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This is Chapter 14/Section 2 ("The History"), of the 2024 Serialization of the Second Edition (2013) of the book by Steven Jonas: "The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022." The book was first published in 1996. This 2nd Edition is available in Kindle on Amazon. A third, printed, edition of the book is currently in preparation and should be in publication sometime this month.
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Author's Commentary
The Act terminated the National Parks and National Forests systems (as early as 1995 closing the national parks had been for instance advocated by Republican Congressman James Hansen of Utah [Sher]). [1] It turned the parks, forests, and other designated wilderness areas over to proprietary interests (a greed"'gratifying process called "privatization" in those days); repealed the remnants of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, in the process finally shut ting down completely the long"'crippled Environmental Protection Administration.
Finally, it removed all remaining governmental regulations and limitations on oil exploration and production, lumbering, and mining on all lands that were part of the White Republic of the NAR (the old "Endangered Species Act" having already long since departed the legislative playing field). The Act's public premise, to the extent that a pub lic premise was needed in a country governed by a dictatorship (see Chapter 15), was the further glorification of the "Free Market" as the ideal public policy-maker and economic re source allocator.
The institution of "Resource Based Economy" (RBE) (see below), that was both the motivation for and the result of policies instituted pursuant to this Act, as we know ultimately failed. We are still re covering from the massive environmental destruction caused by the RBE. The RBE experience did, how ever, offer the final proof, if any more were needed after the deindustrialization of the old U.S. that lead to its adoption, that the "Free Market" was indeed any thing but the ideal public policy"'maker and economic resource allocator it was cracked up to be.
The Right"'Wing Reactionary Environmental Agenda
With the passage of The Natural Resources Access Act, Right"'Wing Reaction finally achieved in full the goals for environmental protection and energy policy they had set back in the mid"'Transition Era. At that time, one of the leaders of what some called the environmental destruction movement, Ron Arnold, had put it succinctly (Stapleton): "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate, the environmental movement."
The environmental goals of Right"'Wing Reaction were laid out in more detail in, for example, The Wise Use Agenda (Gottlieb) and the 1992 Republican National Platform (pp. 46"'56). Even the self"'styled "environmental President" George Bush had proposed in 1992 to allow surface "strip"'mining" for coal in National Parks (Schneider). The so"'called "Wise Use" agenda had included (Stapleton):
-- Breaking up the National Park Service.
-- Opening all national parks and wilderness areas to mineral and energy [resource] production.
-- Clear cutting all ancient forests, using the bizarre argument that 'decaying and oxygen-using' old-growth contributes to global warming.
-- A major 20-year construction program to build [privately owned] lodging and concessions in national parks.
-- A public land giveaway: redefining grazing rights to 'recognize [that] these ranches are not public lands but split-estate lands, co-owned by government and the rancher.'
-- Gutting the Endangered Species Act.
-- Constructing wilderness trails for off"'road vehicles.
-- Immediately developing petroleum resources in Alaska's pristine Arctic Wildlife Refuge (ANMWR)."
Building on the record of legislative success of the "Wise Use" movement that had begun following the election of the 104th Congress in 1994, this Act of 2013 consolidated and codified the gains that Right-Wing Reaction had made under the Republicans, the Republican-Christian Alliance, and the American Christian Nation Party alike.
In the 104th Congress, in addition to many elements of the "Wise Use" agenda, the Right-Wing Reactionary environmental destruction shopping list was designed to (Lewis, [a]):
-- Prevent the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) from keeping possibly toxic fill out of lakes and rivers.
-- Deprive the EPA of funds to keep raw sewage out of rivers and away from beaches.
-- Cut by two-thirds, from 300,000 acres to 100,000 acres, the wetlands to be bought from farmers by the Agriculture Department for a preserve.
-- Increase logging in the Tongas National Forest, a remarkable rain forest in Alaska."
Lewis went on to note that: " 'Congress has set up a virtual environmental exemption bazaar,' Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon (Democrat) said the other day, 'granting special interest after special interest exemption.' "
The "special interests" that Gov. Kitzhaber referred to were almost invariably major contributors to the campaign funds of the Republicans who championed these proposals in the Congress.
At the same time, at the state level, similar initiatives were being taken elsewhere (Schuchat):
-- In California, Gov. Pete Wilson pushed for a bill to gut the state's Environmental Quality Act. . .
-- Maine's Legislature slashed financing for the state's most important water quality program . . .
