WALL STREET JOURNAL
REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial)
The Greens' Snow Job
11/19/2002
The Wall Street Journal
A24
(Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) No sooner did the National Park Service release a compromise plan allowing limited snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park than it was rewarded with a snowball to the head. That's the standard response of Green groups, which in this case want nothing less than a return of the 1990s ban.
We're pleased to see the Bush Administration attempt to re-inject some reason into a landscape warped by the environmental rules of the Clinton years. By any measure the Yellowstone plan is a modest proposal, permitting snowmobiling but capping daily numbers and demanding the best technology. Yet like so many other land-use issues, this one is fated to be decided by the courts.
The reason has to do with a nest of much-abused and outdated environmental laws, chief of which is the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa). When President Nixon signed this bill, the aim was to have the environment taken into account in decisions about land use. Quicker than an endangered jackrabbit, however, the law was hijacked by environmental groups that use it to keep federal agencies tied up in legal knots.
Under Nepa, Earth-firsters don't even have to address substantive environmental arguments. Instead, they can demand Bible-length environmental impact statements, endless internal reviews and then, after years of exhausting that process, start all over in the courts. As a result, environmental agencies today spend so much time guarding against green legal challenges they've largely lost the ability to manage our public lands.
Take Yellowstone. In 1997, the Fund for Animals sued the Park Service, claiming it hadn't properly evaluated the environmental impact of snowmobiles under Nepa. That spurred years of studies, reports, meetings and legal wrangling, until the Clinton Administration banned snowmobiles in 2000. Then the snowmobile industry got hold of the playbook and sued back, claiming Interior had given too much regard to environmental issues under Nepa.
All this means that proposals dealing with issues like snowmobiling are crafted more with an eye to maneuvering on the legal terrain than to ensuring smart land management. And it's not just people having fun on snowmobiles that gives Greens the blues. Environmental groups have also used Nepa to block highway projects, stymie electricity generation, bankrupt farmers and get the Navy to stop using sonar.
The good news is that we seem to have a White House that understands that Nepa was never meant to stop sensible land management or block Americans from using the federal lands specifically set aside for public enjoyment. That's why in May President Bush, in one of the smarter environmental moves in many years, set up a Nepa task force to evaluate how to drag the law into the 21st century. A report is due next year.
It'd be nice to think that Congress would use this report to update the law. But we'd bet our ski parkas that Northeastern Senators of both parties, bowing to environmental activists, will never let that happen. Which means it will be up to Mr. Bush to use his rule-making powers to execute what reform he can.
No doubt that will translate into a fresh bout of screaming that the President and snowmobilers care nothing for the land and its parks. But better the Bush Administration cut to the heart of the problem now than waste the rest of its time in office in court. Reasonable Americans deserve a chance to work out compromises good for people and nature.
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NPCC Response
Editor:
Regarding "the Greens' Snow Job", 11/19/02, the purpose of NEPA is not only to "have the environment taken into account in decisions about land use" - although it is hard to see why that is a bad idea. NEPA serves an even more fundamental purpose. NEPA is the vehicle by which the public - taxpayers, the owners of Yellowstone National Park and all other public lands - have input into decisions about how those public lands are used. NEPA brings the fundamental principles of democracy to public lands management. "Greens" have not "hijacked" NEPA. Enjoyment of public lands takes many forms, and snowmobiling is only one of them. What the editorial appears to object to is that taxpayers have the audacity to expect to help determine how their tax dollars are spent and how their public lands are used. Democracy is always a messy process. NEPA is no exception. But the goal here is not to be quick and convenient. It is to be fair and open. That is indeed sometimes difficult, but it is the American way.
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