Globalization, Meet Gates of the Arctic

Scary stuff from the National Park Service: BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - Pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska, turning up at sometimes dangerously high levels in lakes, plants and fish. A sweeping, six-year federal study released Tuesday found evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments - from Denali in Alaska and Glacier in Montana, to Big Bend in Texas and Yosemite in California. The findings revealed that some of the Earth's most pristine wilderness is still within reach of the toxic byproducts of the industrial age. "Contaminants are everywhere. You can't get more remote than these northern parts of Alaska and the high Rockies," said Michael Kent, a fish researcher with Oregon State University who co-authored the study. The substances detected ranged from mercury produced by power plants and industrial chemicals such as PCBs to the banned insecticides dieldrin and DDT. Those can cause health problems in humans including nervous system damage, dampened immune system responses and lowered reproductive success. Contaminants that accumulated in fish exceeded human consumption thresholds at the eight parks that researchers focussed on most: Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Gates of the Arctic and Denali national parks and Alaska's Noatak National Preserve. Also, mercury levels at the eight parks and DDT levels at Glacier and Sequoia and Kings Canyon exceeded health thresholds for fish-eating wildlife. Kent said he found airborne contaminants are causing male fish to develop female organs in some parks. Much of the contamination is thought to have come from overseas - traveling global air currents from Europe and Asia. But researchers said they were surprised to find substantial contamination from the local use of legal pesticides, particularly in agricultural areas around Glacier, Rocky Mountain and Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks. University of Washington atmospheric researcher Daniel Jaffe said scientists previously thought banning substances like DDT and dieldrin would lessen the persistence of chemicals in the environment. "We replaced them with pesticides with much shorter lifetimes in the environment," Jaffe said. "But in places like the Central Valley of California, we are applying many, many tons of these every year. ... We now know they can move substantial distances." A parks advocacy group called the federal report "a wake-up call" that should mobilize Congress to take a tougher stance on air pollution. "We can take steps to reduce mercury emissions from power plants, steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming," said Will Hammerquist with the National Parks Conservation Association. The $6 million study is known as the Western Airborne Contaminants Assessment Project. It is the most comprehensive to date on the distribution and concentration of contaminants outside developed areas, according to the project's scientific director, Dixon Landers with the Environmental Protection Agency. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that remoteness means less pollution, Landers said many of the parks - particularly those at higher elevations and in colder climates - actually are at higher risk. Mercury from power plants in China, for example, is borne across the Pacific in clouds that rise up when they hit West Coast mountains. That causes the mercury to drop out of the clouds attached to rain droplets or snowflakes, he said. Release of the study, which was coordinated by the National Park Service, came after a delay of several months. A Park Service spokeswoman, Colleen Flanagan, said the delay was caused by the time needed to analyze the vast volumes of data collected, from 2002 to 2007.

Endurance Sports Meet Private Equity

Wow. Those private equity schmucks will not stop until they have taken over the world. Falconhead Capital LLC issued a press release today announcing the completion of its acquisition of Inside Communications Inc., the publisher of the venerable cycling magazine VeloNews "The Journal of Competitive Cycling." Falconhead Capital also recently purchased Elite Racing - the firm that puts on the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon series. Falconhead is also rumored to be interested in purchasing the Los Angeles Marathon. Why are these parasites so interested in endurance sports? Here's a hint from a The Deal.com article that is available on Falconhead's website.

Triathlons are a $1.3 billion industry and growing; membership has risen by 23% since 2002 and is now growing by 35% a year, according to USA Triathlon, the sport's official governing body."

Moreover, the demographics "are highly attractive to marketers," says Moross, noting that the average household income for triathletes is $160,000.

"Where we see big value is where we can harness all customers who read these magazines. It's all about being able to spend more money and get folks to buy things," he adds. Revenue comes from entry fees, sponsorship, TV, merchandise and fitness expos.

I haven't quite processed all of this yet. But I'm pretty sure that this is not a good thing, and that it signals the top of the running/cycling/triathlon boom.

The End of the Specialty Running Store

Can small independent running stores compete as chaings like Road Runner Sports, The Running Room, and Fleet Feet expand? Check out this NY Times article.

Some of the stores are seemingly no bigger than a closet and their wares fairly limited. But for a generation, specialty running stores have managed to survive — even thrive — around the country despite competition from the big chains and online and mail order outlets. These small stores may be at a turning point, though. They face newly invigorated competition from bigger players looking for a piece of their profitable action. Chief among them is Road Runner Sports, a 25-year-old mail order (and now Internet) powerhouse based in San Diego. The company is opening its 19th store this month, and its president and chief executive, Michael Gotfredson, has a goal of 100. The Road Runner stores offer the same personalized service as their specialty rivals but are far bigger (8,500 square feet of selling space, on average) and have a more extensive inventory. At the same time, the specialty running stores are, in effect, graying. Some of the pioneers of the genre got into the business more than 30 years ago, and are now close to retirement age, many without a succession plan.

So much for the great moderation!

I'm tardy in posting this, but this David Leonhardt column should be required reading.

So, how bad could this get?

Until a few months ago, it was accepted wisdom that the American economy functioned far more smoothly than in the past. Economic expansions lasted longer, and recessions were both shorter and milder. Inflation had been tamed. The spreading of financial risk, across institutions and around the world, had reduced the odds of a crisis.

Back in 2004, Ben Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve governor, borrowed a phrase from an academic research paper to give these happy developments a name: “the great moderation.”

These days, though, the great moderation isn’t looking quite so great — or so moderate.

The great moderation now seems to have depended — in part — on a huge speculative bubble, first in stocks and then real estate, that hid the economy’s rough edges. Everyone from first-time home buyers to Wall Street chief executives made bets they did not fully understand, and then spent money as if those bets couldn’t go bad. For the past 16 years, American consumers have increased their overall spending every single quarter, which is almost twice as long as any previous streak.