||| FROM ED CHANEY |||
All quiet on the Pacific Northwest salmon front.
Tomorrow, December 1, the Biden Administration reportedly will release a statement on the federal strategy for dealing with the disaster that has cost the Northwest region and nation billions of wasted dollars, done billions more in damage, destroyed small businesses and thousands of jobs, and threatens extinction of Snake River salmon and Southern Resident Orca.
People throughout the region breathlessly await this latest installment in the four decade-long betrayal of the public trust that has wreaked economic, ecological and social havoc nearly 1,000 miles inland and many thousands of miles along the Pacific coast.
The root of the problem is four Army Corps of Engineers pork barrel dams on the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington. The Corps was warned for decades the proposed dams threatened extinction of Snake River salmon produced in vast pristine headwaters of the Snake River Basin. Warnings ignored; dams built 1960-75; predicted disaster happened.
Congress reacted with uncharacteristic swiftness. The Northwest Power Act of 1980 created what is now called the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The states of Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington were given one year to devise a plan—using existing information—to restore Snake River salmon while maintaining an economical and reliable regional energy supply.
The Bonneville Power Administration political hegemon quickly corrupted the Council, notably excepting its Oregon members. Together Bonneville and its politically powerful customers captured regional, state and congressional elected officials—then other federal agencies, notably the Northwest offices of the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA Fisheries.
All their time in office, Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and Washington Governor Inslee provided cover for the salmon/orca-killing Bonneville Hegemon and its shills and enablers. They were politically humiliated when ultra-conservative Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson proposed to breach the costly, destructive federal Snake River dams in their state, and keep all stakeholders whole—and then some.
Cantwell quickly sought political refuge and salmon cred by creating the diversion of culverts and sprinkling federal tax dollars on her constituents. Murray and Inslee went her one better and dazzled credulous salmon and Orca advocates with Barnum and Bailey-like “collaborative efforts” and sweet talk about Snake River salmon and SR Orca and—wait for it—the need for a “comprehensive plan” to fix everything before doing anything about breaching the Snake River dams.
That doesn’t sound like Murray/Cantwell/Inslee had a road to Damascus revelation and are now prepared to pull the political rug out from under the Bonneville Hegemon. It sounds like a variant on the same tune that has driven Snake River salmon and SR Orca to the cusp of extinction gussied up with the rouge of considering breaching and the mascara of someday, maybe.
Does President Biden have the spine to buck corrupt Murray/Cantwell/Inslee and the rest of the spineless Northwest congressional delegation? Do his duty? Do the right thing? Stop the madness?
After 40 years, will pigs fly. Will wishes become fishes?
Stay tuned.
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While breaching the lower Snake river dams would be a HUGE step in the right direction for a healthier river system, without enforcement of existing laws governing logging practices, especially road construction, it may not make enough of a difference. A holistic approach to ecosystems is not a new idea; why are we still fixated on single issues instead of looking at the big picture? And the big picture includes inconveniencing corporate industrial wheat growers who want to send wheat to Asia. Is that profit seeking more important than native salmon runs and all the species, Orcas among them, that depend on healthy salmon runs? And the larger view also includes the Pacific Ocean and the health of that largest of bodies of water on the planet. It’s all connected. I do not fully share Mr. Chaney’s cynical sentiments towards our senators and governor but I do agree that those elected officials have not done enough to protect our environment. Until the health of our interwoven ecological systems, which we all are a part of, are valued and protected from predatory capitalism, we will never have a hope of surviving the challenges that climate change is bringing.
Thank you, Ken Wood. I too am a full on breach LSRD advocate who sees the bigger picture now impacted by climate disruption. Perhaps considering energy as a resource that can be conserved like any other resource needs a revival. Although adopting a “less is more” paradigm for future production as well as usage does not fit a “predatory capitalism” regime, it can facilitate ecosystem restoration and preservation. In the 1970s we were told to “turn off lights,” “wash only full loads,” and other tips for energy conservation. Today the capitalistic greed machine lobbies for an EV in every garage. As if that panacea for climate change is not a natural resource suck. Smaller footprint using less natural resources to produce efficiently used energy could and should be a goal. Have we not learned anything from destroying, disrupting, or degrading ecosystems, economies, and Indigenous peoples cultures. Treating just one symptom will not heal and restore the entire ecosystem or all its environs. We need to live as integral parts of this Earth, not on it as all consuming predators.
Well penned and well said. It’s heartbreaking, really. But I think it starts right here at home. It’s easy to talk about the big picture as an outside-in solution, but The big picture starts in our own selves and moves outward to community and county – the only place where we have a chance to effect something – and we all see how that goes, in terms of Rights of Nature when we take money from the state and feds. Just more corruption and stranglehold on the things that would make the playing ground more equal for non humans who also live here.
It’s a tangled web and we’re all in the net – and the only way to untangle it is to do something right here where we live – a bottom-up effort. Top down will never work – that is too corrupted by money and favors and a lot of mutual back scratching. It’s easy to give lip service – but until we put Rights of Nature first, in every local jurisdiction, nothing will change on the state or federal level IMO. because all the money trickles down to those entities from on high.
The whole “renewable energy” shell game is not going to solve our problems either, any more than gutting every forest for unlimited market-driven growth and profit for the few will help us cherish and care for Earth’s limited resources like water. How did we let someone own the waters? Efforts on an individual level, and change of consciousness are the only way through this. Every so called “renewable” energy system has its problems too, in some way or other. The problem is our rapacious use of energy and resources and making the human race god over everything else. As long as we have human hierarchy over all other creatures, we are headed for Endgame. The people of Unceded Lands, who were pushed off or killed off, knew this from thousands of years ago. How are they treated? Like all the other ‘dispensible’ sentient beings on the planet, instead of people whose wisdom could teach us.
I can see no benefit whatsoever in technological takeover or domination of nature. We traded the gift of being here among our brothers and sisters in the animal and plant world – for what? For comfort and a cushy unnatural life? And how free are we now, due to making those tradeoffs and allowing snake oil salesmen to convince us that we even deserve that? These are the questions I think need to be asked, and reflected on deeply. What is our place in the Universe? (we’re not the center of it!) . I don’t think this planet is here to be the playground and theme park for humanity at the expense of everything and everyone else. Change of consciousness is the missing ingredient. We have to open our eyes and look, and see, and not turn away.
Well said, Sadie! Species come and species go on this little blue planet and unless we want to be a flash-in-the-pan species, we are going to have to learn to live in harmony with the rest of the family of Life. How to do that with 8 billion humans is the conundrum. I can see where we are and I can see where we want to get to; it’s how to get from here to there without ruining everything on the way that is the predicament!
Ms. Bailey, Mr. Wood, et al.
8 Billion humans – What is our place in the Universe? UN estimate 8 billion on November 15 2022. US Census estimated 2 Billion in 1927. A fourfold increase in 95 years.
We are unsustainable but Mother earth is self correcting, curious to see what unfolds.