What is Environmental Justice?

“Equal justice under law” is more than a quaint expression engraved on the portico of the Supreme Court building.  It is a worldview that is central to our American culture.  It is also a cornerstone of the conservation movement, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the angry activists that form so much of the modern environmental lobby.

The founders of the nation’s first great conservation movement – Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, John Wesley Powell, and others – pioneered the notion of “environmental justice,” but it’s not what you think.  That’s because the term is so commonly abused by the POE’s (people opposed to everything).  In their oft-stated view of “environmental justice,” it seems the concept requires that we lock up public lands from the public, stop the production of energy, live in smaller homes and quit traveling.  We have to scale back our lifestyle, they argue, because our use of the planet Earth is destroying it.  To these organizations, environmental justice means the natural resources have rights just as important as our own and must be protected – from us.

That is almost exactly opposite of what Roosevelt and the other early conservationists intended.

The progressives of the last century who created national parks and national forests did so for three primary purposes.  First, these lands supplied the natural resources necessary to build a prosperous society, including lumber, water, minerals and recreation.  Second, the use of such resources must be monitored and regulated to ensure they are also available to future generations.  Those first two purposes are to this day the basis of the divisive – and litigious – nature of environmental disputes.  But there was a third purpose, too, found throughout the writings, lectures and letters of Roosevelt and the others.  That purpose was to ensure that these resources belong to everyone, not just one segment of the society.

The trees in national forests do not belong just to timber companies, nor minerals on public lands only to mining companies, but to everyone, they argued.  Similarly, public lands are open to everyone, not just the ranchers with grazing permits.  Believe it or not, this theory was highly contentious at the time.  Perhaps we need that debate again.

Today’s environmental lobby would close most public lands to all but the hearty few able to walk there and lucky enough to live nearby.  They would allow the national forests – one of the greatest legacies of the early conservationists – to die and burn before allowing anyone to cut a tree.  And they would lock up all our energy resources, perpetuating our dependence on foreign oil.  In their view, America’s resources may belong to everyone, but not everyone gets a seat at the decision-making table.  Those who seek preservation for the future – without any use by our generation – are more in charge of the debate than ever.  But do public resources belong only to environmentalists?  That view may seem like “equal justice under law,” but only if you think some of us are more equal than others.

Global Warming Did It!

Yesterday CBS aired an updated version of a 2007 “60 Minutes” story about the catastrophic forest fires that have become so common in the West. The story featured interviews with a federal official in charge of managing “hotshot” firefighting crews, and an interview with a professor at the University of Arizona. Both explained that these fires are beyond anything ever seen in the West, and both were quick to blame it all on global warming.

The story made only a very brief mention of the Forest Service’s 100-year policy of complete fire suppression, and quoted the federal official saying the result is “a huge buildup of fuel in these woods.” But then the focus of the discussion shifted entirely onto global warming, as if the Forest Service policy would have produced no such result if only global warming had not happened. It is a convenient way to avoid placing any blame on the overzealous environmental campaign to stop all cutting of trees in America. It is convenient – but wrong.

The fact is that the average temperature on Earth increased about 1 degree in the past century (as the “60 Minutes” story correctly pointed out), but that trend has not continued during the last decade. If the result of such minor warming had been to dry out the forests in the way these activists claim, there would also be dramatic decreases in recent snowfall. But that has not occurred. In fact, snowpack is back up – way up – across the Rocky Mountains in the past three years (along with colder temperatures). Yet we are not seeing huge increases in river flows, and that is for the exact same reason as the fires – too many trees.

Forest managers ended the historic role played by wildfires a century ago, but they also drastically reduced thinning and clearing about 20 years ago – about the same time these massive, catastrophic fires began. As a result, western forests that historically averaged 30-50 trees per acre now have more than 900 in many places. The trees are weaker, competing for water with a massive overgrowth of brush and grasses – all drier than normal. None of this is natural, nor are the resulting catastrophic fires.

To absolve forest managers and politicians (and ourselves) from any and all responsibility for these giant fires by blaming global warming may feel good, but don’t kid yourself. If every American were to stop traveling tomorrow, move into smaller houses without air conditioning, and get rid of their cars, the forests would still be overgrown tinderboxes ready to become towering infernos with the first lightning strike or errant cigarette. Nothing will change that until someone with a chain saw gets serious about thinning the forest back to a more natural condition.

