"Because we depend on so many detailed and subtle aspects of the environment, any change imposed on it for the sake of some economic benefit has a price . . . Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment."
Unknown author

Never before has a movement brought such universal support, such a bringing together of the public sentiment for the natural wonders of our world, so long as my forest is not prevented from clear-cutting, so long as my farm is allowed the unrestrained use of pesticides and so long as my automobile is not required to achieve fifty miles-per-gallon. There are a thousand points at which our support of the whole turns to narrow self-interest.

The power of various lobby interests has proven so potent that we are arrived at the sad state of naming our interests one thing, in order to achieve another and I think that's intellectually dishonest. The snail darter and spotted owl come immediately to mind.

The northwest as well as the southeastern portions of our country have proven themselves particularly conducive to the growth of timber and, in particular, the farmed growth of timber. The climatic conditions in these areas are such that sustainable management is possible and our major timber producers are making the best use of a renewable resource. Certainly this is much to be encouraged, but it's brought with it the greed of the marketplace in harvesting ancient timber, that which can be clear-cut at enormous profit and will not replace itself if it were allowed to replace itself for a thousand years.

A substantial and understandable resistance to this by the public and non-timber interests has sprung to the defense of these ancient woodlands and nominated the spotted owl as its cause. To me, that's intellectually insincere, if not downright dishonest and cannot long hold out against those who would profit. In the same way that we would not allow the tearing-down of a thousand year old cathedral for the immediate need of bricks, it makes sense that we preserve these ancient forests in their own name and for their own value.

Continuing on the examples given, if the damming of a river would flood and remove from use something we value, then a cause must be made for the something of value and not the snail darter as its nominee.

Because of the frustration caused to the public at large in disarming those who would take our forests, flood our valleys and otherwise poison the land and air within which we live, the federal government has enacted legislation to protect the environment. That is a particularly appropriate form of federal intervention, a case in which all of its citizens are at risk and where the states are apt to respond in their individual self-interest.

Since the inception of the Environmental Protection Agency, considerable strides have been made and there has been a cost as well as a benefit. Industry wails at the cost to themselves, but of course such costs are not actually borne by industry, but by the purchasers of industry's products. You and I have borne the cost through an increase in the prices of cabbage and refrigerators. We have found that cost not too burdensome to pay in return for cleaner air and water. Others in the world pay a far greater cost in poisoned air and polluted water and they pay that cost without it producing any benefit. Indeed, powerless to effect a change, their lives are shortened and their children harmed.

Now we see before us another case of naming something that it is not. We are witness to a newly arrived Congress turned upside-down, claiming in its actions to get government off the backs of our industrial and business progress. It's a laudable cry, to free ourselves of government control and it strikes a friendly note in the hearts of all of us who value individual freedoms. But that's not what it is about.

What it is about is giving clear-cutting and mineral rights at bargain-basement prices to a few on lands owned in perpetual trust by all of us. What it's about is to ridicule the damage to our ozone shield in order to increase profit. What it's about is what the corporate world is largely about, the pursuit of short-term profit.

And yet we as consumers have shown ourselves willing to bear that cost to support that profit, standing ready to pay for clear air and safe groundwater.

I must say as a disclaimer to the above broad statement, that many industries are taking an extraordinarily long-term and conservationist view of their activities. Certainly there is no quarrel with that, yet even so, it requires the support of consumers to allow such enlightenment and they have got it. Those who grow foods free from additives and pesticides have found a market. Those who produce compounds of natural enzymes in the place of chemicals have found a market. Those who would build alternative-fuel automobiles will find a market.

We have an Environmental Protection Agency and we have argued long and hard over its mandate and the form in which it currently finds itself. The net result of that agency has been to provide world leadership from a position of cleaning up our own problems before asking others to attend to theirs. The EPA needs to continue as an agency for dialog and implementation of further concessions to the health of the globe. It is not perfect, nor shall it ever be. But it is a continuing instrument of faith and progress in the face of centuries of faithlessness and decline.

In the matter of federal lands and their contribution to the environment, we as a nation set aside huge and unspoiled national parks and wilderness areas in a time when we had seemingly endless resources for such reservation, a time when it was politically agreeable to make such far-sighted acquisitions. Now that the size of these set-asides in a rapidly developing country is being questioned, they become more rare and invaluable with each passing year. There is no other country in the world that has had such foresight and we are immeasurably enhanced as culture because of it.

One need not walk in the mountains in order to understand the value of mountains any more than one need write a book to enjoy the benefits of what is written. It is there and serves the common benefit.

For my own part, I am unalterably supportive of the preservation of national lands and the most careful consideration of what use and by what means their resources might be explored. If that sounds like an open door, so be it. The natural resources of this nation, both on public and private lands will be more intelligently used when commerce, industry, environmental interests and government are less adversarial and sit down to discuss what may be gained and what lost by those interests, never selling-out the long-term in order to gain the short-term.

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