Quit Your Grousing!

It’s a never-ending moral-legal battle, one that pits stubborn, independent Americans with rural and frontier values against environmentalists who are asking the big question: is there a way for humanity to preserve native wildlife on this planet or are we destined to continue to door a litany of dwindling species to extinction? It is also a defining conflict between Democrats and Republicans, fodder for the up-coming mid-terms.

When Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, made a big stink about his right to graze his cattle on federal lands – for free because that’s what he had done for years – his “stand” generated a huge outpouring of support from both locals and GOP-hopefuls. The latter soon came to regret their new poster-boy choice as he uttered and then repeated what most of us heard as deeply offensive racial statements.

But these underlying rural values are rooted in one predominant Evangelical interpretation of the Bible, suggesting that nature is there to be fully exploited by man. Genesis 1:26 gives man “dominion” over the earth’s resources, while 2:15 states: “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” These words have been widely accepted by the Evangelical community as proof that our aggressive pursuit of natural resources – free from government interference – is part of God’s gift to humanity. While some Evangelicals believe that we are “stewards” of these gifts and must be responsible in their extraction and cultivation, that perspective remains a belief held by only a minority of practicing Evangelicals.

Genesis 8:22 adds this post-Deluge (Noah’s great escape from the flood) pledge: “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” To most Evangelicals, this Biblical reference negates any research that man’s pursuit of natural resources and exploiting those resources (as in the creation of energy through the burning of fossil fuels) could possibly cause any disastrous global climate change. A quarter of Americans simply do not believe the linkage between man-caused greenhouse gasses and the rages of climate change that are all around us, despite hard and seemingly irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

A group of researchers reviewed the published literature to determine how scientists really feel about the proposition that global warming is strongly influenced by the actions of man (Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature), they found overwhelming support in favor of this fact. These academics analyzed “the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming.' We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” IOPScience.iop.org (2013).

97.1% is a rather overwhelming statistic, but in a race to embrace the “Base,” too many educated Republican politicians know that to win a primary, they need to be seen as strongly against environmental regulation or any notion that man is responsible for climate change. The problem of allowing unmitigated growth without environment responsibility appears to create irreversible damage, both now and profoundly into our future. There is no, “Ooops, we were wrong, so now let’s fix it” once the tipping is passed (and many argue we have already passed that point).

So battles to save individual species from extinction become surrogates for the bigger environmental issues. If GOP candidates can build their case on these little matters (not so little for the species facing extinction), they become the focus instead of the bigger and overriding issue, suggesting that we are making “job killing” decisions for tiny environmental gains. “Job killing” is a favored but seldom substantiated mantra, since environment responsibility should offer many new jobs in inventing and implementing the necessary underlying technologies.

So when the issue of adding the Western habitat sage-grouse to the Endangered Species list came to the EPA, a litany of ranchers and farmers exploded with rage. “‘Western states never welcome outsiders coming in and telling them how to do something,’ said Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), who co-chairs a bipartisan task force working to conserve sage-grouse habitats and prevent its inclusion on a list of threatened animals.” Washington Post, May 12^th. These birds are severely impacted by habitat change and will probably disappear if there isn’t some serious action to preserve their habitat.

“[The sage-grouse is] at the center of a years-long battle that pits environmentalists who want the sage grouse protected under the Endangered Species Act against ranchers, gold miners, energy producers and Western state governments that stand to lose billions of dollars in tax revenue and economic activity if tens of millions of acres are blocked off from development, exploration or use.

“The tension between the federal government and Westerners who want to use government-owned land garnered new attention last month, when the Bureau of Land Management moved to round up cattle owned by Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy over more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. Some state officials fear a decision to list the sage grouse, which would severely limit everything from grazing to energy development on a huge swath of land, could create a slew of new Bundys all over the rural West…

“The fight over the sage grouse is similar in many respects to the debate over the Northern spotted owl, which in 1990 was listed as threatened. That decision shut down timber operations across more than 24 million acres in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, contributing to the industry’s precipitous decline.

“The difference is that the sage grouse covers about 165 million acres, almost seven times the range of the spotted owl. The economic impact of virtually shutting down development in sage-grouse habitats could be orders of magnitude greater than what happened in the Pacific Northwest…

“‘The sage grouse is an umbrella species, so it’s sort of the canary in the coal mine,’ said Randi Spivak, the public-lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that initially sued the Interior Department to force it to recognize the sage grouse as threatened.

“It’s not just industry that wants to keep the sage grouse off the endangered-species list. States are working desperately to convince the federal government to decline to list the bird. The 11 affected states set up a bipartisan task force in 2011, co-chaired by Hickenlooper and Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R), aimed at working with Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies to coordinate conservation strategies and resource-management plans.” The Washington Post.

In the battle between earth and exploitation, we are going to have to “figure it out,” not just for future generations, but for those of us in the here and now. Droughts and severe hurricanes are the tip of the melting iceberg, and it somewhat disconcerting to see how denial is impacting the lives of all of us. The balancing act is difficult, but we face a disaster that cannot be unmake if we sit here debating stupidly, year after year.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we can take control… if we really give a damn!