-- The people of Arizona no longer have the right to sue a company for polluting private or public property. . .
-- Oregon legislators have denied local communities the right to set stronger restrictions on pesticides than the state does, even though some towns' water supplies have been contaminated by state-sanctioned use of pesticides. . . .
-- In Wisconsin, lawmakers drastically cut back the state Department of Resources public advocate, an office that had acted as an environmental watchdog, and prohibited it from taking legal action against other state agencies."
Right"'Wing Reactionary Environmental Rhetoric and Tactics
In carrying out their campaign, the environmental destructionist forces were not exactly tactful. Ron Arnold stated their substantive goals bluntly (Gleeson): "We want you to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely. And we want people to under stand that is a noble goal."
Reflecting the "cultural, religious war" rhetoric of certain Right-Wing reactionary leaders of the time, Charles Cushman of the National Inholders Association (an organization of owners of private property lying within the boundaries of national parks, forests, and wilderness areas), said (Gleeson): "It's a holy war between fundamentally different religions. . . The preservationsts [environmentalists] are worship ping trees and sacrificing people. . . ."
Indeed the Religious Right itself weighed in on the issue, invoking old Red-scare tactics. Listen to the well-known Fundamentalist Minister Tim LaHaye (Gleeson):
"The phony environmental crisis is a socialist plot to create so much bureaucratic control of business in the name of saving the environment that it will cost billions of dollars and thousands of lost jobs during the next ten years."
But the Red-scare tactic was not the property only of the Religious Right of the time. Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, said (SCLDF):
"If we lose the private-land concept in this country, let us all become Communists. That is what communism is all about, that in the national interest we shall do what is right. But the basis of our democracy has been based upon the individual rights of that one person, not in the national goodness."
Personal attacks and threats were also part of the environmental destructionist arsenal during the Transition Era. For example (Helvarg):
"On November 14, 1994, Ellen Gray, an organizer with the Pilchuk Audubon Society in Everett, WA, had just finished testifying at a County Council hearing in favor of a land-use ordinance to protect local streams and wetlands when a man stood up in front of her with a noose and said, 'This is for you.'
"We have a militia of 10,000,' another man told her, 'and if we can't beat you at the ballot box, we'll beat you with a bullet.' "
(It is fascinating to note, among other things in this statement, the rejection of constitutional democracy, whether by the threatened or actual use violence as in this case or other means, that was so common to so much of Right-Wing Reactionary thinking.)
What Had Been Done
In the almost two decades from the commencement of the 104th Congress in 1995, much had been accomplished in dismantling the series of environmental, wildlife, wilderness, natural resources, and commercial animal protections that had been enacted by the Congress, under both Republican and Democratic Presidents since the first term of Richard Nixon (1969-73). But, by and large, this dismantlement had been undertaken in piecemeal fashion.
The effort had left behind a hodgepodge of laws and programs, of partial repeals and draconian spending reductions, of full"'throated rhetoric and half-hearted measures, primarily slanted in favor of resource exploitation and economic development, but with some throwbacks, quirks, and internal contradictions. As noted, the Natural Resources Access Act was in tended to deal with such problems and establish a single, consistent national policy, not only on natural resources, but also on environmental protection, commercial and wild animals conservation and preservation, and undeveloped areas.
To do this, the Act set a single national standard to be applied to policy"'making in all of these related arenas. As succinctly stated by "Wise Use Movement" leader Ron Arnold and Republican Congress man Don Young (quoted above), the new national standard held that the "free market" was to be the primary determinant of policy and that the fundamental right to be protected was that of private property owner ship and its benefits to the owners. In supporting its position, the "Wise Use Movement" often quoted part of an opinion handed down as part of a 1972 Supreme Court decision (The Private Sector):
"The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights. The right to enjoy property without unlawful de privation, no less than the right to speak or the right to travel, is in truth, a 'personal' right, whether the property in question be a welfare check, a home, or a savings account. In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other."
For a movement that had little concern with the personal rights of, say, thought, expression, and protection against arbitrary search and seizure, it was odd that Right"'Wing Reaction showed so much concern for this one personal right in particular. But then again, a money value can be placed on property. One cannot be placed on liberty and freedom.
Why At That Time?
As previously noted, over the previous 25 years the economic decision"'makers of the old U.S. had consciously implemented the policy of diminishing public and private investment in productive resour es, coupled with economy-wide computerization/robotization and disaccumulation of labor around productive resources. The resultant deindustrialization had led to the then current state of affairs, privately recognized even by the Right-Wing Reactionaries as a problem.
