that requires schools to break out data by Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups. California schools report Pacific Islanders separate from Asians but do not report Pacific Islander subgroups...

As stated on Instapundit this morning:

For example, it finds that ethnic Cambodian and Vietnamese students are suspended or expelled at rates 2 to 3 times that of ethnic Chinese students. The differences between Pacific Islander and Chinese students were even greater. Samoan students were suspended or expelled at more than 10 times the rate of Chinese students, and Guamanian/Chamorro students at almost 5 times the rate of Chinese students.

Does anyone believe that Washington State teachers are twice as biased against Samoan students as they are against Guamanian/Chamorro students? I doubt it. The real reasons for these differences are a good deal more complicated than that (and they are connected to differences in behavior).

Back to the EdSource article:

Noguera and his co-authors concluded that in some respects the discipline gap and the achievement gap — which refers to disparities among racial and ethnic groups in various measures of student success, like standardized tests and graduation rates — are “two sides of the same coin.” The argument being that the same factors that contribute to the achievement gap — high rates of neighborhood poverty and schools with few resources — lead to the discipline gap.

However, they ultimately found that a clear correlation can’t be made without more robust research. It’s even more difficult to gain insight into the relationship when it comes to Asian and Pacific Islander students because of the lack of data and almost non-existent research, the authors of the current study said.

I've been saying for years that the known disparities are  the result of culture, not of racism.  Yet, even the teachers unions side with the racism argument, throwing their members under the bus in the process of proving their "woke" bona fides.

Anyone With The Slightest Knowledge of Economics Knew This Would Happen

Lefties don't care about results, they only care about their intentions.  For them, it's all about their feeeeeeeeeeelings.

Facts don't care about your feelings, and the laws of economics are almost as immutable as the law of gravity:

New York City restaurants are eliminating jobs, reducing employee hours and raising prices due to the higher costs of the $15/hour minimum wage.

A once-growing industry is contracting, according to an online survey conducted by the New York City Hospitality Alliance, an association representing restaurants in the city.

Last year, “full-service restaurants recorded a 1.6 percent job loss, which is the first recorded annual loss in two decades,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the trade group.

The survey also said about a third of respondents will eliminate jobs and most will raise prices this year because of the new $15-an-hour law backed by Gov. Cuomo and other state officials, which took effect on Dec. 31, 2018.

A total of 76.5 percent of full-service restaurant respondents reduced employee hours, and 36 percent eliminated jobs in 2018, the survey said.

The best way to automate lower-wage people out of a job is to make their labor too expensive.

Opposing the Sexualization of Children

"Intersectionalism" certainly creates some interesting problems.  Lefties generally want to sexualize children, but not all lefties:

California’s new sex-ed framework, which tells very young children they’re not necessarily girls or boys, is getting pushback from parents.

Asian immigrant parents are leading the anti-sex ed charge in northern California, reports Joan Frawley Desmond in National Catholic Register...

“Asian people care about family values; we don’t appreciate kids being sexually active too early,” said “Sue,” a Chinese-American mother in Cupertino, told the Register. She was afraid to use her last name for fear of workplace retaliation.

Protests against “Teen Talk” spread to Palo Alto Unified, where parents also charged it was culturally inappropriate...

Latino parents were treated with disrespect by the school board in Santa Ana, a southern California district that’s primarily Latino, writes Kira Davis on TownHall. “It is probably no coincidence that the vast majority of immigrant based/related communities in this state are whole-heartedly opposed to LGBT-based sex-ed curriculum in their public schools,” she charges.

Informed Parents of California staged a protest yesterday at the State Capitol asking the state board of education to reject the new sex-education framework at its May meeting.

The ingrates.  After all the left has done for them....

The Living Constitution

Media Bias

I understand that people in the media can make mistakes (after all, your best and brightest don't pursue journalism as a calling).    But when those mistakes always go in the same direction, when they always play to the left and damage the right, a person who understands probability might, just might, ask if perhaps bias is at play:

So since nobody else has compiled an updated, extensive list of this kind, here are:

78 Notable Mistakes and Missteps in Major Media Reporting on Donald Trump

"No" Is The Appropriate Answer

I suppose the indigenous people of Mexico-500-years-ago never made war on each other:

Spain's government has refused a demand from Mexico's new president that it apologise for conquering the country five hundred years ago.

