Yesterday President Bush signed an executive order designating the Northwest Hawaiian Island chain as a protected marine reserve
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This is a significant move for a number of reasons, but primarily it’s because President Bush’s environmental record up to this point looks pretty terrible. The National Resources Defense Council has a more complete list of the President’s environmental record, but here’s a short list of some of the major Bush Administration’s environmental policies so far:
- Allowing more logging in National Forests under the “Healthy Forests Initiative”
- Supporting mountaintop mining, an incredibly scarring strip mining technique
- Supporting drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
- The “Clean Skies” plan actually allows more powerplant pollution
- The denial of global warming will have cost us nearly a decade that could have begun rolling back CO2 emissions (instead we’ve achieved a slower rate of growth, too bad we needed to do that in the 1990s)
Perhaps the only significant Bush Administration policy that actually helps the environment is its support of cleaner diesel fuel standards. His energy policy might seem environmentally friendly with its alternative energy subsidies and hybrid car tax credits, if it weren’t for the fact that far more subsidies will go towards good old dirty coal technology.
So, that’s why the creation of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Marine Reserve seems so out of place. Or perhaps not. After all, getting to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands is very difficult. Access to all but the largest of this series of atolls and tiny islands is by ship only. None of them have significant sources of fresh water and all are uninhabited but for a few scientists. The islands are home to some of the most diverse populations of reef fish left in the world, along with a number of endangered species such as the Monk seal. The chain has also been a marine bird sanctuary since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.
PBS aired a wonderful film on this ancient island chain a few months ago created by Jean-Michiel Cousteau called Voyage to Kure. Watching it discovered that, though they seem pristine, even these remote uninhabited islands are not isolated from human interference. One of the most eye-opening scenes in the movie was when Cousteau’s team discovered beaches literally packed with plastic trash and reefs covered in abandoned fishing lines and nets. Also, while filming the team observes illegal fishing activities and reports them.
As a protected marine reserve, all fishing would be illegal within the reserve within about five years according to the Bush plan. While fishing is already banned in many of the areas by a late-term Clinton Administration executive order, that order is not permanent protection. The reserve now has the status of a National Monument which accords it the highest protection under the law.
Though I cut him no slack for his embarrassing and destructive environmental policy thus far, this move is an unquestionably positive step in protecting an invaluable marine resource for future generations. And, while it is politically a very easy decision to make, it wasn’t made by any previous presidents. Let’s just thank whoever it is we thank that there is no oil under there.
While there is much more debatable about the Bush administration and the environment, I will satisfy myself with making only two points.
1. Initially Bush’s big energy proposal and initiative was to push for nuclear power, which is by far the most efficient power source available, and many times cleaner than all the coal power we use currently. Of course, it was the environmentalists who stopped that…
2. ANWR is huge and already has a military base on it. Bush has proposed using a minute fraction of ANWR for drilling, and even of using up some of the base space for that. The environmental damage that would occur is trivial, and much of it has already occured. Being oppossed to drilling in ANWR is silly when you learn the facts. Unless you’ve got a hidden agenda against drilling for oil, perhaps part of the same hidden agenda that’s kept us from building any new powerplants or refineries in the past 30 years, drilling for oil anywhere where we’ve got it, building a desalinization plant in the San Diego area to restore the MASSIVE environmental damage that’s been done from the overuse of water?
Most so called environmentalists that I’ve seen or known aren’t really pro-environment so much as anti-capitalism, anti-industry, anti-progress. You yourself have commented on this just recently with your windpower post. The way to help the ennvironment isn’t to try and stop progress, it’s to encourage it, but encourage it in the ways we want to. Environmental damage will always be done, as we must consume resources to survive and to move forward, but the great thing about the environment is that it repairs itself (Just look at New England, which was practically clear cut 200 years ago for the shipbuilding industries). The goal is to maximize the progress we get while minimizing the damage we do, and use that progress to encourage ever more efficient and cleaner technologies.
Ian,
Thanks for your comments. I agree to some degree with much of what you’ve said, but I take issue on a few points:
1) I agree that environmentalists who are blindly anti-nuclear did more damage here than good. I am, however, an environmentalist who is very much in favor of nuclear energy. And I’m not the only one. Don’t be so quick to lump them all into the same group.
2) I admit a fair degree of unfamiliarity with ANWR seeing as it is about 5,000 miles away from here. However, even if drilling for oil does not cause significantly more damage than has already been incurred, the question of whether it is a good idea to do that damage for what is, in the long run, merely a drop in the bucket of our energy demand should be asked. Should we be encourage more drilling for oil when we are not taking similar steps to wean our technological economy off of its dependence on the stuff?
