Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler—Albert Einstein
The third principle of the Culture of Conservation is to keep the message simple. Effective marketing is little more than simple messages and images repeated endlessly. Remember the earlier quote that 93% of American children can recognize McDonalds by the golden arches? I wonder what the percentage is now for the Japanese?
McDonalds sponsoring the Osaka sumo basho
Simple messages and images rise above the cacophony that is modern life. Simplicity and volume (both amplitude and amount) help messages battle through the noise. Doubt this? According to the Associated Press, BP’s been spending more than $5 million a week on advertising since the blowout. Remember BPs original simple message? Beyond Petroleum.
Freeman Tilden inspired what we now know as the interpretation profession. Tilden stressed the need for interpreters (guides, museum staff, National Park Service employees and the like) to know their audiences. My impression is that most conservation groups consider their members to be the audience. No wonder the messages are so obtuse, and geared toward fund raising.
Freeman TildenOur professional organization for interpretation is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI). I am a NAI supporter, and I am working to have myself certified by them in every way possible (Freeman didn’t write about interpretation until the age of 62). But in recent years Jon Kohl, Sam Ham, and I have been thinking about conservation interpretation, and the need to train staff that can communicate and interpret conservation, not just nature, history, or culture. We have completed organizing the training program, and once I finish with my current NAI certification projects I want to turn my attention to this component of our work.
Why? Because I believe that conservation as a movement is fundamentally inept when it comes to devising ways in which people can relate to our work (another of Tilden’s principals).
Rather than continue to offer Tilden’s principles in a piecemeal fashion, here are the six principles from Interpreting Our Heritage:
1. Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.
2. Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However, all interpretation include information.
3. Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical, or architectural. Any art is to some degree teachable.
4. The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction but provocation.
5. Interpretation should aid to present a whole rather than a part and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.
6. Interpretation addressed to children should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.
NAI offers a number of certification programs, and I endorse them all. Interestingly, most conservation groups do not have certified interpretive staff, a mistake in my opinion. But I also believe that there is a need for us in the profession to develop a certification program in conservation interpretation, a program that does not exist currently. For those interested in where we have taken this idea, there is information here on the Fermata blog.
The key to successful simplification, however, is (as Einstein said) to keep things simple but not too simple. In conservation we deal with complex issues like global warming, oil spills, biodiversity, and extinction. These topics do not lend themselves to simplicity. Yet, as Tilden stated, our presentations, programs, and messages must address the desires, experiences, and limitations of our audiences. In this way I agree with Tilden that interpretation is an art, one practiced well by a few. Read Enos Mills, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, and Peter Matthiessen to get a sense of the interpretive art as it relates to conservation.
Enos MillsThis helps us understand the recent debate here about the Ted Williams’ article in Audubon, and Drew Wheelan’s reports for the American Birding Assocation. Williams is a journalist, a master craftsman. His work can be judged by its lucidness and accuracy. Unfortunately, as journalism Williams’ article failed miserably. Drew did not pretend to be a journalist; instead, he functioned as an observer. Drew placed himself in situations in the Gulf that allowed us to experience the blowout and its impacts through his eyes. Yes, Drew is passionate about his work, an attribute that contributes to effective interpretation. Williams debated facts and completely missed the story. Drew didn’t sweat every fact and captured the story in all of its horror, devastation, and pathos.
The National Park Service (NPS) has devised an equation to show the key components that go into the interpretive experience – (Kr + Ka) X AT = IO. Remember, however, that this is metaphor, not math. The equation states that a knowledge of the resource (Kr) plus a knowledge of the audience (Ka), multiplied by well-grounded interpretive techniques (AT), will create an interpretive opportunity (IO). The equation is often displayed as a teeter-totter, where an overemphasis on one factor, such as knowledge of the resource, can outweigh and overwhelm the audience and any interpretive technique. In my experience this is the chief failing of conservation groups. Yes, they can all impress with a knowledge of the resources, but most have no concept of how to communicate that knowledge or a conservation imperative to the audience.
Let’s recap. I have now presented three of the Culture of Conservation principles:
1. Take it to the street
2. Make space for place
3. Keep it simple, not simplistic
Keep tuned for the next principle – Aim straight for the heart.
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture—Gaylord Nelson
Gifford Pinchot popularized, rather than coined, the word conservation. He placed his mark on the word by combining conservation with ethic, embedding his concept of conservation in an almost forgotten book The Fight for Conservation. Aldo Leopold followed with the Land Ethic which states that conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. For the past century American conservation has heeded these tenets.
Yet even Leopold spoke of the difficulties in applying these rules, these ethics. In Land Ethic Leopold asks the following:
Despite nearly a century of propaganda, conservation still proceeds at a snail’s pace; progress still consists largely letterhead pieties and conventional oratory. On the back forty we still slip two steps backward for each forward stride. The usual answer to this dilemma is ‘more conservation education.’ No one will debate this, but is it certain that on the volume of education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in the content as well?
Walter Russell Mead has recently written that the environmental movement has “become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats.” Leopold spoke of “letterhead pieties and conventional oratory.” Edward Abbey said “that which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.” What all are saying (or at least implying) is that conservation, to remain relevant, must constantly evolve. Yet as conservation has become more business and less movement, the forces constraining evolution have become increasingly restrictive and dampening. At these junctures evolution must become revolution.
Over a decade ago I served on the board of the National Audubon Society. One spring we met in Jamestown, North Dakota, where we continued with our debates and discussions about a new strategic plan for the Society. I recall sitting in the Holiday Inn, unable to sleep, and slipping over to my computer to write a section of the plan that I called the culture of conservation. Although the board at that time adopted my thoughts, not long after I left the board the concept vacated as well.
Now I want my idea back.
As I have written before, the conservation and environmental movements (which I will simplify to movement) have been signaled onto the wrong track. I will avoid the Casey Jones analogy, but my message is the same. I see trouble ahead, and trouble behind. Once an organic, social phenomenon, the movement has sacrificed its soul in the pursuit of efficiency and currency. Most environmental organizations are well-meaning, highly educated, and effectively isolated from the fabric of everyday life in America.
Here are a few off-the-cuff examples. In the U.S. two out of three Americans are white, non-Hispanic (according to the census bureau). About 16% of Americans are Hispanic, and around 13% are black. I know of no environmental organization, agency, or department where employment or membership remotely reflects these percentages. The environmental movement, save environmental justice, remains lily white.
In the U.S., only 27 percent of the population has earned a college degree. Only 8.9 percent of Americans have a Masters’ Degree and only 3 percent have earned a PhD. Yet the conservation and resource agencies and organizations usually require an advanced degree as a term of employment. We are white and egg-heads.
Environmental threats occur in every state. In recent years, for example, the Gulf of Mexico (Katrina, Ike, the BP gusher, the dead zone) has been a hot spot. Rural communities are often disproportionately at risk, for example the Marcellus Shale play in Pennsylvania and New York states. Yet the national environmental groups office in the largest cities in the U.S., and at the edges of the country. Here are a few examples:
National Audubon Society – New York City
Defenders of Wildlife – Washington D.C.
National Wildlife Federation – Washington D.C.
American Bird Conservancy – Washington D.C.
Environmental Defense Fund – New York City
The Conservation Fund – Washington D.C.
Defenders of Wildlife – Washington D.C.
The Trust for Public Land – San Francisco
The Sierra Club – San Francisco
I remember an Audubon board meeting that I helped arrange in McAllen, Texas. The board and dozens of staff members would be coming to southmost Texas for this meeting. I recall one of the young female staff members cornering me before the meeting, asking me if it would be safe to drink the water.
I mention this not to embarrass the Audubon staff. I only want to illustrate my point about the groups being culturally, educationally, and geographically remote.