They did not regret the outcomes of their economic policies for a moment, because those outcomes had led to huge profits and a highly luxurious lifestyle for themselves. But they recognized that as a natural result, the economy could less and less be supported by industrial production of goods and services. More and more, continued prosperity for themselves would require the unfettered harvesting and production of agricultural products and natural resources for ex port. Thus, to the greatest extent possible, any remaining limitations (and there were not too many) on environmental exploitation needed to be removed, regard less of any immediate or longer"'term negative consequences.
During the Transition Era, many scientists and liberal policy-makers had predicted that following the Right-Wing Reactionary economic, energy, and environmental policies of the time would in the old U.S. eventually lead to a gradual decline to Third World Nationhood, albeit a heavily armed and fairly wealthy one (see Chapter one). And that is precisely what happened. To this major reconstruction of the economic base of the country, the Hagueites gave that grand sounding name "Resource"'Based Economy." We will return to a consideration of its nature.
Let us turn now to the brief speech President Jefferson Davis Hague made in presenting the legislation to the Congress which he had called back into session for the single purpose of considering (and of course passing) it.
Speech by Jefferson Davis Hague, upon the Introduction of the Nat ural Resource Access Act, made on Arbor Day, Monday, April 15, 2013[2]
"Americans are becoming outraged to discover that their home is no longer the land of hope and optimism, the one nation in the world where anything might be possible.
"Something is wrong, dreadfully wrong. Our nation's strength is being sapped. Somebody, as our English friends would say, has put a spanner in America's works, and the assembly line is shutting down.
"But who would do such a thing? And how did we let it hap pen? The answer is a stunner: the Spanner Crew is the old environmental movement. And by trusting our government too much, we let it happen.
"In every act of 'environmental protection' there is an economic decision. For example: protecting old growth trees rather than allowing them to be converted into homes for people, banning off-shore oil exploration in so-called "sensitive areas" while driving up the price of heating homes and driving cars, expanding a national park by knocking down homes and businesses, protecting so-called "wetlands" which aren't even wet most of the time.
"Putting harsh restrictions on business was the way many of these laws worked: infringing on private property rights by confiscatory regulation, putting resource-rich Federal lands off-limits to private enterprise, taking over private property for so-called "nature reserves."
"The environmentalists have cost us money out-of-pocket, they have prevented economic growth, they controlled land-use against development. They have destroyed private property rights on a massive scale.
"But it is private property and property rights which have been one of the cornerstones of our historic prosperity.
"Land is the fundamental source of that which keeps us alive. Industry is the fundamental instrument we have to get the materials out of the ground that can be made into the goods we need to survive and prosper. And what has the environmental movement done? Nothing but trash, bash, and try to stash industry away.
"And so now, finally, we are going to get government out from between you and industry, out from between industry and the good it can do for you, out of the way of industry so that it can concentrate on doing what it does best, making life better and better for each and every one of us.
"As we accomplish this good for the American people on what used to be income tax day and is now National Arbor Day [3], please recall which Party it is that has substituted trees for taxes for you.
"Thank you. And please, do plant a tree today."
Oakwood Transcript, April 16, 2013
Well good afternoon ladies and gentlemen here in the East, and good morning to those of you still residing out on the Left Coast. Did you hear the President's speech yesterday? I mean, did you hear it? You didn't? Well you should have.
Ah the sound of chain saws and the smell of two-cycle fuel exhaust in the morning. Could anything be better? They make a true outdoorsman's heart beat faster. And that's what Mr. Jeff's speech did for me.
Let me tell you. He gave it to those environmental-wackos, whatever's left of them. Boy have they done a job on this country. You know, people really forgot how rich in natural resources the American Continent really is. Or they knew, but wouldn't let us exploit our God-given natural wealth the way God meant for us to exploit it. After all, if He hadn't meant for us to use it, He would n't have put it here for us in the first place, would He?
But those liberalniggerlover-envirofascists just kept holding us back. You couldn't drill here, couldn't mine there, couldn't burn that kind of fuel here, couldn't cut down those trees there. They just stood in the way of development and progress. And of course, they prevented us from building any decent nuclear energy capacity at all.
Well, the coming end of the towel"'heads' oil has taught us all a good lesson. Soon there's not gonna be no more oil from there, as they say. The Japs and the Euros have been able to meet some of their need because with the divvying up of Russia between them, they have taken over the Russkies' oil.
