Great Debate Round 2

[Texsox]

The Federal Government has authority over Federal Lands and has allowed resources, timber, grazing, minerals, oils, etc. to be harvested. Is this a good use of the public's resources?

 

FlaSoxxJim says no, mreye believes yes.

 

Please follow the following posting order

 

FlaSoxxJim (Jim) opening

myeye (eye) opening

 

eye question

Jim answer

eye rebuts

 

jim question

eye answer

jim rebuts

 

jim question

eye answers

jim rebuts

 

eye question

jim answer

eye rebuts

 

eye closes

jim closes

 

any questions?

[FlaSoxxJim]

"Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

-Garrett Hardin

 

I first read Garrett Hardin's classic treatise Tragedy of the Commons 20 years after it's 1968 publication in the journal Science. My thoughts on the pitfalls of multiple-use of public land were greatly influenced by this work, and remain informed by it almost four decades after publication.

 

At the outset, I'll clarify that although I favor greatly restricting/regulating the private exploitation of public lands, I am not of the opinion that all private exploitation is unsustainable. I am, however, very much of the opinion that as a nation our track record in regulating use to achieve sustainability – balancing profit for the private good with resource conservation for the public good – is abysmal and shameful.

 

For this opening statement, I'll set aside the more egregious forms of private exploitation of public lands, including oil and natural gas extraction, mineral mining, and even logging. We will return to these later. I'll also focus on the economic side of the story, although many more pressing issues (biodiversity, habitat destruction, fire regime alteration, exotic species spread) are the true tragedies of the commons.

 

For now though, let's focus on grazing, a private exploitation that intuitively seems to be among the most sustainable and workable from the standpoint of managing land in the public trust. Three days ago (2/6/06) the government announced the 2006 federal grazing program grazing rate of $1.56 per animal unit month (AUM – the forage needed to sustain a cow and her calf each month) for western state public lands administered by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. This rate, 13% less than in 2005, doesn't come close to the estimated $8.00-12.00 per AUM it actually costs the government to run the program. The Fall 2005 Government Accountability Office report revealed the federal grazing program operates at an annual deficit of at least $123 million, while private economists have put the figure closer to $500 million. The grazing fee doesn't begin to cover the costs of habitat remediation racked up by the program.

 

Let those numbers sink in all you so-called fiscal conservatives. Federal subsidies to public land ranchers raise profits for this special interest group while taxpayers are on the hook for parhaps a half-billion dollars. And remember, we're talking about just one facet of public land resource exploitation for private benefit (which doesn't even take into account grazing on federal land managed by the National Park Service or Fish and Wildlife Service).

 

The widening cost-benefit gap of the grazing program stems from reliance on a flawed and outdated 1978 fee rate formula that Congress was pushed to fix more than a decade ago but declined to do so, acceding to special interests and handing the rest of us the bill.

 

Mining, Logging, oil/gas extraction, is just more – way more – of the same.

[mreye]

Well, it figures you'd select a subject I'm not very passionate about, but I'll try anyway.

 

First of all, let me say..I don't usually post on the weekends, so be patient with me, Jim.

 

 

 

--

 

I believe if I’m going to pay for a plot of land (More than 600 million acres of federally owned land), I should be able to responsibly use that land’s resources, whatever those resources may be. We should be able to use these lands, provided it is done under strict supervision and with care for local communities and the natural habitat.

 

I’m not familiar with near as many programs as my opponent, but just reading up on the grazing program I see a major flaw in the accusation that “so-called” fiscal conservatives cannot support these programs. Taxpayers may be on the hook for perhaps a half a billion dollars, but when you look deeper you see a whole different perspective.

 

If ranchers are no longer allowed to have their livestock graze on Federal land they would not be able to afford as many animals or provide the goods that are produced – milk, meat, etc. Lower supply will mean higher prices. Now, the taxpayers will be on the hook for a whole different bill.

[mreye]

Federal lands make up 68% of Alaska, 44% of California, 62% of Idaho, 83% of Nevada, and 64% of Utah. Should we not responsibly use some of the resources these lands offer?

[FlaSoxxJim]

Federal lands make up 68% of Alaska, 44% of California, 62% of Idaho, 83% of Nevada, and 64% of Utah. Should we not responsibly use some of the resources these lands offer?

The short answer to that question is, yes, "we" should use some of the land and it's resources provided that we can do so responsibly. I said as much in my opening statement, but certainly I guarded any optimism regarding the potential for success in sustainable long-term exploitation (i.e, "wise use") of resource commons.

