Wednesday, July 21, 2004

HELP! WHERE ARE THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS NOW?

We know they're out there. They've stopped many timber operations on national forest lands on behalf of the spotted owl and other endangered species. They've put plenty of cattlemen out of business, and forced many more to downsize, to protect streams from the ravages of grazing cattle. But they have apparently fallen down on the job when it came to stopping the literal rape and pillage of some of our same vast BLM managed lands by energy companies.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), was pretty responsive to the environmentalists when it came to coming down hard on a few western ranchers. They even went the extra mile to round up and slaughter "unauthorized" cattle herds grazing on lands they were mandated to "protect." But the worst cases of overgrazing on public lands didn't do near as much damage as is being done by energy companies now given license to extract oil and natural gas from BLM managed lands. In fact there is no comparison. Cattle were at least as kind to the land as large bison herds once were, and cattlemen had a vested interest in protecting the land for themselves and future generations. But ranchers have a very small political voice. The environmental lobbyists have a loud voice, and the BLM didn't mind crushing a few ranchers -- in fact, it seemed to take a regal pride in doing so.

Now some of our most pristine Rocky Mountain wild lands are becoming ugly industrial parks with a frenzy of road building, oil and gas drilling, pipeline construction, and pumping and storage tank facilities popping up like weeds, permanently destroying both the aesthetics and wildlife habitat of vast regions that were until recently pristine natural areas of sweeping natural grandeur. The resultant environmental degradation is irreversible.

With the global War on Terror, the war in Iraq, and continuing increases in our domestic levels of energy consumption, and the recent wake-up call with the soaring price of gasoline, the strategic vulnerability caused by our continued and increasing dependence on foreign sources of energy has finally hit home -- again. The administration is using national defense as an excuse, and emergency powers to increase development of domestic energy production. The BLM has quietly switched from being a steward of and for the preservation and protection of natural lands to being an active agent of commercial energy production interests, just as the Forest Service became an agent of large corporate timber companies. The transition came with such dispatch that development got in the first massive blows and efforts to save the western public land is now going to be a game of catch up with little or any hope of stopping or reversing the destruction that has already been accomplished and is currently ongoing at break-neck speed.

The question is whether it is worth it. National security advocates, of course, say "Yes!" Environmentalists, conservationists, nature lovers, hunters, and cattlemen who are being deprived of the use of the surface of these energy lands say "No!" Unfortunately, during times of war and national emergency, national security concerns tend to get the upper hand. Energy is Homeland Security business!

The proposition of moving toward energy independence has become important all of a sudden. Yet our vulnerable position had became apparent way back in 1973 with the famous Arab oil embargo. That was over three decades ago! At the time, it became clear that we needed to develop alternative sources of energy. More specifically, we needed to develop "renewable" energy technologies.

We got off to a false start in that direction. For a while it appeared that alternative, renewable, energy development and production was going to be somewhat of a "democratic" affair which empowered enterprising individuals and a whole new array of energy companies.

The problem was that the major oil companies were not all that eager to see renewable energy technologies and sources come into use unless they were able to first establish a monopoly on those technologies and sources. They soon brought global oil prices down again, and the government soon fell back into lock-step with the global energy giants. The energy monopolies continued to reign and thrive, and we became even more dependent on foreign oil imports. Global energy brokerage and trade, in addition to exploration and production, became a new gold mine for the energy giants. Everybody was happy except those few who continued to keep their eyes on the ball. Few in Washington bothered keeping their eye on the ball. Wall Street "prosperity" fixated and satisfied them, and free trade globalism, and international interdependence, became the national priority. Thirty years passed. The "new international economic order" came upon us and thrived.

Then September 11th, 2001 happened. It had been a beautifully clear day in New York, and the Twin Tower symbols of the new international economic order stood tall, proud, and seemingly invulnerable, over the city skyline. Then, out of the blue, came trouble -- as if the handwriting hadn't been on the wall for three decades and more. Now the government once again perceives a clear and present danger, and the only option on the table to quickly develop energy capacity is to call upon the global energy giants to begin exploiting the traditional energy resources known to underlie our public lands with a speedy vengeance. In times of war and national emergency, even the voice of the Sierra Club is little more significant than that of a few ranchers.

This, of course, is the result of dependence not only on foreign oil resources, but the giant oil corporations and knee-jerk national energy policy. The knee jerks only in times of national emergency. At all other times it's global business as usual, tapping the energy resources and labor markets of "others elsewhere." The fact is, having a coherent long-term national energy policy that focuses on energy independence, is (or would be), totally out of keeping with the kind of globalism our trusty mis-representatives in Washington have been carefully nurturing for almost half a century. Being energy independent would be extremely "protectionist" -- it would be like wanting to be industrially and economically independent. It would be like saying we wanted to produce our own apparel and shoes again like we once did. It would be counter to free trade policy and WTO rules. It would even seem to discount the tragic symbolism of the fallen World Trade Center Twin Towers.

We are not only energy dependent on foreign oil producers, we're dependent on foreign sources for 95% of the clothing we wear, and 100% depended on foreign sources for our cherished TV's, VCRs, DVDs, etc., and a frighteningly large percentage of just about everything we need for basic survival, not to mention "the good life." While we believe American agriculture feeds the world, we depend on foreign oil to operate our increasingly foreign-made tractors and farm machinery, and a scary percentage of what we actually eat. What's more, we depend on foreign ships to get about 95% of our consumer goods and food products to our seaports and markets. The cranes that unload those ships in our own ports are built by others, elsewhere, as well.

Energy dependence is only a fraction of the problem. But we will focus on that to the exclusion of our dependence on foreign sources for just about everything we need. What good is oil if we don't have clothes or food? If the United States was cut off from its foreign trade today, we'd not only be forced to park the SUV, but go unclothed, under-fed, and under-entertained, as well. This is one hell of a situation for the world's only remaining superpower to be in -- especially when we have the resources and labor force to become an almost completely independent nation. Independence, after all, was what the Revolutionary War was all about.

John Q. Pridger