Stopping Pollution or Selling Indulgences?

Although blown off the front pages by the death of Michael Jackson, the most ominous government action of the decade came a step closer to reality Friday when the House passed an energy bill that would make “cap and trade” official policy.  It passed the House by 7 votes (with 8 Republicans crossing over to help).  Most Americans support almost any effort to stop pollution, and are sympathetic to attempts to limit greenhouse gases.  But understandably, many are confused about what this “cap and trade” idea really means.  Here are two simple things to remember during the coming Senate debate:

First, cap-and-trade is a financial scam.  The idea is anti-democratic, it would perpetuate economic serfdom for much of the world, and it would guarantee the permanent dominance of existing corporations to the exclusion of opportunity for everyone else.  It is the ultimate scheme for making the rich richer and the poor poorer.  Sound extreme?  Consider this – if we really are polluting the air so much it endangers the very planet, we should stop it.  Plain and simple.  But this scheme does not stop pollution, it creates a market for it.  If the right to pollute can be bought and sold, and the amount of pollution is capped, then that right has tremendous value.  And it will always be owned by the rich and held in the power centers of New York, LA, Chicago, London, and Paris.  So much for economic growth in the third world.

The Science and Public Policy Institute called it a scheme “by which jet-setting celebrities like Al Gore can publicly parade the pretense that their extravagant, carbon-emitting lifestyle is not really adding anything to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.  All they have to do is buy the modern equivalent of the Indulgences sold for profit by unscrupulous pastors in the medieval Church.  The Indulgences, coyly marketed under the name of “carbon offsets,” are sold by various private scamsters, who craftily suggest to penitents that they can salve their consciences for, say, the carbon emissions arising from a transatlantic flight by paying as little as $5 towards the planting of trees that may or may not take place, and might or might not have taken place anyway.”

Second, cap-and-trade is a bureaucrat’s dream.  Carbon is among the most abundant natural elements, and carbon dioxide is central to all life.  As MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen wrote, “If you control carbon, you control life.”  So predictably, advocates of big central government not only want to regulate carbon and the ability to buy and sell it, they also want to tax that right.

Some leaders think transferring wealth is a legitimate government function.  But however you feel about the economic issue, it is silly to pretend the argument is about the environment.  In fact, in my view it is unethical to use the environment as the false platform for that debate.  It is an ethical breach because it is misleading and dishonest, and especially because it is bad for the environment.  Worst of all, it cynically protects actual polluters at the expense of keeping the world’s poorest people locked forever in poverty.  That is “Robin Hood in reverse,” literally robbing the poor to enrich the rich.

When is “Final” final?

Maybe the old saw that “a man’s word is his bond” is obsolete in today’s politics. I grew up in a time and place where a handshake is a contract, and a deal is a deal. But it just doesn’t seem to be true for lots of interest groups today, as we see all too often in the odd world of environmental policy. Many people have become reluctant to make agreements with their opponents, because they fear the “settled” agreement won’t stay “settled” past the ink-drying stage.

Witness last week’s lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, demanding the agency re-open the already-settled decision about “critical habitat” for the Canada Lynx. The agency studied the matter for more than a decade, sought and received input from thousands of interest groups, businesses, stakeholders, state and local governments, and interested individuals across the country. Very few species have been studied more closely over a longer time than the lynx. In the end, based on the best available science, the agency designated 39,000 square miles in Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Wyoming as protected habitat. The population of lynx we introduced in Colorado provided much of the scientific evidence that the Southern Rockies are not critical to the animals’ survival. But that did not provide some extremists with the tools they sought for regulating human activity on public lands, so this week a group called the “Center for Native Ecosystems” filed suit to force the government to reconsider adding Colorado and New Mexico to the designated habitat, with no scientific basis whatsoever. Only time will tell whether the courts will defer to sound science and cool heads, but anyone can predict the millions taxpayers will spend on legal fees before it is settled – again.  There are hundreds of examples like it every year.

At LeaderBridge we deal frequently with companies frustrated by such seemingly endless processes involving endangered species. The Endangered Species Act is the biggest tool in the toolbox for those who seek to stop business activity, and many business leaders wonder if there is ever an endgame. We show them ways to mitigate the impacts of their projects, negotiate the regulatory minefields, and even more important, ways to actually recover species so they can be removed from the endangered list, thereby removing the tool for stopping things.

