[Vision2020] The Trees Are All Right

[Dave]

Really nice article, thanks Wayne.

Dave


On 03/09/2012 06:46 AM, Art Deco wrote:
>
>
>   Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web
>   <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>
>
> March 8, 2012, 8:30 pm
>
>
>       The Trees Are All Right
>
> By TIMOTHY EGAN 
> <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/timothy-egan/>
>
> Timothy Egan 
> <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/timothy-egan/> on 
> American politics and life, as seen from the West.
>
>
>         Tags:
>
> national parks 
> <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/national-parks/>, public 
> land <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/public-land/>, 
> republicans <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/republicans/>, 
> romney <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/romney/>, santorum 
> <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/santorum/>, trees 
> <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/trees/>
>
> In most of the American West, the trees are not the right height, 
> which may frighten Mitt Romney, and some of them are so old as to 
> challenge the biblical view of creation that Rick Santorum wants 
> taught in schools.
>
> The tallest trees in the world, the coast redwoods of northern 
> California, grow to 378 feet --- more than half the size of Seattle's 
> Space Needle. The oldest trees in the world, bristlecone pines that 
> cling to hard ground in Nevada's Great Basin, can live for up to 5,000 
> years.
>
> The saguaro cactus, with its droopy, anthropomorphic limbs, is the 
> signature tree of the Southwest, though some say it is not technically 
> a tree. And the western red cedar, armored in bark that Indians made 
> into waterproof clothing, is a symbol of the Northwest.
>
> This arbor tutorial is prompted by the slack-jawed ignorance of the 
> last Republicans standing in the bad-idea-fest that is their party 
> primary. Every week, it seems, the conveyor belt of craziness serves 
> up another archaic idea from the people who want to represent a party 
> that claims at least 40 percent of the electorate.
>
> Romney, of course, famously said he liked the trees of Michigan 
> because they were "just the right height" --- a bizarre and harmless 
> pander. But last month, in a campaign swing that was overlooked by the 
> national press, Romney told a gathering in Nevada that he wasn't much 
> of a fan of the trees on public land --- at least that was the 
> impression he left.
>
> He said, "I don't know what the purpose is" of the great American 
> public land legacy --- a domain that includes 190 million acres of 
> national forests, 52 million acres of national parks, and more than 
> 500 million acres of open range, wildlife refuges and other turf under 
> management of the Interior Department.
>
> Romney has never been much of an outdoor guy, and strikes me as the 
> kind of person who would wear wingtips on a hike. Once, asked to give 
> a sense of his outdoor cred, Romney said, "I've always been a rodent 
> and rabbit hunter --- small varmints, if you will."
>
> Had he ever taken something other than a BB gun beyond the bunny 
> range, Romney would know that American hunters consider themselves 
> privileged to have so much unfenced country that is theirs as a 
> birthright of citizenship. A clueless rich man, Romney can afford the 
> private ranches of Texas, where one-percenters chase exotic animals 
> without breaking a sweat.
>
> The rest of us need our public land. The West is defined by new, 
> fast-growing cities surrounded by the mountains, mesas, forests, 
> sandstone spires and various shared settings. There is no other place 
> in the world where urban and wild coexist over such a huge area. If 
> you are poor, you can feel rich just minutes from the city, in your 
> estate that is a national forest. If you ski in the high Sierra, or 
> raft a runaway river in Utah, you are most likely doing it on land 
> whose only deed of title is held by all citizens.
>
> "Unless there's a valid, legitimate and compelling public purpose, I 
> don't know why the government owns so much of this land," said Romney.
>
> Using Romney's calculation --- in which these lands can only be viewed 
> as a commodity --- the public domain more than pays for itself. 
> Federal lands in Nevada, for example, provide about $1 billion in 
> economic impact and support 13,311 jobs --- and that doesn't include 
> the Forest Service. A poll by Colorado College found that 93 percent 
> of the state's voters agree that national parks, forests and wildlife 
> areas "are an essential part of Colorado's economy."
>
> Not to be outdone, Rick Santorum has channeled his inner robber baron 
> while in the West. Speaking in Boise last month, he promised to sell 
> our land to the private sector. The last time somebody seriously 
> proposed that --- James Watt, the secretary of the interior under 
> President Reagan --- he got a bipartisan round of boos from all 
> corners of the West.
>
> "The federal government doesn't care about this land," Santorum said. 
> "They don't live here, they don't care about it. We don't care about 
> it in Washington. It's flyover country for most of the bureaucrats in 
> Washington, D.C."
>
> It's clearly flyover country to Santorum. But try telling the many 
> federal forest and park rangers, the smokejumpers and fish biologists, 
> the backcountry avalanche experts and the game wardens, all of whom 
> live in Western towns --- and keep the economy in those places humming 
> --- that they "don't live here."
>
> The New York TimesGifford Pinchot, first Chief of the United States 
> Forest Service, in Pennsylvania in 1933.
>
> Santorum makes national forests sound like crack houses. Some of them, 
> after long neglect, do look a bit ratty. But the best are American 
> cathedrals. Santorum probably doesn't know that a former governor of 
> his home state, Gifford Pinchot, was the founder of the modern Forest 
> Service. Pinchot was a rich man who spent his life advocating for 
> places where "the little man," in his parlance, would be king.
>
> We can thank a hunter, a lover of nature and a man who was always 
> thinking about the kind of country his great-grandchildren would 
> inherit --- the fire-breathing Republican Teddy Roosevelt --- for most 
> of the nation's public land. But today, no Republican would dare stand 
> with T.R.
>
> So it goes in this retrograde campaign. Is there any long-held, 
> much-cherished American principle that Republicans and their media 
> outlets will not renounce? Is there any bad idea from the 19th century 
> --- or earlier --- they will not resurrect?
>
> Romney has shown that he knows the lyrics to "America the Beautiful." 
> Too bad he doesn't know anything about the land itself --- a gift of 
> better minds than his, one that ensures that some things are equal in 
> this democracy.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
>
>
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