n~!//c-57ott/r/{-e/ /-11'1~'/t/ ~;1J- /h" C:'-;'vlrl'/l'7rVVYlrT

(~n7tr/~ ~~'f-)

201

9

The View from Quincy Library or CivicEngagement in Environmental Problem Solving

On their own initiative, about twenty residents of the northern SierraNevada, including environmentalists, timber industry representatives,and local officials, held a series of meetings beginning in 1993 at alibrary in the logging town of Quincy, California, and after monthsof deliberation and negotiation they agreed on a plan to manage thesurrounding Plumas, Lassen, and Tahoe National Forests. They hadchosen the library, it was said, so that they could not scream at one an-other - and by all accounts, the strategy worked. "Mter fifteen years offighting ... the idea that we would sit in one room and recognize eachother's right to exist was a new one," said MichaelJackson, an environ-mentalist in the Quincy Library Group (QLG). A newspaper servingthe area explained, "Local combatants were forced to deal directly witheach other or to remain in perpetual struggle and gridlock.'" LauraAmes, who directs an alliance of grassroots environmental groups,noted that deliberation succeeded where litigation failed. "We are ina new era," she said.2

Across the United States, and especially in the West, hundreds of cit-izen associations like the QLG bring together environmentalists andtheir adversaries in face-to-face collaboration to manage shared re-sources. The more inclusive these associations become - for example,by engaging public officials and representatives from national busi-ness and environmental groups - the more democratic are theirdeliberations and the more legitimate their results. This chapterexamines the "new era" - or at least the new hope - that the rise of civic

Price, Principle, and the Environment200

transaction costs involved in standard command-and-eontrol regula-tion. Industries like Intel may be willing to comply with tougher re-quirements if they were streamlined, say, if companies dealt with asingle agency under clear mandates that allow the industry the great-est flexibility in complying with them.

The alternative to cost-benefit analysis may be economic analysesof other kinds - institutional analysis, transaction cost analysis, cost.effective analysis, and so on. Cost-benefit analysis does not look betterwhen compared to these other wayseconomists helpfully inform envi-ronmental policy. Indeed, in comparison to the many important wayseconomists contribute to environmental policy, cost-benefit analysisonly looks worse.

Science as a Surrogate

environmentalism creates. The current "winner-take-all"systemof con-frontation and litigation maybe yielding to more deliberative and rep-

V' resentative and therefore more democratic decision-making.

203Civic Engagement in Environmental Problem Solving

Faced with the failure of hands-on democracy on the western range,Karl Hess writes, "a new vision of the West arose from the ashes ofthe old - a vision of a federal range governed by scientifically objec-tive and politically neutral government agencies." The growing powerof the timber barons - Weyerhaeuser practically owned WashingtonState - lent urgency to the formation of the U.S. National ForestService, which, along with the General Land Office and, somewhatlater, the Grazing Service, was to manage western public land in thepublic interest. Conservationists believed that professionals in agen-cies, not politicians in Congress, could be trusted to determine onneutral, rational grounds what the public interest requires. "Reflect-ing the will of the people, these agencies would be manned by menand women steeped in the value of public service and thoroughlytrained in the science and technology ofland management, use, andconservation. "7

Conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot, the founding chief of theForest Service, argued that in the absence of centralized control, publicor private, competition among thousands of "cut and run" operators,each trying to beat the others to market, would destroy the resourcebase. In harmony with the Progressive movement, these conservation-ists believed the government should retain control of public landsrather than cede them to corporate oligopolies. "If scientific manage-ment in fact required large organization," writes policy analyst RobertNelson, "then the public sector was preferable to the private sector,or so it seemed to many Progressives. Rather than create one or morenew Weyerhaeuser-type empires, Progressives preferred to create theForest Service instead. "8

Pinchot and his successors fought on two fronts - First,against largecorporations, and second, against politicians who might make a pork

-':1

forage.5 At the tum of the century, one federal official observed flocksof sheep and cattle

passing each other on trails, one rushing in to secure what the other hadjustabandoned as worthless. Feed was deliberately wasted to prevent it~utilizationby others. , .. Transient. sheepmen roamed the country robbing the residentstockmen of forage that. was justly theirs .... Class was arrayed against class -the cowboy against the sheepman, the big owner against the little one - andmight ruled more often than right.6

Price, Principle, and the Environment202

The QLGmight be seen as a long-delayed response to the expectationwith which the U.S. Congress in the nineteenth century encouragedsettlers to migrate to the West.Bygivingsettlers land in modest plots"-usually about 160acres - the Homestead Act of 1862 and the land actsthat followed sought to build ajeffersonian democracy of small free-holders throughout the arid West.These landowners were supposed toform associations patterned on town meetings to settle controversiesthat might arise among them. In refusing to allowpublic rangeland tobe fenced, Congress in 1885 perpetuated the hope that settlers couldcollaborate to manage the pastoral commons. "It was a noble idea;"writes Karl Hess, a scholar of the social history of the West. "It was theexpectation that everycitizenwould be a stakeholder in an experimentof direct, hands-o'n democracy."3

Over most of the West, however, the climate conspired with every- 'thing else to doom this hopeful experiment. Herds of cattle requireenormous tracts of land - sometimes 100 square miles - where foragegrowsslowly.Farms of modest size cannot succeed with only 16 inchesof rain a year.Bythe end of the nineteenth century, timber, cattle, rail-road, and mining "barons," after concentrating their economic and po-litical hold on western land, plundered places and ravaged resourcesCongress hoped associations of farmers, tradesmen, and other smalllandowners would protect. Theodore Roosevelt spoke for the conser-vation movement by demanding that corporations "be so supervisedand regulated that they shall act for the interest of the communityas a whole."4 The sparse citizenry and the inchoate local government .,of the West,however, could hardly challenge mining, timber, and graz-ing barons who created jobs and brought in money.

Bythe 1870s, Congress had become aware that "cut and nm" tim~bering practices had created horrendous problems of disease, fire,and erosion in many areas of the northern and western forests. The"tragedy of the commons" played out even more dramatically onthe range, where enormous herds of cattle quicklygrazed off the prime

205Civic Engagement in Environmental Problem Solving

The Illusion of the Icleal Administration

science as the common language of discourse, bringing about an endto irrationality, rivalry of power, and authoritarianism." '5

Today, nobody utters the words "scientific management" and "cen-tralized planning" except pt:joratively, calling up images of Five-YearPlans. And indeed, scientific management in the form offorest fire pre-vention led directly to, among other things, the insect-infested dyingforests that surround Quincy Library. Yet, in the early 1900s, Congresshad to decide whether to transfer the great resources of the West toempire builders - the railroads, Weyerhaeuser, and a few other cor-porations - or to keep its options open by retaining control of publiclands. ,6 What population existed in the relevant landscapes had all itcould do to keep rudimentary lawand order. Congress created the Bu-reau of Reclamation (1902) and the Forest Service to manage naturalresources scientifically in the public interest- call it communism if youlike - as the alternative to establishing private empires and baroniesin the Western states and territories.