The environmental problems and threats we face in this country are relevant to everyman, not just white, educated urbanites. The average American earns less than $40,000 annually, does not have a college education, and is left wondering why he or she should give a damn about something as amorphous and ill-defined as global warming. We in the environmental movement may be convinced of the facts, and smugly certain of our position, but science does not win elections or hearts. The average American must understand enough to care, and care enough to vote. At this moment, he and she do neither.
You say you want a revolution? Begin and end with the people.
Lincoln said:
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
By real facts Lincoln did not mean the obscure, confusing, and tiresome arguments that only serve to alienate our audience. For example, I believe that most people understand that millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico is not a good thing. What most do not understand are the endless arguments between experts. We speculate about lost oil while Governor Barbour howls about lost jobs. We debate the pros and cons of cleaning birds while Governor Jindal promises to clean house. We aim for the head, they for the heart.
I realize that the terms grassroots and ground up are hackneyed and shopworn. This does not mean that the words are not true, even if overused. Few of the national environmental organizations are of the grassroots form. Sierra has a local chapter structure, and a few have state offices. Audubon had the most distributed, community-level organization of them all, with hundreds of local chapters. Yet over the past several years Audubon has moved away from chapters and more toward state offices and centers. The Tea Party has shown the efficacy of working at the community, even district, level. Our movement, in contrast, has spent the last decade consolidating and distancing itself from the hoi polloi.
Here is an example. A close friend in Houston wrote me to ask about volunteer opportunities to help with the Gulf gusher. Her daughter had a few free weeks of summer break to spend, and she desperately wanted to help. She called Audubon and asked about opportunities, and received the fundraising spiel in return. Ted Williams recently wrote in Audubon magazine that “the very last thing Gulf Coast birds need are well-meaning amateurs crashing through nesting habitat.” Dead wrong, Ted. What the movement needs is those 17,000 potential volunteers to become crusaders, and what better way to engage them than through their willingness to pitch in and help. We would all agree that nesting areas would be off limits to the uninitiated. But that leaves the vast majority of the shore eligible for cleaning by volunteers.
Our movement has become Conservation Inc. We need to step forward to the past, and spark conservation back to life.
Walter Russell Mead notes the following:
Intellectually and culturally, environmentalists came out of the same movement as critics of crude urban development like Jane Jacob (The Death and Life of Great American Cities). They celebrated the diverse local, small-scale adaptations that reflected the knowledge of communities as opposed to the grandiose plans of the social engineers.
Precisely. Jane Jacobs dug in against Robert Moses and the planners who would have stripped New York of the diversity that is its hallmark. She worked at the neighborhood level, yet argued that her concepts also had application on a global scale. Jacobs spent her life concerned with city culture, and the ways in which enlightened, empowered citizens can persevere. I will argue that conservation is a community as well, peopled by well meaning, dedicated citizens that simply need to be empowered, enlightened, and appreciated.
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has—Margaret Mead
Yes, a small group of people can provoke a cultural shift. Change is contingent on these provocateurs, the tiny legion willing to face friend and foe alike. My previous article focused on one of these provocateurs, Drew Wheelan. Drew is a person willing to allow the public to see a problem (the Gulf gusher) through his eyes. We need more of his kind to help us drag this movement out of the muck. I am not arguing that the ecocrats and Conservation Inc. should go away. We need all the help we can get. I am arguing, though, that we need to quickly reintroduce ourselves to our neighbors and ask for their help, not just their money. In this we are years behind, so we have little time to waste.
This is just the first part of a rewriting of conservation and the movement that needs to take place. Future articles will address additional steps in the process. But without the public, there is no movement. Let’s take it to the street.
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people…Theodore Roosevelt
Conservation has lost its edge. Once razor sharp, the movement is dull and rusty. Rosalie Edge had a brass that has leached from the cause. Conservation has become a soirée for the well-meaning, well-heeled saviors.
Conservation did not begin this way, emerging first as a militant. Roosevelt, Pinchot, Dock, Rothrock, Chapman, McFarland, Edge, and their kind were brusiers. A 1948 New Yorker magazine profile called Edge “the most honest, unselfish, indomitable hellcat in the history of conservation.” An Audubon Society lawyer in the lawsuit she had brought against its officers in 1931 denounced her as a “common scold.”
