This is from the AFRC newsletter: definitely checks the “things people agree on” box.
Section 7 of the ESA requires federal agencies to consult with the FWS and/or National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure that agency actions do not “jeopardize the continued existence” of a listed species or “adversely modify” or destroy designated critical habitat. Even under the best of circumstances, the consultation is somewhat of a “black box” for action agencies like the Forest Service or BLM, and even more so for timber purchasers, permittees, and others who rely on the consultation process.
On August 3, AFRC and industry partners National Association of Home Builders, American Farm Bureau Federation, and NFIB Small Business Legal Center filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging the Court to rule in favor of transparency in the consultation process. The case, called U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, addresses what parts of consultation are part of the “deliberative process” so that documents are privileged from release under the Freedom of Information Act.
The case involves a consultation by EPA where the Services prepared jeopardy biological opinions on a proposed rule for cooling water intake structures. Once EPA learned it was going to get jeopardy opinions, it stopped consultation on the initial version of the rule, rewrote the rule, and re-submitted to consultation, eventually getting no-jeopardy opinions. The Services refused to release the jeopardy BiOps, claiming they were “drafts” and therefore “deliberative.” The Ninth Circuit ruled against the Services, but the Supreme Court took the case in March.
Our brief describes how the Services’ actions can impose significant economic consequences without having to explain the scientific rationale. This case highlights a factual scenario that we have encountered where an agency will assert that it cannot select a particular alternative in planning or a project because it would not pass muster in consultation. Understanding the line between jeopardy and no-jeopardy is important for the regulated community to obtain the best outcomes when working with agencies on the ground.
Although AFRC and our partners are not often on the same side of a case as the Sierra Club, the ACLU, and The New York Times, this is an instance where a wide variety of stakeholders agree that transparency will be beneficial to the public interest. Other briefs along the same lines were filed by environmental organizations, former agency officials, and an array of media and civil liberties groups. The Court has set the case for argument on November 2, and will likely issue a decision by next June.
The author’s Jeep on the currently open section of the Hackett Gulch trail in Wildcat Canyon.
Patrick McKay is a board member of Colorado Offroad Enterprise (CORE) and Colorado Offroad Trail Defenders.
A coalition of motorized access groups led by Colorado Offroad Enterprise (CORE), has recently uncovered a disturbing plot by officials in the Pike San Isabel National Forest to illegally close one of the most popular motorized trail systems in Colorado in circumvention of the ongoing travel management process and in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Background
For many decades, off-road vehicle enthusiasts nationwide have enjoyed driving the rugged four-wheel-drive roads in Wildcat Canyon in the Pike National Forest. Located in a steep canyon along the South Platte River about an hour’s drive west of Colorado Springs on the border between Teller and Park Counties, these Jeep trails are also known as “The Gulches” after the three primary trails of Hackett, Longwater, and Metberry Gulches. Since roughly the late 1950s, these roads have been one of the most popular off-road trail systems in the Front Range for recreation enthusiasts seeking adventure, offering a unique set of off-road challenges, river access for swimming and fishing, and spectacular scenery in a rugged gorge filled with towering rock formations.
Since the early 2000s, however, Wildcat Canyon has been ground zero for one of the most contentious battles in Colorado between off-roaders and environmental groups determined to close these roads and lock motorized users, but not themselves, out of the canyon in the name of “conservation.” In 2002, the area around Wildcat Canyon was devastated by the Hayman Fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado history. All of the roads in the region were temporarily closed after the fire, and the Forest Service subsequently began working on a new environmental analysis to determine how to manage the roads in the burn zone.
After a highly contentious public comment period with off-road groups facing off against environmental groups wishing to close Wildcat Canyon to motorized use, the Forest Service issued a decision in 2004 which concluded that re-opening the roads in the canyon was the best option both to meet the public demands for motorized recreation and to protect the environment. However, due to its limited resources, the Forest Service would only allow the roads to be reopened if the relevant county governments agreed to take responsibility for maintaining these roads.
