Steve Wrote:
>My point for the list is that some policy makers are unwilling to face major
>issues and want to focus on "doable" aspects of environmental policy. The
>ethical issue is what Wildavski called "speaking truth to power." If you
>know the decision maker is going to reject your recommendation, regardless
>of the validity, should you go ahead and thereby take a chance of being
>worse off than keeping your mouth shut.
>
>Steven J. Bissell
It sounds as though there is a contradiction here. If policy makers are not
making policy, then they are defending existing policy against new policy or
"adaptive management". Don't we mean here politicians maintaining the status
quo when the status quo is based on 1) "soft law" versus 2) "hard laws",
that is to say, 1) the discretion of an elected person or mandated agency of
government, versus 2) the rule of law, or enforceable standards?
I do not believe that the decision maker is anyone but the voting public. If
we mean the decision maker as an elected politician, then who put him or her
there? The public put the politician there, and the public can remove the
politician. If the majority of the public is happy with the poor water
quality and management, then the problem is not "speaking" about the truth
to a "power[ful]" entity, but public education and literacy on the
importance of water to the biosphere.
We stopped the diversion one million acre feet of water annually to southern
California after speaking publically about the ecological importance of
freshwater to maintain estuaries and salmon in the Fraser River. The Fraser
River is the largest free running river [undammed] in the Pacific Northwest,
and the single largest salmon spawning habitat left in the world. If we had
not done this, the government would have sold the rights to this water to a
company now based in Seattle. How much money was forgone? Well about 1
billion dollars per year.
John
>
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