Bahama Pundit

Earth Day & Free Market Environmentalism in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

"I get upset every Earth Day," says Laura Huggins, a political scientist at the Hoover Institution in California who describes herself as a free market environmentalist. "I get upset because of all those catastrophic claims that have been made about the environment for the past 40 years."

What "outrageous" claims is she referring to? The link between industrial pollutants and cancer made by Rachel Carson; the suggestions by Paul Ehrlich that population growth poses major problems for humanity; and the idea that we are plundering the planet at a pace which will outstrip its capacity to support life, to name a few.

Huggins was speaking at a public meeting last week organised by the Nassau Institute, which advocates libertarian free market policies for the Bahamas. She is a director of the Property and Environment Research Centre in Montana, and the author of books and articles that promote market principles to help solve environmental dilemmas.

"Are resources really finite?" she asked. "That depends on how you look at it, because our ultimate resource is the mind. Every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. The sky is not falling, and the end of the world is no closer today than it was in 1970."

But that too depends on how you look at it.

The Two Arthurs & Majority Rule in the Bahamas

By Simon

Eighteen PLPs, a Labour Party member and an independent constituted the parliamentary team who ushered in Majority Rule in 1967.  Eight are still with us: Arthur Hanna, Clifford Darling, Arthur Foulkes, Warren Levarity, Maurice Moore, Loftus Roker, Elwood Donaldson and Edmund Moxey.  Five of these left the PLP. Three remained.

Half or nine of these 18 PLP parliamentarians left the party, including a Dissident Eight.  Eventually, Edmund Moxey also left.  While the PLP remained in power for 25 years, the split among the core political leadership who ushered in Majority Rule came fast and furious.  

And it came faster than that of most majority rule parties in the Commonwealth Caribbean.  Despite an overwhelming parliamentary majority in 1968, the ruptures in that PLP Government came within approximately 24 months.

In 1970, a group of Free PLPs left a party that they concluded was increasingly more preoccupied with power and personalities, and less so with many of the principles and policies which inspired the struggle for Majority Rule.

One of the ironies of modern Bahamian politics is that their departure left an often perceived liberal and progressive PLP, more conservative and reactionary.  It left the party less tolerant of dissent and more prone to crush dissidence in the service of a cult of personality and a sense of an entitlement to rule. 

Chinese Farming Investment on Abaco

by Larry Smith

MARSH HARBOUR, Abaco—After trumpeting Chinese investment in "a very large agricultural project" on Abaco that would be up and running by September, senior government officials are now backing off the subject.

Chinese experts visited Abaco at least twice recently, with a view to developing vegetable, fruit and livestock production on 5,000 acres of prime land. Published reports say the Chinese are also talking about food processing plants and providing millions of dollars in supplies and equipment to local farmers.

But Agriculture Minister Larry Cartwright and Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation chief Edison Key both said a few days ago there is nothing to discuss. Their reticence probably has a lot to do with the undercurrent of opposition to the Chinese initiative among Abaco's farmers and environmentalists.

"You just want to write about that so people can jump down my throat," Key told me when I asked whether it was he or the Chinese who had initiated the talks.

Searching for a New COB President – Pt. 1

In the opening chapters of 2010, two Caribbean intellectuals featured prominently. Following Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January, Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, penned the brilliant commentary, the Hate and the Quake. 

In early February, cultural icon Rex Nettleford died suddenly.  An intellectual and brilliant dancer, Professor Nettleford was still serving as a lecturer and vice chancellor emeritus of UWI when he passed away at 77.

These men were not singularly administrators. They were also academics whose visionary voices resonated in the academy and beyond.  Both men produced exuberant bodies of work, including a number of books.  Both proved to be beautiful thinkers, beautiful writers and beautiful citizens of the Caribbean.

Professors Nettleford and Beckles appreciated that the life of the community, both national and pan-Caribbean, requires a cultivation of the life of the mind, of the imagination and of the human spirit -- with a Caribbean flavour.  They dedicated themselves to these tasks through a fierce commitment to rigorous critical inquiry.

Smith Comments on BIS Posting

by Larry Smith

Thanks to all those who congratulated me on my purported appointment as director of Bahamas Information Services - replacing Sir Arthur Foulkes, who is moving to Government House tomorrow to become governor-general.

The announcement was made by an anonymous website (that shall remain anonymous here) which seeks to present itself as a source of investigative journalism.

My first priority as director of BIS would be to recommend its abolition as a useless agency that consumes more than $2 million a year in public funds to produce little of value to the national enterprise.

In fact, I am already on record on this very site calling for BIS to be dissolved.

That should give readers a better appreciation of the veracity and reliability of the online news service that broke this fabulous "story".

Twisting the Truth—Politics and Weather in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

The nonsense that has paraded as commentary since the tornado tragedy in Freeport two weeks ago has taken political pantomime to new levels. And this can only make it more difficult to take whatever measures are needed to address any problems that are identified.

Here are the facts as we know them today.

A severe storm front approached Grand Bahama from South Florida in the early morning of March 29. The National Weather Service in Miami issued hail and tornado warnings, and several funnel clouds were spotted in Florida. Although uncommon, meteorologists are aware that tornados occur in the northern Bahamas every few years.

An aviation weather station in Freeport manned by five met officers was operated by the Grand Bahama Airport Company, a division of Hutchison Port Holdings, until the end of last year when it was replaced by an automated weather station augmented by a trained observer.

An Enduring Revolution – Part 2

by Simon

An editorial in The Nassau Guardian two weeks ago concluded that majority rule is failing mostly because black leaders can’t get their act together.  The proof:  “In today's Bahamas there are few empirical indicators providing hope that the future of The Bahamas will be bright.” 

The editorial lacked perspective and depth, both local and global.  Most of the national problems it bemoaned similarly challenge governments from north to south and east to west.  These global challenges include the need for greater government investments in public infrastructure and the imperative of privatizing various inefficient state-run agencies.

Empirical refers to information or facts that are “verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment”.  An indicator is a “pointer or index” or “something that provides an indication”.

The United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight development goals that the international community wants to achieve by 2015.  They are “empirical indicators” that can be verified “by means of observation”.   With this background, we can test the hypothesis that “there are few empirical indicators providing hope that the future of The Bahamas will be bright”.