Just this past January, I wrote National monuments, more of Obama’s environmental legacy at my personal blog about Former President Obama creating Gold Butte National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument. While I reported on the controversy surrounding the designation of Bears Ears, I concluded “the monument will be a good thing and that it will last.” I should not have been so sanguine. I still think it’s a good thing, but Bears Ears may mostly go away, surviving in two smaller parts under a different name. CBS News reports Trump drastically downsizes nationally protected land in Utah.
President Trump announced that he cutting nearly two million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. National Geographic’s environment editor, Brian Howard, joins CBSN to discuss the impact and the expected legal response.
As Howard said, this move is unprecedented and will face stiff legal resistance. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up in the Supreme Court, which means that it will take years for this move to take effect, if ever. I expect to be posting updates on this terrible move for the environment, as well as another attempt to obliterate Obama’s legacy, right up to the end of the decade. It should be fun to watch.
By the way, I had no idea how many paleontological resources there were inside both national monuments until I stumbled across these two images from the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP). They’re out of date, as they were designed to prompt people to use them during the comment period, which expired a while ago, but they’re still interesting.
First, Bears Ears, which SVP wrote should be expanded, not reduced.
Next, Escalante-Grand Staircase.
As a paleontologist who worked at Rancho La Brea and gave presentations about Pigmy Mammoths at Channel Island National Park, I’m impressed, as the topic of fossils in National Parks and Monuments is one that is near and dear to my heart. I wish I had known earlier, but I doubt my input would have made a difference to this administration. Sigh. At least I have its space policy, which is cold comfort for all the ill Trump and Zinke have done for the environment.
Modified from Trump declares the downsizing of two national monuments in Utah at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News .
The strangest thing about this calendar year has been that the ruling party (GOP) has persisted in trying to impose upon its own country a form of shock therapy that has ordinarily been imposed by the likes of the IMF and World Bank upon financially distressed nations in exchange for loans. The conditions of those loans have typically involved privatization of public goods (your diary is a good example of that), imposing higher taxes upon the middle and lower socioeconomic classes (which the House and Senate tax bills, which are in the beginning stages of reconciliation, do), with the result of a transfer of wealth to the very wealthiest of the elites (see tax bill for example). Right now we are just at the beginning of this process, but how it plays out in other countries has been far from pretty, to the point that the poster boy for such shock therapy (Jeffrey Sachs) is not so keen on the approach any more (if I understand correctly). To characterize such an approach to governing as neoliberal would actually be a correct usage of the term, based on the theories upon which such governing is based.
The difference here is that the US is not in financial distress in any meaningful fashion, is not an inflation risk by any stretch, and the US Dollar is for now still a reserve currency. For a nation that is sitting fairly pretty to have a ruling party choose a form of self-imposed shock therapy is highly unusual, to say the least. The impacts on everything from the environment, scientific innovation, economic output, to lifespan will be nothing short of devastating. A lot of the worst can be stopped, still. But it will be a battle for as long as the GOP has a stranglehold on the White House, both chambers of Congress, and so many governors’ mansions and statehouses.
Perhaps a bit of a pipe dream of mine: a chastened US in the 2020s not only cleans the mess made during the last years of this decade, but makes a point of not advocating or supporting efforts to exploit nations that are in genuine economic dire straits (in other words, no more shock therapy, ever), not only because it is morally wrong, but because regrettably, we understand on some level what must have been experienced by those who were most victimized.
Thinking of this action as part of imposing the Shock Doctrine didn’t occur to me, so my hat’s off to you for proposing that. I just considered it to be an anti-environmental move pandering to part of Trump’s base by a person who is known for being both anti-environment and a panderer to America’s worst impulses. As for the rationale, you’re right; it isn’t based on any objective basis in the economy. Instead, it’s a matter of opportunity (GOP control of all branches of the federal government for the first time since 2006) plus a crisis mentality arising from irrational considerations (the psychic wound common among white racists of having a nonwhite President). Just the same, the results of Shock Doctrine on the U.S. will be devastating, which might be the point. This will hurt Democratic constituencies and interests, and at least a few Republicans acknowledge this.
As for this influencing future U.S. foreign policy for the better, we’ll see.
The Shock Doctrine had at least a bit of influence on how I viewed the way politics and economics have been entangled for much of my adult life. The GOP has been telegraphing for quite some time that selling off public goods (regardless the damage to the environment, etc), along with a combination of raising taxes and cutting services for the ordinary citizens in favor of giving the rich a windfall. Everything that this White House Occupant and the GOP majority has tried this past year has been in the service of achieving those goals. The fact that these actions are often unpopular is immaterial – either because the now ruling party is convinced it can maintain rule for the long term or because this is the best opportunity to loot us all that they will get, and that even out of power, their cronies’ ill-gotten gains will already be safely stored in shell companies and whatnot. And besides, the party that has to clean up their mess will get little in the way of gratitude for doing so (the first two years of the Obama Administration are a case in point).
These national monuments are a starting point. Maybe enough lawsuits will keep them from being looted. Not wanting to count on it. But I do want to dream.