I agree very strongly that the way to help the environment is to encourage development in the right ways. However, it is absolutely not true that the environment heals itself on timsecales meaningful to human existence. Sure, New England may be lush and verdant now, but where is the call of the New England parakeet? Where are the flocks of passenger pigeons? Where are the vast uninterrupted canopies of chestnuts?
If we do not conserve wild spaces, we will ultimately find ourselves in a garden world. We will have trees, shrubs, grass, and crops. We will have animals, too. Except the wild animals will be small furtive creatures or pests that are well adapted to urban living. There will be no majesty in witnessing nature’s evolutionary ability to create tenuous, diverse ecosystems. Being an environmentalist means also a deep love of the natural world, not just the green world. Appreciating a well-manicured lawn is a far cry from pausing to drink in the majesty of a boreal mountain forest, or to wipe your brow from the sweat of a rainforest morning.
I do not agree that the goal is to maximize all progress. For me it is to maximize progress towards living sustainably given our planets natural and mineral resources. If that means we pay more for gas so that ANWR is saved in whatever state it currently is, then that is what must be done. Those higher gas prices will then fuel the capitalist drive to seek a true replacement portable fuel, be it ethanol, methanol, hydrogen, or whatever. Thus liberated from our destructive dependence of fossil fuels, we can set far fewer restrictions on where progress may take us. But if we do not, we will live in a world that is the global equivalent of Central Park; beautiful but purely artificial.
1. I admit I was overgeneralizing here. The reason I read your blog is because you advocate progress, as opposed to so many others. I overgeneralized so to make the point that the bulk of the environmental faction has attached itself to political views which end up actively working against the environment.
2. This is indeed an interesting policy question. (I also apologize for my overuse of rhetoric in my original post) Do we clean up our act quicker or slower if we drill for oil? A 20% increase in supply (about what ANWR would supply for us, not to mention that there’s lots of other places we could be drilling) leads to a substantial decrease in price which leads to a substantial increase in economic activity, which could speed up our ability to pull ourselves off fossil fuels. Certainly it speeds up the funding of such attempts. On the other hand, an oil shortage increases the interest in more efficient technologies, although slowing down the economy and therefore funding we have available. I would argue that it is possible to mantain similarly high interest levels in efficiency through artificial incentives such as rewards for innovative technologies, and that therefore keeping the economy churning as fast as possible is best, especiallly since a stronger economy is better for so many other reasons. Regardless, that overall policy question isn’t the reason critics tend to take with regards to ANWR. Instead, they merely emphasize the “purity” of this great wildlife refuge that will be desecrated (while at the same time decrying the evil oil company’s windfall profits because the price of oil is suddenly so high). Masking one agenda behind another is a dirty political tactic, and always deserves to be exposed. Drilling in ANWR isn’t an environmental disaster, the opponents of it just spin the PR as if it is. High oil prices are a seperate but related issue, and should be debated on their own merits.
I suppose I should qualify my statement about environmental recovery, especially when you bring up the point of the species that have gone extinct. I will first point out that we’ve gotten much better at minimizing our environmental damage over the past 200 years, and especially over the past 30 or so. But regardless, I will qualify my statement as saying that there are definitely certain thresholds where environmental damage cannot be undone. Extinction of animal species is an obvious example. As I said, minimize the damage we cause, and I will also say that an important part of minimizing the damage is giving nature the chance to heal any wounds. Thresholds that cannot be taken back should definitely be avoided at all costs.
I also didn’t say that the goal is to maximize all progress unqualified. I too would disagree with that statement. I pointed out that the goal is to maximize progress, but steer that progress in the direction we want, a statement I interpret to mean essentially the same as the second sentence of your last paragraph, but also be general enough to be applicable towards non-environmental issues as well. Also, as I said, the goal is to maximize the progress we can get while minimizing the environmental damage we do, so when this is taken with my full qualifications it would read, “Maximize the desirable progress we can make while at the same time minimizing environmental damage and arranging that damage in such a way that it is as easily recoverable as possible.”
Ian,
It would seem that we are in substantial agreement on the issues here. Perhaps our differences in rhetoric/opinion are due to a slight difference in weighting of progress vs. environmentalism. It seems I would be willing to allow progress to slow slightly (not significantly) in lieu of preserving more pristine environments. While it appears that you have see a different balance where slowing progress would perhaps sacrifice more pristine environments but, in the long run, would be a greater net benefit (for both the environment and humanity, I suppose).
I’m glad that you find material here that you enjoy, and discussions like this are the primary reason that I blog about issues like this. So thanks again for your comment and reply.