 

The reality of the situation is that public lands and their attendant resources are very often not used responsibly. Indeed, communal exploitation that accrues benefits to individuals rather than the community, combined with the ostensibly reasonable personal desire of individuals to maximize return puts responsible wise-use and profitability at odds with one another.

 

I placed the "we" in your question in quotes because it is a fallacious "we." Worse than the royal "we," it is the insidious "we" of the private corporate interests that seek to exploit OUR public lands for THEIR personal gain.

 

This gets to the very nature of the problem regarding the "tragedy of the commons" in the classic formulation of Hardin. As long as the system is set up so that the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, while the costs of exploitation are distributed among all stakeholders there exists a high probability for abuse.

 

Hardin's now famous pasture analogy is a concise illustration. Consider a common resource grazing pasture shared by several individual herders grazing their animals. Hoping to maximize their return, the herders will add animals to their herd whenever they can. That desire to maximize individual gain flow from logic, but it is logic that ultimately dooms the resource to overexploitation. All herders will have the same desire to add animals, and since the negative cost of such actions are always equally distributed while the positive benefits require to individuals there is no dampening feedback tempering behavior since the personal gain is always greater than the distributed costs.

 

The formula is intrinsically fatal since by its nature it rewards the most selfish herders the most but punishes all stakeholders equally for the extreme abuses of the few. A "trash and boogie" mentality is thus positively reinforced as those most capable of gaming the system by rapidly adding livestock and enjoying short-term benefits effectively seal the fate of the shared resource. Herders possessing a conservation ethic and/or forethought of long-term sustainability may decide not to recklessly add stocks, but they are made the suckers by selfish herders who share no similar ethos. After a while paying costs but garnering little personal gain, behavior is modified and the would-be responsible users realize they might as well add stocks to excess since they are already paying the price for someone else doing it.

 

The ultimate cost is the long-term sustainability of the grazing system and viability of the natural resource itself.

 

Federal regulation could conceivably be a solution to the dilemma. But as long as regulations are drafted by lawmakers who can be lobbied by private interests with deep pockets such pragmatic solutions will remain elusive.

Edited February 12, 2006 by FlaSoxxJim

[mreye]

I think what you're trying to say through all the $2 words and compound-complex sentences is that business men / corporations would abuse the land for their own personal gain. I have more faith in regulations and oversight. Put a cap on the amount of livestock per acre. Make an oil company tear down their buildings and return the land to a natural look when any oil has dried up. We already make logging companies plant trees and it has been a huge success.

[FlaSoxxJim]

First, I need to clarify that $2 words are far too pricy for me, and I set a firm cap that strictly limits me to mere 50-cent words. . .

 

I had planned on asking an entirely different question until I read your rebut and thought I'd change course. I'm curious as to the confidence you place in lawmakers and regulators to protect public lands. And I'm downright amused by the notion that big industry "returning the land to a natural look" once they are done exploiting it would do much of anything to restore the ecological integrity of the degraded systems.

 

However, for the sake of this dialog, I'll operate for the moment under the pretense that form and function are equal in landscape ecology. But there are a number of private industry assaults on public natural resources that cannot conceivably be undone so that the land can be returned to anything resembling a pre-exploitation state. This is so despite the fact that such activities abound on public lands.

 

What are the lawmakers and regulators you trust so much doing to protect our shared inheritance, the public lands, from the devastating environmental and social effects of mountaintop removal strip mining, coal bed methane extraction, and even experimental shale rock oil extraction efforts? Do you see these private exploitations of public land as compatible with your concession that industry should in effect be required to fix what they break even though such fixes are impossible?

[mreye]

50 cents, 2 dollars...either way it's obvious it's beyond me and the details you use are beyond me. Your world frightens and confuses me. Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?" I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts. I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and was later thawed by some of your scientists.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Ah, okaay. . .

 

And now my, er. . . rebuttal?

 

The lawmakers and regulators charged with ensuring the wise use of our public lands have done little to earn our trust. They continue to enable private interests to game the system for their own profit.

 

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the rights to stake mineral and oil extraction claims on or lease public lands still derive from laws passed in 1872 (The General Mining Law) and 1920 (the Mineral Leasing Act). It has not escaped the attention of a number of lawmakers over the years that the laws regarding public lands claims rights are archaic and inadequate – essentially a giveaway of public resources in the federal trust. But every time an attempt is made to rectify the laws it gets derailed by big industry and their lobbiests.

