Wild & Scenic in Pioneer

(Revised)

When I awoke after the sending this in and an exhausting meeting I realized I had not remembered all I had said. What follows is a more complete version of the prior commentary under the same title.

On 6/9/14 the Upcountry Community Council had a debate and discussion about the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River. I became so frustrated during the proceeding I seized the floor and under the pretext of a question said the following in a slightly revised form:

Some people spoke of saving the river from dams or other large projects through the Wild & Scenic designation. Even without that designation if such a project was proposed, everyone in this room would be dead by the time the environmental litigation had ended.

The Wild & Scenic proponents produced figures showing how a dam or other large project would be prohibitively expensive. While I don’t question the accuracy of those figures they are not immutable. Things change. When my parents were growing up people washed their clothes in gasoline because it was cheaper than laundry soap. I wonder how much of the quoted cost figures are due to markets restricted by government favoritism and overregulation, lack of skilled labor because young people have not entered the trades, environmental extremism preventing the necessary raw material extraction, the apathy and fear griping America today and myriad other factors.

Preventing future generations from deciding how to best use our resources is simply selfish. Probably we will need water to mine all the gold in the Mother Lode to repay our government debt that the Chinese have purchased. And if we don’t there may not be a United States of America.

The Wild & Scenic designation, along with all the conservation easements and related schemes, are a return to the land tenure system of the Middle Ages. People were very poor then, in part because there was too much regulation, too many taxes and too many governments. So some people started trading goods smuggled through the forests, uniting producers and consumers. These people were criminals in their day, but we remember them as the first capitalists. They are responsible for the great prosperity we all enjoy today.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett