Environmental Outlook: America's Wilderness
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-06-07/environmental-outlook-americas-wilderness
The issue of how to use federal lands has long pitted business and industry against environmentalists. It has also often set Republicans against Democrats. In December the Obama administration's Interior Department issued a policy order seen as promoting the protection of wild lands. Last week it reversed that order, partly because the budget deal reached with the Republican Congress in April essentially took away funding to implement it. Oil and gas companies and some recreational groups welcomed the move. Environmental groups expressed alarm. Another segment in our Environmental Outlook series: The battle over America's public lands.
Guests
William Meadows
president, The Wilderness Society.
Coral Davenport
energy and environment correspondent, National Journal.
Kathleen Sgamma
director of government and public affairs, Western Energy Alliance.
David Hayes
deputy secretary, Department of the Interior.
Comments
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Is this a watch or a warning? I think a "Lookout" is more in order than an "Outlook." Right now a global famine is likely considering how grain harvests have been reduced by extreme weather. We had no reserves to speak of in 2010. An "outlook" might have been appropriate in 1982, not at this late hour.
Only People in a Community can resist the kind of greedy exploitation that kills free services provided in the course of natural processes. I remember when the eastern Town of Takoma Park (then in Pr. William County) realized the woods along Spring Ave.were a giant free air conditioner. It took a National Arboretum employee to explain it. If you don't have a functioning micro-biome you will be asphyxiated either by car exhaust or by the coal that makes the electricity for your A/C. DC has nasty air for a wooded city, but most of the others are so much worse. Democracy begins at home. (I'll be working in DC in late July and early August, so I care.)
Arizona is witnessing yet another monster wildfire which is spreading to nearby states. The "Wallow Fire" in eastern Arizona (thought to be started by a careless camper) is being termed the state's third largest wildfire -- preceded by fires in 2002 and 2005. As a longtime (42 years) resident of Arizona, I see the influx of homes and commercial building competing with the natural beauty of our state.
To what degree does overpopulation contribute to these HUGE forest fires? Aren't forest fires a natural occurence...nature's way of clearing out and thus preventing larger fires?
What impact does this lack of designation have on the future of natural gas fracking in the mid-west and west and the resulting irreversable damage to federal lands?
Nick
Annapolis, MD
Might be appropriate to bring in concepts proposed by the Zeitgeist Movement, since conventional debates tend to rehash old arguments.....
I am very upset to hear this is happening without any input from us, the people who "own" these public lands. Why do we not have a voice? I have written my congress women and men, the BLM and the President, and feel that my voice means nothing. Everything seems to be run by greed and immediate profit.
Our wild horses are being rounded up now to remove them from our public lands so that more area can be used by ranchers for cattle grazing. While I do wish to allow the cattle to use our lands, they do not have the right to push our wild horses, (a notional treasure), off, with no hope to roam on free lands again... their fate is something for another discussion though.
Our great lands are to be set aside for all time, and we are destroying these lands in ways not yet truly known such as Fracking, destroying our air and water.
What are we doing? We know this is wrong. How do we get our voices heard???
Thank you,
Janine
Please leave discussion of Fracking to another show...this has nothing to do with Wilderness designations, which is an extremely important, current topic.
Keep up the environmental coverage -- it is so needed these days to open an intelligent discourse that these complex topics deserve, as we as a planet explore energy, food needs, population growth, pollution, and land/wildlife protection and conservation. Your show is the greatest!!
Kathleen Sgamma -- your industry shill for the day -- is evidence of why US energy policy is among the most retarded in the world, and American economic prospects are so dismal.
She refuses to admit basic facts about the damage that profiteering by her industry does. She understates areas damaged by fuel development, and overstates areas protected from it. She contradicts well-defined data on the chemistry, physics, biology, botany of the air, water, soil, and ecology of the public sites they exploit, the harmful tools they employ, and the damaging methods they literally enjoy using against our natural lands. She ignores the costs, while touting the profits.
It's shameful. She and her cohort deserve deep, unrelenting, public shame for their intentional dishonesty.
As long as we permit people to lie publicly in that way, the decline in America's future prospects will continue. What a tragedy -- to let them lead us to our demise, while everyone in the room knows they're lying.
Just because Kathleen S. states anything as fact does not by any stretch of the imagine make it true. She is paid by the oil and gas industry and they are only interested in making money and the environment be dammed.
I have not heard one bit of truth from her this morning.
She talks about local stakeholders well guess what I am a US local stakeholders and I think that we need to listen to the scientific studies not paid for and approved by the right. Kathleen is a laughable if not dangerous spokesperson for the oil and gas industry. She is not concerned about the environment but the profits for her industry.
Fair warning!
Kathleen is a TYPICAL spokesman for the industry.
1. BLM's charter does not include the authority to convert lands being managed to uses that forever preclude the uses originally possible.
2. The most common argument produced by industry shills for the conversion of forest lands into producing oil and/or gas fields is the need for jobs. This is a false benefit and the claim is disingenuous. The jobs are not created. The jobs move from one drilling area to another, and the trained workers travel from one field to the next.
