We all know that logging and grazing are not inherently destructive practices. Do you work for, or know of, groups that are actively trying to remake the way grazing and logging are done on our federal lands, as opposed to merely campaigning against them altogether? -- John Hintz, Lexington, Ky.
Andy Kerr,
director of the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign.
We all don't know that, John. One cannot have a real forest and log it too. Public lands, by definition, have other values associated with them than the production of fiber or forage. Public lands, by history, are the least productive and cannot be profitably managed for timber and grass consumption over the long term. Public lands should provide goods and services that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide. Public-lands logging and grazing, however carefully done, cannot serve as a model for such activities on private lands. The more one tries to manage for wildlife, water quality, and such, the less forage and timber can be had. Private lands are also subject to the pressures of the market to maximize profit. Public lands provide merely 2 percent of the livestock feed in the U.S., an amount easily made up on more productive private lands. Enough urban wood is thrown away in landfills each year to equal the lumber we get from our national forests.
My next book, Beyond Wood: The Case For Forests and Against Logging, will argue that forests are too important to log -- and that we don't need to log them. We can get 95 percent of the fiber we now get from logging forests from increased efficiency, conservation, and alternatives (mainly agricultural residues, now mostly burned).
Abolition is sometimes a good thing. Slavery, trans fats, and public-lands exploitation come immediately to mind.
What do you think of the Quivira Coalition's "radical center" approach to improving the health of western rangelands? -- George Schroeder, Albuquerque, N.M.
I've never understood the belief that if one is at the center of the spectrum on an issue, one is in the correct place to do the most good. Centers move because the edges change. Slavery used to be a middle-of-the-road kind of thing. Civil unions are becoming mainstream. One should base their philosophy on an analysis of what is morally, ethically, and/or logically correct, not what is in the middle. When standing in the middle of the road, the probability of getting hit by an oncoming vehicle is doubled.
"Better" livestock grazing in the arid American West is not possible, economically or ecologically. Ecologically, these fragile landscapes did not co-evolve with the bovine bulldozers that now dominate much of them. Economically, the productivity is so low as to make sustainable livestock grazing impossible. The average acre of private grazing land in the East is 81 times more productive than the average acre of Bureau of Land Management grazing land in the West. The fact that many Americans place a social (or as an economist would say, existence) value on the cowboy lifestyle doesn't mean that it can be made sustainable. I am also skeptical of the idea that nonprofit organizations can be very helpful in showing for-profit operations how to be sustainable.
When you buy out a rancher's grazing rights and they wish to continue ranching, do you input information on land-friendly ranching done in some places of the Southwest? -- Jerry Broadbent, Bucoda, Wash.
Ranchers don't have a right to graze public lands; it is a privilege that is revocable. Ranching, however conducted, is not land friendly if one's definition of land includes water and wildlife. Some forms of ranching are less harmful than others. But any forage going through domestic livestock is not available for native wildlife. Agricultural operations take huge amounts of water out of streams. The operations of which you speak are not profitable and therefore not sustainable. Rather, such ranching is propped up by individuals with enough wealth to reconcile, at least in their own minds (and, unfortunately, much of the public's), their environmental consciousness with their desire to wear the big buckle and the big hat.
Land-friendly ranching and sustainable logging are oxymorons. It all depends on your reference point. If one is judging a land practice against a cow-bombed grassland or a clearcut, it appears much preferable. If one is comparing the practice against a virgin forest or intact grassland, it appears much less desirable.
What do you think of the controversy over trying to address issues (Nader) versus winning the presidency (Kerry)? -- Lesley Stansfield, San Francisco, Calif.
Unfortunately, we presently have 50 winner-take-all elections, which favor two parties and generally result in a choice between lesser evils. I don't like it, but it is a fact. Until that fact is changed, a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. In 2000, many of my friends told me there was no difference between the two and that they were going to vote for Nader. As the Florida count first seesawed and then whipsawed between Bush and Gore, many of them expressed their hopes (Gore) and fears (Bush) as to the outcome. I gave them no quarter and noted that if there were truly no difference among the two candidates, they should be ambivalent on the matter. They were not.
In 2000, Gloria Steinem observed that those most likely to see no difference between Bush and Gore were middle- and upper-class white male liberals. Historically, white males are less affected by Republicans than those of color and/or without a penis. The evidence of the last four years is ample that there is a difference -- perhaps not as much of a difference as I would like, but enough to be substantially measured in units of freedom, income, justice, environmental quality, and fear.
My message to Naderites is to hold your nose and vote for Kerry and then work to reform election law to have "instantaneous run-off" elections, as is the case in other nations and some local elections in this country. Basically, a voter ranks their preference for multiple candidates. If no one gets a clear majority on the first count, the lower vote getter is tossed out and another count is made. This is done until one candidate has a majority.
If W. is elected in November for four more years of rollbacks and destruction, will environmentalists react with despair and give it up? Doesn't it seem like our backs are to the wall now? -- Earl James, Santa Fe, N.M.
In my experience, this Bush is the worst president we have ever had. However, I think this nation is stronger than the fools it sometimes elects, or in this case, someone the Supreme Court selected. A feature (either a strength or a weakness, depending on how you view it) of this democracy is that incremental change does happen. Leon Trotsky felt that when things get bad enough a revolution will occur. In our system we've institutionalized incremental change, albeit far from perfectly. Our problems are not so much that environmentalists are disunited, but that the nation is. We are a closely divided nation politically. Who wins or who loses depends mostly on who shows up to vote.