I like hellcats and scolds. They confront the status quo, and beyond thinking “outside of the box” they recognize that there is no box in the first place.
Hellcats shove movements out of the muck where they inevitably become mired. A civil rights movement existed before Martin Luther King. An environmental movement existed before Rachel Carson. Computers were around before Steve Jobs. They were the game changers, the ass kickers.
How did the current conservation effort become so tepid, so nice? How is it that this once vibrant cause, this movement, now looks more like a marriage between the junior league and the junior varsity?
The Deepwater Horizon blowout is one of those cathartic moments when the emotional debris we collect dissolves and we see ourselves, at least for a brief moment, in a clear light. After Pearl Harbor American isolationists could see the futility of their efforts. After 9/11 the U.S. seemed a little less secure, a little less safe. After the Deepwater Horizon, we see just how fruitless it is to blithely ignore politics and policy while rubbing noses (and purses) with those who may exploit and despoil.
Consider the oil and gas industry. The run-up in prices and industry consolidation have given rise to an industrial oligarchy. Remember that our country’s greatest conservation president, Theodore Roosevelt, broke up Standard Oil to protect the public from this over-reaching industry over a century ago. We didn’t heed his lesson.
What does this have to do with conservation and the movement? The BP fiasco in the Gulf highlights the environmental costs of being asleep at the switch. Where were the hellcats and scolds before the gusher irrupted into Gulf waters? Didn’t anyone notice the reference to “walrus” in the oil companies’ Gulf of Mexico oil spill plans? Shouldn’t that have tipped someone off that these identical plans were fiction? How could the US Fish and Wildlife Service, charged with protecting endangered species, sign off on the MMS risk assessment? According to the NY Times, Deborah Fuller, the endangered species program coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s office in Lafayette, La., admitted that her office did not challenge the minerals service’s assessment of the risk. “We all know an oil spill is catastrophic, but what is the likelihood it will happen?” Ms. Fuller asked. She said her office had considered that any likelihood under 50 percent would not be enough to require the protections of her office.
Oops.
What is also important to recognize is the long reach of oil money and influence. Whether in politics or in the environmental movement, this industry is invested. While the political world has always been on the dole (see a complete list here), this has not always been the case with environmental organizations. Exxon gives to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Louisiana while funding global warming deniers. ConocoPhillips helps Audubon throughout the nation (just Google ConocoPhillips Audubon), and yet a University of Massachusetts study ranked it the third worst corporate air polluter in the nation.
Here is an example of the political impact of these oil industry investments. According to the Political Wire, even though BP’s corporate code of conduct proclaimed it will make no political contributions, whether in cash or in kind, anywhere in the world, the Washington Post reports that BP North America “has donated at least $4.8 million in corporate contributions in the past seven years to political groups, partisan organizations and campaigns engaged in federal and state elections.” Its most generous corporate contributions — totaling about $4 million — have gone to two Republican-aligned political action groups working to defeat state ballot initiatives in California and Colorado that could have raised oil and gas industry taxes.
Environmental groups have been direct recipients of the oil largesse as well. The blowout prompted a flurry of articles describing how BP had invested in many international environmental groups such as The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International. An article in The Economist noted that the spill seems certain to prompt NGOs to review their ties to business. Lenny Mendonca of McKinsey, one of the authors of a new report, Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy, sees a “risk of heading into a vicious circle of antagonism” that he believes would be a mistake.
Stop.
McKinsey? That McKinsey and Company? Is this the same McKinsey that gave us Enron? Is this the same McKinsey that produced both John Sawhill (former CEO of The Nature Conservancy) and his underling Jeffery Skilling (incarcerated former CEO of the former Enron)? Is this the same McKinsey where Sawhill and Skilling were both energy specialists in the Houston office, and worked side-by-side for the client InterNorth (when merged with Houston Natural Gas became Enron)? Is this the same McKinsey and Company that developed Audubon’s 1995 strategic plan, the one that for all intents jettisoned the grassroots? That McKinsey? [For more information, read Robert Bryce’s Pipe Dreams.]