Firing the first shots in what threatens to become a diplomatic row, the Left-wing Mexican leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Monday that he had sent letters to Spain’s King Felipe VI and Pope Francis urging them to apologize for crimes committed against the indigenous peoples of what is today Mexico.

“There were massacres and oppression. The so-called conquest was waged with the sword and the cross. They built their churches on top of the temples,” Mr López Obrador said in a video message. link

I'm not quite sure from whom I should seek reparations. If I'm descended from the pre-Roman Britons, and I no doubt am, then I can whine to Italy (the Romans), Germany (the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes), Denmark (those darned Vikings took over a healthy percentage of that island with the Danelaw), and France (William the Conqueror, who was Norman/French). Those governments should have deep enough pockets to satisfy my need and desire for historical recompense.

Does it make sense today to ask any government or organization to apologize for what others did 500 years ago?

Ask Not For Whom The Walls Close In On, They Close In On Thee

It's not like they're all working together or anything, right?


And of course, there's this:

They're nothing if not predictable.

Who's Scoring What On The SAT Math Test

Green New Deal Goes Up In Smoke, Causes Global Warming As It Does So

Donkey-chompers herself promotes the so-called Green New Deal--we only have 12 years until the earth explodes! or something--and then gets upset when her own proposal is brought up for a vote in the Senate.

It failed, miserably:

Republicans evidently hoped to use the legislation, which contains a variety of far-fetched and fiscally unrealistic propositions, either to show Americans how radical Democrats — including 2020 presidential candidates — are becoming, or to split the left on the measure by enticing some moderate senators to vote against it.

Perhaps sensing a trap, most Democratic senators decided not to vote on the bill at all, instead voting “present.” The final vote was 0-57. All 53 Republican senators voted “no” on the measure, and they were joined by three Democrats: Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), along with Independent senator Angus King (Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats.

According to reporting from the Washington Post, Democrats called McConnell’s decision to bring the bill to the floor a “sham,” but the majority leader had little sympathy for this claim: “Do you believe it’s a prescription for America?” McConnell said. “Then why would you not want to vote for it? A vote for ‘present’ is a vote for it.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), meanwhile, said that “[McConnell’s] stunt is backfiring” and claimed “the Republican party is way behind the times on clean energy.” At a press conference for the Green New Deal earlier today, the Senate bill’s chief sponsor Ed Markey (D., Mass.) claimed he stood behind the proposal. “It is the national-security, economic, health-care, and moral issue of our time,” he said. But Markey, along with 52 of his fellow Democrats, still refused to vote in favor of the legislation.

Meanwhile, every Democratic senator running for president has publicly stated his or her support for the Green New Deal, and, in fact, all of them have even signed on to Markey’s legislation as a cosponsor. Yet not one of them voted in favor of the measure this afternoon.

So do they support it, or not?  And what does "supporting" it mean if they don't vote for it?   And if it's the moral imperative of our time, why won't the Democratic leadership of the House even bring it up for a vote?

If you expect morality or leadership from liberals, you'll always be disappointed.

Schadenfreude Monday

Today has been the best day to be a conservative since the night of the 2016 election.  It was almost as much fun this past weekend, watching all the lib reporters and anchors who have breathlessly reported every made-up rumor as a bombshell! eat crow and have to admit that every conspiracy they peddled has been shown to be empty, as it was to watch those same anchors and talking heads in November 2016 as state after state fell to President Trump.  Schadenfreudelicious!

The fun continued today with charges filed against leftie sweethearts Michael Avenatti and Mark Garegos (he of Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, Colin Kaepernick, and Jussie Smollett fame--picks some winners, doesn't he?), who are already talking about their expectations of due process.

The American left, along with their willing accomplices in the media, tried to overturn the results of a legitimate American election--and fortunately they failed.  Now they seem disappointed, if not despondent, that the president didn't break the law and collude with an adversarial government.

As Rand Paul tweeted, perhaps now it's time to investigate the Obama administration officials (Lynch, Clapper, Brennan, Comey) who "concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax".  And perhaps the Instapundit was more than prescient with this March 2017 post:  “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”

Senator Lindsay Graham lays out the case for going after the liars:


You want collusion with Putin?  I got'cher collusion with Putin right here:


Will there be any introspection on the part of the left?  If the 2016 election is any indication, they'll pretend to reflect for 10 or 15 seconds and then the fourth estate will go right back to being a 5th column.

