Well looks like 4 to 8 more years of Mountain Top Removal. This is a corporate hack and Appalacha is not considered part of the interior to him.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

Two observations.  First, Salazar's LCV score is 100 percent for this year and 85 percent for this session of Congress.  Second, as a Democratic senator, unless someone produces 8 by 10 glossies of him in the airport stall with Larry Craig or proves some contibutor built him a new house in Girdwood, he is going to be the next Secretary of the Interior.  Which suggests to me that it would be good to have the best possible relationship with him and work constructively.

The response to Ken Salazar reveals the divisions in environmentalism that we saw in the last Democratic administration. Divisions that were masterfully described by Mark Dowie in his book Losing Ground where he described the environmental politics around such proposals of the Clinton administration as NAFTA.

The people in the report above who seem to be fulsome in praise of Salazar are almost all from the Big Greens.

Big Green groups, centered in state capitols and inside the beltway, live in a different universe and have different priorities than say for instance a local forest group fighting controlled burning in a state forest, or a group centered in a small town in Appalachia fighting MTR coal mining. Above all they are masters of real politik. Recently, for instance, Ohio's LCV hired as a new executive director a former state rep who sponsored a bill last year to open up state parks and forests to oil and gas drilling. A proposal that caused many of the Little Greens of Ohio to go postal. It was fortunately beat back, but I think it illustrates the differences between the two.

Environmental unity was easy when we all had the boot of the Bush administration on our necks. We are all glad that Obama won, but everything else is up to debate.

The various responses to Obama's green team, are tea leaves that may show the shape of the environmental politics during the Obama administration. As Betty Davis said in All About Eve "Hold onto your hats everyone, it is going to be an interesting night!"

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Did you hear that coal stocks went up on the news?

He wouldn't even support Lieberman-Warner, with the 75% giveaway in polluter credits.  He's supported coal-to-liquids, carbon sequestration, gasified coal, and is terrible on uranium mining.

The extractive industries are quiet happy I'm sure.

I'm so disappointed about the selection it's making me feel ill.  

I couldn't agree more.

Is that we are so close to edge of destroying the last of our clean water; so close to runaway climate change; so close to peak oil; and natural gas is depleting.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE PLANET.

I'm tired of the politics of sucking up, and that's what Big Green does best.

I think Losing Ground might be a very good book to put on your holiday vacation reading list, because it focuses on environmental politics during the last Democratic administration. There are a lot of things that are different, but a lot that remains the same - especially given Obama's dependance on so many veterans of the Clinton administration.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I think Salazar is a good selection for head of DOI.  From a conservation point of view, I don't think we could have realistically expected better.

We're never going to get a head of DOI that is completely green...it's just not going to happen, since part of the mandate of DOI includes mining and energy development.

I'm a former constituent of Salazar.  Even got to meet and talk with him once when he was AG.  My impression of him was that he's smart and thinks before he speaks or acts.  He also opposed drilling on the Roan Plateau, was against "logging for water", helped protect in-stream flows for the Gunnison through the Black Canyon, recovered enough money from a bankrupt (and morally bankrupt) mining company to clean up the Summitville mining disaster, and created an environmental crimes unit under the office of the AG.

My take is that, as head of DOI, he'll be similar to Bruce Babbitt regarding conservation issues.  So he may not be perfect, but he'll be a hell of a lot better than what we've had over the last 8 years.

I'd make another distinction between the supporters and opponents of the Salazar appointment - the opponents all seem to be knee-jerk opponents of the human cultural and historical presence on Western public lands.  I think of them as Eco-Calvinists trying to save "pristine" nature from "fallen" humanity.  Both concepts are fallacious.  They're still fighting the tired old range wars of the 90s.  Thankfully, a growing number of conservationists throughout the West are reaching out to ranchers and farmers and others who live on, from, and with the land and discovering they have a lot in common and can get a lot more done together than they can separately.  Ken Salazar knows this first hand, as a farmer and as an advocate.  I can't think of a better advocate for a truly sustainable West.

On the other hand, the Vilsack appointment is a disaster.

regarding the forest service?? That has me wondering, since the tree hugger tribe is where I reside.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

When are we going to get a Department of the Environment, like other countries have? "Cabinet-level" administrator doesn't have the same clout as Secretary of the Environment. There could then be some serious reorganization to make the departments' responsibilities correspond to today's realities. If it weren't considered just a regulatory agency, the Department of the Environment (former EPA + NOAA, NRCS, etc.) could more easily weigh in on things like energy generation, sustainable agriculture, and GMOs.

...Salazar has been on the pro-conservation side of forest issues in Colorado.  But he won't have input to U.S. Forest Service decisions, since USFS is part of USDA, not DOI.

Let's face it--most of the devastating environmental impact in our country is coming from West of the Mississippi--not to discount MTR in Appalachia, but there's a lot more land out here to be ruined.  The fact is that a lot of that land is used by miners and ranchers.  We need someone who can work with those interests and balance it out. It never fails to irk me when non-locals or city dwellers think they know what's best for people in rural areas.  You've got to take into account local interests, culture and economy in making sustainable decisions. This has been proved around the world.  Salazar may not be a perfect "Dwell"er but he has cred with traditional interests in the west.  He will know how to build bridges instead of just pissing folks off.