As his obituary in the NY Times generously pointed out, though his credentials as an environmentalist became impeccable, Mr. Sawhill’s positions were not always predictable. In 1974, for instance, he said that the environmental risks of strip-mining coal might be acceptable to meet national energy demands. That year, he said oil drilling off the New England coast, an idea that horrified fishermen, lobstermen and many environmentalists, should not be beyond consideration.
And he told a Senate committee in 1974 that higher fuel prices were not necessarily bad, especially if they encouraged oil companies to find new supplies.
Sawhill came from both the energy sector and from McKinsey. As Range magazine reported, “some of its most informed critics, in fact, suggest that since 1990 when John Sawhill brought his experience as a former McKinsey vice president into the Conservancy’s top job, the world’s richest and most powerful conservation organization has evolved into “McTNC.”” As the NY Times put it, “Mr. Sawhill pressed for more cooperation between business interests and environmental groups.” The fact that The Nature Conservancy and the oil industry developed a cozy relationship should not be surprising. If you launch billion-dollar campaigns, you need friends with deep pockets.
TNC’s admitted success has bled over to shape the entire environmental community. For example, John Flicker served closely with Sawhill at TNC, and then came to Audubon to implement the pro bono McKinsey strategic plan. The TNC model has profoundly impacted both the way environmental groups do business, and the subsequent abandoning of advocacy. After all, pointing out an industry’s deficiencies makes high-dollar campaigns difficult.
Here is an example of the TNC influence at work. Recently Houston Wilderness named a new CEO to replace retiring Rosie Zamora. Here is a quote from their press release; “Johnny’s [Cronin] credentials are second-to-none,” said Joel Deretchin, chairman of the Houston Wilderness board of directors. “Our search committee was impressed with his experience in strategic planning, donor cultivation, supervision and implementation. He has a true commitment to conservation and his experience working on the national level with the Nature Conservancy, one of the preeminent organizations in the country, is impressive.”
The new president of TNC, Mark Tercek, came from another Wall Street favorite, Goldman Sachs. As recently noted, as the head of Goldman Sachs’ Center for Environmental Markets, created in 2005, Tercek has overseen the company’s effort to match environmentally friendly policies with profitable business practices. The center also works with think tanks and academic institutions to develop ways to link environmental conservation with business.
Linking conservation with business. Donor cultivation. Call me atavistic, but t I wouldn’t call “donor cultivation” evidence of a “true commitment” to conservation. I doubt that John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, Rachel Carson, or Rosalie Edge would either. Perhaps Cronin and Tercek know the environmental business, but that is different from knowing the environment.
Albert Camus wrote that “by definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.” To influence policy in a democracy, one must embrace politics. The environmental movement has abdicated this responsibility, and the BP disaster has revealed just now politically impotent the movement has become.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “he who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.” The environment, lacking its own voice, must have those of advocates to protect it (or, as Edward Abbey said, “the idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”) The movement (or at least a segment) must labor at the nexus of the public and policy. The Deepwater Horizon offers a chance to return to the policy advocacy of the past, and to reengage with the public (you know, those who we once called neighbors). Gallup Survey
As this recent Gallup survey dramatically illustrates, active public support for the movement has eroded this past decade. What makes this particularly surprising is that this decade has purportedly been the dawning of a “green age.” Without advocacy, without governmental policy standing between corporate greed and a vulnerable public, this green age is little more than a marketing ploy.
TNC’s Mark Tercek, responding to the Washington Post article, said that “anyone serious about doing conservation in this region must engage these companies, so they are not just part of the problem but so they can be part of the effort to restore this incredible ecosystem.” Actually, anyone serious about “doing conservation” in the Gulf should begin with engaging the public’s help in forcing policy changes that will insure that such a fiasco does not happen again. In a recent paper, Zaradic et. al concluded that “ultimately, the fate of biodiversity and intact ecosystems may depend less on rates of habitat loss or invasive species, than on public perception of whether conservation should be supported at all.” Those who have devoted much of their lives to this cause must force a return to a balanced approach, one that recognizes that engaging business is not the same as engaging the public and that high-dollar campaigns do not replace progressive public policy.
