BOULDER, Colo. — With the presidential election still more than a year
away, environmental positions of the prospective candidates are still
being worked out on the pre-campaign trail. Nonetheless, several
experts at an environmental law conference held here last week
predicted that whoever next sits in the Oval Office will bring a
resurgence of environmental values.
"We're coming into a restoration era," said Charles Wilkinson, a law professor at the University of Colorado.
"That's, of course, a matter of deep change, and it's going to be tough
with the combination of population growth and climate change," he said.
"That's going to put restoration to the test, and the real question is
going to be how serious we're going to get about conservation of energy
and water."
Such big-ticket policy issues as climate change, support for
oil and gas development and the direction of energy development will be
swayed by the party affiliation of the elected, but other matters will
rise to the surface as well.
Wilkinson noted that several trends of the past 25 years will
continue in the next administration. For example, he said that leaders
will continue to support efforts such as watershed councils that have
brought together people with disparate interests to try to solve water
disputes. Wilkinson also expects that the influence of scientists and
economists will grow in policymaking.
He also predicted that the harvesting of timber on the
national forests, which has fallen in the last 25 years from about 12
billion board feet to 3 billion board feet, will stay low in part
because industry has already adjusted to this change by closing some of
its mills, moving operations and investing in different equipment. "The
capability to increase the cut has been reduced significantly, but our
will to keep the cut down is really there and I think that will last in
new administrations."
Wilkinson added that regardless of who sits in the White
House, Native American tribes will continue to play an important role
in natural resource management. The reservations comprise a land base
of 58 million acres — almost as large as Colorado — and many larger
tribes now employ more than 100 people in their natural resource
departments, with authority over timber management, water quality and
air pollution, he said.
Partisan politics recedes?
One thing that will change, Wilkinson predicted, is that
heavy-handed partisanship will recede from natural resources policy. "I
think everybody knows these people have been out of control, and that's
going to change," he said.
John Leshy, who served as solicitor of the Interior Department
throughout the Clinton administration, seemed to agree with that
assessment, predicting that the pendulum would swing from "very
ideological, hard-edged tendencies" that currently dominate politics
back to a "very pragmatic middle." As part of this shift, Leshy said he
expects there will be increased interest in rebuilding an "activist
government" with more attention given to science.
"I think we need to rebuild government's natural resource
management, and I think that we'll begin to move in that direction,"
Leshy said.
Leshy also predicted that concern about climate change would
finally move politicians into action. "There is a growing public
consensus that this very serious stuff and it's going to prompt
Congress to act," he said.
Leshy called U.S. policies to address climate change "huge
wild cards" that would determine the future of U.S. energy development.
Nevertheless, he predicted that oil and gas would continue to be
mainstays of the United States' energy supply for some time.
Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource
Advocates, predicted that there would be more attention placed on
reducing the environmental footprint of oil and gas drilling activities
and continuing controversy over what areas should be off-limits to
drilling. For example, he pointed to the Bureau of Land Management's
plan for Colorado's Roan Plateau, which would limit surface disturbance
to 1 percent of the area to be developed at any one time.
"I think what BLM's proposing for the Roan Plateau has a lot to say about the future of energy," he said.
Environmentalists have objected to the plan because it would
allow drilling in the cliffs and on top of the plateau, which they say
would damage the plateau's majestic landscape. The plateau is home to
prized deer and elk herds and one of the world's purest strains of
native trout.
While environmentalists have tried to protect rare species
such as the plateau's trout under the Endangered Species Act, that
could become more difficult in the future. J.B. Ruhl, a law professor
at Florida State University, noted that ESA has been considerably
weakened since it was first enacted, a trend that seems likely to
continue. "I think it will continue to diminish in effectiveness," he
said.
Efforts to reform the landmark environmental legislation have
floundered for years, and no one at the conference seemed to expect any
major environmental legislation to be forthcoming in the next
administration — although Leshy predicted that Congress might finally
amend the 1872 mining law this session. Instead, Wilkinson suggested
that the new administration might try to advance its goals within the
context of existing regulations.
David Getches, dean of the University of Colorado's law
school, was even more cautious in his remarks. "If you look at the
present administration, and what has happened over these several years,
it's nothing. There's been next to nothing happening in terms of
legislation or major policies affecting conservation. I don't think
we'll see any change in that regardless of who becomes president and
what party he or she is from, unless there's some alignment between
Congress and the executive that can lend itself to a consensus around
conservation."
Getches noted that such alliances have occurred in the past
and expressed optimism that it could happen again in the future, but he
predicted that environmentalism would likely be obscured by other
issues. "I think candidates are going to have to start embracing before
they're elected conservation as an important part of their platform.
Will they do that with eclipsing issues like war and the healthcare
crisis in the country? I rather doubt it."
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