Response by Josh First
www.joshfirst.com
Candidate for the PA 17th

Energy and Climate

1. Do you believe that the United States must significantly reduce its dependence on oil as an energy source?

Yes, I do believe that.  More to the point, we should terminate the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.  We need to create a new transportation fuel to take its place, and I believe that natural gas, biofuels, and electricity can be those fuels.  Natural gas vehicles are currently in use by most of the natural gas producers, methanol and ethanol are widely used as fuels in South America, and the Tesla electric car is becoming quite popular, especially in urban areas where long distances are not required.  Coal currently powers the vast majority of American power plants, but lower-polluting natural gas is increasingly in demand for the same use, and when it is used to create electricity, then it can legitimately be said that electric vehicles reduce pollution as well as demand for foreign oil.

2. Do you believe there are public lands, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that should remain off limits to energy production because of their natural and cultural values?

Yes, I do believe that.  It is possible with horizontal drilling technology to reach underneath many surfaces that we do not want to disturb or need to disturb.  Well pads are now increasingly housing many well heads, and not just one, so that gain in efficiency translates into a reduction in surface impacts.  Multiple use does not mean all uses on all lands, all of the time.  Some places need to be set aside, and if they are truly so strategic and desirable for energy development, then future generations of Americans will work out those lands’ conversion to those different uses.  Our efforts are better spent, right now, developing new technologies and fuels.  It lowers demand for the limited resources in those places.  Then, these political fights over pristine places don’t need to happen, at least not now or for many generations into the future.

3. Should the U.S. expand offshore oil and gas drilling in areas along its Outer Continental Shelf that were, until recently, off limits to drilling?

Yes, I believe strongly that we should drill in the OCS as well as in certain areas of the Great Lakes, taking into account sensitive areas, water quality, and utilizing existing industrialized zones.  A significant portion of the royalties from the drilling should be applied back to natural resource conservation, land protection, and a greater focus on building alternative fuels and their distillation or distribution infrastructure.  I do not want to see any royalties generated from this drilling used to offset budget imbalances or put into the General Fund until the big strategic energy issues are solved.  These finite resources must be brought fully to bear on wildlife habitat and energy-related problem solving, not used to enable the current energy use patterns and fuels.  Also, the federal and state governments have to do a better job of negotiating higher royalties on their leases.  My platform includes an increase in the Land and Water Conservation Fund from the current $900 million a year to $20 billion annually over ten years, all funded by this kind of drilling.  It would solve a lot of challenges and I like the symmetry between the resource extraction funding the resource conservation solution.

4. Do you believe there are offshore areas that should remain off limits to energy production because of their ecological value and their importance to other industries such as fishing and tourism?

Yes, I do believe that there are some areas that should be off-limits, although I would rely on scientists to indicate where those should be.  I have scuba dived in the Florida Keys since I was a teenager, and the benefits of setting aside some areas are abundantly evident there, especially when considering how trashed those areas had become not too long ago.  Elsewhere around the world are special areas well described by oceanographer Sylvia Earle, places that have unique plants and animals, or healthy populations of otherwise widely damaged species, or unique geologic features, and most definitely those areas should be set aside.  So little is known about the planet’s oceans, and yet people from all nations have been quick to make a fast buck from them without an idea about, or interest in, what results from that.  If you ask about drilling in the oceans, we also have to talk about other energy sources from them, as well.  I have to say I was shocked, shocked! at how well the environmental community took it when U.S. senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy stopped a proposed windfarm 20 miles off the Massachusetts coast a few years ago.  In that case we have Liberal, wealthy elites worried about the impacts on their potential distant views from their exclusive backyard decks, and not at all interested in sustainability or alternative energy.  No one in the environmental community criticized these two senators on this, and it stands as a testament to how captured the environmental community is by the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party.  I mean, look how this question was initially phrased: Drilling only; and I ask, why not ask about windfarms, as well?    They both share some of the same environmental and scenic impacts, but only one really gets criticized, and the other gets canned.

5. Do you support steadily increasing the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for automobiles, light trucks and sport utility vehicles?

