What I Think About What Other People Say (WITAWOPS)

Many people think that in following well-established rules and policies, government officials don't have to make difficult business decisions. That is not true. Sometimes they do because of competing interests. Here is one example of a decision that FEMA has to make.  Disclaimer: the views expressed in this post are solely my own, published under my first amendment rights, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Government or any of its current or former federal agencies. The material used below is all in the public domain, as published by FEMA in August 2025.  Because of the interaction between the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in Oregon and the Endangered Species Act, FEMA will select from one of three alternatives they have analyzed in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).  Here is FEMA's own summary of the impacts of those three alternatives (Source:  https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_r10_oregon-nfip-eis-br...

I met Sudan—the world’s last male northern white rhinoceros—at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya in 2009. He had recently been relocated from a zoo in the Czech Republic, in a last-ditch effort to breed him naturally. I had just arrived in Kenya myself, representing the U.S. government through USAID, and embarking on a number of exciting projects.  Sudan lived another nine years before a leg infection made it impossible for him to stand. At 45, he was euthanized. For me, he is a symbol of our power over other species although at one point, the dating app Tinder dubbed him the world’s “most eligible bachelor.” ( CNN ) Photo of me with Sudan, Ol Pejeta, 2009 (real, not generated) Sudan was a northern white rhino, a distinct subspecies now functionally extinct. Only two females remain—his daughter and granddaughter—both also at Ol Pejeta. In contrast, the southern white rhino population has rebounded from around 100 in the early 1990s to nearly 20,000 today across Africa, tha...

The White House has a dark history. Should it really be called white? And no, the inhabitants of Easter Island did not commit ecocide. What Other People Say “"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves”, Michelle Obama, former first lady at the Democratic National Convention Speech, 2016 “In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism.” Diamond Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2005  What Do I Think? I need to be more intentional about absorbing, remembering, and using facts that are rooted in actual historical narratives—not just the ones that are convenient or popular. AI-generated composite image by ChatGPT (2025). Unbury — Who really built the White House?  Looking back, it should’ve been obvious. Construction of the White House began in 1792, on land ceded by Virginia and Maryland—two slavehold...

Everyone, even me, makes three recycling and composting mistakes. First, toss an item into the wrong container. Second, throw away money (literally) by spending more because we believe the item is “greener”. Third, misalign intent and action.  Wrong Container “Dad, where do I toss this?” I looked at the trash can, recycling bin, and compost bin under our kitchen sink. Then I looked at the empty take out clamshell takeout container with its confusing and faint labels. I had no idea and I have two environmental degrees. ChatGPT. (2025). Cartoon of a person deciding where to dispose of a clamshell food container at an airport. [AI-generated image]. OpenAI. Oscar couldn’t help me either. I had stumped him recently. [ Oscar is Seattle airport’s AI-waste sorting technology that is supposed to help me figure out where to put my waste.] Let’s break down my kitchen dilemma. The clamshell container was white, looked and felt like plastic. On the bottom was the product name that included the...

There is heightened interest in the inefficiencies of the executive branch of the federal government. Today, I unravel some of these inefficiencies using a recent fish farm example.  U.S. Court of Appeals , 5th Circuit, 2020 : “Harvesting,”  we  are  told,  implies  gathering  crops,  and  in  aquaculture  the  fish  are  the  crop.  That  is  a  slippery  basis  for  empowering  an  agency  to  create  an  entire  industry  the  statute does not even mention. We will not bite”    Natural predator guards a tilapia fish farm in Lake Victoria, Uganda The Problem There is heightened interest in the inefficiencies of the executive branch of the federal government. All organizations—whether private, governmental, or non-profit—must engage in continuous optimization to stay effective. They may achieve this through internal reforms...

“If you’re a seal, the Ballard Locks are a great place to find a snack. Seals eat a lot of salmon as they migrate through the Locks’ fish ladder to try to reach spawning grounds on the other side. Some of those salmon are Chinook, the only food of the starving Southern Resident orcas.” -- Elis O’Neil, KUOW.org , September 23, 2020. What I think If you’ve visited the Ballard Locks in Seattle or Willamette Falls near Portland, you might have witnessed sea lions or seals, known as pinnipeds, feasting on salmon in a natural buffet line. These man-made choke points—perfect for a patient, opportunistic pinniped—exacerbate the struggle to protect salmon runs while managing a booming population of protected marine mammals. Despite costly attempts to scare pinnipeds off with rubber bullets or loud deterrents, they continue to make their way back to these salmon-rich bottlenecks. Stories like that of Herschel, a notorious sea lion relocated hundreds of miles down the California coast at a signif...