by REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso
Keynote speech at Montana Conservation Voters annual meeting, Helena, Montana; March 14, 2003
Good evening. I want to thank Montana Conservation Voters for inviting me here. I especially want to say hi to Monika Heinbaugh. She and I went through the Environmental Leadership Program training last summer and discovered the joys of sleep deprivation and the most wonderful camp food I have ever tasted.
As a board member for Washington Conservation Voters, I can appreciate the hard work it takes for Montana Conservation Voters to get good people elected to the Legislature and then to hold them accountable. That's especially trying during legislative sessions. With all due respect to the legislators in the room, a legislative session is kind of a recurring human asteroid strike. Every hair-raising story I could bring to you from Olympia, I'm sure you could top with one from Helena.
Let me tell you a little about that other organization I work for—Republicans for Environmental Protection. The first reaction we get is, "Republicans for Environmental Protection" — that sounds like an oxymoron, kind of like diet ice cream or the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act.
Well, it's a real organization, of real people—Republicans who care about restoring our party's conservation tradition. We were founded in 1995 by three women who attended an endangered species conference in DC and were greeted with titters when they identified themselves as Republicans.
Our goal is to bring forward the day when having Republicans at a conservation conference does not result in titters or even a second thought. We are proud to call ourselves Theodore Roosevelt Republicans—ordinary voters trying to keep alive the legacy of a great president who said that conservation is America's patriotic duty.
We don't believe conservation should be a partisan issue. There are no Republican forests or Democratic rivers. You might be interested to know, however, that conservation is consistent with traditional conservative ideas—such as thrift, efficiency, paying your own way, discipline, self-restraint, putting the nation's interests ahead of your own, and looking after the interests of future generations.
Now, we can argue—and we always will—about the most effective ways of conserving natural resources and protecting quality of life. But we should not frame our debates as "economy vs. environment." It's not either-or. It's both-and.
Lately, some of our Republican leaders have gotten crosswise on conservation. Whether it's the way they say it, or what they truly believe, sometimes it seems as if they don't place any value in conservation at all.
Our leaders need to remember, as John McCain said once, that nature is not a leftwing plot. Indeed, the Republican Party has a proud conservation history.
Abraham Lincoln protected Yosemite Valley.
The law establishing Yellowstone National Park was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President, Ulysses S. Grant.
Conservative business interests successfully campaigned to amend the New York State Constitution to declare the Adirondacks Forest to be "forever wild." They knew the value of the clean water that wild forests produce. Clean water keeps the wheels of commerce turning.
In the 20th century, Herbert Hoover used the Antiquities Act to establish nine national monuments. And not just little ones either. Big ones. Like the Grand Canyon. Death Valley. And White Sands. In fact, the Antiquities Act has been used by14 of our presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, to protect special places.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 would not have become law without the efforts of Congressman John P. Saylor, a conservative Republican from the hardwood forests of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He said America needs wilderness to toughen ourselves, to give us peace of mind, and to hold us to our moral bearings.
There's a good story about Saylor. One day, he was hiking in what is now Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona. He spotted a man pocketing a piece of petrified wood, sort of a souvenir. Now, Saylor was a big man. He had a loud voice. He liked to use it too. He strode over to the man and shouted at him, "Put that back, it's mine!" "What do you mean, yours?" the man replied. Saylor lowered his voice and told the man that if everyone takes a piece of our common inheritance, soon there will be nothing left. The man put the piece of petrified wood back where it belonged in the Arizona desert.
Of course, Theodore Roosevelt set the conservation gold standard. Eighteen national monuments. Five national parks. 130 million acres of national forests. And our great system of National Wildlife Refuges.
Today, March 14, is the 100th anniversary of America's National Wildlife Refuge System. Theodore Roosevelt established the first refuge on Pelican Island in Florida. Today, the system includes about 95 million acres inside 540 units—including the National Bison Range, Red Rock Lakes, Charles M. Russell, and many others here in Montana.
The first refuge came about because at the time, it was the fashion for women to adorn their hats with feathers. To fill the demand for feathers, birds were hunted rather severely on Pelican Island and elsewhere. This was brought to Roosevelt's attention. He asked his aides, "Is there any federal law that would prevent me from declaring Pelican Island a federal bird reservation?" His aides replied, "No, Mr. President, we don't know of any." Roosevelt said, "Very well, then, I so declare it."