If deliberation means discussion of the substance of proposalsrather than jockeying for influence, if it means adducing consider-ations that others can understand as reasons rather than logrollingfor results, one could as plausibly look for deliberation among sci-entists and professionals as among the representatives of the people.For these reasons, scientific management seemed to conservationiststo be a good enough surrogate for democracy.'i At the time, howbut by some appeal to "objective" science could the government iden-tify a legitimate public interest in managing western resources? Localcommunities of diverse "stakeholders" and libraries in which to meethardly existed within national forests or public rangeland prior to theSecond World War. Even if scientific expertise and professional judg-ment amounted to reading the entrails of chickens, no one offered abetter way to determine the public good. 18

The twenty or so citizens who met at Quincy Library did not convene. to protest a Forest Service decision. Rather, they came together as aresult of Forest Service indecision. The Service, according to a localnewspaper account in 1997, had become "a weakened, disorientedagency that used to nm the national forests. Today, the forests are run

Price, Principle, and theEnvironment204

barrel out of the West. To keep corporations at bay, Pinchot railedagainst the "vast power, pecuniary and political, [of the] ... railroads,the stock interests, mining interests, water power interests, and mostof the big timber interests."9 After Pinchot retired, the Forest Servicecontinued to attack timber practices on private land. "Laissez-fairepi-i~vate effort has seriously deteriorated or destroyed the basic resources.of timber, forage, and land almost universally," the Service reportedin the 193os. The private sector "has felt little or no responsibilityfor the renewal of the resources on which its own industries mustdepend."10 This was not entirely fair. By the 1950s, millions of acresin tree farms, as one expert noted, received "more intensive forestmanagement than ... most of the publiely owned lands.""

To keep public lands out of the pork barrel, conservationists in: ,.eluding, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson tried tofree agencies from political control. According to historian Samuel.Hays, conservationists preached a "gospel of efficiency" asserting that"social and economic problems should be solved, not through powerpolitics, but by experts who would undertake scientific investigations.and devise workable solutions."'. Hayswrites, "The crux of the gospel},'of efficiency lay in a rational and scientific method of making basiC •.'.technological decisions through a single, central authority." '3 ExpertS';using "technical and scientific methods should decide all matters()fdevelopment and utilization of resources, all problems of allocation',of funds. Federal land management agencies, rather than the parties ..themselves, should resolve conflicts among livestock, wildlife, irriga~,tion, recreation, and settler groups." 14

Why should land management agencies rather than the parties':themselves resolve conflicts? The question had an obvious answer at'the time. Fewheld out much hope that the processes of representativedemocracy would flourish amid the "pressure politics" of the Gilded.Age. The shoot-out at O.K. Corral in 1881 illustrated the alternative"dispute resolution (ADR) and "stakeholder" arbitration techniquesthen available. More to the point, conservationists believed that thetruth and objectivity of science offered a sounder basis than majoritic(or mob) rule for determining the public interest. The objectivity of.science was supposed to put political decisions above elass and fac~';tion. The conservationist movement, an analyst writes, believed that a!,"sense of political community may be regenerated by the adoption of

byjudges, by environmentalists working through the Clinton admin-istration, and by the timber industry working through Congress."19QLG organizer MichaelJackson explains that "because no one knowshow to manage the forests, all sides in Congress hack awayat the ForestService. The Republicans attack science, recreation, and implementa-tion of wildlife protection. The Democrats go after roading and othernatural-resource budget items. The result is a shrinking agency thatspends much of its time wondering when the next blow will fall."20

In its heyday before the Second World War, the Forest Servicehad the benefit of savvypolitical leadership. Legislation enacted in1897, moreover, gave the Forest Service a clear and politically feasiblemandate, namely, to secure water flows and "to furnish a continuoussupply of timber.""' With this mandate, the Forest Service deridedthe views of preservationists such as John Muir. "The object of ourforest policy," Pinchot wrote, "is not to preserve the forests becausethey are beautiful ... or because they are refuges for the wild crea-tures of the wilderness ... but the making of prosperous homes. "22 InPinchot's time experts in agencies knew something; they spoke withmoral certainty born of scientific objectivity, and it hardly matteredif what they knew wasn't so,,3 Given a clear mandate - to maximizesustained yields - scientists could in principle reach aworking consen-sus. This is not as easy if the goal is to do the right thing, to maximizeeach of a hundred conflicting uses, or to appease violently opposedgroups, each with its own scientists to attest to its viewof the values tobe protected in the environment.

Mter the Second World War, in the rapidly growing new West,hunters, fishers, skiers, and preservationists came into conflict withminers, loggers, grazers, farmers, and developers. Environmental or-ganizations, such as the Sierra Club, as well as industry, recreational ..interest~, and other groups, built up their own staffs of scientists,economists, and other experts to challenge the Forest Service on its

. own professional grounds. The agency meanwhile had become inbred;its chiefs, alwaysappointed from within the agency, lacked the politicalsavvyof Pinchot. The Forest Service lost ground figuratively and liter~allyafter the War: against its howlsof protest, preservationists managedto carve several wilderness parks from the national forests.

To block further attempts to tum forests into parks, the ForestService prodded Congress to enact the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield

Act of 1960, a vague document instructing the Service to manage "thevarious renewable surface resources of the national forests so that.they are utilized in t.he combinat.ion t.hat.will best. meet the needs ofthe American people."24 Although the agency hoped that this dele-gation of legislative authority would increase its power, it had the re-verse effect. Such an indet.erminate delegation, as law professor LouisJaffe wrote, yields only controversy and litigation "when resulL~do notcomport with one or another individual's concept of what the 'publicinterest' requires. Thus, paradoxically, the more vague a delegation,the more likely the charge that the agency has t~liledto fulfill its con-gressional mandate.".,-,

When Congress provides an agency, such as t.he Forest Service, withno instruction more precise than to regulate in the public interest,it creat.es not legislation but legislators. Congress similarly delegatesits legislative powers to others when it sets an impossible goal - t.hatthe workplace shall be hazard-free, for example - and then modifiesit with weasel words, such as "to the extent feasible."26 Chief JusticeWilliam Rehnquist, reviewing the Occupational Safety and Health Act,described the phrase "to the extent feasible" as one of many examplesof."Congress simply avoiding a choice which wasboth fundamen tal forpurposes of t.he statute and yet politically so divisive that. the necessarydecision or compromise was difficult, if not impossible, to hammerout in the legislative forge."27 He implored the Supreme Court toinvalidate the vague and precatory laws that support t.oday'sregulat.orystate. These stat.utes, he said, "violat.et.hedoct.rine against. uncanalizeddelegations of legislat.ivepower. "2H

What is wrong with uncanalized delegations of legislative power?Critics of t.headminist.rative state sometimes offer the pseudosophisti-cated reply that agencies t.owhich Congress fails t.ogive a clear polit.icalmandate will be captured by the indust.ries t.heyare supposed to regu-late. Other critics, including those associated with public choice the-ory, argue even more cynically that bureaucrats will feather t.heir O,wnnests, for example, by endorsing on "neut.ral" and "scient.ific"groundswhat.ever policies bring more money or more power to the agency. Ifputting out fires brings in money, t.hen science requires the suppres-sion of fires; if furt.her st.udies attract big bucks, t.hen more research isrequired. While t.here is something to be said for these bmiliar crit.i-cisms, agencies act.ing even wit.h t.he best. int.ent.ions lack aut.horit.y to

206 Price, Principle, and theEnvironment Civic Engagement in Environmenlrti ProblemSolving 2°7

209Civic Engagernent in Environmental Problem.Solving

taken at one of these vertices will be appealed and probably blockedat another - and eventually the dispute will wend its way through thejudicial system, the fourth corner of this infamous triangle. The IronTriangle as surely sinks public policy as the Bermuda Triangle sinksships - and equally well serves the public interest.34If Congress had either leased the Lassen and Plumas forests to

Sierra Pacific Industries or designated them as wilderness, the peo-ple of Northern California would livewith the results. In a democracy,citizens are supposed to accept and comply with a statute the legis-lature enacts even if they do not agree with it. As long as no one isaccountable for the national forests, however, the citizenry must getalong with no decision at all - just indecision, starts and fits of policyin one direction or another, contradictory statutes, and endless litiga-tion. The Forest Service would fiddle with further studies, the localsthought, even while the Sierras burned.Torn in opposite directions by well-heeled en~ronmental and in-

dustry lobbies, each with its own credentialed scientists and specialfriends in Congress, the agencies have become Push-Me-Pull-You'sut-terly unable to make the hard political choices Congress delegates tothem. The appearance of civicenvironmental associations, such as theQLG, has an ironic quality in this context. The very political choicescivil society pays Congress to decide have come back full circle to civilsociety again.