Modern political practice is to never pay for today what can be delayed until future elections and generations. Want proof? Governor Ed Rendell, working with the Pennsylvania legislature, has crippled one of the most progressive conservation agencies in the nation – the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. As the PA Environmental Digest reports, “the budget just adopted for FY 2010-11 means a total of $1.3 billion has been diverted or cut from environmental programs to help balance the state budget or to fund programs that could not get funding on their own over the last eight years.” Rendell has opened state lands to gas development (Marcellus Shale), yet has diverted the lease revenues that might have mitigated for this new development to the general fund. State parks are threatened with closure, critical environmental protections are underfunded, and yet, at least from my vantage point, there is no general outrage on the part of the public.
Why?
Simple. Conservation has forgotten its constituency, and lost its audience. Organizations have become so enamored with anything big (business, government, foundations, campaigns, galas) that they failed to stay in touch with those who matter the most – the people. The opposition has made no such mistake, and the results (as seen in the Gallup survey) are stark. Those who have devoted their lives to conservation should use the Deepwater Horizon incident to review the movement’s successes and failures. No failures are more obvious than the movement’s disengagement from the public, and the antipathy that has arisen in the movement for advocacy. Without progressive public policy, and the public sentiment necessary for such policies to succeed, conservation’s future is up for grabs.
The well still gushes, the tropics are threatening, and BP and their apologists are still obfuscating. Not all apologists work for BP or the private sector. Many reside in Congress. The extent of the damage will unfold over years. Any NRDA (National Resource Damage Assessment) at this point will be preliminary. Tragically, this is a work in progress, and Congress appears to be willing to wait.
Here is the bad news (there is nothing new about Congress being bad). BP cannot return the Gulf to its former state. I can only hope that, with time, the Gulf will heal itself. Let’s also consider the condition of the Gulf before this blow out. Dead zones off the Mississippi delta, rapidly eroding wetlands along the Louisiana coast, and three hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, and Ike) left the Gulf on life support. We need to think beyond triage.
Let’s begin with demographics. Currently around 14 million Americans live in Gulf coast counties, a number less than 5% of the U.S. population. Even that number is misleading, though. This estimate includes Harris County, Texas, and Houston. The Florida Gulf counties include Hillsborough and the city of Tampa. Without those two metropolitan areas (and leaving New Orleans and Corpus Christi in the mix) the Gulf population is minuscule and easily dismissed by the rest of the country.
Without population, the region has little political power. With much of its economy in the hands of non-Gulf companies (such as BP), the region has little economic clout. Populated by a dazzling (and eclectic) diversity of cultures and ethnicities, the region has no single voice (or single language) to speak to its concerns. The Gulf gives food, transportation, energy, and entertainment, and in return gets dead zones and oil spills.
What if BP’s oil now fouled the beaches of Long Island or the Hamptons? What if the Palos Verdes peninsula or the San Diego beaches were awash in this black goo? The nation has chosen to protect the Pacific and Atlantic coasts while laying waste to the Gulf.
On the afternoon of January 29, 1969, an environmental nightmare began in Santa Barbara, California. A Union Oil Co. platform stationed six miles off the coast of Summerland suffered a blowout. Oil workers had drilled a well down 3500 feet below the ocean floor. Riggers began to retrieve the pipe in order to replace a drill bit when the “mud” used to maintain pressure became dangerously low. A natural gas blowout occurred. An initial attempt to cap the hole was successful but led to a tremendous buildup of pressure. The expanding mass created five breaks in an east-west fault on the ocean floor, releasing oil and gas from deep beneath the earth.
