The recent budget deal and mid-term elections show why Republicans continue to take a beating. Despite their purported ideology of limited government, Republicans kowtow to special interests favoring crass exploitation of public resources. They are silent when profitable private acts have negative public consequences, for example former Senator Lauch Faircloth’s hog farms in North Carolina. […]
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It’s time for some good news about America. By historical standards, the vast majority of Americans are exceedingly well off. This is important because richer is healthier, safer – and more environmentally sensitive. We have greatly improved environmental quality since the first Earth Day. However, the easy problems have been solved. More complex issues of […]
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The West has long considered natural resource industries – logging, mining, and ranching – as economic keystones. Westerners have relied upon the federal “landlord” for substantial economic benefits. The world’s largest system of water diversions and network of forest access roads (eight times the mileage of the U.S. interstate highway system) testify to their success. […]
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“The data is overwhelming,” said University of Montana professor Paul Polzin. “There is no correlation between growth and amenities.” Economist Myles Watts of Montana State University laments that mining, factory, and timber jobs are “the sort of jobs that will lift the standard of living for a county or even an entire state.” These comments […]
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Forest conservationists have a love-hate relationship with the Forest Service. Created to protect Western forests from the dangers of irresponsible private sector management, the Forest Service promised an efficient, responsive, and scientific approach. But things didn’t turn out that way. Despite the rhetoric of “multiple use”, political planning prevailed. That process encouraged, and often forced, […]
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Forest conservationists have a love-hate relationship with the Forest Service. Created to protect Western forests from the dangers of irresponsible private sector management, the Forest Service promised an efficient, responsive, and scientific approach. But things didn’t turn out that way. Despite the rhetoric of “multiple use”, political planning prevailed. That process encouraged, and often forced, […]
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1997 marks the centennial of the National Forest System. This is America’s best example of centralized government planning and management, our glorious experiment in “sylvan socialism.” In the Federalist Papers, America’s founders urged us to consider each law and policy as an experiment to be evaluated and perhaps modified. The end of a century’s experiment […]
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The U.S. Forest Service continues to throw money and timber away, but don’t expect the Republican-led Congress to call a halt to this long-running story of government waste. The GOP is brain-dead when it comes to sparing live trees. Last week , Louisiana-Pacific Corp. placed the winning bid of $155,190 for 1.8 million board feet […]
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Fisheries Management Fisheries are complex environments in which fish are just a single inhabitant. Other species, climate change, habitat modification, fishermen, consumers, and bureaucrats all impact fisheries. Economics, as much as ecology, define fisheries. The success or failure of a fishery can hinge on small changes in the composition of local fishermen, in the policies […]
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Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. -Emma Lazarus Environmentalists have long held that environmental problems come down to one issue: population. All of our environmental woes, from species extinction to global warming, can […]
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