2020 is an election year.
Moreover, it is one of the big ones.
Nationally, we will choose a president, all of our representatives in
the House, and one-third of those in the Senate. Many elections for state legislatures will
also be held.
Right now, the campaigns have been largely halted by the
pestilence affecting the world and this nation; most of the political news
in focused on COVID-19. But work on
other issues goes on behind closed doors, though it receives little
attention. Before the elections are
held, votes will be held that address the pandemic. But votes will also be held on taxes, on
education, on defense.
And on conservation issues.
When people go to the polls in November, they will be
voting, in part, on how elected officials exercised their roles during the
crisis times. But with the crisis
hopefully abating by then, they will also cast votes based, in part, on
other issues. For many, how a legislator
responds to issues affecting the conservation of our air, water and land, and
the natural resources that exist within or upon them, will impact their voting
decisions.
But information on conservation votes might be hard to find
in the press, given the other, more newsworthy issues of the day. Some organizations, such as the League of Conservation Voters, will issue “scorecards” on how legislators voted on
various bills, using criteria proprietary to each particular group. The League of Conservation Voters, for
example, states that its
“Scorecard reflects the consensus of experts from about 20
respected environmental and conservation organizations who select the key votes
on which members of Congress should be scored.
LCV scores votes on the most important issues of the year, including
energy, global warming, public health, public lands and wildlife conservation,
and spending for environmental programs.
The Scorecard is the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members
of Congress on environmental, public health, and energy issues.”
That last sentence is undoubtedly true.
I’ve used the League’s Scorecard more than once in this blog, usually
when describing
how a Long Island Congressman’s wrongheaded positions on fisheries issues are completely in tune with his dismal League rating on conservation issues in
general.
At the same time, a lot of
the issues that the League designates “key votes” might have a tangential, if
still important, connection with conservation issues, which doesn’t
necessarily reflect the voting legislator’s overall conservation record.
While there is no question
that the political philosophy and judicial track record of the four appellate
court appointees strongly suggest that they might be hostile to environmental
regulation and so more likely to rule in favor of those who challenge such
regulations in court, such persons, if their appointments were confirmed, would
vote on other matters as well, and it is impossible to say with certainty whether any senator’s vote to confirm indicates that such senator is hostile to
conservation matters, or was driven by other concerns.
The other problem with the League Scorecard is that it must,
of necessity, focus on the big-picture issues; many other votes, on matters of
less universal concern, are not included, even though they may be important to
one or more sectors of the conservation community.
Thus, while high-level ratings like the League Scorecard are
important, and will always be the primary benchmarks, there is need for another
scoring system, which can get down in the weeds and address the bills that are
important to subsets of the conservation community, and is flexible enough to
be adopted by different groups who wish to address different sets of
legislation.
I suggest a new standard for legislators’ votes that I call
the “Leopold Principle,” and is based on the philosophy fleshed out by pioneer ecologist Aldo
Leopold in his book, A Sand County Almanac. Such standard adopts Leopold's view, which places humans within, rather than apart
from, the natural biotic community, which must, for our nown good, be kept healthy and
intact.
Under such standard, the primary criteria
used in rating a legislator’s vote, is whether it demonstrates that such legislator chose to
“Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and
esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the
integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
That's a very simple standard to understand, which can be applied across the spectrum of conservation
issues.
With respect to marine fisheries,
it is relevant to maintaining
the health of Bristol Bay in the face of a threatened mine, to protecting
the health headwaters of rivers that, in time, will flow to the sea, and to
licensing aquaculture
operations that will introduce many thousands of non-native fish, along with
the associated organic pollution, parasites, escapements and disease, to
currently healthy stretches of the continental shelf.
But it has wider application; a clean-water advocate could
apply the same rule to a
vote on mountaintop removal mining, while public land supporters could use
it to rate a
legislator’s position on the creation and maintenance of national monuments. The integrity, stability, and beauty of the
biotic community is, or at least should be, important to everyone.
From there, the principle can be tweaked. Leopold was correct when he observed that
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal
or plant, ‘What good is it?’ If the land
mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it
or not. If the biota, in the course of
aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool
would discard seemingly useless parts?
To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent
tinkering.”
Current debates over seals
and white sharks in New England, over cormorants
in the East and wolves
in the West, if and when they come to votes, should certainly be informed
by such comment.
Finally, and closely related to the other two considerations, is Leopold’s injunction to
“Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action
is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action
is to be condoned because it pays.”
Given the current public health crisis, it’s not clear how
many bills will come before Congress this year, and whether any will impact marine
fisheries issues. However, should any
such votes on significant fisheries related bills take place, my current intent
is to use the criteria set forth above—the “Leopold Principle”—to rate the
votes of, at least, legislators from coastal districts on those bills, and present them in
late October/very early November to this blog's readers as a sort of “Marine Fisheries Conservation
Voting Guide.”
I encourage others, whether involved in the marine fisheries
conservation arena or elsewhere to consider doing something similar. In a time of national peril, there is a
tendency to focus on the immediate threat, and that allows those who focus
solely on their own interests to push bad bills through.
If legislators allow that to happen, and so threaten the
biotic community to which we all belong, voters ought to know.
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