A DIVERSE GROUP OF PEOPLE REMOVING THEIR LIBERAL BLINDFOLDS.

With the political pendulum swinging to the right, conservative victory is likely in the upcoming election. Some say this rightward swing is so pronounced that conservative ascendancy in federal and state government is likely, perhaps, for years to come.

If that is the case, the diminishing or even the demise of contemporary liberal environmentalism is virtually assured.

Which means, it’s time to start designing the conservative environmentalism that will replace it.

Those of you who consider yourself green to the core may despair at hearing this, but you should be celebrating instead. By making this transition, environmentalism will be shedding a number of debilitating dysfunctions that are endemic in liberalism.

One liberal dysfunction that a conservative environmentalism wouldn’t suffer is a systemic blindness that affects all of liberalism in all of its issue areas, environmental and otherwise.

ASSUME YOU ARE WRONG

I learned about this blindness as I experienced my own evolution from eco-radical to conservative environmentalist. Early in my transition, I ran across a way of managing our relationship with Nature that, at the time, was named “Holistic Resource Management” (changed now to Holistic Management). According to this management system, when dealing with nature in a way designed to produce a certain result, one should always “assume you are wrong.”

When I made passing mention of that in a conversation with my wife. Her response was short and to the point, “If you assume what you’re doing is wrong,” she said. “Why would you bother to do it?”

I had to admit that was a pretty good objection. As I thought more and read more about this very counter-intuitive directive, however, I realized it actually makes very good sense. In fact, I believe assuming that we are wrong can add to our chances of success of just about anything we do.

How’s that?

The reason we should assume we are wrong, according to Holistic Management, is to make sure that we monitor what we’re doing so that we’re aware of whether if it is working or not. To someone who is dealing with nature (or with anything in a results-directed way) the reason for monitoring what you’re doing should be obvious. If you don’t keep track of how things are going you could create an outcome that is very different than what you intend — an unintended consequence, so to speak — that could be very difficult, even impossible, to reverse.

However, if we assume we’re wrong (or at least that the possibility exists that we could be wrong), and we monitor what we’re doing, chances are pretty good that, if things do start to get off track, we will become aware of it. Having thus been alerted, we have the opportunity to stop doing what isn’t working and do something different or even to take a different approach altogether.

To clarify this with an example that has to do with our discussion here: If the people who were trying to save the threatened fish, the spikedace, on the Verde River (covered in a previous post ) had considered that there was a possibility that what they were doing might not work, they would have been much less likely to have continued to apply that policy until they had exterminated the very creature they claimed to be trying to save.

What caused the extermination of the spikedace in the Verde, then, is the fact that the liberal environmental groups that intimidated the U. S. Forest Service into removing grazing from the riverside assumed that they were right. They assumed they were right not only to the degree that they did not monitor the situation sufficiently to become aware of the fact that their policies were changing the river in such a way that it was becoming uninhabitable to the spikedace, but when U. S. Forest Service scientists did take note of that fact, the environmental groups exerted sufficient pressure to have those scientists removed from the case.

EVEN THE HORSE IS INCREDULOUS!

To this day those environmentalists consider the Verde debacle to be a success. They consider it a success in spite of the fact that, after the policy was installed, the river did change and the spikedace appears to have been extirpated (none have been seen in the river in 15 years). Those self-designated spikedace-savers consider what they did on the Verde to be a success because the campaign to save several “threatened” or “endangered” native fishes, including the Verde River spikedace, did succeed in getting grazing removed from 900 miles of riverside in the American Southwest.

This reveals the core flaw in contemporary liberalism, environmental and otherwise. Contemporary liberalism identifies solutions as a matter of the installation of policies — liberal policies. And once that policy is installed liberals consider the problem solved. In other words liberals always consider themselves to be right. That’s how liberals apply their own blinders, and that’s how they blindfold themselves to realistic assessments of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their policies.

Take the Drake Exclosure mentioned in a number of other posts: Environmentalists consider management of the denuded Drake to be “right” in spite of the fact that it has continued to deteriorate during 65+ years of being protected from being used (impacted) by humans.

PROTECTED SINCE 1946.

They consider their policy of protection to be “right”, in spite of the fact that the unprotected land outside the Drake is in better condition and supports a more diverse and more plentiful community of native plants and animals (see below).

OUTSIDE THE DRAKE, ALL NATIVE GRASSES (Photo taken same day.)

How about another example. In California it has been found that the “threatened” Bay Checkerspot butterfly has ceased to exist on land where grazing has been stopped, in some cases to “protect” the butterfly. Guess which land environmentalists consider to be managed the “right way.”