I have mixed feelings about this issue.  Do I want more fuel efficiency?  Sure, of course I do; who doesn’t want it, in theory?  The question is: higher standards for which fuel, in what kind of vehicle, in what circumstances?  The CAFÉ standards are a friction point for the old technology meeting the old command-and-control, big government thinking of traditional environmentalists.  This whole policy issue is an anachronism to me.  We should invest our political energy on creating new vehicles with engines that run on electricity, natural gas, and cellulosic methanol and ethanol, three transportation fuels that already exist in certain markets and nations, like Bolivia and Brazil.  By the way, all of these fuels are a lot cleaner burning than gasoline, which solves a big pollution issue, as well.  Back to CAFÉ: This issue is framed in an old-fashioned way and it misses the creative opportunities now presented by new technology research and development, and social entrepreneurship.  I would really like to aggressively explore those alternatives through legislation, federal incentives and grants, and public-private partnerships before spending the political capital on the unnecessary fight over new gasoline standards.  If the Obama administration did something visionary, like they promised they would and like I have absolutely no expectation that they will deliver on, a year ago they would have immediately begun converting the huge federal government vehicle fleet to alternative fuels, thereby setting the trend and demand for newer, more efficient, alternative fuel cars.  It would have changed the debate.  My observation is that the Obama administration is engaged in one thing only, and that is using government to lead a complete takeover of American society in order to restructure the economy, artificially redistribute private wealth, and install Marxist mechanisms at all levels.  So in that context, the CAFÉ standards become a referendum on the role of government and not on environmental quality.

6. Do you support renewable electricity standards to require that at least 15 to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020?

There’s something distasteful in my mind and my “gut” about using government coercion on just about anything but crime control and national defense.  Sure, these requirements would probably help advance the role of renewable sources.  But at what cost?  Can’t we achieve that same goal some other way, or many other ways?  Why is the question about forcing the markets, and not about creating new ones?  Why not use financial incentives and tax incentives?  Invest in new technologies?  Mandates that government purchase electricity from renewable or alternative sources might make more sense to begin with, rather than trying to force the entire population to participate in it.  Political change on that scale in a democracy needs to be incremental, not a jolt.  We’d probably save a lot of political headaches by just spending the public money on grants and partnerships with certain R&D sectors, like solar, electric, clean coal, biofuels, and wind, to help them grow.  Efficiency is another area that can have dramatic rewards in the form of much lower demand, and I’d like to see REP, and elected officials, engage on that subject before talking about forcing people to accept something artificial, like buying increased amounts of electricity from new sources.  In other words, government can do a lot to encourage alternative sources, by purchasing differently sourced energy, by stimulating and creating new markets, and rewarding efficiency.  The reduction in burning coal that is sought could easily be attained this way, without having a political fight about forcing people to accept new standards.  I guess what this comes down to me is the question of the role of government: Force change or facilitate change?  I like facilitation much better, because it is more in keeping with the spirit of our republic.  Liberals have become addicted to using the government to force change on the citizens, whether by judicial fiat or by heavy-handed regulations, and in my opinion, the electorate is growing weary of that.  Twice as many Americans call themselves conservative (40%) as liberal (20%), according to a recent national poll, and given yesterday’s elections and the general political mood showing up on all polling radar, I think it’s politically risky to continue to frame environmental issues in the old-fashioned way, as this question does, much less pursue policies that actually seek implementation.  Voters, particularly conservative voters, want something different.  They want markets to play more of a role in how environmental quality is achieved.  Liberals point to the current carbon cap-and-trade effort as an example of that, and I think they miss the point: That effort is tied to a dubious conclusion or assumption about global climate change and America’s supposed central role in solving it.  Conservative voters are going to continue to reject these efforts until they get a good feeling that America’s economy and security are not being sacrificed on the altar of phony Obama do-gooderness, for lack of a better description.

7. Do you support expanding the use of nuclear energy to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Yes, I do support expanded nuclear energy.  Three Mile Island is within view of my home town here in Harrisburg, PA, and well do I recall the day of the problems at that facility, when I was a school kid in Philadelphia.  If old nuclear plants can be expanded or new nuclear plants can be built to new specifications that take into account modern valuation of the environment and wildlife, then heck yes we ought to build more.  We also ought to pursue biofuels and wood more, as well.  An upstate hospital here in Pennsylvania is looking at using wood to heat the facility; the place is immediately surrounded by about five million acres of privately owned and publicly owned working forests, where the fuel is abundant and cheap.  The benefit of burning wood is that the carbon cycle is a closed loop.  What you burn is reabsorbed into the forests and creates the next crop.  And having forests produce fuel creates a private market incentive to keep the forest as a productive forest (and watershed, and habitat, and scenic amenity…etc) and not as a new strip mall.  It achieves environmental benefits with no government force or prodding whatsoever.  That appeals to me.

8. Do you support incentives that encourage Americans to improve the energy efficiency of homes, businesses and motor vehicles?