Teller County immediately applied for and was quickly granted easements allowing it to take over management of the eastern half of the Gulches trail system, which was reopened to the public by 2009, with the Colorado Springs off-road group Predator 4WD agreeing to maintain the trails on behalf of the county as they had already done for many years prior.
Park County, which contains the western half of the trail system, first applied for an easement in 2008. In contrast to Teller County, Park County’s attempts to obtain easements were repeatedly stonewalled by the Forest Service. Ultimately, Park County submitted no less than four easement applications between 2008 and 2014, with each being met with either silence or excuses from the Forest Service such as claims to have lost the paperwork or not having the budget to process it. Internal Forest Service emails obtained by CORE show agency employees, including two different South Park District rangers, repeatedly searching for reasons not to grant the easements and attempting to discourage Park County officials from moving forward with their request.
Finally in 2015, Park County Manager Tom Eisenman retracted the county’s easement application, apparently without obtaining the approval of the Park County Commission, leaving the Park County roads in limbo. With the eastern half of the trail system open and no signs or barriers at the county line to indicate the roads in Park County were closed, they have continued to be regularly driven by motorized users to this day.
New Travel Management Process
Also in 2015, a lawsuit by a coalition of preservationist groups resulted in a settlement agreement in which the Pike San Isabel National Forest agreed to completely re-do its motorized travel plan with a new travel management process. During the scoping period in 2016, the Forest Service received numerous comments asking it to reopen the closed roads in Wildcat Canyon.
The Forest Service responded by including an alternative in the draft EIS published in 2019, which considered reopening some (but not all) of these roads, leaving out crucial connecting routes to restore the loop opportunities provided by the original trail system. This analysis was flawed from the start, as it relied on a 2015 Travel Analysis Report written by South Park District Ranger Josh Voorhis. That report rated most of these roads as having low recreational value solely because they were currently closed, rather than considering the incredibly high value they had for motorized recreation when they were open, which had been repeatedly acknowledged by the Forest Service in prior environmental analyses.
Internal emails show that Mr. Voorhis strongly opposed including these roads in the travel management EIS at all, as he had already decided to permanently close and decommission them. As a result of the wide latitude Voorhis was given in making decisions for the roads in his district, the preferred alternative in the 2019 draft EIS proposed to decommission almost all of the Wildcat Canyon roads in Park County, with no indication that any serious consideration was ever given to reopening them. The preferred alternative also contained more road closures in the South Park District than in all other districts combined.
The Plot to Decommission the Roads
Instead of waiting for a final decision on the Wildcat Canyon roads to be made in the travel management process, Mr. Voorhis (along with South Platte District Ranger Brian Banks) decided to circumvent that process entirely and began working with local anti-motorized user groups to illegally decommission the roads with no environmental analysis or public involvement.
In May of 2018, Voorhis wrote an internal memo kicking off a decommissioning project with three elements: (1) Removing all existing metal signs and fencing from the Park County roads, (2) installing heavy metal barriers blocking access to the closed Park County roads from the open roads in Teller County, and (3) re-contouring the roads on the west side of the river to physically remove them from the ground. Another Forest Service employee strongly objected to Voorhis’ plan, saying in an email that decommissioning these highly desirable roads in a controversial area with no supporting environmental analysis or public input was illegal and invited distrust and justified outrage from the motorized community.
Nevertheless, Voorhis moved forward with his project, purchasing the metal barriers in the summer of 2019 and searching for contractors to install them that fall. Simultaneously, he and a Forest Service biologist with a demonstrably strong bias against motorized recreation wrote up a document claiming “changed circumstances” which would prevent Park County from being granted an easement under the 2004 EA, thereby thwarting a renewed push by CORE and other motorized groups to get Park County to re-apply for an easement in spring 2019.