Have you done any work promoting battery electric vehicles and pluggable hybrid vehicles to help with the problem of global warming? -- Stephen Gloor, Perth, Australia
I wrote an article [PDF] for Home Power on the Prius. Unfortunately, at least in the U.S., hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are marketed as vehicles you don't have to plug in. In the short term it makes sense. In the longer term, we need HEVs that have a larger battery and can be plugged into house current. Most car trips are only a few miles and most car pollution happens when the gasoline engine is cold. A larger battery would keep the gasoline engine off longer.
U.S. news coverage of hybrids is good, but most ends up saying that it doesn't "pay" to buy one, noting that the average payback in gasoline savings for the most expensive engine may be six years (or roughly a return on investment of 15 percent annually). The reasoning is that most Americans don't keep their cars six years. But maybe they would if they were making 15 percent on their gas savings. I'm developing a spreadsheet in anticipation of purchasing the new Ford Escape hybrid. I may try to turn it into an article somewhere. The main variables are the price of gasoline and miles driven. Given my anticipated mileage, my guesstimate on how much gas is going to cost in the future, and the government subsidies I can get ($1,500 state income-tax credit and $1,500 federal income-tax deduction), it appears marginal purely as an economic investment. If I were paying Australian gas prices (when I was last there it was the equivalent of $4 to $5 gallon), a hybrid would be quite an attractive financial investment. And it's a tax-free investment at that -- one doesn't have to pay tax on the money one doesn't need to earn to buy so much gas.
Do you think that whole easily parodied brouhaha over the spotted owl ultimately advanced or hurt the environmental movement? -- Trent Loosche, Tulsa, Okla.
The only way to ensure one will never be ridiculed is never to try. Comparable parody has been a part of most battles worth fighting, such as equal rights for women. One should pick a battle not because it is easy, but because it is important. Battles can sometimes be chosen, but rarely are causes. I'm not sure we had the power to pick -- or not pick -- this battle. I suppose we could have decided that old-growth forests weren't worth the public-relations cost. But they were. My brain is divided into the ecological half and the political half. Politically, we won this battle, in spite of the short-term public-relations costs. Today, at least two-thirds of Oregonians don't want any more old-growth forest logging, and the timber cut is about 90 percent less than it was. However, the ecological half of my brain tells me that the unprecedented political victory may not be enough. We should have started earlier.
Hey, at least we didn't lead with another old-growth dependent species, like the Malone jumping slug.
Can you point me to any uncensored, straight-between-the-eyes resources on lobbying and the legislative process? What would it take to get the federal government on track to sustainable, responsible policies and legislation? -- Zac Helmberger, Tres Piedras, N.M.
It has been repeated many times, but there are two things most people shouldn't see made: sausage and law. There is no cookbook template for lobbying. There are books on the subject that can be of some help. Lobbying for an oil company that can direct large political contributions is far different from lobbying for a public-interest organization.
The notion, well established in law, that corporations are "persons" under the Constitution is ludicrous. If personhood for soulless corporations cannot be reversed, it should be expanded so that corporations are subject to prison and the death penalty like the rest of us folks. If one cannot imprison a corporation, how can it then be considered a person? The death penalty is easier. It was the corporate body of the Ford Motor Company -- not any one individual who worked for it -- that made the decision not to install a cheap safety device that would have prevented Pintos from exploding. The corporation figured that it was cheaper to pay off any claims for, rather than prevent the loss of, life, limb, and property. For that, the corporation should have been executed. This kind of death penalty would have a significant deterrent effect on other corporations, as managers, workers, shareholders, and creditors would all be more responsible.
I have a love-hate relationship with the federal government. For example, the U.S. attorney general is trying to undo Oregon's assisted-suicide law, a law we voted on twice -- a law that, in my opinion, in eminently reasonable. On the other hand, the national government has been a far more effective force in conservation, human rights, and other matters that I care about than has any state government. For example, the state of Oregon would never have established a Wilderness Preservation System.
How can we generate interest in neoclassical economics in the environmental community? -- Steve Hopkins, Washington, D.C.
It's not so much a matter of trying to interest conservationists in neoclassical economics as having them understand that the probability of their winning is increased by understanding modern economics -- if only to be able to defeat it, or exploit it to the advantage of nature.
I wonder why some people who love the earth and know so much science can be so stupid about the overpopulation crisis. -- Alea Orr, Manistee, Mich.
The capacity of the human mind to simultaneously hold incompatible and irreconcilable beliefs has always astounded me. I know several hardworking, strongly committed conservationists who have more than two children. How could Thomas Jefferson be so eloquent for human rights and also own slaves? Some people ignore the population crisis because they feel it is insoluble, or at least they themselves can do nothing to solve it. Living lives of total consistency would be quite painful.
What do you see as an effective way to make a difference, or more bluntly, do you have advice for someone who is passionate about the environment but does not know where they fit in? -- Holly Ponczko, Ingleside, Ill.
Saving the earth is not a career but a calling. As a college dropout, I'm not particularly impressed with degrees. I am impressed with passion, intelligence, and persistence. Work on what you care about in ways that are comfortable to you. Check out my stock advice on getting a job in the conservation movement.
What has kept you motivated to keep working and fighting? -- Thalia Schlossberg, Bloomington, Ind.
The only thing that hurts more than losing is not trying. Ignorance can be bliss, but only if one is ignorant. If one knows of a pressing problem, one has no choice but to try. There is also no reason not to have fun while trying. It's the only earth we have. As that great environmentalist Calvin Coolidge said:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan: "Press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
A video interview with Bill Moyers
The Yes Men reveal their next big stunt
A video interview with the Yes Men
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