But where does that leave us? Nowhere. So we have to turn to our selves. And when we get back to 54-40 we'll be in even better shape. [4] Between the Canucks and us there's coal, timber, oil, and natural gas aplenty. And now with this new Act, there will be no more restrictions on mining, drilling, lumbering, anywhere. We just did away with them. The free market, self-responsibility, people making their own decisions about cutting down a tree or saving an owl. That's the American Way.
And, of course, we're going nuclear again. But this time we're doing it the smart way. We're putting our new plants just inside the borders of the n-word and Redskin Republics, wrapped around by Protective Fences, of course. So there's no danger to the White race if there's an accident every now and again. And I have to admit, since we're honest over here, that they do happen. And we dump the nuclear wastes in those Republics too, right along with all the rest of garbage. [5] After all, garbage loves garbage, doesn't it? But we are letting those lesser lights have some light from the plants-- if they can pay for it.
But, you tell me, there are always those yammerers about the future. Well, we're using sulfured coal again-- there's plenty of it, and we wouldn't want it to go to waste now, would we? And we're letting cars burn just about anything. And we're getting along just great.
We've finally learned we just don't have to worry about the future. It will take care of itself. It's that kind of liberal-niggerlover-environmental wacko thinking that got us into trouble in the first place. Just look at how prosperous we are now. And this new Act is going to make us even more prosperous. Just you wait.
Author's Commentary
On the Hague Speech
The Hague speech was remarkable for what it didn't say as well as for what it did say. First as to the latter. This speech was a classic Right-Wing Reactionary diversionary tactic dating from the Transition Era. By this time, they had used it so many times that they probably no longer realized what they were doing. (When they started using it, as far back as the pre-Transition Era politics of President Richard Nixon, it was apparent that they knew precisely what they were doing, and did it consciously.)
It was the old formula. Identify a problem (in this case loss of jobs specifically in the energy and natural resources sectors, and more gen er ally in the economy as a whole). Create an enemy, one that is easily identifiable from your side. Make sure that the identified enemy is in no way related to the real causes of the identified problem so that no linkages can be made. (In this instance, the real causes were national investment and energy policies generally, and private timber and coal industry practices in particular.)
If the identified enemy is non-existent, weak, or long-gone from the scene, even better. Then it cannot defend itself against your attacks and is ill"'equipped to identify and educate people about the real causes of the problem(s). In this case, the problems were real enough, and highly threatening to the whole fabric of the economy. But the supposed cause identified by Hague, the "environmental movement," had long since departed the scene.
The environmental movement was one of the earliest victims of the late Transition Era Right-Wing Reactionary policy of "defunding the Left" by arranging to end the Federal income tax deductibility of voluntary monetary contributions to it. At the same time, the policy severely limited the ability of all sorts of voluntary agencies such as the Amer i can Red Cross and the Boy Scouts even to speak out on pub lic issues (Crowley; Lewis, [b]). Of course, with the repeal of the income tax, all tax deductibility disappeared any way, and the rich who benefited from the effective tax reduction were highly unlikely to be contributors to organizations devoted to protecting the environment.
The operation of the "free market" in timber and energy policy had led, for example, to the destruction of thousands of square miles of forest and range land (through strip mining for coal). That process was already well underway by the mid"'Transition Era (see, for example, Egan). That was why the NAR, in developing the RBE, would have to expand into the as yet unspoiled wilds of Western Canada (see below, and Chapter 16).
Overfishing had led directly to the destruction of the food fish populations of the Georges and Grand Banks off the eastern coast of the U.S. and Canada. It was certainly feasible to achieve sustainable use of these renewable resources through careful management and planning (Rosenberg, et al). That was never done; it would have been a Young-like "Communist plot" and "interference with the free market."
Further on fishing, it was over-harvesting and the destruction of the Western rivers by damming and the despoliation of the land by timber over-cutting leading to soil-erosion and its consequences that virtually destroyed the salmon industry in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean. Nerertheless, according to Hague and his forebears it was the "envirofascists" who did all the damage. Little had been done to correct that false message when it first made its appearance during the Transition Era. With control of the media completely in Hagueite hands, it was of course impossible to do anything about it in 2013.