The refuges are great places to fish, hunt, and watch wildlife. There is big money in wildlife recreation—a point we should keep in mind as we debate protecting wildlife and the clean, healthy habitat wildlife must have to thrive.
A report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that 82 million people fished, hunted, or watched wildlife in 2001.
Those 82 million people spent $108 billion while doing so.
The Fish and Wildlife Service broke the numbers down by state. Here in Montana, the service estimates that people fishing, hunting, and watching wildlife spent 1 billion dollars in 2001. That's 5 percent of the entire gross state economic product. That beats the total value of mining, the total value of oil and gas, the total value of lumber and wood products in Montana's economy.
Now, I don't mean to belittle those other industries. Mining, oil and gas, and forest products are important industries in Montana. They bring jobs and value to the state's economy. My point is to offer a perspective you often don't hear from my side of the aisle— a clean, healthy environment is good for the economy. The wildlife recreation economy does not have the visibility of, say, a timber harvest near Libby or a refinery in Billings—but the jobs and dollars are there, nevertheless.
If the Legislature doesn't mind a little gratuitous advice from someone from out of state, I hope they keep that perspective in mind and steps back from the grave step of weakening the initiative prohibiting new game ranches.
You see, voters understand the value of prudence—of taking precautions and giving ourselves large margins. Prudence is an old conservative virtue. That's why I think people voted for Initiative 143. They understand that the spread of chronic wasting disease is a threat to Montana's treasured big game and hunting heritage and would be very bad for business. Better safe than sorry.
We often describe natural resources as natural capital -- like a stock or a bond investment. Capital returns dividends. In the case of natural capital, those dividends are free services -- clean water, fish, wildlife, topsoil, and many others. Best of all, the services come free of charge—no maintenance fees, no inflated bonuses for the CEO. What a deal.
The value of those services has been estimated at about $36 trillion per year, about equal to the total global economic product. If you capitalize it, nature is worth 400 to 500 trillion dollars.
The cardinal rule of conservative investment management is -- never spend down the principal.
So, let's consider the case of water. The voters relied on that old conservative value of prudence when they voted to adopt Initiative 137. The voters made a reasonable judgment that the risks of cyanide-leach mining outweigh the benefits. Polluted water is unusable and cleanup is expensive. Minimizing the risk of damaging water supplies, especially in drought country, is a good business decision.
Again, the voters said better safe than sorry. Again, if you don't mind a little gratuitous advice, I hope the Legislature keeps that perspective in mind and avoids taking the grave step of second-guessing the voters on this matter.
Speaking of water … In the West, there is never enough of it. When droughts come calling, there is even less.
In fact, drought is becoming a national issue. The possibility of water shortages is even worrying people in the wettest parts of the country. A recent article about Florida contains this astonishing sentence: "In a state that gets 53 inches of rain per year, water abundance is now an illusion."
Well … in the short-grass country, folks have never been under such illusions. Helena is your political capital, but water is your natural capital.
Farmers growing hay, ranchers raising cattle, are never far from the edge. When drought comes along, they're that much closer.
This is not a trivial matter. Agriculture produces more than $2 billion a year in economic value for Montana.
So, it is curious that ranchers sometimes get a cool reception when they bring up the risks of coalbed methane development.
There are about 250 coalbed methane wells in Montana today. By 2010, there could be 40 to 100 times as many.
Coalbed methane wells extract the gas by removing water off the coal seam. At 10 gallons a minute, 24,000 wells will extract 345 million gallons of water a day from aquifers. That's twice as much water as the entire city of Seattle uses -- every latte stand, every home, every factory.
When aquifers drop, well levels drop and springs go dry. What will farmers and ranchers in the Powder River Basin do if their well levels drop? Who will pay if wells run dry?
All that methane water has to go somewhere. It's too salty for irrigation—so current practices elsewhere include discharging it into streams, onto soils, or into open impoundments, which may or may not hold it reliably. Who will pay for cleaning up these impoundments? Who will pay for getting rid of the noxious weeds that will spread over salt-damaged soils?
What are the risks that coalbed methane development will spend down the water capital of a state prone to drought?