Almost a century ago, the Forest Service enjoyed both a clear politicalmandate and a solid scientific consensus among experts about howto achieve it. Congress told the Service to protect water flows and tomaximize the sustained yield of timber. Foresters and other profes-sionals knew (or thought they knew) how to do these things. Today,when the Service has no instruction more determinate than to "bestmeet the needs of the American people," what role can science play inagency decision-making? It must play an even greater role, one mightsay,because the agency has to rely on science to determine its ends aswell as the means it uses to achieve them. The alternative to scientificmanagement would seem to be pressure politics; then there would beno role for science.

The Solace of Science

Price, Principle, and the Environment208

make the political tradeoffs Congress delegates to them. As a result,little more may be expected from these agencies than regulatory rigormortis, paralysis by analysis, and an endless loop.During the 1960s and 1970S- years in which it enacted the na-

tion's basic environmental statutes - Congress acted consistently withthe conservationist premise that policy should be professionalizedrather than politicized. The National Environmental Policy Act of1969 (NEPA), for example, hailed at the time as "an environmen-tal bill of rights,"29 in fact reiterated the conservationist faith that the'agencies could spin sCientificstraw into political gold if they gatheredenough of it.go The statute told the agencies to "[u]tilize a system-atic, interdisciplinary approach which will ensure the integrated useof the natural and social sciences and the environmental design artsiri.decision-making which may have an impact on man's environment."glIf a single scientific discipline failed to make an agency sufficientlydiverse, democratic, or deliberative, perhaps a passel of differentdisciplines - including the social sciences - would do.No matter how many scientific specialists an agency brought on

board, the NEPA-mandated Environmental Impact Statements (EISs)it prepared quickly became the targets of litigation. In a representa-tive case, National ResourcesDefense Council (NRDC) v. Morton, an encvironmental group forced the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)to produce not one (as it planned) but 212 maJor EISs for the areasfor which it granted grazing rightsY Ranchers appealed, arguing thatthe NRDC, which hoped "to run them off the range," had colludedwith the BLM,which saw that "its budget allotments would be greatlystrengthened"gg to pay for the EISs.The ranchers then turned to theirsenators, who held posts in key oversight committees, to protect theirinterests from any BLMaction.An "Iron Triangle" - the inevitable result of the overdelegation of

legislative authority to the executive branch - now defines environ-, mental policy making as a three-cornered tug-of-war.At one vertex of'this triangle, the administrative agencies, such as the Forest Serviceor the BLM, try to promulgate policies. At the next vertex, the spe-cial interests, including industry and national environmental groups,challenge any policy they do not like, often taking the agency to court.. At the third vertex, members of Congress intervene with the agency toobtain policies their constituents or contributors desire. Any decision

21 ICivic Engagement in Environmental ProblemSolving

and then in court. Scientists outside a regulatory agency second-guesseverything it saysor does, so that the agencies must employ blue-ribbonscience advisory boards or commission National Research Council. studies to vouch for their objectivity.40 Cost-benefit analyses, ecologi-cal models, toxicological studies, and other analyses cancel each otherout. As expert economic and other assessments fracture along tradi-tional political fault lines, public confidence in science erodes.. By the 1970s, the public recognized that science simply could notanswer many of the questions regulators asked of it:P Hume's edictabout inferring an "ought" from an "is" became a commonplace cau-tion to policy makers against mixing "facts" and "values."The tendencyof newer "policy sciences" beginning in the 1960s to extend their reachto the "trans-scientific," that is, to normative and political questions,aroused public suspicion. Meanwhile, the business of science - the

•• £" 1 I 1 . " d' 1 'f' " hcompetItIOn lor grants, t1e constant c alms to para Igm s 11.tS t atadorn proposals, and the millions of dollars wasted on "big science"fiascoes such as the International Biology Program - fed skepticismabout the honesty, objectivity, and neutrality of expertise.Chastened by the public's distrust, some scientists have become cir-

cumspect, qualifying their claims to the point of making them vacuousor abandoning "relevant" research topics altogether. Others find them-selves preoccupied with policing the boundaries between "real" and'junk" science. As journalists have taken up the science beat, more-over, debates between experts have become routinized, presented liketheater or restaurant reviews,asmatters of taste, or reported like sportsevents, as competitions. The press tends to "balance" every assertionwith an equal and opposing one, however implausible. While sciencehas plainly added much to the store of human knowledge, it has alsomade us aware of how much we do not know. Accordingly, as sci-ence advances it creates the need for more science - and creates withit the opportunity to avoid hard political choices by funding furtherresearch.Asmore people attend college and observe scientists in their univer-

sity habitats, they are less likely to venerate science and more inclinedto judge scientific claims for themselves. When the public does seekto judge for itself, however, it finds less and less in these claims thatit can understand. Local knowledge, for example, of the dying, stick-like forests near Quincy, often bears no relation to scientific models,

Price, Principle, and the Environment210

Speaking to American foresters in the 1970s, economist John.Krutilla declared that the Forest Servicemust base policy on science Of

endure "indignities at the hands of one or another group insisting thatthe national forests satisfy their 'mutually incompatible demands."35Recommending his own discipline of I:esource economics, Krutillaannounced that the agency's goal must be "to manage the nattonalforests in order to maximize benefits," that is, "to pursue economicefficiency."36Robert Nelson comments, "Krutilla argued that the tiinehad come to make good on the original promise of Gifford Pinchot,who preached only scientific management."37Economists like Krutilla preached the "gospel of efficiency"

throughout the 1970s, arguing as scientists that the public interest';lay in maximizing social utility. Seizing upon this opportunity to add:another level of bureaucratic reviewto stifle regulatory actions, RonaldReagan, upon becoming president in 1981,issued an executive orderrequiring a cost-benefit justification of all major regulatory actions; ex-cept as prohibited by law.g8 Administrative agencies obediently hired _economists to pour the old political wine into new bottles, labeled"."costs" and "benefits," from which to decant their usual views of the'public interest.Seeing their own opportunity in this alchemical project, national

environmental organizations hired economists able to demonstratescientifically that the policies they favored corrected a "market fail-ure" and thus were economically efficient. Krutilla himself authoreda number of spectacularly innovative analyses to demonstrate that thecosts of economically promising projects, such as the proposed Hell's'Canyon dam, actually exceeded the benefits.39 Traditional combatantscarry on venerable political, moral, and ideological battles by arguingover externalities, existence values, discount rates, and the economicreturns of ecosystem services.Attempts byeconomists and other professionals to place public pol-

icy on a scientific and objective footing, however, have made agency

\

deCiSions only the more vulnerable to "pressure politics." One reasonfor this is obvious: all sides to a political controversy can hire their ownscientists and economists to refute the other fellow's experts. Nobelaureates tend to cost so much that only industry can hire them, butthere is hardly an interest group, however modest, that cannot affordto enlist reputable expert witnesses to testifyat administrative hearings

