The BLM sidesteps Congress (while Biden vetos) to give environmentalists a win. Complicating the Narrative--a less polarizing way to write news?
"If the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] feels that this rule needs to be implemented, then it needs to be done right — by going through Congress, and involving to a much greater extent the people whose livelihoods depend on these lands."
The quote above is from the op ed below and I could not agree more strongly.
I usually try to keep my focus on local or statewide issues, but this op ed had some themes in it that are close to my heart so I wanted to bring it to your attention.
I'll leave it to you to read the op ed in detail but the crux of the matter is this: the BLM under Biden (in a move that shouldn't shock anyone who has followed this administration's pattern of using rulemaking to accomplish what by rights should be legislative decisions--decisions they know would likely not happen in the proper manner and which have been more than once tossed out by courts when challenged) is considering a change to their rules regarding what they term conservation leases.
As I have written about here, public lands are often leased out to various entities (and sometimes under Polis leased more than once!) such as ranchers, hunters, and etc. Federal lands, which fall under the BLM's purview, has to also (thanks to a 1976 federal law) be let out for "multiple use".
To give a specific definition, see the attached screengrab from the BLM's one-sheeter linked second below.
Here's what's new: the BLM under Biden, without seeking a change in statute, is classifying "conservation" as a use and therefore of equal standing with, say, grazing or recreation.
Putting aside the ill-defined term "conservation" here**, I think that Mr. Valdez (the op ed author) is correct in figuring that the end result here will be monied environmentalists capitalizing on this rule to buy up land and keep anyone from getting any benefit from it at all.
To wit, the following quote from his op ed:
"What this means in a practical sense is that well-heeled environmental activist groups that are accountable to no one could buy up huge tracts of land under the auspices of a 'conservation lease,' and effectively place it under lock and key. That is entirely incompatible with the concept of management for 'multiple uses.' As much as anything, this is a back door to designating more and more land as 'wilderness,' and placing it off-limits to the public — all without going through the people’s elected representatives."
If we want more parks and more wilderness, that's a fine discussion to have. If we want to restore and conserve lands that have been degraded in some way, yes, let's have that debate.
Offering yet another backdoor workaround for an idea that likely wouldn't pass the people's elected representatives and shutting out people like family ranchers who make their living by responsibly using land (while giving the government, and thus the people, a due share) is not.
**One can quite reasonably, for example, consider cattle grazing to be conservation--see Rachel Gabel's op eds for more.
https://denvergazette.com/opinion/columns/perspective-biden-s-blm-a-bust-for-colorado-ranchers/article_c9295cdb-165c-55dc-b014-73ba647b8655.html
https://www.blm.gov/or/districts/burns/newsroom/files/multipleuse.pdf
Related:
More conservation efforts used to block economic activity. More in the article, but the questions raised by some are, I think, quite valid: does adding these animals to the protected list do anything to help them? It will certainly make it harder to extract resources and lowered supply means higher prices all other things being equal.
Plus, if we can't do for ourselves (in terms of timber or oil/gas) we put ourselves at the mercy of the global market.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/09/27/biden-vetoes-two-republican-led-bills-to-undo-protections-for-prairie-chicken-and-northern-bat/
Complicating the Narrative--a less polarizing way to write news?
I found the ideas in the essay below intriguing and thought I would share.
The idea here (and it's a common question and theme I see in reporters writing on journalism) is that the way the media cover political events contributes to political polarization in this country.
The author puts this to a fundamental flaw in the way journalists see and write about conflict and the motivations behind them. To get a sense, I attached the relevant part as screenshot 1 to save space.
That is, the flaw, the thing that is driving polarization, is the misunderstanding and misapprehension of how and what motivates people. They're busy gathering facts and these facts and quotes that do nothing to help render the conflict between ideas/people/ideologies more vividly or in a way that might engage readers from all different perspectives.
To wit, according to the author, when people are already engaged in conflict, the old approach merely acts to further seat them in their beliefs. See screenshot 2.
Presumably then, though I don't think this was mentioned explicitly, armed with a different approach that gets people to see the other side of the story, healing of the divide can begin.
So what is that solution? The author proposes several specifics and fleshes them out, which I'll leave to you to read, but the basic idea is to write stories that acknowledge the complexity of the world. See screenshot 3 for a good summary of the author's ideas, and, frankly, some refreshing candor on the part of someone in the media.
While I greatly enjoyed this essay and thought it an interesting read, I think there are some flawed assumptions and reasoning here.
First, the idea that the media is driving the problem and can fix it strikes me as taking on too much responsibility and arrogating to oneself too much power. Neither is appropriate here.
I'm not a fan of single solution or single rationale explanations in anything that involves humans. This is not to say that the media doesn't have a role to play, but more that they are a cog in the mechanism. Yes, by all means, let's look at this part and try to fix it, but let's not forget that it's a part of a larger whole.
Second, and God help me live long enough to perhaps see the day, I read essay after essay by people in journalism that seems to want to make the problem about a lack of local news, about the way the story is written, about ANYTHING at all but the people doing the writing and the way newsrooms are set up.
This particular essay comes closer than most (see screenshot 3 again), but falls short on this point.
Imagine how our news would look if you picked half the reporters at random from Fox and CNN and swapped them.
Imagine how our news would look if you took half the reporters at 9News (along with their editors) and swapped them with half from the New York Post.
My point is this: over time, due to a variety of selection criteria, societal/market pressures, our news sorted itself into mainly liberal outlets. Much like the social sciences and humanities at universities, there was an ideological drift that persists to this day.
True, with the expansion of the internet and the balkanization of our country has come news outlets where conservatives have gathered, but by and large the main media outlets that were around before, say, 2010, remain largely populated by liberal reporters, editors, producers, and the like.
Unless and until this is reckoned with, I do not see how adding local news can do anything but make more local liberal news. Until this is reckoned with, I fail to see that the coverage can be fully complicated or that the spotlight of the media's attention will ever fully land on both conservative AND liberal areas of concern.
Complicating the narrative is a start, but it's a piece of a larger pie.
https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63