Yes, I do, as I elaborated above.  Incentives better fit the American mind and character than big government breathing down people’s necks.  The time of big government forcing the serfs to do what pointy-headed bureaucrats think they ought to do is over; voters are increasingly rejecting that approach.  Having worked at the U.S. EPA in Washington, DC, for seven years, I had an incredible exposure to that pointed-headed bureaucrat way of thinking.  Legions of bureaucrats there who were dismissive of private enterprise, openly and caustically opposed to capitalism and profit making, doing anything they could to hamstring and damage companies.  Did I see business excesses?  Sure, one or two, and we dealt with them effectively.  Were there dedicated, well-meaning public servants there who provided their skills and careers to improve the public well being?  Sure, lots, and at one time, when I was young and idealistic, I was one of them.  But day in and day out there’s a whole structure, culture, and philosophy in that particular agency that just needs to be completely changed, and private market incentives is one important way, one key place, to start.

9. Do you believe global warming is a serious problem that warrants federal action to limit the greenhouse gas emissions created by burning fossil fuels?

I don’t know what to think about this issue.  Proponents of climate change and global warming seized on it quickly, turned it into a big political issue, and immediately used it to advance a host of social changes, laws, regulations, global re-alignments, really they were idealized lifestyle changes, that were and remain anathema to most Americans.  People who questioned the science, then and now, like the capacity of the computer models to grasp the newly developing data and then accurately project likely global outcomes, these poor people were quickly labeled as kooks, and that is not right.  Real science is deliberative and makes room for debate; I can think of no other scientific field where people shout that the issue is closed, that the debate is over, that the current science is final for all time, and yet this new science of understanding our planet’s complex climate and weather systems is supposed to be complete.  Take Wikipedia, for example, where the definition of “global warming and climate change opposition” is filled with all kinds of official warnings that the information violates Wikipedia standards and is subject to all kinds of reader objections and removal attempts.  This is called the suppression of information, not open debate.  Does that make sense to you?  It does not make sense to me.  Do the proponents who say the debate is “over” persuade you?  They do not persuade me, especially when they try to shout down and eliminate the other point of view.  Just go on the Web and see for yourself that all sorts of credible scientists have raised real concerns about all aspects of global warming, climate change, and greenhouse gases.  Even those scientists who say that the issue could be real, a time bomb, caution that the modeling is insufficient to ascribe cause-and-effect results.  These people have standing, too, and shouting them down or attacking their character just makes me all the more suspicious, not more persuaded that human-caused climate change is necessarily as real or as looming as the proponents would have us believe.  And the fact that this science was so aggressively politicized so early on makes me even more suspicious about the quality of the science and the motives of its proponents.  Having said that, I will say what many other hunters and fishermen are saying (see the 2008 Field and Stream magazine related article):  Something unusual is going on with our weather patterns and surface water.  You can’t hunt and fish as much in the mountains as I do and not see the changes in dispersion of certain trees and plants, or the proliferation of certain animals from warmer climates, more generalist species filling what were formerly niche environments.  Whether or not these changes are variations that occur naturally within the planet’s long-term cycles or whether they are augmented by or the result of human activity is something I don’t believe that anyone can answer right now.  But so what?  What is wrong with embracing the conservation message anyhow and saying, irrespective of whether or not climate change is really happening, or whether or not it is human caused or affected, why shouldn’t we, as smart humans, be searching for ways to power our lifestyles with less pollution, better stewardship, more sustainability, less demand on finite natural resources, less impact on our little planet?  And I certainly do embrace and promote that conservation message, as many REP members and board members will recall.

10. Do you support limiting greenhouse gas emissions using either a carbon tax or a market- driven system of tradable allowances, which is often referred to as cap and trade?