Moving beyond the environmental aspect of liberalism: Consider the Occupy Wall Streeters and their call for an equitable redistribution of wealth: Do you think they consider that policy to be the right thing to do? Absolutely.

Do they think they consider that there is any way in which it could be wrong? Absolutely not!

If the Occupiers get their way, and their policy is made law will they monitor to see if it’s working?

Or, if things start to go wrong (which happens every time this policy is tried), will they do everything they can to cover up its shortcomings? Will they propose more regulation? Stricter penalties? Will they say we need to give it more time? Will they blame their failures on others: the rich, the 1%, human greed, Republicans, Conservatives, Bitter clingers…..

Plug any other liberal crusade/campaign into the above scenario — universal healthcare, cap and trade, renewable energy, affirmative action, etc. — and it will fit perfectly.

All liberal policies and the actions that make up those policies are considered to be the right thing to do because they are morally right, at least within a liberal frame of reference.

To liberals we all have a right to have enough money, to have access to health care, to have a place to live, to have day care for our children, a diaper service. And, we have a right to a healthy environment, species have a right to not be made extinct, etc. And all liberal policies that facilitate those rights are also right.

Because liberals believe all of those policies are “the right thing to do,” to ask whether or not they work (whether they get the right results) is to utter an irrelevance. We’re all taught, “You should be honest no matter what the consequences.” Or, “If you do the right thing, whatever happens is what is supposed to happen.”

Complain about redistributionist tax policies, i. e. say they don’t work, and you will be called greedy or a pawn of wall street.

Get into an argument about energy policy and you’ll quickly be confronted with, “We have to develop alternative fuels because we’re going to run out of oil someday and drilling for oil just gets us into wars in the Middle East. Anyway, it wrecks the planet and just makes filthy rich oil companies even richer.”

Environmental policy? “Why shouldn’t we protect as many species as possible from the environmental impacts of humans? Humans don’t have the right to use the planet purely for our benefit, and the animals were here first anyway!”

Presenting all issues as a matter of right and wrong is what makes liberalism so seductive because it means you don’t have to be an ecologist to know what to do to keep a small, rare fish in Arizona from going extinct. Never mind if you exterminate the fish in the process. It’s not your fault the fish died out in spite of the fact you did the right thing to save it.

Nor do you have to know anything about ecology to know how to restore damaged rangeland in Arizona. You protect it. And if that land doesn’t get any better, in fact if it gets worse, you say you didn’t protect it soon enough, or long enough, and if the unprotected land next door is in better shape, you ignore it and continue to do what you know is “the right thing to do.”

Regarding the economy, reduce all issues to a simple matter of right and wrong and you don’t have to know anything about economics to know how to manage the largest economy on Earth. Do the right thing. Redistribute income. Put government in charge of health care, in charge of everything. As long as government is run by people like you, i. e. liberals, i. e. people who want to “do what’s right,” no matter what happens you can consider yourself morally superior to those who refuse to go along with you whatever the reason.

But is protecting the spikedace really the right thing to do if it exterminates the fish?

Is protecting rangeland, like that within the Drake Exclosure, really the right thing to do if it dooms that land to a future of deteriorating desertification?

And, Is creating a more equitable redistribution of wealth the right thing to do if it creates the kind of economic collapse happening, as I write this, in Greece, the country with the most aggressive redistributionist policies in Europe? Or Portugal. Or Spain, Or France, Or England…

Once again, we can thank one of the planet’s pre-eminent conservatives — Mother Nature, as well as the spikedace and other plants, animals and ecosystems — for showing us that issues — environmental, economic, political — are not just about morals (right and wrong) they are about practical matters, too — survival, ecological function, jobs, energy, wealth.

And we can thank them for demonstrating to us that results do matter.

All we have to do to avail ourselves of this insight is listen to Mother Nature, little fish, butterflies, the true condition of the economy, etc.. And the only way we can listen is if we assume we are wrong.

As happens frequently in situations that make me uncomfortable, I couldn’t think of a clever and appropriately devastating rejoinder to make on the spot, so I just grunted and acted disinterested and hoped he would change the subject.

Later on it occurred to me that I should have called him on what was a totally cruel, tasteless, stupid, and completely empty comment—I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want to be responsible (by wishing it) for the death of a couple of billion people, but when it comes to liberals, I’m not so sure anymore. 

A good retort to his comment, it occurred to me,  would have been to say, “Knowing how you feel about peace and love and all that I’m sure you would never condemn anyone else to be nuked or plagued or committ suicide, or even ask them to do it in your stead. So, I assume what you just said means you, and the other people who think like you, are volunteering to remove yourselves from the planet in order to save it from overpopulation. That is so courageous and self sacrificing, I’m totally in awe. When do you plan for this to happen, and is there anything you’d like me to do for you after you’re gone?”

