aferraro

Thank you for your comment.
I can only speak for myself, as the writer of the piece, but what I support is the production of energy, or the production of any commodity, in ways where the producer does not rely on the environment that sustains us all to soak up the cost of their production. The catch-all phrase is "privatizing profits and socializing costs."
You can save lots of money by not spending it on plans to deal with oil spills, by not using blow-out preventers, by not replacing dead batteries on your blow out preventer, by focusing purely on profit, taking every tax incentive that your lobbyists can produce for you, and counting on the vast commons of the Gulf of Mexico to soak up any mistakes you might make. After all, you are an oil producer, not a commercial fisherman. Your business is to produce oil and make a profit on that production. Whether there are fish, or anything else, is not really your concern.
In Wyoming, public land managers were commanded "to reduce the impediments to energy production," which they have done. The impediments were laws, regulations and policies to protect wildlife, grazing, water resources, etc. In effect, energy producers were encouraged to let the costs of their operations fall on the public. Invasive weeds, loss of livestock grazing, contaminated creeks, loss of wildlife, all of this has a cost, and it's a cost that goes on long after the gas has been sold and burned, and the profits taken away.
There was a time when we as a nation became convinced that, given much freedom, industry would act not only in its own best interests, but in the best interests of the nation as a whole. Regulations, designed to prevent private enterprise from socializing its costs- say- I have a factory that produces cast iron pipe, and I use a lot of grease and oil, and every night, instead of paying to have the grease and oil hauled off to a recycling center, I just save the money and dump it all in the creek - these regulations became unpopular (with a lot of help from lobbyists for the industries that were being forced to comply) and we set off on a new path, voluntary compliance, getting rid of regulatory impediments to production, etc. Even where we had regulations, say at the federal Minerals Management Services, we discovered that, in a pro-production climate, those regulations were kind of jeered at and not followed.
And that's what first brought us mountain-top removal coal mining. Just a little jig in the regs, courtesy of former coal and oil lobbyist Steven Griles, appointed to the Department of the Interior (and since imprisoned in connection with the Abramoff corruption case). After the little jig in the regs meant to protect clean water, a coal producer could use a barebones workforce to blow the tops off mountains, get the coal, and shove the waste into the valleys, burying the creeks. There's a big cost- water supplies, property values, wildlife, etc. But you don't have to pay it.
So, yes, you bet, I'm against that. I'm against corruption, mostly because I think that corruption destroys nations (see exhibit A: Mexico).
I'm against the loss of wildlife in Wyoming and Colorado because a company didn't want to spend the money to produce the commodity without destroying wildlife - no matter HOW MUCH WE NEED THAT COMMODITY.
I'm against pouring salty water from coal bed methane operations into the Tongue River so that it can't be used to irrigate crops, and we lose farms and jobs and food production, just because somebody decided they didn't want to cut into the profits from the gas to pay to properly dispose of that water.
I think if I were in charge of a company fraccing the Marcellus shale, I would not keep the ingredients in my fraccing fluids- which I'll be pumping into the aquifers-a secret. If I do, I have to expect that people who draw their drinking water from those aquifers, and who own homes that could be made worthless if those aquifers are contaminated, could get real angry.
If you want to be free of regulations, you have to more or less act right. If you act right, buddy, I'm supporting you all the way.
Does that answer your question?

"What we are seeing is the work of a new generation that has no connection to the land…over the past hundred years, the natural resources of our country have become political spoils."

No kidding. So true, and makes me so sick sometimes. We need a judge jury and executioner to show up and just take care of the land rapists. Nothing seems to stop them. They have the money and the power. What the hell am I supposed to do beyond getting more bitter? Vote? There is no one any good to vote for.

Great piece, Hal. Keep up the good work. If enough sportsmen call their congressmen and senators and ask why they're not doing more to protect our fisheries and our wildlife habitat, we may be able to save some of the places we hunt and fish.

Shane - get on the phone, call your congressman and Senators, drop Obama an e-mail, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, join conservation organizations like the TRCP, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, Trout Unlimited ...

It's an old cliche, but it's still true: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you want results, then make some noise.

Hal,

Thank you for a fantastic piece that really ought to open the eyes of every sportsman who reads it. The idea that we can continue to hunt and fish in this country without the habitat to support our fish and our game is ludicrous. You have demonstrated, yet again, the need for the average hunter/angler to grow a set and step into the fray, for fear of sacrificing opportunity, now and for the next generation.

Keep up the good work...

CH

"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."

Theodore Rooseveldt.

Thank you, Hal