Maybe.  In theory I do, and I have spoken publicly about carbon cap and trade for years, as well as invested in private forestland to explore it myself.  It depends on the mechanism for achieving that cap and trade system.  It depends on the buy-in of businesses, because if we can show people that they can make real money protecting the planet, then they will be incentivized to make private investments and will want to do it without government coercion.  Also, there has to be enough time to get the caps in place without damaging American business.  And most important, I would expect, no, demand, the Chinese, Russians, and Indians to all get on board with America on carbon reductions before sacrificing our own nation’s enterprise and interests.  By the way, I am really tired of hearing how America consumes so much energy, more than other nations, as though we are a bunch of gluttonous slobs.  We do use too much oil for private vehicle transportation, and in most cases public transit is short of where it needs to be, but our overall consumption of fossil fuels matches almost exactly our nation’s GDP.  In other words, our consumptive intake matches our productive output; we have a lot to show for what we use, and it is not only internally proportional but comparatively sound when compared to other nations.  The SUV makes a fat, juicy political target, and it’s an iconic symbol of profligate behavior; but it’s not the total reality of America or Americans.  I am bothered by the constant assault on the American character by Liberals and environmental advocates who seek to paint this unfair caricature of Americans, we who freed Europe three times from the clutches of totalitarianism.  Americans are owed more than they are getting back, and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s speech this week in DC just highlighted to me how ingrained this guilt has become in the Liberal mind.  Somehow America is supposed to lead the world by cutting its own throat…..Sorry, that won’t happen on my watch, not if I have anything to say about it.

11. Do you support strengthening Clean Air Act standards to reduce power plant emissions of mercury, greenhouse gases, and pollutants that form smog, acid rain, and unhealthy soot?

Once we have tackled the issues I outlined above, and fallen short of our goals, then yes, I might support that.  But only if we have tried the other options first.  Government regulation is a blunt tool; it is using a sledgehammer when often we only need a screwdriver or a set of scalpels and small tools to solve the problem.  Let’s use the screwdriver first, the sledgehammer second if need be.

12. Older power plants built before the Clean Air Act took effect are not currently required to meet the more protective pollution reduction standards of newer plants. Do you support requirements to ensure that all power plants, regardless of age, must meet the same pollution reduction standards?

Why not?  And why not also, simultaneously, have federal research and development funds put into helping to develop better scrubber technology, in order to reduce the costs of retrofitting?  Power is a public benefit, and it’s a public benefit to help the plants get with the newer standards.

13. Do you believe the Clean Water Act is a good law and support its past-due goals to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into the nation’s surface waters and ensure water quality sufficient to protect fish, shellfish, wildlife and recreation in and on the water?

Yes.  This is a straight-forward issue in my mind, so long as we are regulating pollutants that 1) can actually be measured in meaningful amounts, and b) demonstrate exposure risks.  Only a lunatic would advocate polluting our waters again to the levels they used to be in the 20th century.  Fresh water is a strategic and highly limited resource with a host of immediate and long term benefits.  Let’s not screw it up.

14. Do you believe that under the Clean Water Act the federal government has, and should continue to have, jurisdiction to control development and pollution in the nation’s wetlands?

Yes, I do, although dealing with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is not always easy, pleasant, or professional. Wetlands are important. Their role in ecosystem services is unparalleled. Wetlands act as a spring to absorb flood waters, protecting downstream and nearby communities. Many rare plants and animals call wetlands alone home, not to mention the many types of huntable waterfowl, as well. The problem with current wetlands regulations is that wetlands’ intrinsic value, their functional value, is not really measured and compared to the surrounding lands. Wetlands mitigation banking is getting better, but the zoning laws and natural resource laws that protect wetlands do not really capture the value of their ecosystem services, and therefore their relative value compared to other adjoining terrestrial habitats, soil types, and landforms. Without a sliding scale, it’s tough for citizens to understand why their wetlands can’t be used in a way they want. Therefore, laws that protect land, such as wetlands, appear subjective and opaque, even though they are just blunt instruments. We need land use and natural resource laws that reflect the functional values of the land we are regulating. That is where I would eventually like to see wetlands regulation end up; a much more sophisticated analysis and valuation process. People can not only understand that, they can accept it.

Wildlife and Endangered Species

15. Do you believe that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) signed into law by President Nixon is a good law and should not be weakened?

