Bush Hears Local Voices--When It Suits His Agenda

No sooner had George W. Bush taken office last year than he promised a fresh approach to the West. No more high-handed Washington decrees on public lands. The administration would listen to local sensibilities.

It was a smoke screen, of course. What he had in mind was wild land development: energy extraction and mining in the Rocky Mountains, timber harvesting in the Northwest, roads into wilderness.

The way he proceeded was as a pied piper of local populism. He understood that the reigning civic and economic interests in states such as Idaho and Wyoming and Utah saw the West the same as he did: Money in the ground. Let’s get it, boys.

Public lands protections that had been years in the making were blocked and upended. Anything for the locals.

Now, Bush’s natural resources development policy has moved farther west--to the West Coast.

Guess what? The president’s tune has changed.

No more tenderhearted concern for local sentiment. Unlike go-go developers in Idaho, Californians want to preserve what they have left. So no point in listening to them.

Last week, the administration tiptoed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that California no longer has the right to object to oil drilling on three dozen old and undeveloped leases in federal waters off the state’s midsection. There were no town hall meetings, no press announcements, no photo ops, just a legal brief dropped off at the clerk’s office.

Does Bush really intend to pursue drilling off the coast of California? I don’t know. He’s quiet on the subject. But it is plain that his administration’s court filing is a move to keep the door open. And those who have underestimated his willingness to fight on industry’s side of development have been surprised before.

At the least, the court filing confirms the view that the president and his administration are not interested in local views, only in the views of those who favor development.

“When it comes to oil drilling, the administration apparently respects local voices only when they agree with the administration and the oil industry,” said Drew Caputo, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Last year, conservationists screamed bloody murder when Bush said that local residents should be entrusted with the future of our national wild lands. I joined the choir. Americans collectively hold deed to these national forests, parks, waters and monuments. They are not provincial assets belonging just to the people of Idaho and Wyoming. And not to Californians either.

Public land usage is a question for the ages now. There’s not enough left of our clean, open spaces to continue the dead-end game of “balancing” interests between preservation and development. No longer can we divide these lands and waters, giving half to development and half to preservation. Each time we make that choice, the piece that’s preserved gets smaller. And it’s small enough now.

To view matters through local eyes is to cede Alaska to the interests of Alaskans--which would mean gold mining in Denali National Park and immediate oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, among other things. Our remaining roadless forests do not belong, section by section, to our neighbors in Idaho or Montana. The tourist-hungry city of West Yellowstone should not decide whether to reopen the adjacent national park to the screaming mania of snowmobiles.

No, I’m not arguing that we should heed local voices when they are for conservation but not when they are for development. Californians, with their behemoth gas guzzlers, cannot singularly decide that oil drilling must go elsewhere for the sake of their scenic views any more than Alaskans should decide the fate of our final frontier.

The future of these lands and waters raises righteous questions that all Americans must confront. These places are our endowment. What are we to do with them? What will we do without them?

President Bush has delivered his answer. Lately, he has been saying it more quietly.

But just because there is no announcement in Washington and no press conference on the courthouse steps, just because there is no roundtable of interested parties or presidential fly-by to see the coast, the stakes remain just as high, just as permanent.