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Defenders Magazine
Defenders View: Caught in an Iron Triangle
Have you heard about the environmental protection
advocate appointed to a position in the Bush administration? Neither have I.
Wasn't this supposed to be a president who represented all the people?
Didn't he promise his appointees would exemplify America? Polls show that a
majority of Americans consider themselves environmentalists. Isn't their desire
to protect the environment worth at least a token appointment? Apparently not.
Have you heard about the anti-environmental special interest
representative appointed by the administration? It's hard not to when so many
federal agencies have top appointees who vehemently oppose regulatory protection
of the environment.
When the president appointed Gale Norton as secretary
of the Interior and lauded her as a conservationist, real conservationists
almost choked from laughing and sobbing at the same time. Endangered species
immediately began looking for Noah's Ark, knowing that the flood was coming.
And flood it has. In only two years she has pushed for oil drilling in
the Arctic refuge, the Powder River Basin, off the coast of California and many
places in between; contributed to the killing of 30,000 endangered chinook and
coho salmon; rejected her own scientists' warnings that her policies would hurt
wildlife; overturned a requirement to stop snowmobiles from causing serious harm
in Yellowstone; overturned an approved plan to assist the endangered grizzly
bear; ignored federal court orders to protect the manatee; and damaged morale in
the National Park Service by proposing to turn increasingly more park jobs over
to commercial interests. And that's just the beginning. In addition, she is the
only Interior secretary who has not proposed protection for any new species
under the Endangered Species Act. Meanwhile, hundreds requiring protection slip
even closer to extinction.
Then there's Norton's deputy secretary, Steve
Griles, who simply left his private sector business of lobbying for the mining,
oil and gas industries to do the same job as a government official. He's already
had formal reprimands for helping his chums in industry — who are, incidentally,
still sending him $284,000 per year while he's a paid Interior official making
decisions that affect them. Griles claims these are legitimate payments for his
old lobbying business, which he "sold" to his friends. But when Defenders
demanded to see this supposed sales agreement under the Freedom of Information
Act, the Interior Department claimed to know nothing of any such document. Now
we're suing to establish whether or not it exists.
Examples of special
interest appointees go on and on. Mark Rey, former top lobbyist for the timber
industry, is now an agriculture undersecretary setting policy for our national
forests. The no-surprise result? The Bush administration is working to eliminate
protection for the last 58.5 million acres of roadless national forests and to
seriously weaken the landmark National Forest Management Act. It is promoting a
deceptively named "Healthy Forests Initiative," which in the name of wildfire
protection allows extensive logging of fire-resistant trees nowhere near
communities at risk.
Throughout American history, one of the most
persistent threats to the proper functioning of our political democracy has been
the phenomenon known as the "iron triangle." Basically, this is an alliance of
influence peddlers from private industry working with sympathizers in federal
agencies and supporters in Congress to promote private interests at the expense
of public welfare.
Advocates of environmental protection are well
acquainted with this phenomenon because it is always present to some degree.
Industry special interests always have lobbyists pushing to maximize short-term
profits at the expense of the environment. Some political appointees are less
interested in their agencies' public interest missions than in assisting special
interest friends.
What is truly astounding in the current situation is
the near total takeover of the executive branch of our government by top-level
appointees who are fiercely committed to the idea that our environmental laws
impose an unwarranted burden on private industry — and slavishly dedicated to
eliminating that burden, by whatever means possible. Never has the iron triangle
been more in evidence ... and more dangerous.