It was during the public comment period for the draft EIS in fall 2019 that CORE first became aware of Voorhis’ plans to decommission these roads, when he unsuccessfully sought permission from Teller County to barricade the roads on the east side of the canyon further up in Teller County. CORE subsequently hired an attorney to file a FOIA request for all Forest Service documents pertaining to Wildcat Canyon, which we obtained in early 2020.
The Forest Supervisor’s Response
Having learned through the documents provided in response to our FOIA request of Voorhis’ plans to install permanent barriers blocking access to the Park County roads sometime in 2020, CORE wrote to Forest Supervisor Diana Trujillo this spring asking for her assurance that no actions would be taken to decommission any roads in Wildcat Canyon until after a final decision was made in the travel management EIS.
After a phone conversation with the Supervisor in May, Deputy Forest Supervisor Dave Condit wrote to us on her behalf on July 1 stating that, “The Forest does not plan to do any work on the roads in Wildcat Canyon this year. There will be no changes until we complete our Travel Management Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and sign the subsequent project Record of Decision (ROD).”
Unfortunately, this assurance turned out to be false. On the same day Mr. Condit sent his email, Wild Connections (the lead environmental group pushing for closure of Wildcat Canyon) published their July monthly newsletter in which they announced they had received a grant from Park County and permission from the South Park Ranger District to move forward with a “metal removal project” in Wildcat Canyon later this summer.
This project was the same as the first element of Mr. Voorhis’ decommissioning plan from May 2018, removing all the old signs and fencing from the Park County roads in preparation for obliterating the routes from the ground. Those signs and fences were originally placed decades ago by Predator 4WD in partnership with the Forest, and continue to be helpful today in preventing drivers who inadvertently drive the closed roads without knowing of the closure from going off trail. They would also be critical for this purpose if the roads were ever legally reopened.
When CORE contacted Ms. Trujillo again in August with these concerns and asked her to prevent Wild Connections from completing this project until a final travel management decision has been made, she dismissed our concerns, falsely claiming that the metal removal work was not decommissioning and it would not affect the outcome of the travel management process. This is unfortunate as it shows the Forest has no interest in partnering with or maintaining the trust of motorized groups who wish to see these trails reopened, and has already predetermined to close them regardless of public demand for motorized recreational opportunities in Wildcat Canyon.
Conclusion
At this point CORE has no choice but to assume the Forest has not been proceeding with good faith in this matter, and to prepare for inevitable objections and likely litigation over the Forest Service’s malfeasance regarding these roads. We are calling on all motorized recreationists to write to Supervisor Trujillo, as well as the Park County Commission and other elected officials, expressing extreme disappointment over the decision to proceed with decommissioning these roads before the travel management process is complete.
The fight is not over yet. The off-road community in Colorado is hopeful that, if enough individuals get involved and show that motorized recreation is important to them, these treasured roads will once again be open to all outdoor recreation enthusiasts
Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. USFS (D. Idaho)- On August 11, 2020, the district court ruled against the Forest Service on the Lost Creek-Boulder Creek Landscape Restoration Project on the Payette National Forest. The court held that the Forest failed to explain how changing the desired conditions (without amending the forest plan) would achieve the existing desired condition and therefore it violated the forest plan. (Plaintiffs version of the story is here. We had a long discussion of the Ninth Circuit’s decision on the original project here.)
(No linked court documents)
United States of America v. Robertson (D. Montana) – On August 7, 2020, the district court of Montana found defendant liable for trespass and damages associated with the White Pine patented mining claim on the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest.
Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center v. Grantham (E.D. Cal.) — On August 12, 2020, the district court issued a Stipulation for Dismissal without Prejudice regarding the Crawford Vegetation Project on the Klamath National Forest because the Forest Service withdrew the decision. (We discussed the issues in this case here.)
Los Padres Forest Watch v. U.S. Forest Service (C.D. Cal.) – On August 20, 2020, the district court upheld the Tecuya Ridge Shaded Fuelbreak Project on the Los Padres National Forest, which used the categorical exclusion for “timber stand and/or wildlife habitat improvement activities.” (We had an even longer discussion of this case here.)
