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« Back to Are we protecting the land for Americans or from Americans? main page   Transcript for: Are we protecting the land for Americans or from Americans?THINK TANKANNOUNCER: Funding for Think Tank is provided by the T. Rowe Price Associates, an investment management firm providing mutual funds, brokerage services, and retirement plan services. T. Rowe Price, invest with confidence, T. Rowe Price Investment Services Incorporated. We're Pfizer, we're looking for the cures of the future, spending about $4-1/2 billion a year in search of new medicines for the 21st Century. Pfizer, life is our life's work. Additional funding is provided by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, and the Dodge Jones Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. Conserving America's land resources has been a government concern since the days of Theodore Roosevelt in the early part of the 20th Century. Federal agencies now manage fully one-third of all the land in the United States, and were long regarded as models of scientific land management. Now, under pressure from politicians and activists, they are increasingly embroiled in controversy. Environmentalists say government has a moral imperative to protect the nation's wildlife and wilderness, critics say environmental activists in government are, in effect, fencing off federal land and telling the public to keep out. To find out Think Tank is joined by: Robert Nelson, professor of pubic policy at the University of Maryland, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of A Burning Issue, a Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service; Al Sample, President of the Pincho Institute for Conservation and author of Land Stewardship in the Next Era of Conservation; and Roger Sedjo, director of the Forest, Economics and Policy program at Resources for the Future, and editor of A Vision for the U.S. Forest Service, Goals for Its Next Century. The topic before the house, protecting land for Americans or from Americans, this week on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Bill Clinton in one of his last acts as president put 58 million acres of federal land off limits to logging, mining, and much recreational use. In total more than half of the national forest system is now barred from any kind of development, even road building. The Clinton administration gave high priority to preserving key species and ecosystems. Within federal land agencies, one prominent view is that national forests should be untrammeled by man, serving as a general ecological reserve for the entire nation. Many see this as a serious departure from existing laws which mandate not only recreation on federal land, but also mining, logging, cattle and sheep grazing, and drilling for oil and natural gas. Moreover, some say environmentalism has been bad for the environment. The General Accounting Office reports a $12 billion backlog of maintenance problems, including a dangerous build up of dead trees and underbrush that leads to wildfires, like the one in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in May of 2000 that destroyed more than 200 homes. President George W. Bush with support of Republicans in Congress has promised a serious review of Clinton's recent set asides. He says that in an era of rapidly rising energy costs, and energy shortages, we need to tap new natural gas reserves. National environmental groups are scrambling to head off that effort. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. I was particularly struck with this phrase untrammeled by man. The argument that we make in the set up piece is that there really are two competing ethics in controversy now, at play. One is this idea that these federal lands should be untrammeled by man, and it's looking towards species, bio-diversity, and pristine virginity of ecosystems and so on, and so forth. And that has been, at least in the Clinton-Gore administration that view has been on the ascendency. And the other view is that, hey, the law talks about multiple use, recreation, mining, logging, oil and gas drilling, and so on and so forth. Is that the argument? MR. SEDJO: Let me respond to that. On the one hand you have a commodities perspective, timber, minerals. MR. WATTENBERG: And recreation. MR. SEDJO: Well, recreation kind of fits in between. On the other hand you have this untrammeled by man. So you have a whole -- you run the spectrum from no impact, to impact, to like native peoples, and all the way to the other end. MR. WATTENBERG: Would you agree with the characterization, that this is what the fight is about in a macro sense? MR. SAMPLE: Its' been sort of off that we actually still are hearing some concern from segments of the environmental community over the roadless area set aside being inadequate. Because it's simply said that this area that has never had roads built into it will not have roads built into it. And the environmental community came back and said -- MR. WATTENBERG: Bob, I'm having a lot of difficulty getting an answer over here. MR. NELSON: I think you're basically -- MR. WATTENBERG: Is that the conceptual framework? MR. NELSON: Yes, you are correct. The way you characterize it agree with. It's beginning, but it began well before the Clinton administration. MR. WATTENBERG: I understand. MR. NELSON: And it has been a move towards what's called ecosystem management. It was not ratified by Congress, but in the Clinton administration it's, again, been adopted administratively. And at the core of ecosystem management was a move away from this multiple use, human use, utilitarian philosophy. In practice that gets to be defined as to achieve a natural forest condition. MR. WATTENBERG: This is with a unilateral decision of enormous magnitude. Is that the way this system is supposed to work, is the process right? MR. SEDJO: There are provisions in the law for