Accommodation is winning Western wars
It is usually a bad idea to ban someone’s livelihood. Consider the uses and abuses of the terms “Old” and “New” Western economy.
People who log, mine and farm belong to the “Old Economy.” People who write novels, program computers and serve tourists belong to the “New Economy.” Or at least that is how some would have them classified. Sorted that way, far fewer Westerners work in the “Old Economy” than during pioneer days, or even immediately after World War II. Declines in extractive and manufacturing industries were replaced by newly created industries (computer software and the like) and by industries based on the West’s appeal to recreationists and retirees.
The trend continues. Innovations reduce the labor required to grow crops and convert timber into wood and fiber products. Improvements in global transportation reduce costs of supplying America with metals from other continents. Increasing wealth and leisure draw more recreationists and retirees to the West. Growing acceptance of the Internet allows more individuals to earn their living in global markets while living in the rural West.
Environmentalists cite these trends to support radical proposals like banning loggers from national forests, cattlemen from public grasslands and trappers from everywhere. As they see it, natural resource industries are doomed anyway. So no harm is done by shutting them down before their natural deaths.
You would not say that to another person, face to face, in polite conversation. But natural resource management and environmental policy discussions are not always polite. The slogan “War on the West” owes much of its popularity to the reaction of “Old Economy” workers upon hearing their assigned fate.
Banning small, declining industries may be better than banning large, growing ones. Most of us would also rather lose one finger than three. But, we would demand compelling reasons for losing any.
If it is not already obvious that we should do likewise before accepting industry bans, it will become so after considering how much the beliefs and values of many environmentalists differ from those held by the rest of us. Search the Internet for the phrase “deep ecology.” You will find a vast literature that actually opposes material prosperity and other benefits of capitalism and modern technology. Keep searching and you will find theories asserting that ecosystems and natural processes divulge their own moral principles, equally binding on man, beast, water and stone. Think I am kidding? Go look. People who think sweaters and bicycles will solve the energy crisis should not be taken seriously when they dismiss the possibilities for coexistence among commercial logging, outdoor recreation, wildlife and other environmental values.
When people who care equally about commercial production and environmental values revisit environmentalist proposals for industry bans, they usually find room for accommodation. Accommodation works both ways. It means industry changing practices, even if that raises costs. It also means environmentalists accepting less than the last drop of ecological perfection. Some examples.:
• Ban grazing. “Cattle free in ‘93,” was a popular slogan early in the pro-environmentalist Clinton administration. Cattle were not banned from federal land. Instead, accommodations were made. One was reintroduction of wolves into cattle country in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Included in that program were guarantees that wolves attacking livestock would be killed.
• Ban logging. Some environmentalists also want to ban all logging in national forests. What is emerging instead, across the pro-environmentalist Clinton and pro-resource production Bush administrations, is a consensus that logging should be limited to where it has already occurred. Also, loggers working in those previously cut areas should be protected from legal harassment by environmentalists, just as the new quasi-wilderness (old growth, roadless) areas should be protected from loggers.
• Wild salmon. For over a decade, some environmentalists have insisted that Endangered Species Act (ESA) compliance on the Columbia and Snake rivers should consist entirely of habitat changes benefiting absolutely “wild” salmon. That amounts to giving environmentalists a license to use ESA-based lawsuits to dismantle much of the Columbia Basin Project, starting with the Snake River dams, but not necessarily ending there. Instead, there has evolved a mixed policy of habitat improvement (resource use restrictions) and technological assistance (conservation hatcheries and barge transportation).
Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst system of government on earth — except for the alternatives.” Amazingly — when you step back from the day-to-day flurry to look at the bigger picture and longer term — he was right.
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