Yes, I know we on the right aren't perfect.  But we're on a roll right now, and I hope the movers and shakers know how to take advantage of it.  To be sure, we need to keep hammering home these points:

Hands up, don't shoot. Trump's a Russian spy. Kavanaugh ran a secret gang rape cartel. Covington kids assaulted a vet. Never forget that these lies--and yes, they were outright lies--were deliberately peddled by all the same people for all the same reasons.

Keep hammering.  Don't even let them come up for air.

Update, Tuesday 3/26:  This week just keeps getting better and better:

The House of Representatives failed to garner enough votes to override President Donald Trump's veto of the resolution crafted to terminate his national emergency declaration to divert military funds and build a wall along the United States border with Mexico.

The vote finished 248-181, far short of the required two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto.

Update, 3/27/19: And it just keeps getting better and better for the president:

A federal judge tossed out one of the remaining challenges to President Trump’s travel ban policy on Wednesday, ruling that the government had the power to refuse visas for people under the affected countries.

Judge Brian M. Cogan also ruled that while there is such a thing as a right to “familial association,” it only applies to people already legally in the U.S., and cannot be used to demand the country let in relatives who aren’t in the country.

 I'm not tired of all the winning yet, are you?

Molon Labe

Did you see the movie 300? It's a stylized telling of the Spartan warriors who stood against the Persian army in northeast Greece 2500 years ago. Xerxes' ambassador demanded of Spartan King Leonidas that he lay down his weapons and submit, and history tells us that Leonidas' reply was Molon Labe--"come and take them".

These days, it serves a similar function, though. It’s a more polite way to tell someone to “bring it on.”

You see, if someone like me says those two little words, we’re conveying a whole lot in a short period of time.

For one thing, we’re saying that we oppose any kind of gun control, that we won’t lay down our arms as a tyrant demanded of free people at Thermopylae. We’re saying that we’re committed to our cause, that we’re willing to die to protect our rights and the rights of our brothers and sisters.

More than that, though, it’s a warning.

When we say that, we’re warning lawmakers that if they push too far on gun control, they’re going to get a fight. It’s not a declaration of war, but it’s a warning that one will be coming if legislators decide they can take away our guns and ignore the Second Amendment. More than that, though, it’s a warning that the Second Amendment won’t go away quietly.

The truth of the matter is that gun owners tend to recognize that no people become enslaved unless they’re disarmed. No genocide happens unless people are disarmed. Atrocities which shock the world only happen to disarmed societies.

We Americans have decided that won’t be us.

I neither confirm nor deny possession of any firearms. And that's as it should be.

Cue My Shocked Face

The president of the University of California system, a Clinton cabinet member who now runs an organization well-known for using its institutional heft against conservative students and thinkers, doesn't think too highly of President Trump's executive order requiring a little free speech on campuses:

The president of the University of California system lashed out against President Donald J. Trump, who Thursday signed an executive order to protect free speech on campus.

Unprompted, Janet Napolitano issued the following statement...

Don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs, Janet.

In related news, the University of California claims that calling the United States "the land of opportunity" is a "microaggression" of some sort, despite the average income of different ethnic groups in the country.  Again, don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs, Janet.

That Sound You Hear Is That Of Moving Goalposts

Remember when the Mueller investigation was going to end the Trump presidency?  Remember when, if it didn't find evidence he colluded with Russians to win the presidency--as if Vladimir Putin has the keys to the White House--his financial misdealings, including money laundering, was going to end his presidency?  Remember when, if it didn't find evidence of financial misdealings, his children and son-in-law were going to be caught for crimes?

Mueller's report was dropped on a Friday evening during March Madness--and that's not done when there's big news to be had.

In other words, it was a big nothingburger.  And mark my words, we're now going to be told how it was never a big deal anyway, how Trump is still somehow a criminal, blah blah blah.  The entire report must be released to the public, no redactions at all, or else it's not legitimate.  Lefties truly are sore losers--which is why they made this whole thing up in the first place, because their candidate, the Dowager Duchess of Chappaqua, lost the election.

Relatively unreported, except by moderately conservative outlets fairly recently, has been the extent to which bad players in the FBI and DOJ conspired to remove a lawfully-elected president whose only crime is that he beat Hillary Clinton fair and square in an election.  Yes, most of the press were complicit in this, but their involvement, while reprehensible, doesn't rise to the level of criminality.  Those so-called Deep State players within our own government, though--those involved in the Steele Dossier, those involved in using fake evidence to get FISA warrants for wiretaps--they need to go to jail.