As to Hague's point about the environmental movement and job-loss, many more jobs had been lost because of industry policies and practices than because of environmental regulation and protection. For example, in the timber industry, most job"'loss occurred be cause of clear"'cutting and the closure of private lumber mills as industry sales and marketing practices changed (Durning; Egan; Johnson; Linden). "Interference" from the environmental protection movement was not a primary cause of job-loss.
In fact, it had already been shown in the 90s that environmental protection could actually create jobs in areas that private timber companies had already over-harvested (Glick; Seagar). At the same time, in the then two principal economic rivals of the old U.S., Germany and Ja pan, "environmental protection [was seen] as an opportunity for economic development, not a barrier to growth" (Moore). Much of the advantage that they quickly achieved in the field of environmental preservation technology was based on methods and systems that had been originally developed in the old U.S., but never exploited there, either by government or private industry.
On the Oakwood Transcript
Note the casual prejudice ("the towel-heads' oil") that was so much a part of the Oakwood presentation. Note too the casual manner in which he alluded to the end of the oil supply from the Middle East, something that had been warned against by energy-supply experts for decades. However, profits not prudence had ruled the utilization of those re serves.
In the 1970s the oil-rich countries surrounding the Persian Gulf had nationalized their own petroleum reserves. Subsequently, the only way the large American oil companies which had previously owned the stuff could make money was by acting as the middleman and selling large quantities of it on the retail market. The more oil they sold, the more money they made. But they could no longer make money simply by owning the oil reserves and seeing their value rise over time.
The oil companies wanted nothing to interfere with their short-term profit-making potential, so they made sure that any oil-conservation or conversion programs were muzzled. Ironically, if they had owned the reserves, they might have been interested in conservation to make the petroleum"'basis of the economies of the industrialized countries last longer into the future, when the resource would be more expensive.
In fact, the Reaganite destruction of the American domestic oil industry (in which many relatively small companies were factors) during the early Transition Era was prompted by the need the large oil companies had for maintaining American dependence on foreign supplies, sold in America at high profits, by those self-same companies.
The Reaganites also virtually shut down the nascent industry in alternative energy sources, such as solar. These policies were all undertaken at the behest of Big Oil, major benefactors of the Reaganite Republicans. After President Clinton had overseen a modest re"'start in alternative energy resource research and development in 1993, the Re publican-controlled 104th Congress moved smartly to shut it down.
The reference to the siting of both the nuclear power and the nuclear waste "disposal" industries on the borders of the Negro and Indian Republics needs no comment. As to the "don't worry about tomorrow" message, that was an old one for Right-Wing Reaction, dating back to the early Transition Era and President Ronald Reagan.
On the "Resource Based Economy"
Hague did not discuss the "Resource-Based Economy" (RBE) in this speech. But it was the Natural Resources Access Act that led directly to its development. Indeed the Act was needed if the RBE were to be developed. With the continued relative decline in American industrial capacity, and the coming severe limitations on petroleum supplied from the Middle East, the economic decision"'makers had determined that America would live on its natural resources, and eventually those of its neighbor to the north.
The aim was to make the NAR one of the two major energy sources for the industrialized world (the other being the now-divided nation of Russia). The NAR would more and more meet its own energy needs from the unfettered use of nuclear power, now that plant siting and nuclear waste dumping were to be considered "No Problem."
Domestic petroleum reserves were fast disappearing, even from the Arctic areas and the continental shelf. However, with the reintroduction of the use of sulfured coal and the end of any restrictions on strip mining, the NAR's coal reserves were numbered in the several hundred years. Nevertheless, the NAR was using up its own trees rapidly, even with the new technologies that made energy extraction from them much more efficient. Thus the drive to take over Western Canada and its seemingly countless trees intensified. (It had coal, oil, and natural gas reserves too.) This policy had been advocated during the Transition Era by certain Right-Wing Reactionary figures such as Patrick Buchanan (c. 1989). (There is no indication, however, that Buchanan would have endorsed the specific policies followed by Hague and the NAR.)
Responding to the long-standing economic depression in Canada, and using the economic advantages afforded by the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 and other similar pacts with Canada, American resource capital had moved ever-more strongly into the four Western Canadian provinces during the early Fascist Period. The larger and larger American economic presence supported the political drive. The latter eventually culminated in the dismemberment of Canada and the Legitimation Treaty of 2017 (see Chapter 16).
