Poll: Westerners Favor Conservation

Greenwire reports that a poll by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project found that 64 percent of respondents said they would “prefer the administration place more emphasis” on protecting natural resources. And only 23 percent said they support placing a greater emphasis on domestic energy production “by maximizing the amount of national public lands available for responsible oil and gas drilling and mining.

7 thoughts on “Poll: Westerners Favor Conservation”

  1. Colorado College does this every year. It’s interesting because there don’t seem to be any folks with natural resource experience involved. They ask questions in interesting ways..e.g., compare the “drilling” one to this one last year.
    [caption id="attachment_22320" align="aligncenter" width="730"] slide from 2016 State of Rockies Report.[/caption]

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  2. How many respondents believe there are no safeguards currently in place? Sharon hit on a key point – it’s often more how you ask the question.

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    • The funny thing about all this is that probably none of the interviewers, nor interviewees, actually know what the current safeguards are. It would be hard because there are different rules for different kinds of mines and for oil and gas and different rules for surface under BLM and FS. Maybe max 50 people in the US would know this?

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      • It would be funny except that so many of our laws and regulations have been made with agenda based science, or no science at all, by people that often don’t even read the proposed law or regulation, before signing or voting on it. The uninformed buy off on it because it feels good or they benefit materially and the proponents that pushed for them cheer, as another notch for their agenda becomes the law of the land………… before a few get too defensive, I believe it happens on both sides of most issues……… but the left side may not be cheering much for awhile.

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        • Forester, I was visiting with a law enforcement person in my county and he pointed out that marijuana legalization is bringing us real problems because the laws were written without thinking about how they were to be enforced by on the ground people in a variety of situations. So it’s broader than just the natural resource world.

          In some cases, “how is the going to work in real life?” is too complicated to predict (like “drug cartels will come to Colorado and grow it illegally and put pressure on law enforcement).” But other things could be improved simply by asking the people enforcing the new law or regulation whether it is written in a way that it can be enforced meaningfully and safely.

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  3. And the irony is, here in Oregon the legalization of marijuana has crossed the ecological and societal bridge and wasn’t too tough to predict.
    We have the unintended social effect of drawing in a social element that draws down the economics of the area, raises criminal activity, while clear cutting thousands of acres with no intention of replanting trees, over loading the soils with nitrogen and chemicals, to harm owls and salmoids. All these things that no one making the laws believed could be true. All the things that those voting for it, said was just the opposition trying to take their freedom. But the biggest irony is the number of people ok with clearing the forests for grows, but believe it’s socially unacceptable to manage and commercially log because it clears trees, supposedly harm wildlife and doesn’t improve the quality of life for the economic area. ……… go figure.

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