Finish off the finishing myth
The ink was barely dry on President Clinton’s
rule limiting road building and logging in roadless forests, when the howl
went up.
Idaho’s governor declared that the state
will sue the federal government to invalidate the rule. Idaho’s senators
have vowed that Congress will change the rule, which was thoroughly vetted
in public hearings and which has nationwide public support.
The administration rule bans road building
and logging on 58 million acres of federal land, 9.4 million in Idaho
alone. The rule makes it possible for the federal government to take care
of existing roads instead of building costly new ones. It also protects
wild areas from damaging development.
It’s a "conservative" rule. It
recognizes that the U.S. Forest Service can’t afford to take care of the
roads already on federal land. It recognizes that new roads destroy wild
country. Yet, that’s not the way many in the party that will soon occupy
the White House see it.
The new chairman of the House Resources
Committee, James Hansen R-Utah, is taking aim at the rule and the rest of
the Clinton legacy. He has compiled a hit list for review including 11
national monuments, oil drilling and mining restrictions, bans on
snowmobiles in Yellowstone and other national parks, fly-overs of the
Grand Canyon and other parks, a ban on personal water craft, oil and gas
royalty formulas, and the roadless rule.
The moves to destroy the Clinton legacy are
misguided.
Historians tell us that development in the
American West was based on a finishing myth—the idea that the world as
it existed was unfinished without the works of man to make it
"better."
The trouble is all works of man are not
created equal and "better" has proven to be in the eye of the
beholder.
The idea that any work of man in any
location—a road, for example--is a good work is indisputably misguided.
Witness the polluted silted rivers of the West.
Worse, the idea is harmful because it
allows development with no thought of tomorrow and its consequences—loss
of wild species and loss of clean water and air.
Those who subscribed to the finishing myth
had gone too far when Clinton came into office.
The new administration should think twice
before undoing the Clinton legacy. Idaho and the rest of the nation should
try to live with the new roadless rule before trying to change it.
There’s more involved than partisan
politics and a president’s ego. The nation must choose between two
endings for the myth: Finish off the myth or finish off what’s left of
the wild places of earth.
