WHAT COULD POSSIBLY be left of the environment for the Bush administration to degrade on its way out the door? Leave it to the Forest Service not to see the forest or the trees.
So begins Derrick Jackson in this morning's Boston Globe in a column entitled Bush's one last blow to environment. It is an examination of the decision by the forest service to pave roads on behalf the nation's largest landowner (other than itself), Plum Creek Timber, enabling that entity to do residential development. It is a column that puts the issue in the proper contexts, which are several. I urge you to read it. Then you might not need to continue reading what I have offered below the fold, although of course I would be delighted if you did.
This decision demonstrates the problems that occur when a fox is put in charge of the hen house. The director of the U. S. Forest service who negotiated the deal, Mark Rey, is a former lobbyist for the timber industry, and thus it is not surprising that he considers the interests of Plum Creek as outweighing the combined interests of everyone else, including those who hunt and fish. The decision was made behind close doors. A Government Accountability Office that found the deal problematic in light of the 1964 National Forest Roads and Trails Act, and the questions it raised were not adequately answered by the Bush administration.
The act originally was meant to allow roads and trails in lands administered by the Forest Service for timber harvesting and recreation. The GAO said the Department of Agriculture "cannot convey a greater property interest than the statute allows," and that the rule change on behalf of residential development was so broadly interpreted that it "could have a nationwide impact." The GAO was particularly critical of the backdoor dealing, saying the Bush administration's approach "deprived it of the opportunity to obtain the public's views on a matter of intense public interest."
And the public's views? In Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres in hte Western part of the state, much of it not far from Missoula, whose county Rural Initiatives Director is quote as sayingin July that this action reverse 40 years of Forest Service history in three months. The Washington Post wrote about the area is question that
Much of that land's mountain wilderness, complete with glaciers and grizzlies, is so pristine that the Post said parts of it are "as Lewis and Clark found it."
And were there any doubt of the salience of this issue, it was a ke part of Obama's campaign in Montana. Jackson quotes the statement Obama released in July:
"At a time when Montana's sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off. We should be working to conserve these lands permanently so that future generations of Americans can enjoy them to hunt, fish, hike, and camp."
He also reminds us that Obama only lost the state to McCain by 3 points.
Jackson describes Bush's attack on science and the environment as Bushs' second worst war, noting that
In his waning weeks, he has freed federal agencies from consulting with government scientists to evaluate the environmental impact of projects.
One example of this idiocy is Interior Secretary Kempthorne saying he would protect the polar bear (sorry about that Governor Palin) while at the same time denying any link beween the dangers to that creature and global warming, denying that greenhouse gases are melting the ice upon which the polar bear depends:
"We do not believe the science is there to make the causal link."
. I am tempted to note the use of the word "belief" and remember how much of the decision making of this administration is faith based, often faith in the accuracy of Bush's digestive tract.
Jackson offers other examples about what he considers bad decisions. The columnist opposes the decision to lift the ban on weapons in National Parks, etc., a decision with which I do realize the gun owners here agreed - I found that out when I wrote about the column in which Jackson excoriated that decision. I don't think too many people will disagree, however, with Jackson's criticism of lifting the 100 yard buffer zone around rivers and streams to protect them from coal-mining waste.
I do not think anyone here is surprised as what the Bush minions are doing, in this case and others. They are rushing to put into effect as many rules and regulations favoring corporate interests at the expense of the rest of us. They are riding roughshod over normal procedures designed to ensure proper vetting of proposals. And they have attempted to implement as many of these as possible before their last 30 days, to prevent the incoming Obama administration from easily reversing them.
Fortunately in this case, Plum Creek Timber has more common sense than does the Bush administration. The Post today has a page 3 story entitled Timber Firm Drops Road-Use Request and subtitled "Deal With Forest Service Raised Concern" in which we read
Plum Creek Timber, which owns 8 million acres nationwide, withdrew its request for an explicit legal understanding that it has the right to use roads across Forest Service lands for residential development, not just for logging.
The company insists it wants to be a good corporate citizen, and a local commissioner says that they have been working with the company, and noted
"Our whole impetus is that the Forest Service was the one who was out of line," Curtiss said. "They were the ones holding meetings without public input or public knowledge."
And Mark Rey, the Forest Service person who issued the decision? The Post article notes that in an interview
.Rey maintained that Plum Creek has the right to use the roads as it sees fit.
Jackson's final paragraph puts this incident, however it may finally end, in the appropriate context, especially given the regions connection historically with the expedition of discovery sent out by our third president:
Back in 1803, Lewis and Clark said their expedition of the West was to be "a tribute to general science," by collecting "the best possible information." They would be appalled at an administration that leaves as it came in eight years ago, avoiding all possible information, trashing all available science, and leaving the Obama administration a toxic dump of regulations to reverse.
a toxic dump of regulations to reverse That is clearly the case with respect to the environment. Would that it were so easy with some of the decisions that have been implemented with respect for civil liberties, but unfortunately there the Congress acquiesced.
Consider the withdrawal of the request by Plum Creek at least a temporary victory. We are now within the thirty day window in which additional regulatory decisions can be easily reversed by an incoming administration. In the meantime, do not forget what the Bush administration is leaving for Obama - a mess in Iraq, an under-supported effort in Afghanistan that allowed resurgence of the Taliban, a confusing approach to the economic crisis created in part by lack of regulation and made worse by the regulatory and administrative actions of the current Treasury Secretary, a rollback of basic civil liberties, attempting to protect its minion from accountability for their actions, a destruction of the good name of the United States internationally. . . there is so much more.
The problem is certainly more than regulatory decision on science and the environment, but that line from Jackson seems to me an appropriate summary of what the legacy of the Bush administration truly is. I entitled this diary with those words, and I will end with them as well:
a toxic dump of regulations to reverse
Peace.