While I was kicking myself for not having said the above, another thought came to mind that was much more of an awakening and absolutely chilling. It occurred to me that liberals really are removing themselves from the earth, and that they really are committing mass suicide, and they are doing it at a really startling rate. Shades of Hale-Bopp and Jonestown!

At that point I remembered a couple of environmentalists I knew, and a couple more I’m aware of, who killed themselves because they thought they were “part of the problem.” I thought of a woman in England whom I had heard had herself sterilized so she couldn’t increase her carbon footprint by producing other humans. I thought of myself and my wife who had essentially done the same thing—We didn’t have kids at least partially because we swallowed the “Earth is overpopulated” propaganda, too.

I also thought of an article by Mark Steyn called “It’s the Demography, Stupid”). In this article Steyn pointed out that in the U. S. there are only 2.07 births per woman. In Ireland 1.87. In New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76, and in Canada 1.5, which is well below replacement rate. Germany and Austria come in at 1.3. Russia and Italy at 1.2; and Spain is at 1.1, which is only about half replacement rate. This means, Steyn points out, that “Spain’s population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria’s by 36%, Estonia’s by 52%.” 

In America, demographic trends suggest that the majority of this attrition by far is happening among liberals. Steyn notes that, “In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.” By 2050, the 100 million more Americans who will be alive will be mostly red-staters.

The next time you talk to a liberal tell him or her goodbye, thank them for their sacrifice, and ask them if you can have their Prius or, better yet, their wine collection.

Ed Abbey, guru of modern radical environmentalism, promised his followers that they would live to “piss on the graves of their enemies.” It appears that he may have had it backwards.

But before you start thinking that liberalism and liberal environmentalism contain the seeds of their own suicide, you should consider the fact that this movement is a very, very good recruiter.

That is the real issue here, and it is the subject of the next and most important post of this blog yet.

What is unique about Ms. Martin’s approach became apparent whenever one of us said something like: “I want all the cows off public lands.”  or ” I want higher grazing fees,” or when a rancher said, “I want fewer regulations and fewer meetings like this to go to.” Whenever a demand like this was made, Tommie would ask the demander what he or she hoped to achieve by such an action. How we would expect the land to change as a result? How would it look? How would it make us feel? What would we want to change? And she would keep asking questions like this until we answered in terms of real world results: that we wanted less bare dirt. More plants. Healthier populations of wildlife, and so forth. 

The result was that, whenever Tommie used this technique, in almost every case, ranchers and environmentalists ended up affirming that they wanted the same results. Everyone wanted green mountainsides and more vital plant communities and populations of wildlife appropriate for the type of land it was. 

Realizing that we wanted so many of the same things made a huge change in the tone of the meeting. We had started the meeting by making the same demands ranchers and environmentalists always made in situations like this, and the mood had been typically confrontational. Each side cheered for their side and hooted at the demands made by the other side. But, the first time Tommie Martin’s facilitation led one of the ranchers to say he wanted something that was considered “environmental,” I remember that we all sat in stunned silence. At least I know I did. And as this happened a second and third time the meeting became more friendly. We joked. We laughed. Some people even hugged.

I remember being extremely impressed by what had happened, and very puzzled. After I thought about it, I decided that Tommie’s facilitation had revealed that there are two kinds of goals, and I labeled them: “Goals that Incite” and “Goals that Unite.” I also labeled these different kinds of goals “prescriptive” and “descriptive.” 

Prescriptive goals involve prescribing (or demanding) that a certain process or policy be adopted —”Get the cows off.” or (getting back to Obama) forcing energy companies to use wind power and solar rather than drill for more oil or develop cleaner ways to burn coal. 

Descriptive goals involve achieving certain results—greener rangelands, less dependence on foreign oil, or greater prosperity.

Prescriptive goals are “Goals that Incite” because no one, not even a two-year-old likes to be told what to do. 

Descriptive goals are more likely to be Goals that Unite, as they were at the meeting I described above, because, when you get right down to it, most of us really do want the same things. This is especially true with regard to the environment. Who doesn’t want clean air and clean water and healthy ecosystems? 

So, why do people who want the same things fight?

The best way to answer that question was given to me at a small get-together with a couple of friends at which I was showing my slides and talking about what I had discovered at that facilitated meeting.

When I pointed out that the ranchers and environmentalists at that meeting had discovered that they had the same goals, one of my friends, an ecologist and activist, was so offended she positively fumed.

“We have no right to set goals for nature.” she spat. “We need to do the right thing and whatever happens is what’s supposed to happen.