Center for Biological Diversity v. Leverete (D. D.C.) — On August 5, 2020 the plaintiffs filed a complaint against the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Forest Service concerning the 4-year extension of 13 prospecting permits on the Superior National Forest to Twin Metals Minnesota LLC, for proposed sulfide-ore copper mine at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. (This is the latest of many lawsuits related to mining there, including this one (Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters) and this one (Wilderness Society. This article includes a map.)
Round v. USDA (D. Colo.)- On July 17, 2020, Plaintiff filed a complaint claiming property rights in grazing allotments and improvements on the Pike and San Isabel National Forest, Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands.
State of Alaska, Department of Fish and Game v. Federal Subsistence Board (D. Alaska) — The Forest Service and BLM were included in this complaint filed on August 10, 2020 involving the operation and decisions of the Board regarding native and non-native hunting rights on federal lands.
Nez Perce Tribe v. Midas Gold Corp (D. Idaho) — On August 18, 2020 Midas Gold (defendant) in this case, filed a proposed Third Party motion against the Forest Service to join this case, or in the alternate, to consolidate this case with the action Midas Gold Idaho, Inc. v. United States, concerning the Stibnite Gold Project on the Payette and Boise National Forests and alleged violations of the Clean Water Act by the Forest Service.
OTHER CASES
(No linked court documents, but the complaint is here.)
Citizens for a Healthy Community v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. Colo.) – On August 19, 2020 the plaintiffs filed a complaint against the BLM, concerning the agency’s approval of a revised Resource Management Plan for BLM’s Uncompahgre Field Office (UFO) in southwestern Colorado, which opens 871,810 acres of BLM, other federal lands and private mineral rights to oil and gas leases. (Here is some local coverage.)
(New case.) The Cottonwood Environmental Law Center has sued the Custer-Gallatin National Forest for failing to reconsider its 1987 forest plan direction based on new scientific information about the ineffectiveness of fuel treatments on wildfire prior to implementing these projects. (The forest plan is currently being revised.)
(Other agency court decision.) NRDC v. U. S. Department of the Interior – On August 11, 2020, a federal district court in New York ruled that the unintentional or incidental “take” of migratory birds is a crime under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The law is best known for its use in fining those responsible for large oil spills, with the money being used for restoration purposes, but it can come up in Forest Service litigation. The Forest Service has an MOU with the Fish and Wildlife Service obligating it to “address the conservation of migratory bird habitat and populations when developing, amending, or revising management plans for national forests and grasslands…”
According to the U.S. Forest Service, the agency manages access to, and development of, federal oil and natural gas resources on approximately one-third of the over 150 national forests and grasslands. Source of photo and info: https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/geology/energyminerals/oilandgas
Here’s a press release from a number of conservation groups about another Trump administration plan to make it easier for corporations to drill for oil and gas on National Forest System lands.
On September 1, the administration will release its plan to make it easier for companies to drill for oil and gas on U.S. Forest Service lands. The proposed rule is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.
National forest lands serve a vital role in the climate solution by storing carbon. Under this new rule, the administration would escalate oil and gas development, increase carbon emissions and exacerbate the climate crisis, putting human as well as the forests’ health at risk at a time when public health is the nation’s top concern.
The proposed rule would cut the public out of the process used to decide whether and which lands will be opened to oil and gas drilling. It would also give excessive leeway to companies that don’t follow US Forest Service (USFS) laws and weaken that agency’s ability to protect public land from development and degradation.
By adopting this dramatic departure from its long-standing role, Forest Service would give away its right to serve as a check on leasing in those places that need protections.
“By undermining the public participation and environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act, this proposed rule puts the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of the public interest,” said Will Fadely, senior government relations representative, The Wilderness Society. “Our national forests and grasslands have never been more important for preserving and passing a healthy world forward to future generations.”
