Babbitt touts conservation

Babbitt touts conservation, alternative fuels

Nov 10, 2001

BRUCE BABBITT

By Jim Mimiaga
Journal Staff Writer

Conserving fossil fuels and considering alternative energy sources, including nuclear power, is the patriotic duty of Americans, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt told a crowd at Fort Lewis College Wednesday.

Babbitt, who championed wildland preservation during his tenure under the Clinton administration, was sharply critical of President Bush’s plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and within national monuments.

"I take that personally and Congress agreed (not to drill in those places), except for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," Babbitt said.

Drilling there, he said, is unnecessary because the amount of oil is negligible compared to the benefits of conservation.

"It is a fragment of supply that would run the country for 18 months at the most," he said. "Why disrupt the silence, open space and one of the last intact wildlife migration routes for that?"

Babbitt said that the "energy independence" Bush seeks is a laudable goal, "but not exactly economic reality" when it comes to oil. America relies heavily on foreign oil, consuming 25 percent of the world’s total reserves, but producing only 3 percent.

The rest is imported. But foreign-oil demand could be cut in half by doubling gas efficiency on cars and trucks.

"People forget that President Gerald Ford wanted that, and Detroit said ‘impossible,’ but Ford mandated 27 mpg and it happened even though demonstrated technology was not there yet," Babbitt said. "Lamentably, our administration backed off that standard and since then SUV’s dropped to 20 mpg."

Babbitt urged support for gas-electric hybrid cars and hydrogen fuel-cell systems, which can get 50 miles to the gallon. He said the technology is there, but "there is not enough gumption in our national leadership to create the regulatory (system) and make it a reality."

Capping the pollution from power plants should be a national priority also, Babbitt said, because they produce one-third of the greenhouse gases disrupting the global climate. He said a new bill introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman proposes to reduce power-plant emissions through a "cap-and-trade" permit system.

The system gives power plants tax breaks and "credits" if they reduce emissions by upgrading equipment. Those credits can then be sold to plants unable to afford new pollution-control technology. The idea is to make it economically attractive for power plants to operate cleaner.

Bush has been eying coal reserves in national monuments and along the Colorado Plateau in order to boost energy production. But that is not an environmentally clean or advisable solution, Babbitt said.

"We need to end our addiction to fossil fuels," he said. "We have to collectively say to our leadership that if we are patriots, then we cannot abandon (seeking alternative energy solutions) that affect our future."

To do that, calmer discussion needs to take place on the viability of more nuclear power plants, which emit no carbon dioxide, the culprit of global warming. Dealing with nuclear power’s dangerous drawbacks needs more study, however.

"What about the radioactive waste generated from building more nuclear plants?" asked one student.

Babbitt responded that waste is already being dealt with from the 103 nuclear-power plants now on line in the country. He supports Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where a hotly debated nuclear-storage site is being proposed, as a solution to deal with the extra waste.

Babbitt, as he did during his tenure, supports the controversial Animas-La Plata project, a $350 million off-stream reservoir near Durango now getting initial funding from Congress.

"The era of dam-building is over. . . except for A-LP," he said to the apparent dismay of many students. "I support dismantling dams that cause more harm than good, especially on the Snake River in order to protect salmon runs.

"But with A-LP we must honor our commitment to satisfy the Indian water claims, this project is the best compromise and I think it will come to fruition and should," he said.

One opponent asked how A-LP could be an environmentally acceptable compromise since the water will be used to fuel growth in open space and could be targeted for use at new coal-power plants.

Babbitt countered it was a compromise because the off-stream reservoir is better than a dam spanning the popular boating and fishing river. He added that studies show the river depletions will not harm endangered-fish habitat downstream.

As a seasoned politician who championed environmental causes, Babbitt took heat from students on his A-LP stance.

"When you first started you reminded me of (Green Party leader) Ralph Nader," said one woman, "but what I’m hearing I don’t like. . . . just more of the same."

Seemingly unfazed by the criticism, Babbitt joked that "he was hoping for more softball questions." He noted earlier that he "was surprised there were no protesters at the airport," considering intense opposition to the newly formed Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, a designation which he initiated.

"The Interior office has built-in tension because it tries to balance saving natural lands with management of resource depletion," he said.

"I think you’re asking if there is any hope, but history shows us that things change," he said. "That power of ideas is the course of history and it is incubated in colleges where they are test-driven, debated and rolled out into the system."

During his 1 1/2 hour speech, Babbitt also:

Encouraged citizen ballot initiatives that prevent current agricultural land and open space from re-zoning unless approved by voters. "Current planning and zoning does not work because there is always the presumption that the zone can be changed," he said.
Justified the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, a 164,000-acre swath of desert canyonlands in Montezuma County replete with Anasazi ruins. "If we are serious about protecting our human heritage we must do it as a whole," Babbitt said. "It is not just protecting our ancient landscape, but learning how these people lived in extraordinary harmony with the land."
Supported forest-thinning projects to try and undo years of fire-suppression polices that causes fuel build-up, and then massive wildfires like the one at Mesa Verde National Park in 2000. "We learned that you can’t take out old growth because that unravels the natural fabric of the ecosystem, but also we cannot sit on forest either," he said.
Explained that solving the Interior Department’s admitted mismanagement of $10 billion in oil and gas royalties for Indian trust accounts is a bookkeeping nightmare. Much of the money was either lost or never paid out. Babbitt said that a big problem is that many royalty records were never kept, "so trying to reconstruct those records" has been overwhelmingly complex.