In the seven years since I co-founded Republicans for Environmental Protection, officially known as REP America, I have answered two questions more often than any others: “Isn’t Republicans for Environmental Protection an oxymoron?” And, “If you care so much about conservation and environmental protection, why don’t you become a Democrat?” The first one is easy […]
Politics
Posted inWotr
Why Greens need blue blazers
One of my childhood friends, Karl Warkomski, is the first and only elected Green Party member in ultra-right-wing Orange County, Calif. Orange Country — home to the mega-hawk and former congressman “B2 Bob” Dornan — is a place where people get misty-eyed remembering the Reagan presidency. So how in the world did Karl get elected? […]
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No way to run Wyoming
Imagine, for a moment, that some kooky politicians in Washington, D.C.. decided they wanted to invade Iraq with feather dusters . Now, imagine a colonel in the Army warned them that this was a bad idea, and they need would need real tools of war, helicopters and tanks and such, to execute such a plan. […]
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In Iraq, there’s hope of restoring the Garden of Eden
Watching the chaotic aftermath of repression andwar in Iraq hurts my heart. As an antidote, I conjure a vision of hope: a shimmering expanse of water and life that may once again grace the Iraqi desert. Until a decade ago, southern Iraq boasted one of the world’s largest wetlands, the Mesopotamia Marshes, almost 7,800 square […]
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Bruce Babbitt and I have seen the past, and it no longer works
“That was the biggest bunch of BS I’ve ever heard,” complained one man. His friend agreed: “Yeah, I’ll bet neither Babbitt nor Williams have ever been near a timber mill.” Those comments were overheard as the two young men heard left a University of Montana auditorium after I’d introduced former Interior Secretary of the Interior […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Republicans wave guns, but where’s the butter?
Western Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis occupies a congressional seat that until 1972 was the most powerful one in the West. It was owned by the late Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat who chaired the House Interior Committee in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the federal government was continuing the development of the Interior West. Federal […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
The Northwest’s diehard diplomat
Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber fought to bring a divided state together
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The West’s negligent landlord
Western Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis occupies a congressional seat that until 1972 was the most powerful in the West. It was owned by the late Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat, who chaired the House Interior Committee in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the federal government was pouring billions into the the Interior West. Federal agencies […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
White House record on rollbacks
It’s undoubtedly grim reading. But it should be required for every conservationist — Democrat, Green, Republican or Independent. The Natural Resources Defense Council has just released its review of the Bush administration’s 2002 record on the environment. In Rewriting the Rules: The Bush Administration’s Assault on the Environment, the council details more than 100 federal […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
Does your representative make the grade?
It’s report card time again for Congress, and Western politicians are seeing more Fs than As. According to the League of Conservation Voters’ annual National Environmental Scorecard, Western congressional members had some of the worst environmental voting records in the nation. Out of a possible score of 100, the senators of Colorado, Idaho, Utah and […]
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The Bush administration is doing something right on fire policy
There isn’t much I can praise about the Bush administration’s approach to Western resource issues. But its instincts on firefighting policy are just about right. If it can fill in its knee-jerk act of cutting the budget with a sound, long-term policy, it could lead the West out of a quagmire that has been deepening […]
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Everybody’s a greenie now
Suddenly, everybody’s green: developers, who believe a golf course pond is good for wildlife, ski resort managers, who want to use recycled water to make artificial snow, absentee owners, who want to cut everything in sight in the name of fire prevention, though they spend a weekend a year in their Southwest trophy homes. Or […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2003: The Wild Card
While America waits for war, the environment suffers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the best of times, it’s tough to get the average American to pay attention to such arcane matters as whether it should be legal to sue the Forest Service if it fails to protect wilderness in Alaska, or whether to pay logging firms to thin one section of forest by letting […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Wyoming at a crossroads
Can a new governor bust the Cowboy State out of its stagnant economic corral?
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Excerpts from Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s inaugural speech Jan. 6, as he took office
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Wyoming at a crossroads.” “For too many decades, we have dreamed of a day when the government of these United States would transfer the ownership of its lands to state or private hands. While this dream may occupy our hearts, it cannot be the […]
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There are perils in cowboy diplomacy
If there is one thing President George Bush has figured out, it’s the importance of a 10-gallon hat to the American electorate. We adore the cowboy politician, no matter if it’s a pose. No one cares that he was educated at Phillips and Yale, is the grandson of a patrician senator from Connecticut, and summered […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
“But you don’t sound like a republican…”
Martha Marks, president of Republicans for Environmental Protection, has gotten used to funny looks and puzzled questions. Yes, she’s a green elephant — but she objects to being put in the same category as “jumbo shrimp” and “deafening silence.” She is not an oxymoron. What she is, she says, is “the environmental conscience of the […]
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Running Green is a learning experience
“Green Party, huh? Well, I’ll vote for you, as long as you’re not a damn Democrat,” said my 70-year-old neighbor when I told him I was running for the Montana state Legislature. Few weeks later, I introduced myself to Tom, a local businessman and one of the Montana Freeman who’d gotten into trouble with the […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
The push is on to privatize federal jobs
Thousands of park and forest jobs could go to private contractors
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Conservation vote groups optimistic
Environmentalists redouble efforts on the local level