That explained to me better than anything else I have encountered why so few environmentalists were interested in the message that they could achieve what they wanted more effectively by working with ranchers (and other people they saw as environmental adversaries) than by fighting with them. I had made the mistake of believing that, for the people within the mainstream (liberal) environmental movement, environmental goals, such as healthy rangelands, functional watersheds, and healthy wildlife are primary, while, in truth, they are not. 

My friend, the ecologist/activist, and all the others who have no interest whatsoever in working with their adversaries to achieve Goals That Unite, made it very clear that for them and many other mainstream environmental activists, what is primary is getting other people to do what they (the environmentalists) think is “the right thing” regarding the environment, and that protecting endangered species, reducing the human “footprint” on the land, fighting global warming, and the whole list of environmental causes are the excuses they use to impose the regulations, elect the politicians, and win the lawsuits that enable them to dictate people’s actions vis a vis the environment, which means vis a vis everything.

And if the threatened fish disappears, the endangered bird nests somewhere else, and the rangeland turns into desert; that is what’s supposed to happen. You can’t blame them, and you can’t blame the policies they promote. 

My friend took issue with my “manage for common goals” solution to rangeland conflict because, to her, the question of how to manage the environment is a matter of moral judgement—and as with all moral matters, outcomes are irrelevant. How’s that? When we are exhorted to be honest or to follow the golden rule we are told that we must do so whatever the outcome. Whether it benefits us or not. The problem is, how we manage the environment has a practical as well as a moral side. Although the people who forced the removal of cattle from along the Verde River did it because they considered it the right thing to do (See earlier post). They also did it to save a “threatened” fish, and when their action exterminated the fish they and their method deserve to be held accountable.

What does this have to do with Barak Obama? The policies he has promised to bring to government, and is now in the process of enacting, have been sold on the basis of their morality. We’re supposed to abandon the most successful energy source humans have ever devised (fossil fuels) for a bunch of 1960s pipe dreams: windmills, biofuels, solar, and cogeneration (whatever that is), which are technologies into which we’ve poured billions for almost half a century and still they haven’t performed, because “it’s the right thing to do.” We’re supposed to negotiate without preconditions with enemies who place plenty of preconditions on us; turn loose murderers who can’t wait to murder more of us, kill ourselves via increased abortions and euthanasia disguised as restricting treatment to elders and others who are “low priorities” because a socialist economy won’t support as many of us. And last, but certainly not least, we’re supposed to scrap the most effective economy humans have ever devised—free market capitalism—for the real “failed policies of the past”—socialism. 

We’re supposed to do all of this for the flimsy reason that a lot of liberals think it is “the right thing to do.”

As for accountability: When the “chickens” of this transformation come home to roost, you know what’s going to happen. When the economy tanks, when our enemies gain strength and we weaken, when our freedoms disappear and government control is extended into every aspect of our lives, the proponents of these policies are going to tell us that this is “what’s supposed to happen.” They’re going to tell us that it’s is the best we can hope for. It’s what we have to do to live within our means—to keep from destroying the planet. They’re going to give us all these excuses when the real reason is these disasters are the best a socialist economy and policial system can produce.

When that happens will the fact that in a socialist society the people who live highest on the hog are the political leaders be any solace?

Recently, I visited my old home town, Flagstaff, which has changed from an old logging, ranching, and railroad town, to one of the most liberal places I know of. On the streets of Flagstaff I saw a higher percentage of Obama bumper stickers than even in liberal Santa Barbara. Everywhere I went I heard my friends gush about Obama. That he is going to change the world was taken as a given. That I shared in this belief was taken as a given, too. I even heard people refer to him as a “Christ.” I didn’t have the heart to tell these people that I am an unbeliever. I think it would have been too ugly.

All this got me to wondering. Why are so many people, including so many conservatives, so euphoric about this relatively inexperienced and unaccomplished politician? Why do they think of him literally as a messiah? And then the thought came to me, that, in a liberal frame of reference, Obama is a messiah. A messiah is someone who absolves us of our sins. Because Obama is African-American, a vote for him absolves the voter of any guilt as a racist. Because Obama has promised to end the war in Iraq, meet with our enemies as equals, and change the image of the U. S. from a nation of war to one of peace, voting for Obama establishes the voter as a person of peace and absolves him or her of any guilt in the war against the Islamists or against anybody, anyplace, anytime. 

Because Obama has vowed to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor and have the government provide health care for all, a vote for him absolves the voter of economic guilt. too. (That means you can keep flying first class and not feel guilty about it.) 

Because Obama has stated that the U. S. can’t continue to usurp 25% of the world’s wealth for a mere 3% of the people without being held accountable, and because he has promised to work to end global warming, a vote for Obama absolves the voter of green guilt as well.