 

Fast forward to 1977 when lawmakers beholden to special interests made a bad situation worse. Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act that allowed the commencement of mountaintop removal strip mining. Prior to this time there were, as you suggested, laws that ostensibly mandated that mine operators restore mined land to its original contours. But mountaintop removal operations are given a pass as long as they can state the flattened mountaintops will be developed for commercial or industrial use once the coal seams are removed. Invariably, such assurances have been smoke and mirrors. Mine operators can say they will prepare the areas for livestock grazing, forestry, etc., and get their permits even if they never intend anything more than a token follow-through.

 

The laws supposedly prohibit mountaintop blasting that will dump rubble into steams, but it hasn't stopped the operations from dropping millions of tons of rubble into streams. A federal judge ruled in 1999 that the operations that bury streams under tons of debris do o in violation of both the Clean Water Act and federal coal law, but that hasn't stopped the operations.

 

So where are the regulators in whom we entrust stewardship of our public lands? Well, when your "stewards" are people like Interior Secretary Gale Norton, J. Stephen Griles (Deputy Secretary of the Interior until 2005) and Mark Rey, (BushCo Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and the Environment), you begin to realize the depth of the collusion between industry and government regulators. Before his BushCo Interior stint, Griles was a principal lobbyist for the National Mining Association, Arch Coal, Devon Energy Corporation, and Yates Petroleum Corporation. In his position within Itnerior, Griles proved to be a very well placed friend of oil, gas, coal, and hardrock mining special interests. Rey was a top timber industry lobbyist before he got the administration nod to game the system from the inside as Ag Undersecretary.

 

Then there's the Gale Norton Nightmare. Her willingness to give free reign to mining and drilling interests, and her refusal to share scientific findings within her own agencies make abominable Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt look good.

[mreye]

It wasn't really a part of the debate, I was making a joke, but either way...

 

 

You keep bringing up bad laws and bad "stewards" as you call them. Yes, people abuse these rights at time and the laws may be arcaic. Hmmm..., how do we fix that? Stop electing these morons into office. 2 words: term...limits. I believe with adequate regulation by a moral and uncorrupt government, under the watchful eye of an informed public, mining, drilling, grazing, etc of public is possible.

 

And don't try to portray that "BushCo" and Reagan appointees are the only problems. They all take money from lobbyists. It's a politician thing, not a perty thing. I can see that.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Sure, I got the joke. Good old Ki-rok was a favorite of mine as well.

 

"When I see a solar eclipse, like the one I went to last year in Hawaii, I think 'Oh no! Is the moon eating the sun?' I don't know, I'm a caveman - that's the way I think."

 

But, after waiting a day and a half I figured the joke was all that was coming, so I responded with a "rebuttal" along the lines of where I thought the discussion was going.

 

Moving forward. Let me set up the next question by bridging from your last response.

 

Certainly I see tragedy of the commons issues as crossing party lines and existing long before the current administration, indeed, long before our nation existed. But you and I are of highly divergent opinions if you don't think the current administration doesn't deserve special mention for their irresponsible stewardship of our public lands.

 

A quick comparison of some of the actions of the last two administrations:

 

The Clinton Administration revised the public lands hardrock mining regulations, effective January 2001. The changes would have made mine operators more responsible for reclaiming mined land and also allowed BLM to deny permits to operations that would cause "substantial irreparable harm" to public resources that couldn't be mitigated.

 

This seems to fit your criterion of "adequate regulation by a moral and uncorrupt government." But, barely two months into office, the Bush Administration began the process of setting aside the new rules and reinstating the previous loose restrictions.

 

The Clinton Administration also recognized that hardrock mining operations on public lands paid NO federal rents or royalties was a huge, unfair private industry subsidy at taxpayer expense, and tried to get it changed but left office without success. The Bush Administration has allowed the miners' free ride to continue.

 

The Bush Administration's side-stepping, ignoring, and eventual setting aside of the Clinton-era Roadless Rules gutted an important and sweeping land preservation rule that would have protected 60 million acres of national forests.

 

Clinton's Secretary of the Interior – Bruce Babbit, who was a key architect in the Clinton-era federal land use changes and who tried to give the Endangered Species Act a badly needed overhaul based on sound science.

 

Bush's Secretary of the Interior – Gale Norton, a self-proclaimed oxymoron (i.e., a "free market environmentalist") who had previously written on the "right to pollute" of certain industries.

 

You have taken exception to my suggestion that the current administration should be singled out as particularly hostile to conservation aspects of public lands stewardship. My question to you is simply, who ya' crappin'?

Edited February 16, 2006 by FlaSoxxJim