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Opportunity came knocking recently, and I wasn't there to answer. The only reason I know is that there was a message on my answering machine.
The opportunity was a telephone call from a network news program, and it may have represented a chance to practice punditry on a national scale.
I wasn't there to answer because I was visiting the Republic of Texas at the time. The main idea, besides mooching off some relatives and getting to take a long drive past scores of adult video shops in the great wholesome heartland, was to enjoy some relief from this bitter winter.
Naturally, it was warmer in Salida than in Dallas, where we got four inches of snow on New Year's Eve. My nieces there, who had never before seen enough snow to play in, were thrilled, and thanked their Uncle Ed for bringing this delight down from Colorado.
Upon my return early this millennium, I found the missed opportunity. I returned the call, but it was too late -- they had needed some immediate commentary about the career of Gale Norton, nominee for Secretary of the Interior and former attorney general of Colorado.
It's just as well. I couldn't think of much to say about her that was remotely relevant to the Interior Department.
As attorney general, she was your fairly typical Republican hypocrite -- talking about a smaller and less intrusive government that respects people's rights, while continuing to pursue the War on Drugs that makes for a bigger and more intrusive government that tramples our rights.
She did exhibit a spirit of bi-partisan cooperation by working closely with then Gov. Roy Romer, who was alleged to be a Democrat. Together, they staged a couple of publicity stunts -- suing to preserve a stone tablet of the Ten Commandments in a Denver park, and protecting us from a dangerous commune near Buena Vista whose threats to our peace and dignity had previously escaped local notice.
But I doubt the network wanted anything about that. Her nomination as Interior Secretary has already inspired controversy because she twice worked for Satan.
Or at least, that's the sort of name generally applied to James Gaius Watt by the environmental movement in this great republic. Norton worked for Watt when he was Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, and before that, when he ran the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a public-minded outfit that aimed to make the world a kinder place for developers, polluters, subdividers and other pitiful victims of persecution.
Norton has even been characterized as James Watt in a
skirt.
Suppose that's true. Suppose she acts just like Watt in the Interior Department. And so what?
Go back to 1980, the last year of the administration of Jimmy Carter, who was supposedly zealous about protecting the environment.
We had two major uranium mines under development nearby. Climax Molybdenum had 3,000 miners at work atop Frémont Pass. Local sawmills were buzzing away as lumberjacks took the woods every summer.
Watt took office in 1981. Shortly thereafter, the mines closed, as did the sawmills. Ranchers cut their herds and quit using all their grazing permits. The biggest industrial development ever proposed for Colorado -- Exxon's immense oil-shale project at Rifle and the Piceance Basin -- was terminated.
Although Watt gave lip service to the Sagebrush
Rebels
who wanted to turn federal land over to the
states or to private industry, the amount of land in
federal hands actually increased during Watt's tenure.
He didn't put bounties on endangered species, or bulldoze roads through wilderness areas, or move ahead on some boondoggle water project like Animas-La Plata.
In short, he talked tough, but nothing on the ground really changed -- and even if he bragged about how much he supported mining, grazing and logging, all those activities diminished while he ran the Interior Department.
If you believe that mining, grazing and logging are bad for the environment, and that their curtailment is therefore good for the environment, then Watt did more to improve the environment of the Mountain West than any dozen other secretaries of the interior.
Thus it's hard to see why environmental groups are so opposed to Gale Norton if she is indeed a Watt clone. Of course, the more stink they raise, the more that some people feel threatened, and the more money they send to environmental groups -- just as happened during Watt's tenure.
And if giving more money and power to environmental lobbies is a good way to protect the environment, and Norton inspires such donations -- well, she could end up protecting the West even better than Watt did, and he did a pretty good job of it, whether he meant to or not.
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