Imagine, ABSOLVING YOURSELF OF ALL GUILT merely by voting for a presidential candidate. No wonder Obama’s true believers are euphoric!!

This euphoria is one of the reasons that, when Rush Limbaugh was asked what will wake people up to the fact that Obama can’t deliver on all that he has promised, Limbaugh answered that they’re never going to wake up.

Another way to say that is: virtually everyone who voted for Obama, and many of the people who voted for McCain and now support Obama (even McCain supports Obama), aren’t even considering the possibility that Obama’s policies can fail. 

Because flying blind in times as hazardous as these is so very, very dangerous, this inability (or unwillingness) to hold Obama accountable could get us so deep into trouble before we even realize it, that it will be very difficult for us to claw our way out of that trouble, if we can do it at all.

I’m sure there are plenty of Obama-ites who would tell me I’m totally delusional about this. That if Obama’s policies were beginning to fail, he would realize it and change. Hasn’t Obama said recently that if someone shows him a way to do anything that works better than his way he would change? And if he didn’t live up to this wouldn’t his supporters realize it and pressure him to change, and then, surely, he would do it.

One service this blog can provide is to equip its readers to help Obama keep this promise. To do that, I believe most of us need help because for some time now we have been failing to hold our politicians, bureaucrats, and other supposed leaders accountable while they were claiming to be saving the planet but really doing just the opposite—making the world and our lives worse. We hope to provide this help by equipping Obama’s supporters and his detractors with the skills to cut through the euphoria and recognize when his policies are producing the opposite of what he has promised. If “The Right Way to be Green” can provide this service, it might just play a role in saving his administration.

What this blog is about, after all, is making liberalism more accountable by pointing out that, in many cases, the policies of liberal environmentalism — environmental protection, preservation, reducing the “human footprint” — don’t make the environment better, they make it worse. In many cases they exterminate the endangered species they purport to protect, hasten the desertification they claim to reverse, and make us all worse rather than better off. Just like Obama, they do all this without being held accountable. In fact they get credit for doing just the opposite.

Here’s how: (These have all been mentioned in earlier posts).

When liberal environmentalists apparently were responsible for causing the demise of a population of a threatened fish in the Upper Verde River in Arizona, no Environmental Impact Statement was required even after government scientists had cited the policy two environmental groups had compelled the U. S. Forest Service to adopt via a threatened lawsuit (see Seeing is Believing and other previous posts) as the cause of the spikedace’s disappearance. Nor were any of the environmental groups or any of their members charged with a “taking” (killing) of a listed species, which, according to the Endangered Species Act is a federal offense that can be punished by a significant fine.

In spite of this failure, the environmental groups who were apparently responsible for the disappearance of the Verde River spikedace are still looked upon as its protectors and the policy that exterminated the little fish is still looked upon as its greatest hope of survival. In the meantime, the scientists who have said otherwise have been silenced. As for the press, if it reports anything, it reports the opposite of what has happened. And when I tell members of the environmental movement what their policies have done, as I have many times, they scoff and call me a pawn of the ranching industry and discount what I have told them or promptly forget it. 

There are plenty of other instances of this phenomenon (again, which I have reported in other places in this blog). For instance, I’ve told you how the policies of liberal environmentalism have: 

• Accelerated desertification of extensive areas of the American West.

• Created a preserve for an endangered bird which the bird avoids, preferring to live on a nearby cattle ranch. To add insult to injury liberal environmentalists then tried to remove the rancher from the ranch the bird preferred ostensibly in order to “protect” the bird.

• Caused the deterioration of California native grasslands by making those grasslands more vulnerable to invasive nonnatives.

• Caused the demise of unique habitats called vernal pools, which have been called the densest concentrations of threatened and endangered species on the planet.

• Caused the deterioration and near demise of native bird habitat on the Island of Kauai in the state of Hawaii.

• Caused the deterioration and near demise of one of the most valuable wetland habitats in India and resulted in the killing of nine villagers in the process.

Why would an environmental group whose primary mission is to protect endangered species end up causing the extermination of a population of one of those species and not even say “Oops,” or admit their mistake, or try to correct it? And why are they still pressing to expand the policy that caused the demise of a fish they say their mission is to protect?

After more than thirty years of experience as an environmental activist, including several years with the Sierra Club, Audubon and Earth First!, examples such as these have convinced me that the collection of activities we call “environmentalism” may appear to be about birds and fishes and ecosystems, and many of those involved in it may sincerely feel that they are personally dedicated to things that are green and growing and wild, but in the end, environmentalism is about politics, which in the end is about control. 