Now that we've reached the end of the beginning of this attempted coup, here's as good a synopsis as any:

With only a few exceptions — Fox News, the editorial pages (not the front pages) of the Wall Street Journal, and a handful of websites — the better part of the American media has spent the last two years fulminating about Trump-Russia collusion we now know never existed.

Actually, we always knew that, but finally, it's official. It was always a bunch of — excuse the expression — trumped up baloney that made no sense except to those who wished so deeply to believe it was true.

Which makes the people who were doing that fulminating — media, politicians and (usually retired) intelligence figures, who were, as is becoming increasingly clear, betraying the American Constitutional system with impunity — sick and evil.

Update, 3/24/19: Here's is text from the Attorney General's letter to congressional leaders regarding the Mueller report:

The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated wityh it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: "[T]he investigation did not establish that mebers of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities"...But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump Campaign.

And then, on the topic of presidential misconduct regarding obstruction of justice:

After making a "thorough factual investigation" into these matters, the Special Counsel considered whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment...After reviewing the Special Counsel's final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.

In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that "the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference," and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President's intent with respect to obstruction.

The Attorney General then addressed legal requirements about making the report public:

Separately, I also must identify any information that could impact other ongoing matters, including those that the Special Counsel has referred to other offices.  As soon as that process is complete, I will be in a position to move forward expeditiously in determining what can be released in light of applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.

The president was unjustly accused by rogue elements of the FBI and DOJ, in concert with a willing press as well as Hillary Clinton's losing campaign, and appointed a special counsel to investigate himself and his campaign.  The special counsel filled his team with Democrats--and still they came up with nothing.

A pretty good summary:

Hands up, don't shoot. Trump's a Russian spy. Kavanaugh ran a secret gang rape cartel. Covington kids assaulted a vet. Never forget that these lies--and yes, they were outright lies--were deliberately peddled by all the same people for all the same reasons.

Know Why There's Been No Posting The Last Couple Days?

Honestly, I haven't had anything to write about!  A short break from blogging hasn't seemed to hurt me much, but I definitely need to get back into the game!

Bias In Educational Research

I can't believe that anyone's surprised by this:

Critics have attacked Big Pharma for widespread biases in studies of new and potentially profitable drugs. Now, scholars are detecting the same type of biases in the education product industry — even in a federally curated collection of research that’s supposed to be of the highest quality. And that may be leaving teachers and school administrators in the dark about the full story of classroom programs and interventions they are considering buying.

An analysis of 30 years of educational research by scholars at Johns Hopkins University found that when a maker of an educational intervention conducted its own research or paid someone to do the research, the results commonly showed greater benefits for students than when the research was independent. On average, the developer research showed benefits — usually improvements in test scores — that were 70 percent greater than what independent studies found.

“I think there are some cases of fraud, but I wouldn’t say it’s fraud across the board,” said Rebecca Wolf, an assistant professor in the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the draft study. “Developers are proud of their products. They believe in them. They’ve worked hard in developing these products. They want a study that puts the best face forward.”

Biased research matters because current federal law encourages schools to buy products that are backed by science.

Gambling? In Casablanca?

America's Biggest Educational Scandal

From Joanne's site:

There’s little reporting of “the scandal that afflicts the vast majority of young Americans,” he writes. “Namely that our K–12 schools only prepare about one-third of our students to succeed in postsecondary education, even as they encourage two-thirds of eighteen-year-olds to give college a try.”

It's not that we're preparing too few, it's that we're pushing too many.

Recycling

Recycling is an article of faith for so many Americans, but what most don't know is that their recycled goods are just thrown in a landfill or burned to create energy:

Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country.

Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it.

Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.

“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” said Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, where recycling costs have increased in some cities.

Prompting this nationwide reckoning is China, which until January 2018 had been a big buyer of recyclable material collected in the United States. That stopped when Chinese officials determined that too much trash was mixed in with recyclable materials like cardboard and certain plastics. After that, Thailand and India started to accept more imported scrap, but even they are imposing new restrictions.

The turmoil in the global scrap markets  began affecting American communities last year, and the problems have only deepened.

What I get from this is that recycling only works if we have a 3rd world to dump our trash in.

With fewer buyers, recycling companies are recouping their lost profits by charging cities more, in some cases four times what they charged last year.

Amid the soaring costs, cities and towns are making hard choices about whether to raise taxes, cut other municipal services or abandon an effort that took hold during the environmental movement of the 1970s.