“National forests are treasured by the American people for their recreation, watershed and wildlife values,” said Pete Nelson, federal lands director for Defenders of Wildlife. “Accelerating oil and gas drilling on national forests will hasten the extinction and climate crises at a time when we need to be moving in the exact opposite direction.”
“The administration really outdid itself with a proposal that has the Forest Service walking away from its responsibilities for managing our national forests and grassland while closing the door on public oversight,” said Nada Culver, vice president of public lands and senior counsel for the National Audubon Society. “This is not just a conservation issue, it’s putting our communities at risk. Replacing forested areas and grasslands with drill pads and access roads not only means fewer birds like mallards and prairie warblers, but also degrades our lands and natural spaces, and threatens water supplies for millions of people.”
“Tens of millions of Americans hike, camp, fish, hunt, bike, and run in our national forests each year,” said Sharon Buccino, senior director of lands for the Nature Program at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “This rule would sideline their voices in favor of the fossil fuel industry. We won’t allow the Trump administration to shut down public review of drilling in our national forests that the American people don’t want and that the climate can’t afford.”
Specifically, the rule would:
Reduce public input and transparency by removing the requirement that a Forest Service office give public notice of the decision to approve a Surface Use Plan of Operations, the specific plan for development.
Allow the Forest Service to skip important and necessary environmental reviews for leasing decisions. This, together with other administration roll backs of NEPA regulations, undermines that law’s role in good forest management.
Make it more difficult for the Forest Service to stop bad lease sales by removing explicit confirmation of USFS consent as a standard step in the leasing process.
Remove environmental considerations as criteria for decisions to approve plans.
Loosen the rules by giving developers unbounded discretion to extend deadlines and comply with operating standards. Currently, compliance deadlines can only be extended if the operator cannot meet them due to factors out of their control.
Limit the Forest Service to only protect specific, named natural resources and ignore opportunities to address climate change or protect vital wild places.
By filtering air and water, lands managed by the USFS provide clean drinking water and clean air for millions of people and serve an essential role in tackling the climate and the extinction crises. Currently, if US public lands and waters were constituted a country, they would rank as the fifth largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, ahead of Japan, Brazil and Germany.
A map of Colorado’s oil and gas activity. The blue-shaded area are the oil/gas basins, including the Denver-Julesburg, the largest. Purple and brown mark oil and natural gas fields.
Colorado Politics had an interesting article about Colorado’s never-ending oil and gas regulation debates (they’re never-ending because some groups want to stop permitting oil and gas altogether).
Federal versus state authority
Kinder Morgan, a pipeline company, pleaded for changes around oil and gas activity on federal lands, as did the American Petroleum Institute. Among them: a claim that the state cannot veto federally-approved land use. They asked that the COGCC change a rule that makes it clear that the commission cannot deny a comprehensive area plan (which outlines an oil and gas development) located on federal-owned or managed surface lands already approved by a federal land manager. However, the COGCC could consult with the appropriate federal agency as well as the operator, according to Ana Gutierrez of Hogan Lovells, representing Kinder Morgan.
The commission should also add a rule on site-specific data, mapping and analysis on geologic hazards, such as fault lines, rock falls, mudflows and unstable slopes.
In response, Assistant Attorney General Joel Minor said relevant federal statutes dating back to 1920, as well as case law, do recognize state authority to regulate oil and gas activity on federal lands. That includes state authority to protect the environment and wildlife resources on federal lands, he said.
Is that just about oil and gas on federal lands, or does it apply to everything (mines, windfarms, etc.)? Does it only work if states want to be more protective?
Meanwhile, if you think governments in D control will be spared lawsuits about the environment..Wild Earth Guardians is suing the State of Colorado for moving too slowly towards its climate goals.
Such a plan is still months away. The state has been working with an outside consultant on a roadmap to guide its policymaking to meet the climate targets. Putnam expects the effort to wrap up by the end of September.