I'm not suggesting that coalbed methane development be stopped. Regardless of how people in this room feel about it, it's going to happen. America is using 22 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. By 2015, we'll be using 31 trillion cubic feet. Our appetite may be whetted even more if natural gas becomes the preferred feedstock for hydrogen to power fuel cell cars.
There are equitable solutions. Montana's water can be protected by reinjecting methane water back into aquifers, as is done in Colorado. Adequate reclamation bonding can ensure that gas companies pay their fair share of the costs. Surface user agreements can protect property owners who will have to make their living off the land long after the gas boom is over.
Coalbed methane one of many ways Montana produces energy. Montana has other forms of energy that could mean money for farmers and ranchers.
Energy is where the intersection between the economy and the environment becomes crystal clear -- especially when you're talking about renewable energy.
There is wind … which I'm told blows in Montana every now and then. Of all the new energy technologies, wind is commercially competitive today. Montana's potential is enormous -- 17 million acres, 20 percent of the state's land area have investment-grade wind resources. That means the wind blows hard enough and persistently enough to interest developers who build commercial wind farms.
In Wheatland County, a rancher plans to lease some of his land to developers planning a 180-megawatt wind farm. He'll get $3,000 per turbine every year—a firm price not subject to wild fluctuations of commodity crop markets and a cushion to help him ride out droughts.
Biomass is another energy source with great potential. Forestry residues mill waste, energy crops, crop residues, and livestock waste could be turned into methane gas, ethanol, or biodiesel.
Let me focus on ethanol for a moment. Today, ethanol is a niche product because you have to produce it from starch, a very small slice of the plant kingdom. You're at the mercy of corn prices. That makes ethanol uncompetitive.
The key to driving down cost is to find ways of drawing ethanol from all kinds of plant matter -- stems, stalks, wheat straw, grasses, wood chips, and much more. It's called "cellulosic biomass"—and it's everywhere.
If we can perfect technologies for fermenting cheap ethanol from cellulosic biomass, that would be a game-changer. New markets for Montana farmers, new economic growth for Montana towns, cleaner air, cleaner water, a source of hydrogen for fuel cells, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and much less reliance on the Middle East for energy.
There are 2 million cars on the road right now that could burn E85, a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Detroit produces them to meet fuel efficiency standards. Most of the owners of these vehicles don't even know they can fuel them with E85.
Montana by itself cannot hasten the clean energy breakthroughs we need. But Montana can be a key part of the team. Conservationists, farmers, ranchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, developers, and elected officials can help our nation move the clean energy ball forward.
As former CIA Director Jim Woolsey said at a renewable energy conference last year, a coalition of tree huggers, farmers, defense hawks, and do-gooders would be unstoppable.
And that gets to the point of my whole talk. In the past two decades or so we have tied ourselves into ideological knots over the environment. We have put ourselves into a box that describes the economy and the environment as irreconcilable.
First, we must untangle the knots. To be sure, conservation has ideological roots, from both progressive and conservative traditions. But primarily, protecting the environment is a matter of practical household management. This is our home and we must take care of it. If you have a hole in the roof, you go up and fix it. You don't try to convince the rest of the family that the puddle building up on the living room floor isn't really there.
Second, we must help people understand science—what science is telling us, but more importantly, how science works. Citizens need tools to critically evaluate he-said, she-said stories that often pass for environmental reporting in the media.
Third, we must be clear in our advocacy. Conservationists, acknowledge that we use nature's bounty. The lights in this room, the chairs we are seated in, ultimately came from something that was grown or extracted. That's reality. What we want are methods of growing, extracting, and adding value to products in ways that minimize waste, prevent pollution, and don't violate the land's integrity.
From the political left, we need a greater willingness to consider market-based solutions. The market is not an infallible deity. But it is a useful tool that can spur innovation at reduced cost, if we understand its limits and enforce safeguards against abuse.
From the political right, we need a greater willingness to consider property in a broader context. The right to use and enjoy property is fundamental. But property rights are not absolute and never have been, not since the colonial era. We live in communities with neighbors, who deserve consideration. And, we need to safeguard our natural capital, so it will keep delivering the free services that we cannot exist without.
It is our ethical responsibility to take good care of the land, keep the air and water clean, and leave a conservation inheritance—so that future generations have choices. That is the essence of democracy. As Theodore Roosevelt said: " The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."
