杏吧原创

AMONG the pledges that won Donald Trump the US presidency was one to shred the legislation underpinning federal environmental control 鈥� opening up wilderness and the wide open spaces of the American West to coal mining, oil drilling, pipeline laying and much else. It鈥檚 not just climate change that Trump鈥檚 supporters are sceptical about: there is pushback against environment law of all sorts.

What鈥檚 going on? In his book A Good That Transcends, lawyer Eric Freyfogle doesn鈥檛 mention Trump. But he is clear that what lies behind long-standing and growing 鈥減opular resistance鈥� to green thinking is a devotion to the primacy of the individual and private property at the expense of any ideas that require collective endeavour, such as environmental management of the great spaces and wildernesses where bison once roamed.

In theory, that doesn鈥檛 mean Americans are opposed to the environment. After all, even Trump recently claimed that he is 鈥渁 very big person when it comes to the environment. I鈥檝e received awards on the environment.鈥� But everything is ultimately seen through the lens of the rights of the individual. Private property eclipses everything.

Thus, the heroes of environmentalism tend to be philanthropists who buy up land to protect it, such as media mogul Ted Turner鈥檚 bison prairies, or the purchase of big chunks of Patagonia by fashion entrepreneurs Doug and Kris Tompkins.

The science gets skewed towards this agenda too, with consequences that have been bad not just for the US heartlands but for much of the world. Take the ascendancy of perhaps the most influential idea of all in modern environmental management, the 鈥渢ragedy of the commons鈥�, coined by US ecologist Garrett Hardin.

鈥淭he heroes of environmentalism tend to be philanthropists who buy up land to protect it鈥�

In essence, it holds that collectively owned land is doomed to be destroyed, while private land will prosper because it has value to an individual. In one of the most cited papers ever in , published in 1968, Hardin argued that a commonly owned pasture, where many cattle herders graze their animals, would always be overexploited.

This was because those with the most animals would make the most profit, while everyone 鈥� however many or few animals they have 鈥� would share in the suffering as the actions of those individuals turned the pasture to desert.

The only way to prevent this tragedy was to turn common land into private property, whereby the owner had a personal interest in protecting it for the future. By inference, privatising the planet is the key to conservation.

No, no, no, says Freyfogle. If not controlled by strong environmental law, private property destroys natural assets by converting them into cash. Look at how fences and ploughs have wrecked the ecosystems of the US Midwest. Privatisation didn鈥檛 prevent the dust bowl of the 1930s. Even access to rainfall 鈥� a quintessentially collective asset 鈥� is handed out as a private right that goes with land. Result: California is parched as farmers defend to the death their legal right to keep abstracting.

This is a tragedy not of the commons but of private property. And perhaps of the US Constitution, too. 鈥淟ife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness鈥� won鈥檛 save nature. To do that, says Freyfogle, we have to 鈥渃urtail individual liberties鈥�. Landowners cannot have absolute rights to their land. We need to banish the idea that individuals or markets can fix nature.

This is a well-argued critique of land ethics in the US. But where does science fit in? Freyfogle is pretty hostile to it. The Enlightenment 鈥渨eakened鈥� ideas about collective management of nature, he says, and promoted the primacy of the individual and 鈥渢he market-based view of nature鈥�. That鈥檚 a bit harsh. Collectivisation hardly treated the steppes of the Soviet Union well, creating conditions for famine worse even than the American dust bowl.

In The Politics of Scale, geographer Nathan Sayre makes a not dissimilar case. The US rangelands 鈥� the grasslands, steppe, prairies and deserts of the American West 鈥� have been badly managed because of bad science, he says. Science encouraged people to demonise cattle grazers as ecological despoilers and to obsess about preventing fires 鈥� even though the grasslands were created by grazing and fire is an essential part of many ecosystems.

Much of this he puts down to the 鈥渇ateful mistake鈥� of academic devotion to the early 20th-century ideas of Nebraskan botanist Frederic Clements on ecological succession. Clements held that every place had only one correct 鈥渃limax鈥� ecosystem, and any variance on that had to be resisted. Fires destroyed climax ecosystems, and grasslands had to be maintained in their present state through rooting out weeds and imposing fixed stocking rates for grazing animals.

Such environmental management is bound to fail. It has, all over the American West. So how did such ideas gain widespread and long-lasting acceptance?

Sayre calls the mistakes 鈥渂lind spots鈥�, but also blames the 鈥渋nstitutional context鈥�. Or, as Freyfogle might have put it, scientists were too keen to do the bidding of their paymasters, the big landowners who alone could deliver the fences and fire beaters that their diagnosis required.

This tragedy of land privatisation isn鈥檛 restricted to the American West. Efforts to prevent 鈥渄esertification鈥�, notable in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, built on failed US science, says Sayre.

鈥淪cience won鈥檛 change anything until cultural ideas come into line with ecological imperatives鈥�

In their work for the World Bank, UN development agencies and others, US scientists explained their degraded ecosystems back home 鈥渘ot as evidence of their own failure, but as proof of the urgency to intervene in other arid and semiarid rangelands to prevent 鈥榙esertification鈥� 鈥�.

Here Sayre agrees with Freyfogle about the unwritten political agenda of the scientists 鈥� how 鈥渙utside capital was portrayed not as the cause of rangeland degradation but as the solution to it鈥�. The common pastures had to be privatised.

Are things any better now? Sayre is guardedly optimistic. The ideas of Clements and Hardin have been largely discredited among scientists, he says. But Freyfogle isn鈥檛 so sure. Even if Sayre is right, science won鈥檛 change anything until our wider cultural ideas come into line with ecological imperatives. He quotes Pope Francis鈥檚 2015 environmental encyclical, which said that 鈥渋t is we human beings above all who need to change鈥�.

That doesn鈥檛 feel like a Trump agenda.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎 new tragedy?鈥