The Mischiefs of Faction

'-

213Civic Engagement in Environmental ProblemSolving

wilderness. Like the dead trees that hang upon each other in the for-est, interest groups shore each other up, each sustained and supportedby its holy war against the forces of evil on the other side., Political theorists suggest two strategies for dealing with the mis-

chiefs of faction. First, neoconselvatives believe that public resourcessuch as the national forests should be privatized. Second, some liber-alssuggest that representatives of opposing groups could form "stake-holder" committees to work out some compromise - as happened inthe Arizona power plant: example described in the last chapter. Thereare ways to combine these strategies. One model for doing this mightbe found in the Smithsonian Institution, which is governed by a groupoftnlstees who represent different constituencies and are accountablefor what the organization does. Why not incorporate each nationalforest, for example, under its own board of tnlstees and let them ex-periment with different approaches to management? That way,societywould have management and management decisions rather than anendless loop that in the end gives nobody authority and thus leaveseveryone out.45. Bycreating boards of trustees to govern the national forests, society

could create authority rather than diffusing it. Opposing groups rep-resented on these boards must reach consensus or lose their mandate.As things stand, these groups simply vie with one another for favors -

(~'rents" in the technical lingo - from government. The public owner-ship of resources, as Friedrich Hayek has said, leads to the "dominationof government by coalitions of organized interests" and the growth of"an enormous and wasteful apparatus of para-government" needed toplacate, reward, and defend against interest groups.46

Incorporation under trustees is not the only strategy to avert the mis-chiefs of faction. Among liberal theorists, Joshua Cohen and CharlesSabel have described a system of federalism "with multiple centers. of decision-making, including central and local decision-makers, andseparate spheres of responsibility for dil1erent units."47 Laws that pro-

), hibit nuisances or torts - for example, lawscontrolling pollution -may';.",beadministered centrally, since everyone has the common-law right"to be free of trespass. Representative citizen groups and stakeholder,councils, however, are best situated to respond to problems arisingin their communities not related to civil, political, or personal rights.Gohen and Sabel also note that deliberative associations seeking to

Price, Principle, and the Environment212

One does not have to look long at the history ofthe Forest Service to sc:;whatJames Madison described as the "mischiefs offaction." The singhissue strategies of many lobbying groups routinely "gridlock" policyi~the Iron Triangle.44 For these groups, conflict provides the prinCipalmethod to deal with issues and to mobilize support. Deliberating witothers to resolve problems undermines the group's mission, 'whicis to press its purpose or concerns as far as it can in what it regal',as a zero-sum game with its political adversaries. Anything less thafidemonizing opponents - for example, negotiating with them - woulddisarm and demobilize one side in comparison with the others. Whean interest group joins with its enemies to solve a problem, it 10seStn~purity of its position; it ceases to be a cause and becomes a committe

The strife of factions around the Iron Triangle has become'pr,fessionalized. It benefits the lawyers, lobbyists, and expert Witneswho serve as mercenaries, but it produces no policy. If the crum1;>lirPlumas and Lassen forests go up in flames, carrying away the habit;of species as well as that of human beings - as they surely will absentmanagement plan - environmental groups can celebrate theirvict()they will have thwarted the timber industry. The timber industry ca~":.savor its victory in having kept the area from becoming a desigrtated,

such as those concerning "forest succession," "climax communities;"or "sustainable yields." Funds flow to "high priori" abstract and the(}'.retical research, such as the mathematics of biocomplexity, although'these arcane Neoplatonic studies cannot possibly bear on management'decisions.

As the models become more mysterious, the assumptions morttgnostic, the mathematics more hairy, expert opinion loses releVance'to public concerns. SheilaJasanoff, a leading commentator on sciehc~policy, has written, "The gap between what experts do and what makessense to people accounts for a massive public rejection of technidiLrationality in modern societies."42 Not science itself but the COnSer":vationist or Progressive faith that it can always be our guide has'l~dlto disillusionment - to the widespread belief, asJasanoff reports, thai,"science, far from being part of the solution, may in fact be part of the,'problem."43

manage localized resources have much in common. Compromises en-vironmentalists and industry groups reach in one place may provide amodel or "benchmark" for results elsewhere. These problem-solvinggroups should be networked so that they can learn from each other'sefforts.

A Step toward Democracy

Beginning in the early 1970s, the Forest Service encouraged this kindof federalism by bringing the viewsand interests of local user groupsinto its decision-making process. In 1972, the agency initiated its In-form and Involveprogram, which served as a model for other agencieseager to engage stakeholders in policy discussion. The National ForestManagement Act of 1976 called for public participation in the prepa-ration of the long-term forest plans it required.48 Officials in the De-partment of Agriculture prodded the Forest Service to implement theparticipatory mandates of the law.49A cadre of foresters tried to teaseout the public interest by talking with the public; indeed, the ForestService became preoccupied with public outreach and engagement.

During this period, the Forest Servicebrought together stakeholdergroups, thus preparing the wayfor the one that met a decade later atQuincy Library. Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland, who work withthe Civic Practices Network, point out that "some forests developedprograms characterized by genuine dialogue and consensus-seekingamong various user groups, and staff began to nurture deliberativeregulatory cultures to complement and modity a professional ideol~ogy based on the scientific management of the land.""jOIn responseto NEPA, the Forest Service redoubled its efforts to solicit public"input."51 In the decade-long process to prepare an EIS for areas to begiven wilderness status, Sirianni and Friedland report, the Service "in-volved fifty thousand people in providing input into the scope of theEIS,seventeen thousand in workshops," and thousands more who sentin comments. Over twodecades, the Forest Service has engaged stake-holders throughout the West in "deliberative, consensual and otherface-to-face"discussions, including "intensive workshops to clarity andclassity different user values" and "weekend retreats to build trustand empathy among traditional opponents."52 These traditional op-ponents, when dealing face-ta-face with each other, start considering

reasons rather than stating positions and thus move from mobilizingsupport to solving problems.

Rather than simply seeking "input" for a decision agency expertsare to make, the Forest Service can do more to let stakeholder councilsmake the decision themselves, once they have been offered expert in-formation and advice. A~long as individuals trust their representativesin negotiations with delegates of opposing groups, they are bound toaccept the outcome as equitable or as the best that could be achieved.They are likely to challenge the same outcome if reached byan admin-istrative process on the basis of technical or scientific considerations.

Science cannot determine the public interest. A bureaucracy mayimplement clear political goals, but it is hopeless when it tries to re-solvewhat are essentially political disputes. The public itself, througha representative and deliberative process, must. make out where itsinterest lies. Unlike the Iron Triangle, where pressure is the only prin-ciple, local stakeholder councils, properly constituted, can be places,as Cohen and Sabel writ.e,"where practicality in the form of prohlem-solving meets political principle in the form of deliberation. "5'1

The story of the QLG is typical of these deliberative prohlem-solving coalitions, which draw together diverse interests and ideologi-cal groups. When actors find they cannot defeat each other and t.hatit.isbetter to solve problems than to rally around positions, as Sirianni andFriedland write, face-to-face meetings and social networks give t.hemthe opportunity to find common ground "based on t.hedevelopmentof trust and recognit.ion of legitimate interests." With respect to thenational forests, "more deliberative cultures, and the use of alternativedispute resolution, open decision-making and ecosyst.emmanagementemerged only in t.hewake of an extended period of conflict" in whichadversaries remained tied to inflexible positions."'!

Management st.rategies worked out by deliberative and represen-tat.ivecitizen groups, of course, become targets of criticism by thosewho seek to advance a priori positions - for example, t.opermit. or t.oprohibit logging on all public lands - which they insist reflect the bestavailable science. Thus, any consensus-based compromise reached bythose trying to resolve an impasse will be "attacked by environmen-talists, timber and mining groups, and other backcountry users asproviding too much or t.oo little wilderness protection.":Y; In spite oftheir vulnerability t.oend-runs by int.erest groups, stakeholder councils

2 I.f)Civic Engagement in Environmental ProblemSolvingPrice, Principle, and theEnvironment214

217Civic Engagement in Environmental Problem Solving

neighbors," Jackson recalled. "There was sugar in the tanks of loggingequipment. And they responded in the normal way,including gunshotwounds to windows."lio

Ten years later, these adversaries found that face-to-face meetings insearch of a compromise plan gave each side more than it could gain bystruggling against the other. In spite of their earlier acrimony and mu-tual distrust, environmentalists, loggers, foresters, and public officialsunited in seeking what t.he leader of a prominent ecological rest.ora-tion project. in Northern California has called "communit.y survival inplace."6!