One sure way to confirm this is to recognize the way in which environmentalists measure success. Environmental groups measure success in the number of green laws passed, regulations created, acres brought under “protective” management (administered by the government and directed by them), and in the election of politicians committed to increasing all of the above (like Barak Obama). On the Verde, for the environmental groups directly involved and those cheering from the sidelines, success was identified as removing private management from the lands along the river and placing control of those lands more securely in the hands of the government, which environmentalists are more adept at controlling than they are at controlling individual ranchers or private corporations.

All this has happened under cover of a smokescreen which protects the process from accountability and anoints it as the “right” thing to do. That smokescreen is provided by the bedrock assumption of contemporary liberal environmentalism (which most of us subscribe to): that all environmental problems are the result of human impact — more specifically the impact of human productive activity, and the only way to solve any and all of those problems is to reduce that impact, ideally to zero. Removing cattle from along the Verde reduced human productive activity on those lands and therefore returned them to “nature.” When the Verde River spikedace disappeared as a result, the enviros blamed nature, and washed their hands of the matter.

In this same way, Barak Obama is absolved of any accountability for the failure of his policies. If his energy policies cause our economy and therefore our standard of living to shrink, even catastrophically, his supporters will tell us and themselves, he is doing the right thing by reducing the human footprint on the planet and reducing our dependency on foreign oil, and the standard of living we are left with as a result is natural and good and, therefore, we shouldn’t expect anything more.   

And if Obama’s plan to nationalize health care reduces the quality and availability of health care in America, as people who have lived under similar systems tell us it will, that failure, also, will be chocked up as a “success” because making health care available to all is the right thing to do, and for liberals success is a matter of installing the right (i. e. liberal) policies and whatever happens as a result is the best you have any right to expect.

If Obama’s foreign policies embolden our enemies and make us and our allies more vulnerable and more likely to be attacked, this new teflon president, who has sold himself as a “man of peace,” will not be held accountable for that either. Those unhappy consequences will be dismissed as a late payment for “the failed policies of the past” or the legacy of George Bush, or as Obama’s minister has described it, “America’s chickens coming home to roost,” and we will be told we’re getting what we deserve.

In short, Obama’s election has not only absolved us of all guilt, it has done the same for him. What that means is, most likely our circumstances will have to become very ugly to wake enough of us from our slumber to recognize that this emperor has no clothes and we have a right to try to achieve more than the sour fruit he is already trying to sell us. 

Stay tuned. We’re working to help wake you as early as possible.

The extirpation of a “Threatened Species” (the spikedace) from the Verde River by the Liberal Environmentalists’ cure for any and every thing that ails the environment—protection (see last post)—isn’t the only proof this approach doesn’t work. There are other instances in which protecting the environment has failed to restore balance, heal the land, bring back native plants and animals, and save endangered species. Here are some more:

DESERTIFICATION: On Wupatki National Monument, adjacent to former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s family’s ranch in Northern Arizona, the amount of bare dirt (soil without plants on it) has more than doubled in 13 years of “protection.” In contrast, four trials of using cattle to encourage plant growth on a study plot on the Babbitt Ranch monitored by EcoResults (a not-for-profit I helped found) increased plant cover by native grasses by an average of 20% per trial.

ENDANGERED SPECIES: A ranch along the Gila River in New Mexico hosts one of the largest known populations of an endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher. Two adjacent “protected” areas host none of those birds.

NATIVE PLANTS: On a preserve near Santa Barbara, California, where I live today, exclosures have been constructed to protect areas of native grasses from human impact on the theory that the current invasion of California grasslands by plants from other continents is caused by the damage done to those habitats by more than a century of human use. After 15 or so years of post-human management the exclosures have proven more hospitable to the invaders than the natives. The protected areas have become almost pure stands of invaders, while outside the fence, where the land continues to be grazed, and thus be used by humans, there are healthy stands of natives grasses right up to the fence.

VERNAL POOLS: In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, Nature Conservancy scientists found that post-human management made these concentrations of native diversity and endangered species vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plants. This invasion caused some of these seasonal wetlands to dry up before the rare plants and animals that inhabit them could spring to life and reproduce. In as few as 3 years of “protection” these areas, which have been called one of the highest concentrations of rare and endangered species on Earth, have literally disappeared.

To their credit a number of mainstream environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and others have recognized this situation and have facilitated the return of grazing to these unique areas. Still, the other situations I described above, and plenty more like them, have experienced no such progress.

My experience and my examples come mainly from ranching and rangeland management in the American West, but the phenomenon I am describing occurs in other types of habitat with other kinds of management, too.

