Governing Narratives: Symbolic Politics and Policy Change

Appendix 2: Environmental Policy Discourse

Appendix 2 environmental Policy Discourse The environmental policy discourse picked up steam in the 1960s with books about overpopulation, dead birds, and finite worldwide resources. Aside from civilization’s ever-necessary attention to waste disposal and clean water, an earlier conservation movement that began in the second half of the 19th century was perhaps America’s first policy-relevant articulation of environmental sensibilities . Literary appreciations of nature written by authors such as Henry David Thoreau, John burroughs, and John Muir must surely have laid some of the ideographic groundwork for the policy changes that were to come later. This appendix will touch on three episodes of environmental discourse: the conservation movement epitomized by the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service, the environmental movement that culminated in the formation of the environmental Protection Agency (ePA), and the 1980s’ antigovernmental trend, whose emblematic policy debate may be the Sagebrush Rebellion during the Reagan administration, which moved the conversation from decentralization toward privatization and market solutions. I. the conServatIon narr atIve One important precursor to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 was the establishment of yellowstone National Park in 1872 during the presidency of 116 / Appendix 2 Ulysses S. Grant. A political rationale justifying such a land set aside was articulated a year later.The concern of Franklin Hough, first in a paper, “On the Duty of Governments in the Preservation of Forests,” presented at the 1873 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and subsequently in an AAAS committee report, led to the congressional creation of a special Department of Agriculture office, whose job was to assess the quality and conditions of forests in the United States. The office so requested by AAAS was established in 1876; in 1881, the office expanded into the Division of Forestry. its guiding narrative, as expressed by Hough, included themes of efficiency, profits, and benefits—and preservation of the existing woodlands. Hough seemingly affirmed both the conservation narrative and the preservationist narrative in his remarks to the Chamber of Commerce (New York Times 1884). by the time of Grover Cleveland’s second term in office (1893–1897), the president had been granted the power to set aside land (by a law passed in 1891), and Cleveland used this power to set aside 21 million acres of forest reserves in a decree issued within the last two weeks of his presidency (New York Times 1897). The next president, William McKinley, kept the land in the public domain by turning it over to the interior Department; he assigned it to its General Land Office (egan 2009, 34). The General Land Office had a reputation for favoring mining and timber barons. Few were prosecuted for the alleged corruption that took place. For example, according to the New York Times (1895), “The Commissioner decided that John y. Mcbride was entitled, by reason of having filed mining claims thereto, to land in the City of Tacoma, Washington, valued at $2,000,000. . . .The idea of fraud in connection with the proceedings is spurned by the Washington officials.” McKinley subsequently hired Gifford Pinchot to look into the western lands (egan 2009, 34) and soon thereafter appointed him head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Forestry, a tiny unit of government by today’s standards, but one that would in seven years become the U.S. Forest Service. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, and the vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, became president. Roosevelt turned out to be a Progressive who both challenged the mining and timber barons and promoted conservation. His remarks to the joint session of Congress on December 6, 1904, presaged the now-familiar idea of sustainability as well as the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service: “it is the cardinal principle of the forest-reserve policy of this Administration that the reserves are for use. Whatever interferes with the use of their resources is to be avoided by every possible means. but these resources must be used in such a way as to make them permanent” (T. Roosevelt 1904). Roosevelt was advocating a conservation ethic, a sustainability argument of environmental Policy Discourse / 117 sorts, as opposed to a preservation ethic, which would be less keen on exploiting forestlands for their timber and mineral resources. He expressed concern for the water supply and for the timber supply and sought authorization from Congress to set aside additional...