How did these opponents manage to find common ground? First.,they had to solve a problem rather t.han sustain a lobby. Second, theyhad arrived at an impasse det.riment.al t.oall. Unable t.oatt.ract any at-tention from national environment.al groups, local activist.slike LindaBlum had to act. single-handedly t.ostop logging by filing administ.ra-tive appeals of specific sales. "That meant driving deep int.o the for-est to review every logging sit.e and writ.ing lengthy documents,"' saidBlum, an environmen t.alconsultant in Quincy. "Asa grassroots activist.,I couldn't keep it.up. It.wasn't sustainable act.ivism."62Logging com-panies found they could not pay their hundreds of employees in t.hearea, t.hus sustaining t.he local economy, and st.illlit.igate against t.hesediehard environment.alists. Neit.her side expect.ed t.hat t.he Forest Ser-vice would resolve the sit.uat.ion,for its interest. plainly lay in budget.ingfor further scientific studies, not in making a decision. Everyone in-volved in the community around Quincy had come t.ohis or her wit.'send, and no one out.side t.he communit.y offered much hope or help.

Third, many of these people knew each other and deeply regrettedthe social animosit.y that had torn the community apart. "It is easy t.otake the moral high ground when you don't live in t.hese communities,"said Tom Nelson, a Sierra Pacific Industries forester, who joined t.heQuincy group. "It.is tougher when you have to face these people everyd "63ay.

Fourth, t.he prospect of a horrendous forest fire functioned, likethe proverbial hanging, to concent.rate the minds of t.hese traditionalcombatants. For thousands of years, Native Americans had used fireperiodically t.oremove undergrowth and to thin dense st.ands of cedarand pine, allowing a few surviving t.rees per acre t.o become oldand great. This regime of regular burning produced t.he park-like

Price, Principle, and theEnvironment

have gained enough strength to prompt Robert Gottlieb and HelenIngram to hail the emergence of a "new environmentalism." Theydescribe a "grass-roots, community-based, democratic movement thatdiffers radically from conventional, mainstream American environ-mentalism, which alwayshad a strong nondemocratic strain."5

6

In an article titled "Land-Use Democracy," ecologist AIdo Leopoldwrote in 1942, "One of the curious evidences the. 'conservationprograms' are losing their grip is that they seldom have resortedto self-government as a cure for land abuse .... [We] have not trieddemocracy as a possible answer to our problem."57 Instead of tryingdemocracy, the nation has generally kept Pinchot's faith (to quoteJulia Marie Wondolleck) "that scientifically trained land managers willbe able to acquire the appropriate information with which to ... reachoutcomes that advance the public's interest." Whether a forest shouldbe mined, timbered, hunted, roaded, or designated aswilderness, how-ever, is a political not a professional judgment, which an agency musthide under the cloak of technical analysis. Scientific expertise pnrvides a smokescreen for political judgment. Wondolleck writes, "Likethe emperor's new clothes, however, this technical cloak now hideslittle and ... the masses are not quiet about what they see."5

S

Community Survival in Place

The QLG was born of desperation. Decades of litigation had tied log-gers, environmentalists, and officials in knots - a legal Laocoon fromwhich no one could break loose. Through a series of administrative a{J-'peals and suits challenging nearly every timber sale during the 1980s,local wilderness advocates such as Michael Jackson and Linda Blumhad forced logging companies, notably Sierra Pacific Industries, tocease most operations, depressing the economies of Quincy, Loyalton,and other towns. When a timber sale did go through, a local newspaperreports, the driver of the truck carrying the big logs was likely to makea detour to pass under Jackson's office window "taunting the environ-mental litigator with the sight of another fallen giant, before stoppingfor a celebratory beer on the town's main street."59 In 1986, laid-offworkers made threatening remarks at public meetings, and store own-ers displayed yellow ribbons in solidarity with the industry. Wilderness'advocates gave as good as they got. "We blamed and ridiculed OUI:

216

\\\

:1"J!~lKiH\:1lin,~tilil,t ~'Ij~\i

old growth that illustrates calendars issued bythe Sierra Club and otherwilderness organizations.64 When the Lassen National Forest was firstsurveyed in 1908, trees over 30 inches in diameter dominated morethan 70 percent of the land.65At about that time, however, the newlycreated Forest Service instituted fire prevention as part of its scientificmanagement of the forests. (Fire suppression also brought enormousamounts of money into Forest Service coffers.) Gifford Pinchot wrotein 1917 that "the work of a Forest Ranger is, first of all, to protect theDistrict committed to his charge against fire. That comes before allelse.,,66

In an eighty-year effort that cost many billions of dollars, SmokeyBear nearly eliminated forest fires in many areas of the West. Partlyas a result, in Idaho, California, and other western states, deadwoodand brush blanket the floors of forests, and small trees in dense standscompete for water and light. "Such forests in the typical case havebecome economically less productive, subject to disease and insect in-festation, aesthetically unattractive, and ironically now also prone tonew and much greater fire hazards," writes Robert Nelson.67The con-flagrations that ravaged Yellowstone National Park were no accident."They were partly a result of a century of federal fire policy that hassought to eliminate fire from the western landscape but instead hasmerely changed its time and place."68According toJackson, "In 1904,the number of stems [trees] was around 200 per acre," because firesregularly burned saplings, while larger trees survived. In 2000, as a re-sult of fire suppression, "there wasan average of 1,280stems per acre"along wth immense stands of undergrowth in the forests surroundingQuincy, California.69

To relieve the tinderbox conditions in the surrounding forests, localenvironmentalists, including Jackson and Blum, along with industryforesters, revived a plan that national environmental groups, includingthe NRDC, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society,had supportedten years earlier. It allowed timber companies to emulate the resultsof periodic fire by thinning small trees and clearing deadwood andundergrowth, while leaving larger trees untouched. "If I thought thisforest could survive without being cleaned up, I would support zerocut," Jackson said. "Mter 150 years of pounding this is not a normalecosystem. We've got 50 years' worth of work to get back to a naturalcycle."70

OnJuly 10, 1993, the QLG presented its management plan at a town-hall meeting attended by about 150 individuals representing everyview, interest, and position in the surrounding communities. The at-tendees approved the plan nearly unanimously. In 1994, when a hugeblaze in neighboring Loyalton destroyed spotted owl habitat, local ac-tivists including Blum sawno alternative to the Quincy plan. "It wasn'tloggers versus owls that was the unresolved issue," she said. "It wasowlsversus fire."71

The Quincy Library Plan covered about 2.5 million acres t.hat ithoped to return to the condition that existed in previous centuries,when periodic fires pruned away dead and small trees, leaving oldgrowth to dominate the forest floor. Today, according to observers, firesuppression and other policies have turned the forest into "a thicketof 1,000 or more small trees per acre, with dead ones on the groundor leaning against the living trees." In this context, "the fear is thateven small fires wi.11quickly grow to catastrophic, landscape-scale con-flagrations that will destroy all trees and habitat."