HAWAII: On the Hawaiian island of Kauai farming was removed from the Hanalei Valley to benefit native birds. When bird populations began to suffer, farming was restored, and the birds came back.

INDIA: In “Cattle and Conservation at Bharatpur: A Case Study in Science and Advocacy,” Michael Lewis describes a situation in Bharatpur, India, in which the grazing animals belonging to surrounding villagers were removed from an area of wetlands that had been created as a hunting reserve for the local maharaja and recently converted into a park. Nine villagers were shot to death achieve this removal. Since the villagers and their livestock were forcibly removed, the marshes, ponds, and canals have become clogged with plants the cattle used to eat. As a result, bird numbers have begun to drop as has the tiger population, which used to be one of the most dense in the world. As of 2003, the Indian Government was struggling to deal with this apparent anomaly in environmental theory: Removing the impacts of humans is not supposed to cause parks to deteriorate.

In all of these examples, and plenty more, the remedy mainstream liberal environmentalism or Big Green has identified as the only way to deal with our environmental problems—reducing human impact—has failed to achieve its goal. It has failed to save endangered species, improve habitat, and encourage the survival of native plant species. In every case I have listed it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do: it exterminated the endangered species it intended to protect, destroyed the habitat it was intended to restore, made areas more, rather than less, susceptible to invasion by nonnatives, and hastened the desertification of land it was supposed to preserve.

So, what does Liberal Environmentalism do? What is it for? Why are so many people committed to it? Rabid about it? Stay tuned.

A sedge meadow being “protected” from livestock (cattle) to eliminate the damage they allegedly cause to native fish habitat. As a result, trees have invaded the meadow and caused it to erode

The end results of protection

In the previous post (see Liberal Environmentalism’s Deepest, Darkest, Secret) I argued that Liberal Environmentalism’s claim that “protecting” nature, i. e. reducing the impacts of humans on forests, grasslands, deserts, meadows, mountains, etc. invariably makes those areas more natural, more healthy, better functioning, and a better home to their native plants, animals, and ecological functions is bogus.  

One example I offered to support that claim is that, when this remedy was applied to protect a native fish, the “threatened” spikedace in the Verde River in Central Arizona, the move that was intended to protect the fish—removing cattle grazing from along the river—seems to have extirpated it instead. How this happened, I explained, went like this: After grazing was removed, a large increase in trees and willows began to crowd the riverbanks, transforming the stream from wide, shallow, gravelly, and warm (ideal habitat for spikedace and other warm-water natives) to narrow, tree-shaded, mud-bottomed, deep, and cool, which is ideal for large, non-native Spikedace-eating predators such as smallmouth bass, which ate the native minnows.

But that’s just part of the story. Removing human impact (in the form of cattle grazing) created much more of an ecological disaster than just extirpating a native minnow. It drastically changed the course of the river, the shape of the riverbed, and the character of the riverside habitat. Here’s how:

Until recently, much of the riverside habitat of the Verde River consisted of sedge meadows. Sedges are grass-like, water-loving plants that are an irredescent green for much of the year. We call the meadows “sedge meadows” even though they also include rushes and grasses.  These meadows play an extremely valuable role in the ecological functioning of desert rivers like the Verde. When the river floods, the grass-like leaves of the sedge plants bend with the force of the water and form a thatch (like a thatched roof), which protects the meadow’s rich soils from erosion. The sedge leaves also filter sediment from the floodwaters, enriching and adding to the soils that support them. The roots of the sedges form a dense mat that helps hold the soil in place.

Sedge meadows thus create a habitat that is extremely rich and very stable even though it is frequently subjected to one of the most powerfully destructive forces on earth—fast-moving, sediment-laden floodwater.  Perhaps most important of the vital roles sedge meadows play in the life of the desert is as a water-storer. Their living community of grass-like plants, root mats, and deep, organic-rich soils acts as a living sponge, absorbing water when flows are high and releasing it slowly when times are dry.

These meadows thus even out the flash flood and deep drought water cycle characteristic of the desert and make water available for longer periods of time to larger numbers of living things—plants, animals, and humans—in a habitat where this is very, very important. When the cows were removed from the Verde they were no longer there to nip the occasional tree seedling that managed to sprout in the meadows. Relieved of this “predator” these seedlings grew into saplings whose stems stood up through the floodwaters creating turbulence that swirled and dug and eventually penetrated the protective sedge thatch and root mat at their base. Thus exposed, the meadows’ rich and vulnerable soils began to wash away. The results can be seen in the photo sequence shown at the beginning of this post.

LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM’S DARK SECRET IS THAT IT DOESN’T WORK, AND IT’S NOT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT.

