Babbitt Speaks

This is not directly park related but it is interesting. Bruce Babbitt was Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton and has impeccable environmental credentials. He is most famous for his roles as the named government defendant in the Sweet Home case that upheld the Endangered Species Act and one of the most important players in the establishment of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Now he is in the news criticizing President Obama's environmental policies, particularly in the areas of land and water protection/conservation and failure to push back aggressively on disingenuous and dangerous Republican attacks (usually based on lies and other forms of disinformation) on a wide range of environmental issues from oil leases to mountain top removal to fracking to greenhouse gas emissions.

That such a high profile former official would criticize a president of his own party in this direct a manner, even in such a gentle way, is certainly notable. It isn't often (though it is healthy and necessary) that you see this kind of behavior. (Indeed, our discourse on the environment as well as all other issues would be healthier, more productive, and more intellectually consistent and honest if we did have more intraparty criticism based on facts and well-reasoned arguments, but that's a side issue). The main point is that while Obama has done a handful of good things on environmental, natural resources, and public lands issues, on the whole there has been a lot of stalling and evasion, not to mention areas (particularly when it comes to oil drilling) where he is actively damaging the future for negligible short term gain. This should be a wake up call to Obama that the environmental community is not happy with him and will not automatically rise to his aid in 2012. It is likely that some will respond to the "better than the alternative" fear-based argument, but that won't raise nearly as much money or inspire nearly as many door knockers or phone bankers. We'll see what he does (but I don't expect him to change his moderately anti-green behavior any time soon).

Update (June 11): The Los Angeles Times agrees and uses pretty strong language and lots of examples. Unfortunately it is buried in the Saturday paper, but it's still the strongest newspaper castigation I've seen of Obama's weak and cowardly environmental record.

Update II (June 13): The New York Times also agrees though its language is much  more conciliatory to the administration (however, it appears on a Monday so it will get more views). In a related development, the power plant rules that the Op-Ed cites have been delayed again (announced after publication).