Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona, says it won\u2019t be easy to tap wind and solar energy sources in the West while at the same time preserving wildlife, native cultural sites and landscape views across millions of acres.<\/p>\n
The key, he told the Review-Journal last weekend, is for the Bureau of Land Management to adopt \u201cbetter policies\u201d to ensure those treasures are preserved when it comes time to develop solar, wind and geothermal power on public lands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe important thing is to have good front-end land use planning,\u201d said Mr. Babbitt, who joined a Nevada gathering of \u201cenvironmental\u201d groups that make a habit of bringing lawsuits to delay or block any development in the west, including alternative energy — primarily under the guise of \u201cprotecting wildlife habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n
And such \u201cplanning\u201d will allow the new transmission lines to proceed without such disruptions? Wanna bet?<\/p>\n
Mr. Babbitt, who served as Interior Secretary under President Bill Clinton, represented the Colorado-based \u201cConservation Lands Foundation\u201d at the third annual \u201cFriends Rendezvous\u201d that began Friday in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about kicking everybody off the land. It\u2019s about protecting traditional uses of the land,\u201d Mr. Babbitt asserted. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not about building all of the infrastructure that comes with a national park. It\u2019s about getting the community behind it and protecting traditional uses,\u201d Mr. Babbitt asserted.<\/p>\n
Really?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s scenic splendor in the West, sure. Few who live here would want the empty lands all paved. Most Westerners are also happy to see the recovery of bison, eagle, and other species once over-hunted.<\/p>\n
But unfortunately, if we\u2019re discussing the arrogant gang that have dominated the environmental movement in recent years, Mr. Babbitt is wrong: it certainly has been \u201cabout kicking everybody off the land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where are Clark County\u2019s cattle ranchers? Despite the fact that desert tortoise counts are typically higher on lands where the scrub is grazed down by cattle, extremists have made cattle ranching so onerous that only one or two ranchers now persevere, where 50 years ago there were dozens.<\/p>\n
Throughout the West, an ongoing government campaign — backed by the eco-extremists — digs pits or places boulders to block access to unpaved roads or trails to block their \u201ctraditional use\u201d by off-road vehicles. Old-timers report old structures are quietly torn down to facilitate new “wilderness” designations.<\/p>\n
While he was Interior Secretary, Mr. Babbitt participated in many a public-relations stunt in which he pretended to hand checks the size of surfboards to various mining interests, claiming these were the \u201csubsidies\u201d the taxpayers provided these risk-takers and job-creators by \u201cnot charging them enough\u201d for mining permits on public lands.<\/p>\n
And are we really expected to believe Mr. Babbitt wants to \u201cprotect the traditional land use\u201d of amateur pot-digging, in a land where the only remaining \u201cnative cultural sites\u201d are frequently old garbage middens?<\/p>\n
If so, why the set-ups, the stings, the federal prosecutions that lead to suicides by such upstanding local citizens as beloved 60-year-old rural Utah doctor Jim Redd?<\/p>\n
Try calling the federal government to come excavate a site once erosion exposes bones or textiles or earthenware, meaning most useful artifacts will be eroded or carried away by predators in short order. Try.<\/p>\n
For that matter, they only assert collecting is illegal on federal lands, even if they misleadingly call them \u201cpublic lands.\u201d Ask them to show you a bill of sale for the lands in question, proving Washington \u201cpurchased\u201d said lands \u201cby the consent of the Legislature of the state in which the same shall be,\u201d as required by Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, the only clause under which the federals can gain control over ANY American lands outside the District if Columbia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spend a lot of time tramping around the West meeting with local groups and talking about the importance of getting this BLM conservation mission really embedded in the cultural and political matrix of the West,\u201d said Mr. Babbitt, in effect promising more of the same.<\/p>\n
Among the best examples to follow is Friends of Gold Butte, organized by Mesquite resident Nancy Hall, Mr. Babbitt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe land belongs to us and we need to take care of it. It belongs to everyone,\u201d Ms. Hall preened.<\/p>\n
Actually, property rights in the West have a 150-year history as a complex mosaic of PRIVATE property rights, including overlays of mineral, water, and grazing rights which most certainly do not belong to any self-anointed \u201ccollective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t the former Arizona governor just say, a few paragraphs above, that \u201cIt\u2019s about protecting traditional uses of the land?\u201d Hasn\u2019t the \u201ctraditional use\u201d of lands including Gold Butte, over more than a century, included cattle grazing? But hasn\u2019t the federal goal for 30 years now amounted to imposing new and absurd rules that had the effect of driving virtually every cattle ranching operation out of Clark County, with the result that desert tortoise populations have fallen precisely where the cattle used to be, while wildfire risks have increased?<\/p>\n
What efforts do you suppose Ms. Hall will take to preserve this \u201ctraditional use\u201d?<\/p>\n
The green extreme seeks to drive up the costs of fossil fuels. But we shall see just how \u201ccooperative\u201d they prove when it comes time for them to forgo their next lawsuit, their next attempt to block development of the next alternative energy resource by claiming it threatens some previously unknown weed or bug, or — heaven forfend — \u201clandscape views across millions of acres.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona, says it won\u2019t be easy to tap wind and solar energy sources in the West while at the same time preserving wildlife, native cultural sites and landscape views across millions of acres. The key, he told the Review-Journal last weekend, is for the Bureau of Land Management to adopt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extreme-green","category-public-land"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-aa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}