The plan put about a million acres of roadlcss forest into wildernessand other protected status - including 148,000 acres of roadless, old-growth forest now designat~d by law as timberland. In response tothe threat of catastrophic fires, the Quincy Library Plan proposes thatin the remaining 1.6-million-acre managed area, loggers each yearwould clear 40,000 to 60,000 acres ofleaning dead trees, some youngtrees, and deadwood on the ground. All larger trees (those over 30inches) would be protected. The plan also allows 10,000 acres withinthe managed area to be logged in selected small patches yearly,with aresulting rotation cycle in which each acre would be logged once every175 years.72 According to newspaper reports, the plan "limits the sizeof cuts to 2 acres at most, and takes 30 percent of the most sensitiveof the 2.5 million acres off the timber base, including salmon habitatnot yet protected by any recovery plan."7;:The group believes that thepermitted harvest will allow enough work for loggers to sustain thelocal economy while at the same time helping to return the forest toits "pre-settlement" state.

Having reached a deliberative consensus on this strategy among tra-ditional combatants in Northern California, the QLG had to convince

218 Price, Principle, and the Environment Civic Engngnnent in Envi1'Onmentai Problem Solving:

The QLGPlan

219

221Civic Engagl'ment in Environmental Problem Solving

morning on the floor of the House was soul-satisfYingfor us and manylike us around the country."75

The passage of the Quincy bill in the House, while "soul-satisfYing"for local collaborative groups, greatly angered national environmen-tal organizations, such as the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, andthe Wilderness Society. which, along with the NRDC, had earlier sup-ported the plan upon which the Quincy group was built.76 The SierraClub in the meantime had adopted a "zero logging" principle forthe national forests and now opposed even the commercial cuttingof deadwood to make firebreaks. The Audubon Society describedthe Quincy plan as "unfair and undemocratic" because it involved a"paradigm shift from national management of national forests to localmanagement."" Louis Blumberg, a spok~esperson for the WildernessSociety, shared the same concern. The Quincy bill "excludes 99 per-cent of the Americans who have an equal stake in national forests," hesaid,7s

Except for the Sierra Club, which opposes all commercial loggingin national forests, national groups objected to the Quincy plan less,asa matter of substance than of precedent. 'Just because a group oflocalpeople can come to agreement doesn't mean that it is good publicpolicy," said Jay Watson, regional director of the Wilderness Society.79The National Audubon Society stated that Quincy-like bills "wouldallow a relatively small group of citizens to dictate public forest man-agement, rather than agency officials receiving input from the publicat large."sa Michael McCloskey, chair of the Sierra Club, declared thebill was "designed to disempower our [national environmental] con-stituency, which is heavily urban."s,

QLG members replied that national groups refused to send repre-sentatives to their councils. "We begged. We pleaded. They wouldn'tcome," said MichaelJackson. "What do you do when they won't come?Tell your neighbors we can't meet because they're too busy havingcocktail parties down in San Francisco?"82 Library group memberTom Nelson pointed out that Congress was responsible for makingthe, decision. If Congress votes overwhelmingly for the bill and thepresident signs it, how is democracy slighted? "It is rewarding that agroup oflocal citizens can take their ideas to a local representative andtake it through the whole process," said Tom Nelson of Sierra Pacific.

Price, Principle, and the Environment220

the Forest Service to implement the plan. But this proved impossible.Wayne Thornton, the Forest Service supervisor of the Plumas NationalForest when the Quincy group was formed, correctly surmised that ria.,tional political groups that dominated the Iron Triangle - and to whomthe Service wasbeholden - did not share the problem-solving spirit ofthe participants. "Every time I looked at them, I saw almost shadow~looming behind them of larger constituencies," said Thornton. Andit was not clear that "these individuals were doing what these largeI:constituencies wanted."74

Nor was it clear that the Forest Service was eager to find a solu-tion. Critics suggest that increased funding for the Forest Service pays;mostly for environmental impact and other scientific studies. SiIicestudies can alwaysbe questioned, extended, confirmed, disconfirmed,and so on, getting the science right promises to become an eternaloccupation. This is especially true when each side of a controvei~yearnestly believes its position reflects the best available science. Parale

ysisby analysis seemed the only prospect. "We'd been waiting for four,years for the administrative solution," said QLG member Linda Blum,"and had gotten nothing but excuses and obfuscation and sabotage byvarious persons working for the U.S. Forest Service at various levels."Accordingly, Blum and her colleagues, perhaps following a lesson theyhad learned in high school civics,decided to go to their representativesin Congress.

The Politics of Environmental Policy

In 1996 - three years after they had first submi tted their proposal to theForest Service - members of the Quincy group approached their 19cairepresentative to Congress, Republican WallyHerger, whojoined wit~Senate Democrat Dianne Feinstein to convert the plan to legislation.,Onjuly 9, 1997, as the QLG members watched on GSPAN, the Houseof Representatives debated and passed the bill by a 429-1 majority;"Wewere thrilled by the vote, of course, but the debate touched ourhearts," Michaeljackson later testified. "To see Congressmen Hergerand Fazio working together to include Congressman Miller's objectivesin our bill reminded us of our own laborious negotiations in the earlyyears. To see resolution, accomplishment, and good spirits reign for a

The QLG Bill Becomes Law

Local forest users can tell us a lot about their forest, like which areas are usedby which species or which are most valuable for wood. They are not neces-sarily equipped to view the bigger picture of, for example, species declines,

Mter the House of Representatives passed the Quincy Library Billnearly unanimously, the president announced his support, and theSenate put it on its agenda for quick passage. To stop the bill in theSenate, the National Audubon Society circulated a "Dear Senator"letter that defended the normal processes of the Forest Service. "ForestService employees," the letter said, "are more likelyon the whole to actin the public's best interest than local management coalitions, whichdon't have the national scientific backing of an agency.,,88The Societyacknowledged that one of its "respected chapters, Plumas AudubonSociety in.Quincy, CA, is participating in and actively supporting theQLG's legislative strategy."The letter advised the Senate to ignore theposition of the local chapter.

223Civic Engagement in Envinm:rnental Problem Solving

The local Audubon chapter, stung and surprised by the "DearSenator" letter from the National Society,wrote back that the nationaloffice was "unfamiliar with the individuals, expertise and diverse tal-ents which have developed QLG strategies. Also, this rhetoric is, to putit politely, patronizing." The Plumas chapter, which had joined theQuincy Library negotiations from the start, asked, "How can a localchapter of Audubon remain viable when the National office abandons,sabotages or undermines local efforts to improve conservation on thelocal scene?" The chapter emphasized the specificity of place and theneed for place-based solutions to environmental problems. "Nationalfolks could better understand the real meaning of 'place' if they wouldcome to the 'places' in question."S9

Sierra Club Chair McCloskey explained his group's opposition tostakeholder negotiations in a November 1995 memo issued to theClub's board. "Industry thinks its odds are better in these forums,"McCloskeywrote. "It has waysto generate pressures on communitieswhere it is strong, which it doesn't have at the national leve!."9" En-virOli.mentalleaders in Washington joined McCloskey in alleging thatrural Westerners are easily snookered by slick-talking industry repre-sentatives. According to one newspaper report, literature from na-tional groups often refers "to well-intentioned Bambi consorting withravenous GodzilJa, and naive chickens inviting sharp, high-poweredfoxes into the coop."91

In spite of opposition from national environmental groups, the localcoalition prevailed; the Senate approved and the pl'esident signed theHarger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act, whichbecame law in October 1998. It required and directed the ForestService to conduct a five-year pilot project, patterned on the QLGplan. The statute insisted that the pilot project be consistent with main-taining habitat for endangered species, This proved to provide a basisfor scientific second-guessing of every contemplated action. At thetime, though, hopes were high for some action. Representative HelenChenoweth of Idaho, in oversight hearings, praised the QLG for itsefforts in collaborative democracy. She congratulated the group for"bringing this community-based plan to a point where it can now be

cumulative impacts, or policy trends .... Considering the big picture is the jobof Congress, and of watchdog groups like the National Audubon Society.