wilderness areas being set aside, but the provisions call for congressional approval. What we have Bill Clinton doing, I believe, is probably within the law creating these set asides which are, in a sense, de facto wilderness areas. So technically it's probably within the technical limits of the law, but it's certainly not within the spirit of the law. MR. NELSON: This is an enormous are of land that we're talking about. It's 10 percent of the United States. In the State of Idaho it's 40 percent of the state. With the new designations by the Clinton administration half of the national forest system will be in a wilderness status. In a state like Idaho, 25 percent of the area in the state, not just federal land, of all land in Idaho will be in a wilderness designation. I think that this cuts out large numbers of uses. MR. SAMPLE: Let's keep in mind, these are lands that after 100 years of fairly intensive development on the national forest, certainly since the end of World War II, we have had extensive development for timbering, for oil and gas development, for mining development, and through all that century of development this 58 million acres for some reason is still unroaded and undeveloped. From a timber management standpoint, most of these lands would probably never be economical for the production of timber. There may be oil and gas reserves in there. Exploration can continue in that. Exploration continued up until just a few years ago even in the congressionally designated wilderness areas. MR. WATTENBERG: Why would anyone explore it if they could never tap it? MR. SAMPLE: Well, it's not clear that they couldn't tap it. And even in terms of timbering, technically timbering is not -- MR. WATTENBERG: Let's talk about oil and gas, here you have the largest state in the union going through brownouts, dimly lit, people groping around the highways. And President Bush is saying, let's get some hydrocarbons down here. And you're saying, uh-uh. MR. SAMPLE: I think that's a red herring. We're not running out of natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico, we're not running out of coal. MR. WATTENBERG: Why is California -- I mean, I read in the paper and they say California has a supply shortage, because they haven't built a new power plant in 10 years, they've barely built anything in 20 years, largely because, as I understand it, of this environmental ethic. And you're saying well there's no shortage. MR. SAMPLE: At this time of year California is typically exporting power to the Pacific Northwest. During the summer it's the other way around. The Pacific Northwest is exporting power to California. Most of this is hydro power with the recent low levels of precipitation, the water levels behind these dams are lower than they -- MR. WATTENBERG: But, hold on a minute, California, I'm going to make up some numbers, I think they're probably close. In the last 10 years the population of California went up by 10 million people. They didn't build any new power supply plants. At some point, last year, this year, or next year, you're going to say, there go the lights. Do you disagree with that? MR. SAMPLE: Governor Gray Davis said the other day that state lines really don't mean anything in the Northwest, in the Pacific coast. MR. WATTENBERG: Not to him they don't, they do to the Governor of Oregon, and Washington, and Idaho. MR. SAMPLE: He said what really matters are the grid lines. And within that grid there have been significant additions to the power generating capacity. MR. WATTENBERG: You are, I think, the centrist in this dialogue? MR. SEDJO: Well, ostensibly, I'm not sure. It depends on the issue. Look, we've got the energy issue, and we've got this set aside, land set aside issue. MR. WATTENBERG: But, they're linked. MR. SEDJO: Well, they're linked, but -- MR. WATTENBERG: They're linked conceptually, maybe not specifically, but conceptually. MR. SEDJO: A couple of comments on this. I think the issue of the 58 million acre set aside, with respect to what kind of impact that has on timber production, which has been the traditional major commodity for the forest service, is probably small for the reasons Al suggested. A lot of these lands are inaccessible, the costs of exploiting that would be high in the absence of subsidies or something of that nature, the forest service either putting in the roads, or subsidizing the development of that timber. On the other hand, when you get to something like energy that's a different issue, and the potential there could be much more substantial, the ability to extract that economically, cover your costs, is probably much greater, assuming you find sufficiently rich sites of energy resources. So you've got a couple of issues here. The third issue is the recreational issue. The budget from recreation is being squeezed on a lot of these lands. So there is, I think, a strong thrust towards this set aside. MR. WATTENBERG: Again, I keep returning to this idea, is that a reflection of this changing ethic within the government? MR. SEDJO: Yes, it's a reflection of the ethic of -- MR. WATTENBERG: They don't want people in there. MR. SEDJO: In my view, this administration, the Clinton administration that just passed, has as one of its major constituencies the environmentalists. The environmentalists feel strongly that they don't want impact on these lands, they don't want to develop these lands, they don't want to -- they want to minimize recreational use of these lands. I think that's been pretty clear. MR. NELSON: Well, I think that, you know, we go back to this issue of values, there has clearly been in the Clinton administration the expression of a value that the primary goal for many of the higher level officials has been to recreate or restore nature. MR. WATTENBERG: Let's talk about a couple of specific issues which relate to this change in values. ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in his campaign then Governor Bush repeatedly said, we should open this up for oil and gas drilling or exploration and then drilling. What's wrong with that? MR. SAMPLE: Well, I don't think it's really necessary. If you look at the supplies that exist up there, there's less than two months supply. A majority of Americans really have looked at that and said, gee, this is really a marvelous, unique place. MR. WATTENBERG: Have they ever been there? Have you ever been there? MR. SAMPLE: I'm sure most people will not ever go there. MR. WATTENBERG: Have you been there? MR. SAMPLE: No. MR. WATTENBERG: Have you been there? MR. NELSON: If you could actually do oil and gas drilling, especially with the latest techniques which are relatively unintrusive, with very modest environmental impact. If you think of environmental impact in the normal sense of what's it doing to the caribou, or is it affecting some ecological system, but the reason why the environmental movement has fought the development of ANWR is because it symbols this idea of nature in its innocence. And the very presence of man in the area in any form of an active form, other than maybe going hiking, or down traveling in a few rivers, is seen in the value system of the environmental movement as a moral offense. MR. WATTENBERG: Is that a caricature or an accurate view of the environmental. MR. SAMPLE: Oh, I think it's fairly accurate. MR. WATTENBERG: If you're not going to drill 2,000 miles away from the lower 48 in an uninhabited area, I mean, where would you drill, in Manhattan, or Ann Arbor, or Madison, Wisconsin, or Los Angeles, I guess we drill in Los Angeles. I mean, I look at that stuff and I say, you know, as Bob says, that's a pretty good place, nobody is there. MR. SAMPLE: Nobody is there, it's uninhabited, but perhaps only by human beings. It's one of the richest, most diverse wildlife environments left on this planet, as far as where we would go to find that. The technology that we have today for going back, even to oil and gas wells that were considered essentially depleted 10 or 15 years ago, and extracting an enormous amount of oil and gas from those wells, the Gulf of Mexico is one example where there is still enormous reserves. MR. WATTENBERG: The Gulf of Mexico is okay, but the Atlantic and the Pacific are not okay. MR. SAMPLE: I'm referring to fields that are already well developed, and where the reserves are still enormous. MR. NELSON: Even a lot of the Gulf of Mexico, by the way, is closed off, off the West Coast of Florida. MR. WATTENBERG: Where do you come out on nuclear power? MR. SAMPLE: Well, I think they've got some enormous technological issues to resolve in terms of the safe disposal of the materials that are going to remain dangerously radioactive for 10,000 years. MR. WATTENBERG: So, your answer is no. MR. SAMPLE: For the time being. MR. SEDJO: There's another issue here, though, that's tied into values. I'm convinced that a fairly substantial component of the environmental community area really interested in reducing the standard of living, the consumption of resources, et cetera. So the idea that we block off a whole series of options forces the economy and the world community to contract. And I think that within a fairly substantial component of the environmental community, there is that kind of value. MR. NELSON: I've written a couple of pieces where I described environmentalism as sort of a secular Calvinism. And so this idea that we need to reduce consumption, while it hasn't been the mainstream idea in American life in recent times, it's not entirely unknown in American history, or Western religion to believe that it's a bad thing to consume too much. And, in fact, you can even endanger your mortal soul if you get too rich, and you're tempted by too much consumption. MR. WATTENBERG: They're ganging up on you, Al. What do you think about that? MR. SAMPLE: I think we do need, particularly in the United States, to look at the enormous per capita consumption of energy of wood and fiber and balance that with our desires to protect pristine areas. To go back specifically to this question of the roadless set aside. There's an enormous amount of the national forest system that is open. There's 350,000 miles of road in the national forest system. If the kind of recreation that you want to pursue is the kind where you want to drive your RV up a road, you've got 350,000 miles of road to choose from. MR. WATTENBERG: So what's wrong with that? MR. NELSON: My major problem with the president's set aside is one of procedure. I think that if we're going to set aside 58 million acres as wilderness area, we've got laws that call upon the Congress to do that, and the Congress should move ahead. So, I'm concerned with the process, with unilateral actions on the part of the administration to do things that are beneficial to their constituency. I find that personally somewhat offensive. On the other hand, I think that large areas of additional wilderness could readily be created without any serious effects. I would probably make some sort of exception in the case for development of particularly productive energy resources. MR. WATTENBERG: Al seems to think that we do not have a supply problem in terms of oil and gas. Do you agree with that? MR. NELSON: My understanding is, a lot of the supply problem in California comes from the unwillingness of California to build their own facilities. So even if we've got plenty of oil and gas, if they don't have a facility to convert that to power, they've got a power problem. MR. SAMPLE: We have a supply problem with gas partly because of environmental influence. Gas has become the energy of choice. It's less polluting in terms of air pollution in Los Angeles and so forth. It also has much less greenhouse gas emissions. So there's a major move which has been on in the United States and all around the world to switch to natural gas. MR. WATTENBERG: From oil or coal. MR. SAMPLE: From oil or coal, especially coal but also oil. MR. NELSON: And our reserves of natural gas are an order of magnitude higher than reserves of oil. MR. SAMPLE: Well, but, unlike oil which we can always bring it in from the Middle East if we don't find enough in the mainland of the United States, natural gas is much harder to transport. So, in order to develop and use natural gas the way we've been talking about it, we're largely going to have to do it, at least within the North American continent, or else it's extremely expensive to liquify it and so forth. Now, what we've had there is a major turn to natural gas, but at the same time, we've been squeezing the supply by cutting off federal land extensively, cutting off outer continental shelf oil and gas areas where we might be able to find gas. And so with this burgeoning demand we're coming to the crunch on natural gas. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you agree with Al, Al has cited that people want public opinion polls clearly show we want to save the wilderness, we want to do that. We want to do that. On the other hand, I study that stuff, and public opinion polls also show that people want to have plenty of fuel to drive, they want air conditioning, they want a lot of things, in my judgment, before they want to preserve the spotted three-toed dowager or whatever it is that they're going to preserve there. What is the tradeoff there on public opinion? MR. NELSON: Well, of course, there's different people. But I can give you one public which clearly registered its preference. I you take the rural west, which is where these things are happening, and where the people live, and who actually know what's going on, they don't have fantasies of nature that really don't exist. Al Gore got 26 percent of the vote in Utah, 28 percent in Wyoming, Idaho and Alaska, and 33 percent in Montana. MR. SAMPLE: We need to keep things in historical perspective, too. I'm not sure if you really took things in a broad historical perspective that you'd see that much of a value change. A hundred years ago, we made a fundamental shift in federal policy from a systematic, aggressive, disposal of federally-owned lands in the United States under the Homestead Act, under the Timber and Stone Act, to a policy of reserving some of those federal lands to be federal lands for perpetuity. MR. WATTENBERG: But we never made a titanic shift away from the consumption and consumer ethic. Let me just ask an exit question here, combat, we're going to have combat on just this value system that we have described. The Bush people are here, they take one side of the value issue. The Clinton-Gore people took another side of the issue. And it's got to be brief. In this ensuing combat in the next year and two and three and four, what's going to happen? MR. SEDJO: Well, I think the Bush administration is going to shift the center of gravity back toward where it had been. There had been more of a balance between commodities and environmental issues. But I don't think we're going back to the 1980s. I think the battle of the next century is going to be this fire battle. The issue of how do we manage forests that are interfacing with urban communities in such a fashion that environmentalists at the national level are happy, but people at the local level feel that there's some confidence that the fire problem has been reduced, the probability of serious fire disasters. MR. WATTENBERG: Al, what's going to happen in this new combat arena? MR. SAMPLE: The Bush administration has an enormous opportunity. They can go to the environmental community and say, look, we'll make you a deal. We know that those 58 million acres probably have not been developed in the last 100 years because there's not a great deal there, or it would cost us a lot more to develop it than it's really worth. The deal is, we'll let you keep your 58 million acres. We need some flexibility. We need that flexibility built into law, built into policy, that is going to allow us to develop some of those already roaded, already developed areas of the national forests, so that they can produce timber to meet this demand for wood and fiber, still within the context of sustainable forest management. MR. NELSON: The problem with that is, there's nobody to negotiate with in the environmental movement that can actually make a deal and hold it. And if you look at the environmental movement, one of its problems is, I've never seen a form of energy development that the environmental movement was for. The way the movement is organized, you can't actually sit down at the table like a normal negotiation and make a deal. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. We've got to stop, sorry. Thank you very much Al Sample, Robert Nelson, Roger Sedjo, and thank you. Please remember to send us your comments via email. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 1219 Connecticut Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036, or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS Online at pbs.org. And please let us know where you watch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in association with New River Media, which are solely responsible for its content. Funding for Think Tank is provided by the T. Rowe Price Associates, an investment management firm providing mutual funds, brokerage services, and retirement plan services. T. Rowe Price, invest with confidence, T. Rowe Price Investment Services Incorporated. We're Pfizer, we're looking for the cures of the future, spending about $4-1/2 billion a year in search of new medicines for the 21st Century. Pfizer, life is our life's work. Additional funding is provided by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, and the Dodge Jones Foundation. (End of program.) Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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