Thus the passage of the Natural Resources Access Act, which led to the massive despoliation of the environment from which we have yet to recover, was a pivotal event for the history of the whole of North America. It also marked a major step down the road towards world wide environmental destruction and its consequences that Dino Louis had described in an unpublished commentary on the Earth Summit of 1992 held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The essay had apparently been written at the request of a friend of Louis' who was an international authority on epidemiology. It responded to a general question the friend had posed: "What are the world's five major health problems, as you see them?" This brief essay is re produced here.
Five Major Health Problems (Plus One)
by Dino Louis
June 8, 1992
In opening the Earth Summit of 1992 at Rio de Janeiro, Bra zil, Maurice Strong of Canada, Summit coordinator, said (New York Post):
"We have been the most successful species ever. . . . We are now a species out of control. Our very success is leading to a dangerous future. . . . The wasteful and destructive lifestyles of the rich cannot be maintained at the cost of the lives and the livelihoods of the poor and of nature. We are either going to save the whole world or none of it."
That's the number one health problem: the future of the human species, and perhaps of all life on Earth. That problem is also two, three, four, and five.
Another way to characterize the present situation is by listing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
" Pestilence
" Famine
" Flood
" War
One would only need to add one more Horseman that the conceivers of the Four could not have thought of: Overpopulation, the health problem which underlies and is a major factor in each of the first four.
(If overpopulation had been an even barely perceptible future occurrence at the time the original Horsemen were conceived of, there surely would have been Five of them to begin with. But human over"'population was far beyond anyone's ken 2000 years ago. It has become possible only in our era, when dogma has failed to keep up with science.)
When done correctly, after description, the Public Health Method of problem solving moves on to causal analysis. Many books have been written on the present predicament facing life on earth, and it is a high ly complicated one. But "the wasteful and destructive lifestyles of the rich" are certainly the most prominent of those causes. Major responsibility for the parlous state of the world does lie with the industrialized countries and the political, social, and economic policies they have fol lowed over the last 300 years or so.
Currently, the major factors in the imminent environmental disasters that await us are:
" The heavy reliance on carbon dioxide"'producing fossil fuels for energy, especially by the United States.
" The exploitation of natural resources around the world by the industrialized countries, without regard for the ultimate outcomes of that exploitation.
" The use of chloro-flurocarbons for a variety of purposes, many of them frivolous.
" Destruction of the forests around the world for profit, as well as for fuel and the creation of arable land to support the rapidly burgeoning population.
" The active opposition to population control, for ideological/political reasons on the part of the Eurocentric Roman Catholic Church, and for domestic political reasons by the Reaganite/Bushist Administra tion in the United States.
" Underlying all of the above is production for profit rather than use, which has produced the enormous human, biological, economic, solid, and toxic wastes that now burden us.
Solutions to the problems represented by the Four Horsemen Plus One require very significant political, economic, and social policy changes on the part of the industrialized countries, especially the United States, as was borne out on an almost daily basis during the Rio Sum mit. The solutions require policy changes on the part on the "developing" countries as well, but without action by the former, action by the latter will mean nothing.
Present policy changes agreed to by the industrialized countries, especially the United States, will make only minor alterations in the present downward course toward the Apocalypse. To change them significantly will require major political shifts in those countries. In my view, that is one of the most important tasks to which public health authorities in those countries should currently be lending a hand.
However, looming on the horizon is an even more serious threat to human existence than present industrialized country policy: the threatened takeover of the governments of a number of the industrialized countries, not in the least the United States, by far right"'wing, authoritarian, sometimes theocratic, political parties. We have already experienced more than a whiff of what this would mean for the future of the world in the present Reaganite/Bushist policies that were most recently played out by the American approach to the Rio Summit.
The advent of such authoritarian governments would virtually ensure the end of civilization as we know it, if not of human the species itself, because of their known policies on: the use of petroleum and other fossil fuels, global warming, ozone depletion, population control, the use of force backed up by thermonuclear weapons to achieve political and economic objectives not obtainable by other means, and the belief of their religious Fundamentalist wings in the inevitability (to some of them the desirability) of the Apocalypse in any case. Thus, in my view, the number one health problem facing those of us living in the industrialized nations is changing the course our governments are taking and, for those of us living in countries threatened by authoritarian take"'over, the fight to prevent that catastrophe from occurring.
Author's Comment
Unfortunately, in this essay Louis was nothing if not prescient.
References:
Arnold, R. and Gottlieb, A. Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America, Bellevue, WA: Free Enterprise Press, 1993. 1 "'74.
