One of the first lessons responsible parents teach their children is both simple and valid: if you make a mess, clean it up. Many mining companies used their political influence to escape this admonition. This is true through out the West, even on the borders of Yellowstone National Park. Their economic calculus is simple. Benefits […]
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I wish President Bush well, but environmentally, his administration remains astonishingly shortsighted. They inexplicably ignore an increasingly important political fact: as individuals’ wealth and education increase, so does their sensitivity to environmental quality. Economist Don Coursey of the University of Chicago recently demonstrated that the demand for environmental quality resembles that for BMWs and foreign […]
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I’m writing this column in support of environmental quality prior to the election. I hope voters purge two types of politicians; troglodytes who confuse conservative with exploitative, and watermelons, those green on the outside and pink within. Remember Jim Watt? When appointed Secretary of Interior in 1981, he led the “Sagebrush Rebellion”. He promised to […]
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Ed Marston, editor of High Country News, a regional paper published in Paonia, Colorado proclaims in the April 10, 2000 issue: “The war between extractive interests and the environmental movement for control of the Interior West’s public lands is drawing to a close. The timber era, the cattle era, the mainstem big-dam era, the wise […]
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I have lectured at Hillsdale College, the once great conservative college success story. The school was a striking anomaly, a self proclaimed exemplar of traditional values and independence from government. Hillsdale refused to accept federal aid. Nearly bankrupt in the late 60s, in 1971 it hired a 35 year old president, historian George Roche III. […]
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BOZEMAN, Mont. — The American bison, down to a few hundred remnant animals in Teddy Roosevelt’s day, is making a great comeback. Today there are more than 250,000 buffalo, and the number is steadily increasing. Bison ranchers are doing very well indeed — alas, partly at taxpayer expense. In contrast, cattle ranchers are having a […]
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The Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” report of 1970 stated: “We can thus say with some confidence that… population and industrial growth will certainly stop within the next century, at the latest”. The cause of this projected arrest was a projected scarcity of natural resources. The report’s authors did not understand why scarcity has […]
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We greens are gearing up to celebrate Earth Day on April 22. I’m afraid the celebration may miss a key to environmental improvement. Let’s first consider the assumptions of Earth Day’s leaders and then an important omission, the role of environmental entrepreneurship. It’s a full generation since the first celebration, 1970. This event, like the […]
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Americans have become increasingly supportive of environmental protection. Ironically, however, recent battles to save endangered species jeopardize the survival of this conservation movement. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) itself may be endangered. How have we gone astray with endangered species? Let’s first consider the Act’s history. The 1973 passage of the ESA expanded the federal […]
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Each year the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado grants the Wallace Stegner Award to a writer who has contributed to “the cultural identity of the American West”. Stegner would no doubt be pleased by this year’s recipient, Paul Schullery, a long term Park Service contractor and defender, and husband of […]
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