Price, Principle, and the Environment

"It is how democracy is supposed to work. That is what I learned inschoo1."83

Speaking for the Wilderness Society, Blumberg urged the Quincygroup - which he described as "only one special interest group" - towait for the Forest Service to make its determination, however long itmight take.84The League of Conservation Votersjoined the Wilder-ness Society in defending the Forest Service process. In her letter toCongress, Deb Callahan, League President, wrote, "The Herger billcould have serious environmental consequences that can only be as-sessed through full public and scientific review."85Michael McCloskeyof the Sierra Club joined the others in defending the Forest Service.Brushing aside the fifteen years local residents had awaited a deci-sion from the, agency, McCloskey said, "When they run to Congressto impose a negotiated agreement on a national forest, they certainlyare displacing an agency's process."S6Michael Yost,a Quincy environ-mental activist, replied, "Mter working eleven years with the nationalenvironmental organizations and four years with the QLG attempt-ing to get an administrative solution, the best option is now to seek alegislative solution. "87

222

Killing the QLG

implemented as a pilot project. It offers hope to those of us who caredeeply about balance in our national forests."

22:')Civic Engagement in Environmental ProblemSolving

There Will Never Be a Decision

something out. These stakeholders must then have the authority andresponsibility to administer their agreement and be accountable forthe results. As long as factions collide around the Iron Triangle - aslong as interest groups can end-run agencies - there will be no deci-sion. The Sierra Nevada Framework, though it received at first whatseemed to be a blessing by the Bush administration, soon became onemore dead tree in the overgrown thicket of studies, policies, and rec-ommendations, all awaiting conflagration. On December 31, 2001,the supervisor for California's national forests announced that theBush administration would review and revise the Framework. As ofthis writing, the Bush administration's Healthy Forest Initiative ap-pears to swing the policy pendulum as far in the direction of loggingas the abandoned Sierra Nevada Framework swung it in the directionof preservation. QLG members are worried. "If it goes too far, it's go-ing to take well-thought-out plans like ours and make them seem likefrauds," Michaeljackson said.94

It may be ,time to acknowledge that there will never be a decision, aplan, or a policy for the national forests. This is because no one butthe local groups whose livelihood depends on the condition of theforests wants a decision. To be sure, local environmentalists and for-est users can get together as they did in Quincy to hammer out theirdifferences and get to win-winsolutions. These people are united, forexample, in the dread that the forest will explode in fire, surroundingtheir community with flames. They also need the assurance of a pre-dictable policy for deciding what sorts of investments to make, careersto consider, houses to build, and so on.

Outside the local community, however, nobody wants a decision. Infact, all factions benefit from the endless process of indecision. This isplainly true of the Forest Service, whose budget depends on develop-ing policies, undertaking analyses, and reviewing scientific findings. Itis also true of the forest industry in general since it depends for timberproduction primarily on private forests. To open the national foreststo logging - the situation has not changed since Pinchot's day - wouldbe to depress lumber prices, Overproduction in the lumber industry,already a problem especially in view of competition from Canadian

Price, Principle, and the Environment224

Congratulations were not in order. In spite of the clear directive of thelegislation, the QLG plan wasnot implemented. Instead, the decision-making process has continued, and no end is in sight. Rather than im~plement the QLG legislation, the Forest Service conducted extensiveand expensive scientific and environmental reviews, some of which,became objects of litigation, throughout 1998 and 1999. Some ofthe further studies, such as were involved in several EnvironmentalImpact Statements, also may have been required by law. In an effortto get the science right - to develop a management plan based in sci,,'ence not politics - the Forest Service brought or bought all sortsb[academic and other experts into a debate over many alternative plansand assessments. The science fractured along political lines; more Wasrequired.

A $12 million study undertaken during the Clinton administrationculminated in the Sierra Nevada Framework, a roughly 1,50o-pagedocument, hailed by environmental groups for limiting logging andthinning of national forests. Indeed, the Framework would cut logginglevels by two-thirds on 11.5million acres in eleven national forestsand would prescribe burning as an alternative to thinning by lumbercompanies. Howeverwell the Framework conformed to the no-loggingviewsof major environmental groups, it appeared to mock and rejectthe mandate of the QLG Act by blocking efforts to thin overgrownthickets. The QLG filed a lawsuit complaining the Frameworbriolatedthe letter and spirit of the law.Frank Stewart, a forester in the QLG,stated that the Framework "does nothing to address fire, fuel loads'and local economies. All it does is continue the process and ensurethat fuel reduction will be accomplished" through catastrophic wildfires.92The QLG stated in a letter written to the Forest Service, "theSierra framework decision effectivelykills the Herger-Feinstein QuincyLibrary Group Project."93This QLG statement ismistaken, even naive, in one respect: it refers

to a "decision." The only way to get a decision is to act as the QLGdid, namely, to bring the stakeholders together and have them work

suppliers, would follow that of agriculture generally, so that the entireeconomy might depend on subsidies and bailouts. Plainly,some firmswant to 9pen the national forest';, but others do not. Conflicts of inter-est within the industry make it easier to tolerate an absence of policygenerally.

Environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, have nothing togain and much to lose by participating in stakeholder collaborations.It is better to fight for purity - and thus represent those who supportthe cause - than to settle for compromise. At one time, environmen"tal groups could rightly worry that stakeholder collaborations wouldbe captured by industry groups. Today, local communities include en-trepreneurs of many sorts; for example, from the Sierra Nevadas tothe Colorado Plateau, software developers greatly outnumber loggers.According to the Atlas of the New West,only a few counties remain inwhich 35 percent of the population is employed in mining, logging,farming, or ranching. The "Westhas moved beyond extracting naturalresources to appreciating them in place: mountainsides not excavatedfor copper or molybdenum; rangeland homes for wolves instead ofcattle; and old-growth forests rather than clear-cuts."95

National environmental groups remain suspicious of collaborative"stakeholder" processes for other and deeper reasons than the fearthat industry flakswill co-opt local environmentalists. People who arewilling to listen to each other and to find waysto solve the problemsthat divide them are likely to defect from the Manichean battles na-tional groups wage around the Iron Triangle. "It is troubling that suchprocesses tend to de-legitimate conflict as a wayof dealing with issuesand of mobilizing support," McCloskeywrote in his memo. "Insteadof hammering out national rules to reflect majority rule in the nation,transferring power to a local venue implies decision-making by a verydifferent majority in a much smaller population."

McCloskey added that there is a good reason national groupsdo not accept invitations to participate in councils seeking to gov~,ern localized resources. If representatives working at the local levelsign on to a compromise to resolve a particular conflict in specificcircumstances, the national group will be bound to accept it, eventhough it departs from national principles. "It is psychologically dif-ficult to simultaneously negotiate and publicly attack bad proposalsfrom the other side. This tends to be seen as acting in bad faith."

Civic Environmentalism and Civic Renewal

Since the Sierra Club has committed itself on both scientific and ethi-cal grounds to a "zero commercial logging" national rule, it sees littleto gain by negotiation or accommodation. "Too much time spent instakeholder processes may result in demobilizing and disarming ourside."96

Sociologist Robert Putnam has argued 'that battles environmentalgroups wage in Washington drain the strength of democracy to solveenvironmental problems in the nation at large. "Weare shouting andpressuring and suing," he has written, "but we are not reasoning to-gether, not even in the attenuated sense that we once did, with peoplewe know well and willmeet again tomorrow."97While recognizing thepolitical clout of organizations like the Sierra Club, Putnam denies theybuild the social trust on which democracy depends. "For the vast ma-jority of their members, the only act of membership consists in writingacheck for dues or perhaps occasionally reading a newsletter. ... Theirties, in short, are to common symbols, common leaders, and perhapscommon ideals, but not to one another."9S

227Civic Engagement in Environmental ProblemSolving

Recently, Randal O'Toole. a respected authority on western resourceissues, has warned that the environmental movement faces its great-est crisis. "One likely result is that the movement will fragment intotwo distinctly different movements, one that focuses on preservationand central control and one that focuses on management and decen-tralization." O'Toole presents this schism as a replay of the historicalopposition between preservationists and conservationists. He may failto see, however, that preservationists and conservationists now hold atleast one viewin common. Both appeal to science - whether environ-mental economics or forest ecology - to justify their position. Theyseek a scientific vindication not a political compromise.

