Enlightened self-interest by John C. Street

Let’s put the ugliest part of this right up front and not avert our eyes.  

The process of extracting natural resources is messy, visually disturbing and, in far too many instances, unscrupulous operators walked away, seemingly unconcerned and apparently unaccountable for the degradation left behind.  

Now, decades later, tributaries and secondary streams run with a perpetual red tint and landscapes remain irreparably altered. And the after effects of this economic sugar high still intrude into daily lives like the smell of a wet dog months after an encounter with a skunk.  

With daily visual reminders of past quests for solid-form, carbon based fuel, citizens of the Commonwealth seem justified in expressing skepticism over the newest iteration of resource extraction. In appearance and process it seems like – as Yogi Berra once said – “Deja vu all over again.” 

Marcellus shale gas, which has been discovered and tapped under a broad swath of the northern tier of Pennsylvania (and parts of New York and Ohio), has burst into the news over the last two years as “One of the largest gas reserves in the world.” It is so large, in fact, that its exact size and volume are still unknown.  

For a nation with a massive – and growing – energy Jones, the Marcellus reserve seems like a Godsend. Combined with the equally massive Bakken (oil) formation which covers big parts of Montana and North Dakota, both industry and government prognosticators believe these reserves could provide the Holy Grail of total “energy independence” well into the next century.  

But not everyone believes this is a Holy Grail worth pursuing. There is a price to pay for extracting natural resources - beyond the cost of retrieving them - and, given the past indiscretions of the extraction industry, many argue that this price is too high, that the after affects will add even more visual injury to the insults already inflicted. 

As a rule, natural resource extraction does not take place in commercial or residential areas but rather on “undeveloped” land or, as is more often the case, in the boonies. Consequently, and understandably, hunters and anglers are often the first people to see and feel the impact and to sound the alarm when these extraction activities begin to negatively impact an area where they hunt or fish. And this is not just a recent phenomenon.  

For well over 100 years, Bloodsporters have been actively involved in identifying threats to this nation’s wild places and wildlife and, more importantly, putting their own time and money into solutions even when it meant – as was the case with market hunting - admitting they were the problem that needed fixing.   

In recent deep-think articles, however, the conservation history of the Bloodsports has been described – and denigrated –as nothing more than “enlightened self-interest.” Hunters and anglers, these deep-thinkers claim, are only interested in “protecting and conserving” so they can perpetuate their activities. And that seems like a legitimate point. Rare indeed would be the hunter who purchased a license solely for the purpose of protecting the forest habitat of, say, a Cerulean warbler. 

This “enlightened self-interest” argument begins to break down, though, when the authors use it as a philosophical bludgeon to pound home the point that it’s high time other, non-consumptive stakeholders take control, employing Bloodsporters where they are useful - as in culling excess populations of wildlife, for instance – but otherwise excluding them from the decision making process. But this philosophical bludgeon takes on an entirely different connotation when viewed through the long lens of history. 

Bloodsporters, upon identifying threats to wildlife and wild places, have always dug deep into their own pockets to find, fund and implement solutions. The end results of this “enlightened self-interest” can be seen not only in the unimaginable diversity (the “biodiversity”) of wildlife species extant today but in the large amount of habitat that has been set aside to sustain them.  

Deep-thinkers, on the other hand, address threats to wildlife and wild places as money making ventures and rarely – and then only in miniscule amounts – are the proceeds applied to solutions. And when these deep-thinkers have been shown to be the cause of the problem (as in the banning of DDT, for instance), they hide behind the skirts of Mother Nature to obfuscate their culpability. 

The United States of America cannot survive – let alone thrive - on “alternative sources of energy.” And, arguably, wouldn’t even if it could.  

Alternative energy, popularly understood to be ethanol, wind and solar, requires enormous amounts of land (mostly “undeveloped,” often boonies), consumes a disproportionate amount of other natural resources to produce and pushes consumers into financial decisions that – for all but the top rungs of the economic ladder - literally spell the difference between life and death. 

Bloodsporters need, therefore, to face the future by remembering their past.  

There’s a great deal to be said for “enlightened self-interest.”