Sunday, March 22, 2020

CONSERVATION POLITICS: THE LEOPOLD PRINCIPLE


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.  


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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