When oil companies tried to persuade Americans that exploiting the petroleum under the Alaskan wilderness was good for the nation’s security and economy, President Bush agreed: "This is a way to get some additional reserves here at home on the books. …This project will make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy, eventually by up to a million barrels of oil a day." (The Guardian, March 18, 2005)
That view would have been rejected by President Theodore Roosevelt. He would probably have waited with the extraction of America’s remaining petroleum until none could be bought abroad. He clearly placed the conservation of America’s natural resources higher on the national agenda than any chief executive before or after him.
During his two terms in the White House from 1901 to 1909,
Teddy--as Americans liked to call him--had more than 80 million acres of mineral lands and 1,500,000 acres of water power sites withdrawn from public sale. He set aside some 148 million acres for national forests, national parks, and nature preserves--more than all of his predecessors combined.
His close associate Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) pioneered the development of forest conservation. After completing forestry school in Germany, he established one of America’s first model forests on the Biltmore Estate of Cornelius Vanderbilt in North Carolina. In 1905 Pinchot became the first chief of the newly established U.S. Forest Service.
Roosevelt was committed to managing America’s natural resources in a scientific manner and to curbing their reckless exploitation for private profit. He signed into law the creation of five National Parks and eighteen new National Monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. He also established fifty-one Bird Reserves and four Game Preserves.
In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir (1838-1914), the founder of the Sierra Club, even though the two had different views of conservation. While Muir wanted nature preserved for the sake of its beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's belief "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."
Ever suspicious of powerful financial interests that might take advantage of public property at the expense of the national interest, in 1906 the president stopped entry to all coal lands in order to permit their official appraisal. Once that was done, those lands were again opened to buyers at from $35 to $100 an acre.
As a liberal Republican, Roosevelt resolutely reacted to the investigation of Chicago’s meat packers and to Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, by pushing for America’s first Meat Inspection Act and for the Pure Food and Drug Act. It imposed regulations on the labeling of products containing alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroin, and the like.
Precisely a century after Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive campaign for the protection of the nation’s natural and human resources, two oilmen, George Bush and Dick Cheney, are now in charge of America’s treasures. , They seem to view environmentalists more as annoying “tree-huggers” than as promoters of sound resource preservation.
More than once did the Bush White House dismiss environmental scientists as doomsayers of the loony left. Ecological concepts such as sustainability, biodiversity, and interdependence are not part of their agenda for the American people. Could it be that the people’s long-term environment and health may be less important to them than the welfare of the coal and oil industry?
In his opposition to the exploiters of America’s human and physical resources, the first Republican president of the 20th century had no illusions: “Behind the ostensible government,” he once observed, “sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”
[Theodore Roosevelt will be portrayed by Professor Chuck Chalberg of Bloomington, Minnesota, at the 9th Prairieland Chautauqua on Monday, September 3, at 8 p.m. in Jacksonville’s Community Park. Dr. Fuhrig may be reached at wdfuhrig@aol.com or 217-243-2423. For other essays, log onto his website: www.inependentcritic.com]