Preservationists in the tradition ofJohn Muir demand that the fed-eral government protect as much of the nation's landscape as possi-ble from human intrusion. "Research in ecology, fisheries, soils, andother areas," O'Toole comments, "seemed to support the preserva-tionist claim that 'nature knows best.'" A "precautionary principle,"moreover, suggests that it is perilous to alter nature if science cannotwith certainty predict all the consequences that may result.

Price, Principle, and the Environment226

229Civic Engagement in Environmental Problem Sol1Jing

selective logging, by thinning trees and clearing out brush, can re-place fire regimes in the ecosystem. It may no longer be possible toleave the forest alone.What is most striking about grass-roots movements, Gottlieb and

Ingram have written, "is their democratic thrust .... Inste~d of em-bracing expertise, they have developed self-taught experts .... Theyhave become organizat.ions of active members rat.her than rosters ofdues-payers on mailing lists."102 Jordan and Snow add, "While the tradi-tional groups have amassed memberships to underwrite staff expertsin law, science, and policy, the grassroots groups are comprised ofmembers who are personally involved in the issues."Jordan and Snowpoint out the difference. In "their base of support and t.he ways theyselect issues and strategies, the grass-roots groups are essentially po-litical, while many of their establishment counterparts have becomeessentially technical.",o3 This difference - rather than the historicaldivergence between conservationists and preservationists - accountsfor the schism now dividing environmentalists.Environmentalists today confront a fundamental choice whether to

conceive their movement as political or as t.echnical in its concerns,its program, and its justification. They cannot have it both ways. Ifenvironmentalists at the local level engage their opponents in a po-litical deliberation ending in a compromise, this is bound t.o offendnational leaders eager to vindicate the truth of their science-based po-sition against wrong-headed, ill-intentioned, and unscientific beliefs.It is unsurprising that nat.ional groups like the Sierra Club and theAudubon Society reject. the political efforts even of their own chaptersin the affected regions. Environmental decisions cannot be tnlsted toamateurs whose objectivity and neutrality are compromised becausethey are invested emotionally and economically in the survival of theirhuman communities in place. These locals do not have t.he requisitescientific expertise.Lois Gibbs, who has criticized mainstream environmentalism ever

since the Love Canal days, has argued that it is a mistake to think en-vironmental goals can be framed or justified in technical- includingeconomic and scientific - terms. They are political goals arising fromcompeting beliefs, needs, interests, emotions, and ideologies. Theyare not matters of t.echnical controversy to be settled by a mOl"esci-entific, interdisciplinary approach. "Effort~ to preserve and improve

Price, Principle, and the Environment228

Conservationists believe that experts should manage nature in-tensively to maximize the long-run benefits it offers humanity. Likepreservationists, however, conservationists favor scientific control ofresources - for example, the management of the national forests by theForest Service. Both preservationists and conservationists base theirconceptions of land management - their "land ethicn - on what eachtakes to be the best available environmental science.99 For preserva-tionists, science involves succession and equilibrium models, feedbackloops, stability-diversity associations, and notions of nature as a su~perorganism that has a "health" or an "integrity" upon which we alldepend. For conservationists, science yields the principles of silvicul-ture, genetic engineering, and so forth, on which sustainable forestry;,agriculture, and the like are based. The best available science showsthat humanity can prosper, even survive, only if it manages nature'intensively (if you are a conservationist) or leaves it alone (if a preser-vationist). Each side, secure in the objectivity of its science, is certainof the rightness of its cause."Asheirs to their conservationist forerunners' deference to exper-

tise," Gottlieb and Ingram comment, "establishment environmental-ists are embarrassed by the lack of scientific sophistication in the grass-roots movements." Thus, a Sierra Club press release urges defeat of th-eQuincy bill in part because it "ignores the best available science."lOoAppealing, for example, to the theory of forest succession or to var-ious equilibrium models of the order of nature, environmentalistsmay argue that the Lassen and Plumas forests will achieve the "eli"'max" condition pictured on Sierra Club calendars ifwejust leave them "alone. Science shows that nature knows best; all logging - indeed, allcommercial activity in the wilderness - is therefore bad on scientificgrounds.Members of the Quincy Group, however, cannot see the old-growth'

forests pictured in Sierra Club calendars for the stick-like, dyingtrees that they perceive all around them ..Their experience confirmswhat other ecologists believe, namely, that theories of forest succes-sion, equilibrium, and so on serve essentially a political purpose,while nature itself (to quote environmental historian Donald Worster) . ,"isfundamentally erratic, discontinuous, and unpredictable. It is full of "seemingly random events that elude models of how things are sup".posed to work."lOl From this point of view, one could argue that

the environment are sure to be set back, if not fail outright, whenadvocates for the environment forget or ignore the fact that environ-mental causes are just as political as any other public policy issue." 104

If environmental causes are political, advocates must seek to per-suade or reach some accommodation with their adversaries who areregarded as equals in a joint effort of deliberation. This requires allthe sides in a controversy to discuss possible ways to solve a problem,each offering considerations the others may regard as reasons to adoptone solution or another. Rather than denigrating one's opponents asmotivated by private gain or as befuddled by bad science, one mustengage them in ajoint project of finding common ground. The alter-native is to delegate political decisions to experts - to interdisciplinaryteams of economists, environmental scientists, and lawyerswho, as theAudubon letter said, are "equipped to view the bigger picture of, forexample, species declines, cumulative impacts, or policy trends." Thisalternative lets a technical elite that has lost its democratic bearingsgovern. The Russian nomenklatura, as William Sullivan points out,offers a glaring example of "the fate of modern elites who lose theircollective moral bearings, and slip from self-satisfaction in,toarroganceand finally deadening demoralization.",05

Jean Cohen, a political scientist at Columbia University, argues that"participation as an equal in the exchange of opinions and in collectivedeliberations" gives individuals a sense of voice and democratic com-petence. Collaborative groups engender "internal publics" in whichindividuals have a voice. Cohen writes, "I suspect that only associationswith internal publics structured by the relevant norms of discourse candevelop the communicative competence and interactive abilities im-portant to democracy." The efforts of deliberative associations to pen-etrate legislatures - as the Quincy Library Group has tried to do - farfrom being undemocratic, provide an important check on the state'sadministrative apparatus. ",6

If civic associations like the Quincy Library Group are unable to in~fluence environmental policy, it is hard to see what political recoursethey may have. National mass-mailing organizations, along with theirspecial friends in Congress and the. industry groups they oppose, ownthe Iron Triangle as a preserve for professionalism and expertise. What-ever its prospects for implementation, however, the Quincy Library

Plan has restored a sense of civility- even of common purpose - to thecommunities surrounding the Plumas anc! Lassen foresL~.Traditionaladversaries are now on the same side. Democracy can and should ac-complish just that result. Michael Jackson describes one sign of thecivic renewal his group has achieved. "These days, when people waveat me, they use all five fingers," he said. '°7

230 Price, Principle, and theEnvironment. Civic Engagement in Environmental Problem Solving 231