Buchanan, P., Patrick J. Buchanan . . . From the Right, fund-raising letter, c. 1989.
Chernow, B.A. and Vallasi, G.E., Eds., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, "Oregon," NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 2021.
Crowley, M., "Mistook Istook," The New Republic, November 27, 1995.
Durning, A.T., "Saving the Forests: What Will It Take?" Worldwatch Paper 117, December, 1993.
Egan, T., "A Land Deal Leaves Montana Heavily Logged and Hurt ing," New York Times, October 9, 1993.
Gleeson, K., "Patriotic Games," The ZPG Reporter, November, 1992, Vol. 24, No. 5.
Glick, D., "Having Owls and Jobs Too," National Wildlife, Au gust/September, 1995, p. 9.
Gottlieb, A.M., The Wise Use Agenda, Bellevue, WA: The Free Enterprise Press, 1989.
Helvarg, D., "The Anti-Enviro Connection," The Nation, May 22, 1995.
In Brief, "And Justice for All," Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund News letter, Summer 1993, p. 1.
Johnson, R., Sierra Club Northwest Office, Personal Communication, Septem ber 30, 1992.
Lewis, A., "On Another Planet?" New York Times, September 29, 1995, (a).
Lewis, A., "A Menacing Vendetta" New York Times, October 2, 1995, (b).
Linden, E., "The Green Factor," Time, October 12, 1992.
Moore, C., "Bush's Nonsense on Jobs and the Environment," New York Times, September 25, 1992.
New York Post, "U.S. Likely Scapegoat as Earth Summit Gets Underway," June 4, 1992, p. 15.
Rosenberg, A.A., "Achieving Sustainable Use of Renewable Resources," Science, Vol. 262, November 5, 1993.
Schneider, K., "Bush Strip-Mining Plan for Parks is Blocked," New York Times, October 3, 1992.
Schuchat, S., "Unfit Stewards," New York Times, September 20, 1995.
SCLDF: Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, "Was the Election as Horrific as it Seemed?" In Brief, Winter 1994-95, p. 2.
Seager, S., "The Other Logging Dispute Rages in the Forest Primeval in New England," New York Times, November 27, 1995.
Sher, V., "Lawless America?" In Brief, Summer, 1995.
Stapleton, R.M., "Greed vs. Green," National Parks, November/December, 1992, p. 32.
The Private Sector, "Governing," Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring, 1995, p. 3
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Author's Notes:
[1] There is no indication or evidence that James Hansen, Alan Gottlieb, Ron Arnold, any other member or associate of the "Wise Use Movement" or related organizations, John Kitzhaber, Pete Wilson, Tim LaHaye, Don Young, or any of the other historical personages or organizations mentioned or alluded to in this chapter or else where in this book in a similar manner, would have supported or approved in any way of the passage of the "Natural Resources Access Act," or any of the regulations, policies, or procedures created or implemented pursuant to it in or by the New American Republics at any time in the future, subsequent to its passage and the implementation of the policies carried out pursuant to it.
[2] The reader may recall that President Hague had trouble finding writers who could prepare original speeches. For example, as Connie Conroy revealed (see Chapter 6), his First Inaugural was drawn largely from the work of Transition Era Right"'Wing Reactionary leaders. It has been discovered that this Arbor Day speech was based in large measure (with a great deal of cutting, some direct quotation, a good deal of para phrase), on the writings of two leaders of the Transition Era Right-Wing Reactionary "Wise Use" movement, Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, that appeared in their book Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America, Belleville, WA: Free Enterprise Press, 1993, pp. 1-74. There is no indication any where, however, that either Arnold or Gottlieb would have endorsed the Hagueite ideology or mode of government in any way.
[3] It is not known whether or not Hague was struck by the irony of his making such a speech as this on Arbor Day. It was formerly a locally determined holiday celebrating tree planting. Hague happened to have made it into a national holiday celebrating an Act that would bring about, among other things, the wholesale slaughter of trees on the North American continent.
[4] The "54-40" reference is to a mid-19th century slogan of settlers in the U.S. Northwest, "54-40 or fight." It encapsulated a territorial goal of the time which, if achieved, would have incorporated into the United States much of what later became the four Western Provinces of Canada (Chernow and Vallasi). Subsequent events would see that goal achieved for the NAR (see Chapter 16).
[5] "Racial dumping" of toxic wastes had been wide ly practiced in the old U.S. for many years (In Brief).
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