Dear HCN,
I want to thank Ed
Marston for confirming the wise-use movement’s characterization of
me as an “eco-terrorist” (HCN, 12/23/96). The mining and logging
industries will get good mileage out of the idea that I am a
“Robespierre” leading a “reign of terror” across the
West.
My book, Lost Landscapes and Failed
Economies, sought to deal with the role that natural resource
industries and environmental protection play in determining the
economic health of our communities. In the economic dialogue in the
West, natural resource industries are usually depicted as central
to our economic health and as “high-paying, family wage” jobs. On
the other hand, environmental protection, especially when it
impacts those same natural resource industries, is depicted as
imposing a relatively high economic cost on our communities. The
empirical data staring us in the face, however, tell a quite
different story. Mining, mill and farm towns are rarely prosperous.
They tend to be depressed, run-down towns plagued by a variety of
negative socioeconomic characteristics. On the other hand, areas
that provide what are perceived to be high-quality living
environments have seen employment, income and population rise
despite declines in what they are told are their economic
bases.
It is true that the floor has literally
been pulled out from under relatively uneducated and unskilled
workers nationwide. The blue-collar path to a middle-class
lifestyle is being systematically eliminated. The result has been
dramatic declines in real earnings and benefits for workers at the
lower end of the economy. Poverty rates have increased; part-time
work has proliferated; real earnings have stagnated; inequality has
dramatically increased. It is a very bad time to be in the lower
middle class, free-falling into economic
oblivion.
One can condemn the public policies
that have allowed this to occur. My book does exactly that
(although High Country News rarely does that for fear of offending
its economically conservative readership). However, the question
the book seeks to wrestle with is what part of these national and
international trends that one can observe in the West are tied to
environmental protection measures. After reviewing the empirical
evidence, I concluded little or none. That is important
knowledge.
Ed Marston repeats the errors I tried
to systematically guide readers around. He does not ask whether the
higher poverty rates, the low wages, the part-time work, etc.,
found in the West over the last two decades are due to changes and
policies unique to the West or just part of national trends. He
does not ask whether the amenity-driven economic revitalization of
our communities is reducing these problems or adding to them. He
does not ask whether the low-paid migrant workforce now servicing
the recreational economy is new or just a different version of the
migrant workforce that staffed the West’s ranches, farms, mines and
railroads in the past.
Marston does not take up
the key questions posed by the book: Does environmental protection
and amenity-based economic vitality contribute to the reduction of
the socioeconomic problems faced by Western communities or compound
those problems? Given the trends in labor-saving technology and
international markets, can an economy centered on mining, lumber,
ranching or farming bring stability and prosperity to our
communities?
Marston concludes that “the goal
should not be the destruction of the land-based industries. The
goal should be to eventually make those industries part of the
restoration of the West.” I could not agree more. Despite Marston’s
assertions to the contrary, I always emphasize the ongoing
importance of our natural resource industries, properly constrained
by environmental institutions.
In the Consensus
Report by Pacific Northwest Economists which Marston cites, I put
it this way: “We are not saying that the natural-resource
industries … are not important to the regional economy. Natural
resources industries are still important in the Pacific Northwest
and will remain so into the foreseeable future. The point we have
tried to make is not that they are unimportant but that increased
volumes of material extracted are not likely to be sources of
expanding employment and income.” Despite my stating this in bold
type, Marston still reads me as advocating “the destruction of
land-based industries.” This says more about Marston’s preconceived
notions than about what I have written.
Thomas Michael Power
Missoula, Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Montana economist attacks review.
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