He added the lawsuit won’t force the state to move any faster. If anything, he worries it could divert scarce legal resources away from the rulemaking process into a legal defense. In a statement from the Governor’s Office, spokesperson Conor Cahill expanded on the point, writing the administration has taken “unprecedented action” to retire coal-fired power plants and electrify Colorado’s economy.
“It’s very unfortunate that some seek to distract from the nationally-leading success of Colorado in order to justify a risky and expensive strategy such as a state-based cap and trade system that has not demonstrated the ability to effectively cut emissions elsewhere. Coloradans trust that Governor Polis will continue to act boldly and swiftly and utilize the tools and resources available to create good green jobs, address climate change, and ensure we can all breathe cleaner air,” wrote Cahill.
Nichols countered the state doesn’t need to waste time fighting the lawsuit. All it needs to do is submit rules to put Colorado on track to meet its climate goals.
“We don’t rush into lawsuits. It’s not something we take lightly, but the stakes are so high here,” he said.
In my experience, speed has never been the ally of crafting good rules about complex phenomena with diverse stakeholders and interests.
In case you were wondering, this is entirely by design and intentional malfeasance.
“The Bureau of Land Management’s move West has resulted in changes to the bureau’s organization that, in some instances, reduced staff in divisions overseeing planning and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act.
Documents obtained by E&E News reveal new details of how BLM’s move to the West has changed and rearranged staffing, while the bureau continues to obfuscate the results of its overhaul of the bureau.”
As you all may recall, according to this September 2019 article in the Washington Post:
“The Bureau of Land Management has selected a site for its new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo. — and it’s in a building that also serves as the home to a Chevron corporate office, a state oil and gas association and an independent natural gas exploration company….
The four-story office building with two wings is home to more than just Chevron, Laramie Energy and a branch of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. In addition, the building has offices of Shaw, a major construction firm; Moody Insurance Agency; ProStar Geocorp, a provider of geospatial software; and a firm providing cloud storage for school districts, according to one of the building’s tenants.
Located on the Rockies’ Western Slope, Grand Junction lies in the heart of a natural gas reservoir, and the region hosts a number of oil and gas operations. While more than 90 percent of the bureau’s employees already work in the West, Interior officials said they were moving most of the staff to the region so they could work closer to the people most affected by the agency’s decisions.”
I found two articles in my newsfeed this morning from sources I have rarely or never heard from, and on both sides of the political canyon. Both are related to the respective campaigns.
People for the American Way used a Forest Service case to make their point about the risk of more conservative judges being nominated by a Republican administration. Here’s the headline: “Trump Judge Tries to Permit Forest Service to Proceed with Commercial Logging of Trees Without Assessing Environmental Impact: Confirmed Judges Confirmed Fears.” They provide a reasonable summary of EPIC v. Carlson (which we reported here), but attack the dissent written by the Trump appointee, saying, “If it had been up to Trump judge Lee, however, that would not be the case, risking significant environmental injury.”
I’m not sure there is anything particularly unusual about this case – traditionally conservative judges seem to be more willing to defer to agency expertise (though Trump refers to agency expertise as “the swamp”). I do think it is unusual for a national forest lawsuit to be dragged into a presidential campaign.
Then there was the logger who spoke at the Republican National Convention, and was featured in Breitbart.
“Under Obama-Biden, radical environmentalists were allowed to kill the forests,” Dane said.
“Under President Trump, we’ve seen a new recognition of the value of forest management in reducing wildfires,” Dane said. “And we’ve seen new support for our way of life—where a strong back and a strong work ethic can build a strong middle class.”
“We want to build families where we’re raised and stand by communities that have stood by us,” Dane said. “We want that way of life available for the next generation, and we want our forests there too.”
The debates about the “value of forest management in reducing wildfires” of course haven’t been settled. But I’m more interested here in the idea that it should be the role of government to perpetuate anyone’s industry, job, hometown or “way of life,” logging in particular. (I always thought Republicans wanted to limit the role of government.)