The thing that bothers me the most about all of this, that is seldom discussed, is that of the basic rights of the creatures (including flora) that inhabit these areas. They have the right to live, just as do we. And we have already taken so much of their natural habitats and forced them to either go extinct or relocate. Enough already... if it is such that we feel we have to exploit these areas for natural gas or oil - then plainly we need to use other means of generating energy, or reduce our usage.
One of your guests mentioned that fracking chemicals are common in pools, household cleaners, and many other products we presumptively use daily. These statements are made with intent to mislead the public. These statements are meant to make these chemicals seem harmless because they are in our pools and homes already. I pose a simple question for that nice gal, Will you come over and drink my home cleaners and pool water as your main source of water? People don't have to drink these chemicals in fact I would bet on the bottles it suggests that you do not drink them! How many people are drinking pool water to survive?!
This is an economic issue for a number of western states, many of which lack property tax revenue due to the amount of land which is federally owned, and therefore does not generate income. For this reason, many who live in these states would like to see some usage by energy companies in order to reap the benefits of increased revenue in the small businesses in the areas affected. Energy companies many not hire locally, but their use of motels, restaurants, shops, etc. by workers that have come to these towns benefits them in sales tax revenue and creates jobs which are often badly needed by local citizens.
I am as concerned about the environmental effects as the next person, but I grew up in small western towns which were economically devastated after the energy busts of the the early eighties and remember both the resulting lack of jobs and lack of services. Blindly stating that the environmental impact is the only consideration here does a disservice to the people most affected by potential development.
I agree that 'we' are destroying land. But please do not confuse wild horses with true conservation.
Horses are not natural species in North America. They are not a 'national treasure.' They are imported species which impact, and harm, natural species.
I support rounding up 'wild horses' as they are invasive species. Support wild bison (a true national treasure) or pronghorn- but not mustangs / wild horses.
Thank you,
WillT26
Kathleen Sgamma reminds me of the tobacco scientists who testified before Congress on the innocuousness of tobacco smoke. Lots of smoke and mirrors here. Shame on you Diane Rehm for allowing it.
Diane, I was only able to listen to 15 minutes of today’s “Environmental Outlook: America's Wilderness” program but, if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that it was produced by Fox News! You followed their pattern of deceit by bringing in an industry spokeswoman that spouted only distortions and outright lies. To counter these lies, you had a timid environmental spokesman that seemed to apologize for being an environmentalist and never informed the audience of the industry’s lies. If it wasn’t for your first caller, an uninformed audience would not know that some people living in a region that allows Fracking can set fire to the water coming out of their faucets.
I believe it’s important to have a true debate over critical issues like this but it is essential that you have speakers that can stand up to industry misinformation and lies. I will follow up by taking my complaint directly to "The Wilderness Society". Based upon the arguments made by their president today, they too seem to be shills for the powerful energy corporations. You can be certain that I will no longer be giving my support to a weak kneed organization like “The Wilderness Society”!
Shame on you for producing this terribly unbalanced program.
True, wild Mustangs were introduced by the Spanish explorers. However, the wild Mustang has been recognized by the United States Congress as a living treasure, a sentiment I share.
I am sorry you do not see them as worth preserving and I do support "wild bison, pronghorn" as you do.
Don't forget that we, (unless you are American Indian), are not indigenous to North America either.
too many people not enough planet.
janine ody wrote: Don't forget that we, (unless you are American Indian), are not indigenous to North America either.
The clock starts now! oops, the clock starts now? No human population is more deserving than another, so the first in are the chosen!
Well put good sir (markieobrien). Interesting that Mrs. Rehm (sp?) is labeled a national treasure by many call in conversationalists, shame indeed.
Your speakers never address an underlying assumption that is misleading and false--that preserved lands have a negative impact on the economies of rural western counties. In fact, the opposite is true. In every instance of large national monuments designated on public lands since 1982, the local economy has grown. Not a single county has seen a drop in income.
For more on the economic effects of wilderness, see the extensive work done by The Sonoran Institute, Headwaters Economics, and the annual Colorado College State of the Rockies report. Search online for these sources and you’ll find startling facts rarely acknowledged by rural westerners—but crucial to our fate.
Just 3 percent (in 2000) of personal income in the West came from agriculture, mining and energy development, and lumber and wood products. That statistic transcends Kathleen Sgamma’s rhetoric when she decries the "war on western jobs” posed by preservation of wild country. Rural sociologists find that permanent protection of “natural amenities” on public lands stimulates economic growth.
Rural counties with protected lands (wilderness and national parks and monuments) do even better when they have access to an airport and ski resorts. Rural economies grow with an educated workforce (so invest in education and quit wasting money on frivolous anti-fed lawsuits). Huge sweeps of the public-lands West are perfectly situated for this new western economy—but only if we protect our unique wildlands from short-term, short-sighted development.
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