Privatization: Turning The Commons Into Gold

By Steve Kelly

"By the law of nature these things are common to all mankind, the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea,” proclaimed the Roman Emperor Justinian. Justinian’s code, the original protection of the public trust, or commons, become the law of the land in 528 A.D. Over the centuries that have followed this precept has become widely known as the Public Trust Doctrine. 

Today, the commons face unprecedented new threats from an American 21^st Century Emperor and the expansion of so-called neo-conservatism, or privatization. From a neo-conservative perspective, laissez-faire individualism and free-market (corporate) economics, the conceptual building blocks of a bold return to medieval feudalism, offer efficiency, smaller-sized government, and greater individual choice. Public tradeoffs or costs (public losses) are seldom discussed. 

Since the institutionalization of greed in the 1980s under the Reagan Administration, the expansion of the domain of property rights has delivered dramatic rewards to the selfish desires of America’s consumer culture elite. 

In 2004, the Montana Republican Party adopted the following platform resolution:  “Be it resolved by the Montana Republican Party that we support privatization in all aspects of government, whenever possible and practical.” If, as President Reagan stated, “the problem is government,” and the solution is privatization, then a wholesale return to servitude seems inevitable for all but a handful of 21^st Century lords hunkered down in heavily fortified, gated communities, and on private islands.

The privatization of public assets by corporate capitalists, elected and un-elected political operatives (lobbyists), and international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has become a global phenomenon influencing public policy in every corner of the globe. Our air, water, privacy, schools, energy, railroads, busses, airports, airwaves, health care, social security, prisons, seeds, forests, calories, silence, knowledge, sunlight, soil, and everything else once publicly owned, is being snatched up to make a quick buck. 

In the U.S., especially in the arid West, the extreme anti-environmentalist, Wise-Use movement, a regional variant of the privatization movement, is advancing a growing number of proposals to give-away, sell, exchange or otherwise reduce public ownership and/or control over public lands. 

Recently, an outrageous proposal by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) authorized the liquidation and development of millions of acres of "mining claims" on public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior/ Bureau of Land Management (BLM) passed the U.S. House by one vote.  Pombo’s bill listed some National Parks, which were to be sold, allegedly to balance the budget, and raise relief funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina and future disasters.

Democrats have also played leading roles in privatizing the commons.  In 1995, House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sponsored the Presidio Trust legislation, which created the first privatized national park in the United States.  Private businesses now control more than 80 percent of the 1,408-acre park in San Francisco.  Pelosi's legislation requires that leases, and other real estate development pay the entire cost of managing the park by 2013. 

Tax-exempt foundations led by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Tides Foundation, and some brand-name groups like Environmental Defense and The Wilderness Society, hopped on Pelosi’s privatization bandwagon. Privatization of The Presidio demonstrates the new way private foundations function like corporate lobbyists and PACs (Political Action Committees) to promote their narrow, short-term political agenda – the greater public interest be damned.  When it suits their short-term objectives, some environmental groups will do just about anything to claim victory. 

In Idaho, Pew, The Wilderness Society and Idaho Conservation League have teamed up with Rep. Simpson (R-ID) to promote his Central Idaho Economic and Recreation Act (HR 3603), or CIEDRA, a classic example of collaborative realpolitik in action.  CIEDRA would designate 300,000 acres as wilderness, but would give-away to county governments over 8,000 acres of public land, including some congressionally protected lands in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.  In total, CIEDRA would hand over 130,000 public acres to motorized recreation and potential real estate development.  Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), ranking member of the House Resources Committee, said at a hearing last fall it was the first time he could remember opposing a wilderness bill.  "The focus of this bill is placed on development, with public land giveaways, monetary favors and special legislative provisions for a select few," lamented Rahall.

Opposed by over 50 grassroots conservation groups, CIEDRA is a privatization bill, disguised as a Boulder-White Clouds “wilderness bill.”  Boulder-White Clouds legislation is only the latest in a series of “wilderness-lite” or “virtual wilderness” bills making their way through Congress that are taking the new “free-market” (quid-pro-quo) approach.

One common force driving the privatization agenda appears to be the lavish funding provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based behemoth controlled by heirs to the Sun Oil fortune, and its national Campaign for American Wilderness.  By defusing political dissent through endless meetings, collaboration, and compromise, Pew and its foundation-dependent allies help spread the privatization pandemic, aided by a network of sympathetic and biased “main-stream” journalists.

Pew pours huge sums of money into its campaigns independently, and through other foundations, which ultimately finds its way to submissive local groups willing to sacrifice wilderness principles for hollow political victories. 

Doug Scott, formerly a 17-year veteran with the Sierra Club, now heads up Pew’s Campaign for American Wilderness.  Scott works tirelessly to marginalize critics of Pew’s “new way,” insisting that no wilderness bills ever passed without compromises.  He cites past efforts like the Frank Church Wilderness, which traded mineral access for wilderness, or the statewide Wyoming Wilderness bill of 1984, which traded oil and gas exploration access, “hard release” and “sufficiency language” for rocks and ice wilderness, and the Gospel Hump Wilderness, which traded access to timber for wilderness.  But Scott’s examples are disingenuous.  He is well aware that in those instances large tracts of public land weren’t gifted or sold in exchange for wilderness protection, primarily in uncontested areas, the way it is today. 

Wilderness area proposals for Northern California and Washington are scheduled for congressional consideration later this year.  Like CIEDRA in Idaho, all are part of larger, multi-designation packages that include giveaways or sales of public lands, non-conforming (wilderness) uses, and/or exceptions to statutory restrictions or important administrative protection measures. 

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Antiquities Act of 1906, the
landmark tool used by Theodore Roosevelt to protect more than one million public acres by designating 18 National Monuments in 9 states, our intuitive appreciation of the public commons must guide us through the morass toward a brighter future.  The illusion of abundance, and the failed notion that the private elements of our private property system can shove all of the public trust attributes into a back corner, must cease.  Private claims and public needs are both essential elements of our limited common capital, from which we derive the means to sustain our common survival.  The paradox is that what we are experiencing today is simultaneously very new and very old.  The reality of the spaceship earth is upon us.  Let’s not blow it.

Steve Kelly wrote this article originally for the Northern Rockies Networker. We thank them for letting Lowbagger re-run the piece.