Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Destroying our heritage

Thursday, Oct. 2, 2003 | 9 a.m.

THE EYES OF AMERICA are on Iraq where many of our sons and daughters continue to face death every day. What is or isn't happening there deserves our attention and so does the request for giving that country more than $20 billion to spend on rebuilding programs. The very least requirement for this amount of our money should demand it be made as a loan to the nation with the world's second largest oil fields. This matter is now being debated by Congress.

Congress sure moved in a hurry to pass a bill enforcing the use of a no-call list for telemarketers to follow. Seldom does that deliberative body move with such speed. This week they have another bone to chew on as the Department of Justice seeks the person or persons who gave columnist Robert Novak the name of a CIA officer. Because the officer is married to a person who disagrees with some of the White House statements about Iraq, there is some belief the leak came from the White House. Eventually some members of the national press may ask why the officer's name was even published by a popular and widely read conservative columnist.

As all of our eyes face east and we give our attention to Washington, D.C., and Iraq, the Bush administration is moving swiftly to gut some of our laws protecting wildlife, watersheds, forests and wetlands. Iraq can and will be rebuilt just as Japan and Germany were almost 60 years ago. Reclaiming the destroyed natural resources can be an impossible task or one that it will take several administrations to rectify.

Did you know the unpopular proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still alive and well? What is not being considered in the energy bill is the requirement that wind, solar and geothermal power be included as 10 percent of our electricity production by 2020. The recent blackout in the East and the terrorist attacks two years ago are being used to promote anything oil, gas and nuclear power companies want for higher profits.

The amazing survival of drilling in the ANWR should no longer be surprising. A recent issue of Roll Call points out that GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sees the drilling in the wildlife refuge as a needed precedent to open up other pristine areas for industrial invasion. So it's all about big oil and big bucks and has very little to do with a reasonable energy policy.

Last summer The Wilderness Society sent out information that gave the following warning: "The country's two largest national forests, the Tongass and the Chugach, now face serious logging threats after a stunning announcement in June by the former timber industry lobbyist who now oversees national forest policy. As part of a sweetheart settlement of a lawsuit filed by the state of Alaska, the Bush administration decreed that the policy barring commercial logging and roadbuilding in roadless forests will not apply to the most environmentally fragile portions of the Chugach and the Tongass. The Chugach, which is 98 percent roadless, is home to the famed Copper River Delta and other globally significant areas. The Tongass is the world's last largely intact temperate rain forest. There are 50 proposed timber sales that could move forward in the Tongass in the near future. The news came five days after the administration had announced that it would not tamper with the roadless poli! cy."

Even large users of lumber such as KB Home, Staples and Hayward Lumber support the protection of the Tongass and Chugach forests. In August, Edith Roosevelt Derby Williams wrote President Bush reminding President Bush that, "Great presidents protect great things. My grandfather, President Theodore Roosevelt, protected the Tongass National Forest one hundred years ago. Please protect it now by keeping it in the Roadless Area Conservation Rule."

There is a world full of problems, but we had better start here at home and protect our great natural resources. Let's not allow greed to destroy some of the values Americans have protected for generations.