For eleven days, oil workers struggled to cap the rupture. During that time, 200,000 gallons of crude oil bubbled to the surface and was spread into a 800 square mile slick by winds and swells. Incoming tides brought the thick tar to beaches from Rincon Point to Goleta, marring 35 miles of coastline. Beaches with off-shore kelp forests were spared the worst as kelp fronds kept most of the tar from coming ashore. The slick also moved south, tarring Anacapa Island’s Frenchy’s Cove and beaches on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands.
Only days after the spill began, Get Oil Out (GOO) was founded in Santa Barbara. Founder Bud Bottoms urged the public to cut down on driving, burn oil company credit cards and boycott gas stations associated with offshore drilling companies. Volunteers helped the organization gather 100,000 signatures on a petition banning offshore oil drilling. While drilling was only halted temporarily, laws were passed to strengthen offshore drilling regulations. Union Oil suffered millions in losses from the clean-up efforts, payments to fishermen and local businesses, and lawsuit settlements. But maybe worse, the reputation of the oil industry was forever tarnished.
U.S. President Richard Nixon said that “it is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people. What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”
A year later the nation celebrated the first Earth Day. The Nixon administration began to initiate the most sweeping environmental regulations in the nation’s history. One can argue that the Santa Barbara spill gave birth to the nation’s environmental movement. The Santa Barbara spill totaled 200,000 gallons, while the Gulf gusher already has spewed between 40 and 80 million gallons into the Gulf. But does anyone expect a cathartic uprising this time?
Louisiana isn’t California, is it? Isn’t it interesting that in all of the bitching about New Orleans after Katrina (the people don’t want to help themselves, the city shouldn’t be rebuilt below sea level, all Louisiana politicians are corrupt), no one took the time to consider the nation without the Gulf, without the Port of New Orleans, without the Mississippi River transportation corridor, without the oil and its products that fuel the rest of the nation.
Between the nation and its raw greed is the Gulf. Between the Gulf and the nation is a cultural “gulf,” a socio-economic chasm. Subject to the malevolence of greed is nature, forever the victim.
Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen. – Huey Long
There are examples from the past to consider. In the early 1900s fashionable women in the northeast demanded plumes and feathers for their hats. Egrets, herons, spoonbills and their kin were slaughtered along the Gulf coast by the countless numbers so that the feather merchants could supply this demand. The conservation movement began in the swamps of Florida and Louisiana, where lone wardens funded by the National Audubon Society and the American Ornithological Union fought (and died) to protect Teddy Roosevelt’s first refuges from the pillagers.
Ironically, less than a century later the National Audubon Society began oil and gas development in its Paul J. Rainey Sanctuary in coastal Louisiana. According to PERC, “since the early 1950s, 37 wells have pumped natural gas (and a small amount of oil) at various times from Audubon’s Paul J. Rainey Sanctuary, a 26,000-acre preserve at the edge of the Intracoastal Waterway and Vermillion Bay in Louisiana. These wells have produced more than $25 million in revenues for the Society.” There is a lesson in that irony, one that the early Audubon movement would not have ignored.
Actions deferred are all too often opportunities lost, particularly in safeguarding our natural resources. I urge the enactment of this proposal at the earliest possible date so that a further significant step may be taken to assure the availability and accessibility of land and water-based recreation opportunities for all Americans — President John Kennedy, 1962 letter to Congress
Flash forward to the early 1960s. Acting on the wishes of the recently assassinated president, Congress established the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in 1965. The Act designated that a portion of receipts from offshore oil and gas leases be placed into a fund annually for state and local conservation, as well as for the protection of our national treasures (parks, forest and wildlife areas).
Although authorized at $900 million from revenues generated from federal offshore oil royalties, the LWCF has only been fully funded once. More than $16 billion remains in the Fund on paper as an unspent balance, but has been diverted to the federal treasury. The demand for such funding has dramatically increased since the 1960s, yet this fund, established for this expressed purpose, remains gutted.
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. — HL Mencken
Congress clearly indicated that the new Federal program should have a lasting effect on the supply of recreation sites and facilities by requiring that sites assisted be added permanently to the national recreation estate. As a result, Section 6(f)(3) of the Act states unequivocally that grant-assisted areas are to remain forever available for “public outdoor recreation use,” or be replaced by lands of equal market value and recreation usefulness.
Initially, three sources of revenue to the fund were designated: proceeds from sales of surplus Federal real property, motorboat fuel taxes and fees for recreation use of Federal lands. The level of funding from FY 1966 through FY 1968 reached about $100 million per year, which was far short of Congress’ expectations. To remedy this shortfall, it was proposed that Outer Continental shelf (OCS) mineral leasing receipts be tapped. In 1968, P.L. 90-401 raised the Fund’s level to $200 million a year for five years, beginning in FY 1969, making OCS revenues available to cover the difference between this minimum level and receipts from other sources.
By 1970, growing demands on the Fund led to enactment of P.L. 91- 485, which increased the LWCF again to a $300 million annual level from FY 1971 through FY 1989. This amendment reveals that Congress’ perception of needs for the Fund program had expanded in three ways: the State grant program should give more emphasis to urban parks and recreation areas; the grant program should help acquire and develop recreation facilities within urban areas, not just nearby; and the Federal side of the Fund program should also contribute to meeting close-to-home recreation needs.
The Fund’s increase in authorized funding to its current level came with enactment of P.L. 95-42 in June 1977, which increased the LWCF to $900 million for FY 1978 and subsequent years. Congress also enacted P.L. 95-625, which created, among other things, the Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Program (UPARR), as a complement to the LWCF program. This program encouraged local governments to rehabilitate existing recreation facilities, demonstrate innovative programs, and plan for overall revitalization of community recreation systems.
Since 1965, funding for the grants program has averaged approximately $100 million per year, with a peak of $369 million in 1979. In the last 20 years, annual appropriations have decreased to a low of zero funding in 1982 and 1996-1999. However, as a direct by-product of the effort to enact the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, the drought ended in FY 2000 with appropriations that ranged from $140 million in FY 2002 to $28.3 million in FY 2006.
The LWCF is intended to use offshore lease revenue to fund recreation and conservation projects throughout the nation. Since its inception Congress and the various administrations (Democrat and Republican alike) have viewed this fund as one of those sources of revenue to raid. The Obama administration, for example, budgeted less than half of the authorized $900 million for FY 2009. And while the funding appropriated is shared with the entire nation, the damage is generally limited to the Gulf.
The policy changes needed are simple. First, raise the LWCF appropriation to no less than $1 billion annually. Second, pass legislation to permanently fund the LWCF, insulating the fund from raids. Third, expand the LWCF by dedicating additional OCS revenues to conservation and recreation efforts in the Gulf states. Fourth, appropriate the LWCF funds that previously were authorized but not spent (around $13 billion) for a one-time “get right with God” appropriation. Give priority to the Gulf states, and remove the matching-fund requirement for stateside grants in this one-time appropriation. As now structured, the LWCF requires matching funds from local grantees, insuring that the poorest will continue to remain without.
The LWCF is not a true trust fund in the way “trust fund” is generally understood in the private sector. The fund is credited with revenues totaling to $900 million annually, but Congress must authorize appropriations; if appropriations are not made from the fund, the revenues remain in the U.S. Treasury and can be spent for other federal activities. If these funds are spent for other activities, no interest is accrued in the LWCF account. In addition, because the fund goes through the annual appropriations process, the funds are subject to earmarks and other more precise directions from Congress each year.
“Deposits” to the LWCF are thus, in effect, only an authorization of expenditures that accumulate if the funds are not appropriated. Through FY2001, the total amount that could have been appropriated over the years was $24.5 billion, but only $11.4 billion has been appropriated.
The OCS lands are the property of all citizens of this country. The damage being done is restricted to a few. A law is already in place to begin to make this right, the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Now is the time for this administration and Congress to atone for the sins of the past, and to begin the long, painful process of recovery. Now is the time to finally make good on the promise.