Decarbonization can be framed as fundamentally an engineering problem. If you frame the problem that way, the solution clearly lies with .. engineers. This is an interview that Tisha Shuller (an Environment Without Enemies heroine) conducted with Dr. Michael Webber of University of Texas, who is currently on assignment working for ENGIE in Paris, France. It’s part of the Energy Thinks podcast series.
If you’re a techy at heart you’ll enjoy his review of current technologies, and what they can do, can’t do, and may be able in the future to do. He also dives into the international scene from the small-scale (there’s not enough organic material in Saudi Arabia to do biogas) to health impacts (4 million people die due to indoor air pollution from solid fuels in Africa) to really big changes in carbon that would result from substituting natural gas for coal in India and China.
As in Webber’s essay in Mechanical Engineering, he talks about how this is an “all hands on deck” moment for climate, and we are “better rowing together in the same boat in the same direction.” We need everybody, but it’s hard to take leadership towards a future vision that does not include you.
This might remind you of the timber or grazing workers/industry (“Oil consumption is as much about demand as supply”), or the “vision that does not include you” might resonate with OHV or MB folks. Anyway, I recommend the entire podcast, but if you don’t have much time (or aren’t interested in technology) try his essay in Mechanical Engineering linked above. The excerpt below is from that essay.
Humans are hard-wired for fairness. We feel satisfied when everyone gets their just reward and are outraged when we discover cheating. But that innate desire for justice can get in the way of solving our biggest challenges.
Take climate change: When scientists and environmental activists take stock of the mess we are in, the oil and gas sector is a handy villain. For people tapping into their instinct for retribution, the petroleum industry ought to be punished for the damage it has caused and cut out from any opportunity to participate in the upcoming transition to a clean energy economy. To activists who have made climate change a top priority, anything less feels like inviting an arsonist to help put out the fire.
As with everything, however, the truth is more nuanced.
If tackling climate change is something we want to do quickly and with as little social disruption as possible, then the oil and gas industry is, in fact, a critical partner. Petroleum companies have some of the deepest pockets and most technically capable workforces around.
Is there a way to work with them, rather than against them, to promote a low-carbon future?
Unquestionably, many oil and gas companies have been bad actors. At best, the petroleum industry has ignored the problem while making a profit off the products that worsened the situation. At worst, it actively worked to delay action by funding misinformation campaigns or lobbying to delay policy action.
But blaming the industry leaves out our own culpability for our consumptive, impactful lifestyles. Oil consumption is as much about demand as supply.
Rather than finding someone to blame, let’s look for who can help.
So far, I’ve heard about the Forest Service Budget Modernization Effort from a few people and a discussion with cooperators put on by Sustainable Northwest today.
If I recall correctly from the SN discussion:
It’s in response to Congress’s (continuing) displeasure at the FS lack of transparency in the budget.
R-6 is doing it differently than other regions.
In R-6 they’re going to run fixed costs out of the RO.
I’ve asked contacts for something already written about this, but have received nothing so far. There’s a description around page 138 of the 2021 budget justification, but I’m wondering how it’s playing out and if is a description out there somewhere at a generic level for fellow FS aficionados.
I am saddened by the fires in California this summer, especially those in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in the redwoods south of San Francisco and north of Santa Cruz. I spent much time as a teenager roaming Big Basin State Park, Butano State Park, and other places. Beautiful places. But they haven’t been destroyed — far from it. Fire is as natural there as in other forest types in the west. I recall playing in old redwoods hollowed out at the base by fire, still standing and growing.
Fire was once common in the redwoods, but as in the Sierras and elsewhere, the elimination of Native American fire and aggressive fire suppression has led to high levels of fuels, dead and green. Some observers will point to climate change as the dominant role in these fires, but human management or the lack of it is a large and often ignored factor.