We can’t force people to stick to agreements once made; we can’t force others to act with civility or keep their word. But there are plenty of ways to deal with the world as it is and ensure the right outcome.

Save the Dead Trees!

This week in Denver, I attended an annual gathering of timber industry leaders and U.S. Forest Service officials, all talking about ways to restore our national forests that are dying, falling down and burning up – a disaster Ken Salazar aptly called the “Katrina of the West.”  Unfortunately, not much progress has been made in the years since environmental zealots stopped almost all logging, chanting slogans like “save the old growth.”  In the past ten years bark beetles have marched across millions of acres of forests from northern New Mexico to British Columbia, leaving a trail of destruction that would make Sherman blush.  My home state of Colorado now has over 2 million acres of dead trees.

Once these trees die, and even if they burn in today’s all-too-common catastrophic wildfires, they still have commercial value for several years if managers move quickly enough to get them harvested before they rot.  Today, however, even that normally valuable wood is worthless because the recession has all but stopped home construction, tanking the price of lumber to all-time lows and devastating a timber industry already on its last gasp.  Weakened from years of no available timber – caused by environmental appeals, lawsuits, and regulatory delay – the few sawmills left in public lands states (Colorado has only two of commercial size) are on the verge of collapse.  It is appalling that the process is now so complicated that managers cannot even get approval for the sale and removal of dead trees.  Are we now officially protecting dead landscapes?

Just as all hope seemed lost, though, the new Obama Administration suddenly pumped over $1 Billion into the Forest Service to save and create new jobs through projects badly needed to restore the health of the national forests.  Relief for both dying forests and dying timber companies?  Sadly, the first third of that money has been absorbed by the agency for in-house projects, and given out in grants for projects that have nothing to do with either jobs or healthy forests – including a grant for a Girl Scout camp, and funding for outdoor youth programs.  Worthy perhaps, but they have nothing to do with forest restoration, and they do not create or save jobs in the industry with which the government must partner to manage our forests.  Some funds were targeted for clearing dangerous dead trees from roadsides, campgrounds and power lines – but the money went to out of state contractors while local loggers are going out of business.

The good news is that two-thirds of the money has not yet been spent.  That means there is still time for the Forest Service to save hundreds of good jobs by merging economic recovery with the desperate need to clear dead trees and restore healthy forests.  There may yet be a success story in the making.  But if they don’t get this right, our leaders will have saved nothing but hundreds of miles of dead trees.

Green Energy = Subsidized Energy

The political world is all abuzz about “alternative energy” and “green energy” – which actually means “subsidized energy.” Otherwise it would just be called “energy.” Companies that make their living providing natural resources and energy are struggling to understand this brave new world, a major challenge for many. The world’s most prosperous economy is now run by a government apparently determined to completely change the way we have powered our lives for more than a century.

America’s economy is driven by energy, especially from fossil fuels. Every year we use 750 million barrels of oil, 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.2 billion tons of coal. Only six percent of our energy comes from all the “alternative” sources combined. Our new government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to change that, and seems determined to use its regulatory power to stop further advances in the exploration and production of traditional fuels. Natural resource providers can fight this dramatic shift in national priorities, or they can embrace it, but they probably can’t change it.

At LeaderBridge we talk frequently with companies trying to digest this new direction, determine how successful it may or may not be, and strategize how to react to it. Some have trouble adapting their thinking to the new green reality, and they may be left behind. Those that go beyond survival and actually thrive will be the ones who embrace both views – traditional energy in a green package. Companies that used to provide timber can now subsidize that operation by using the “waste” to generate biomass energy, for example – and government will help pay for the addition. Coal mines can now capture the methane gas (the worst greenhouse gas) formerly vented into the atmosphere, and turn it into energy – and government will help pay for the required equipment. Utility companies can add important new generation capacity from new sources – and government will help pay. Even oil and gas companies have new options for greener approaches to their traditional work – that government will help pay for.

The recurring theme is government money, and leaders understand that “he who pays the fiddler calls the tune.” It leads to a fairly simple conclusion: producing greener energy is the business to be in. Does that mean no more fossil fuels? Of course not. No Administration can change the world that dramatically or that quickly (if we manage to triple the amount of alternative sources, fossil fuels will still provide 82 percent of all our energy). So the survivors, and the winners, will be the companies that can produce not only clean energy, but plenty of it. In many cases, whether the current political leaders admit it or not, that means greener ways to produce oil, gas and coal.