Environmentalists (the liberal variety) are taking a lot of hits these days. Their ability to keep us from drilling for our own oil is being blamed for $4 plus gas prices. Their refusal to allow any substantial increase in large-scale energy production is being blamed for serving as a straitjacket for our economy and our prosperity. Their manufactured “global warming” crisis is being blamed for institutionalizing the shortages mentioned above and for threatening to put aspects of our lives, from the most momentous, such as how many children we have, to the most minute—our home thermostat settings and how much gas we buy—under the control of liberal bureaucrats.

Almost no one, however, takes issue with Liberal Environmentalism’s most basic claim—that protecting nature, i. e. reducing the impacts of humans on forests, grasslands, deserts, meadows, mountains, etc. makes those areas more natural, more healthy, better functioning, and a better home to their native plants, animals, and ecological functions.

Some may gripe that enviros want to protect too much and say “It would be nice of we could protect everything, but…,” but those same people are glaringly quiet beyond that. Even Liberal Environmentalism’s most vocal adversaries have little or nothing to say about whether contemporary environmentalism works to save the bunnies, birds, trees, fishes, and ecosystems that make up what we call Nature.

That is about to change.

Liberal Environmentalism’s deepest, darkest, secret is that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work to do the one job it claims that only it can do—restore nature, heal the planet, bring back native plants and animals, save endangered species, and so forth. In fact, in many of those cases and more, Liberal Environmentalism doesn’t even make things better, it makes things worse.

That requires an example. A good one involves the Verde River in Central Arizona.

In the mid-1990s a couple of environmental groups sued the U. S. Forest Service to remove cattle from public lands along hundreds of miles of streams in the Southwest including the Verde. They sued because they deemed the impacts of grazing to be a threat to two threatened species, the Verde being home to one of these species—the spikedace. Instead of arguing the suit, the U. S. Forest Service conceded to environmentalists’ demands out of court without the knowledge or agreement of the Arizona Cattle Growers’ Assn. and New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Assn., which were intervenors in the case.

In 1997, after all cattle were removed from the upper stretches of the Verde, to everyone’s surprise, it became apparent that the spikedace had left with them. Monitoring by state and federal agencies has turned up no spikedace in the Verde since grazing along the river was stopped. In fact, the number of all native fishes in the Verde has dropped precipitously since what was alleged to be the major threat to them (grazing) was removed. (from 80% native / 20% nonnative to 20% native / 80% nonnative)

U. S. D. A. scientists, searching for an explanation to this counter-intuitive happening, noted that, after grazing was removed, a large increase in trees and willows began to crowd the riverbanks transforming the stream from wide, shallow, gravelly, and warm (ideal habitat for spikedace and other warm-water natives) to narrow, tree-shaded, mud-bottomed, deep, and cool, which is ideal for large, non-native spikedace-eating predators such as smallmouth bass. And then the big fish ate the little fish.

The Verde River 1975—grazed, wide, shallow, gravelly, and warm, ideal habitat for large numbers of spikedace and other warm-water native fish.	The Verde River 2008, grazing has been removed from this area for 15 years, and the river is narrow, tree-shaded, mud-bottomed, deep, and cool, and there are no spikedace.

Small portions of the Verde continue to be grazed. Today, they look surprisingly like the river did when it was good spikedace habitat.

The reduction of human impact on the Verde’s riverside habitat by removing grazing is an application of the assumption that forms the bedrock on which contemporary liberal environmentalism is founded. That assumption is that all environmental problems are caused by the overuse, misuse, or just plain use of nature by humans, and that the way to solve all of those problems, or to avoid them, is to limit our species’ use of nature, ideally to zero.

Some in the environmental movement, quite a few actually, have taken this belief that “humans don’t cause environmental problems, we are the problem” to its logical extreme. For instance, when University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert, Dr. Eric Pianka, the “2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist,” advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola. He was given a standing ovation by the Texas Academy of Science. More environmental writers than I can (or want to) quote here have said that the best thing that could happen to planet earth is for homo sapiens and our impacts to disappear.

HOLD THE EBOLA

In the case of the Verde River’s spikedace and its other native fish, the removal of human impacts seems to have been the worst thing that could happen. If that result doesn’t disprove the basis for contemporary liberal environmentalism, it at least raises significant questions about it. It certainly helps make the case that mainstream environmentalism doesn’t work, at least not all the time, because Big Green not only didn’t achieve its goal of protecting the spikedace, it exterminated a significant population of the rare fish. And without so much as an “oops” or “sorry” to boot.

If that surprises you, it‘s just the beginning of the story of Big Green’s failure in the case of the Verde and the spikedace. It gets worse.

Note: This was first posted on my “Learner Blog” – rightway2bgreen.blogspot.com