OPINION/COMMENTARY

Scientists and Generals - Jim Beers

According to a top manager of the Sierra Club, since “Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000,” and President Bush has now, “won outright, with a clear but narrow majority”; “we can expect efforts to limit the Endangered Species Act and to undo the National Environmental Policy Act”. Even scarier (to them) is the prediction that, “Science will continue to take a backseat to politics”. How many times in the past few years have we heard that “scientists say”, “scientists predict”, “science requires”, “scientists demand”, “the science needs more peer review”, “scientific studies indicate”, and “more science is needed”? One US Fish and Wildlife Service employee recently quit because “politics were dictating the science”. “Science” is used to justify everything from the harmful effects of unmanaged wolves and mountain lions to the Kyoto Treaty that would greatly harm the United States and the “need” for a UN Treaty on Native Ecosystems as a goal of national governments. Such justifications are the basis for laws and Treaties that diminish US private property rights, US States’ Rights, rural lifestyles, and the management and use of natural resources. From these things flows the growth of the US Federal government and it’s expanding hegemony over State and local governments in every aspect of American life. The Sierra Club is certainly not alone in it’s angst over a slowdown in Federal growth or it’s fear of recently passed laws being undone. All of the environmental organizations from The Wilderness Society and The Nature Conservancy to the Audubon Society and Ducks Unlimited have profited from tax breaks, grants, subsidies, and powerful laws that allow the Federal government to “take” property without compensation as well as their premiere role as Federal “partners” in all manner of Federal schemes....