Like most of the environmental laws of its time, the ESA was a good law and necessary for the challenges of its day. By today’s standards, four decades later, it stinks. It creates winners and losers; it creates incentives to shoot, shovel, and shut up; it creates disincentives for landowners to participate in the conservation of important plants and animals. Because it is so punitive, it has earned a bad reputation among most landowners. I personally have had the ESA invoked by a state-level wildlife professional as a threat to block me from accessing, not developing, but simply accessing land I owned and that he wanted to add to the inventory of adjoining public land. I can tell you, despite my entire career spent in the field of environmental protection and conservation, I was not feeling charitable at all toward the animal being used to try and hurt me. The ESA creates these sorts of weapons in the hands of bureaucrats, and like many other old environmental laws, it makes people hate the ESA instead of being able to work with it or value its goals. While I was no fan of the Clinton Administration, one of the better policies they started was the habitat mitigation plan, where landowners could be compensated or worked with to conserve rare and endangered species. Unbelievably, nearly every environmental advocacy group decried this approach and demanded that private landowners alone should bear the burden of protecting publicly valued species, and all sorts of related, stupid arguments were created surrounding that thinking. Some argued, for example, that no private landowner has a guaranteed expectation of making a profit off of their land. Isn’t that infuriating? That’s not the point. The point is that one moment you have something of value, and then poof, it’s gone, by government fiat, and not just the land’s value but maybe even your ability to use it at all. That is just bad government in a democracy. My answer is that if the public values these species so highly, then the public has to help pay for their conservation. And plenty of landowners will be willing to work on a paid conservation easement, or be willing to trade their land for some less sensitive public land somewhere else, maybe even right nearby. But so long as the ESA hangs around unmodified, with no money or mechanism to work pleasantly, creatively, and willingly with landowners, then the ESA loses credibility with the group who matters most: The landowner. Just like if the Federal Highway Administration condemned houses for interstate highways but never paid the homeowners for their losses…an issue that most environmental professionals can relate to because they live in a house. But they don’t own land, and that’s the problem. Their views are based on inexperience and ignorance. The ESA should not be weakened, it should be strengthened, using payments and friendly landowner programs.

16. Do you believe that taxpayers should fund programs to compensate landowners who are required to protect endangered species habitat on their property?

Yes, as I mention above. I believe this strongly. And If such programs are created, what we will see is an outpouring of heretofore undocumented populations of rare plants and animals on private lands. And we will see private landowners only too happy to take prideful ownership of those species and help guard them, once they have a stake in them and not a stake through their heart because of them.

17. Do you support efforts to reestablish predator species populations such as grizzly bears and wolves to their historic habitats where sufficient tracts of protected land exist to sustain their populations?

Yes, I do, so long as there is an effort by the federal and state wildlife scientists to work with (and compensate) the local citizens who are most effected by these efforts. Here in Pennsylvania we have a wild elk herd. Amazing animals, charismatic, very big and exciting to see as a tourist, or to hunt in the winter. But when all of Aunt Mabel’s fruit trees are devoured in one afternoon by them, or she hits one with her car on her way home from church, it’s not so great. People have penetrated so deeply into most formerly wild areas that it takes a lot of work to acclimate the people to the new animals and the animals to the people, but that work is necessary or the reintroduction effort will not be successful.

18. Do you support efforts to combat over-fishing by strengthening the law that governs commercial fisheries to require that annual catch levels do not exceed sustainable levels as defined by scientists?

Yes I do, because there is overwhelming evidence that humans are depleting oceanic fisheries to catastrophically low levels, much like the way we did with many terrestrial species in the 1800s and certain birds in the 20th century. This kind of gross mismanagement and growing disaster needs a firm answer, and if environmentalists feel the need to go drop the command-and-control government regulation bomb on something, then I would suggest that commercial overfishing is a legitimate target. Every aspect of commercial fishing needs to be thought out and changed. It is truly a disaster, and in many places in the various oceans it looks like a bomb literally was dropped, or, in the case of the Indian Ocean, the cyanide bombs used by local fishermen have indeed wiped out miles of life forms. This is an area that needs the full attention of the environmental advocacy community.

Public Land Conservation

19. Do you believe the Wilderness Act is a good law and support efforts to protect additional areas that qualify for protection under the act?

Yes I do. Strongly. While I emphatically advocate for commercial forestry, the fact is that setting aside wilderness areas does not harm anybody and actually does a world of good for the rural communities around them. Hunting, fishing, and ecotourism have in some places become more valuable annually than the timber that was supposed to be when cut just one time. Wilderness areas are neat, people like them, and here on the east coast especially, there aren’t enough.

20. Do you support permanent Wilderness Act protection for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

ANWR is a special place. In 2005 I visited Alaska and used a float plane to get around every day. Wow, what a place, so rich in flora and fauna, so scenic. Ted Roosevelt IV’s great words from a few years ago about the vastness of the place matching the vastness of the American spirit really stuck with me. As a conservative who believes that the American spirit is tough because of our frontier roots, and that Americans need the frontier now more than ever to remain who we were and to regain our traditional values, these wild places are critical to our identity and culture. Put another way, wild people need wild land, and Americans are at their best when they are wild. That wildness, the American frontier, formed our constitution. How can we trade that away? It’s like selling your mother. No thanks. For sure I support holding off on drilling in ANWR and leaving it for future generations to decide what to do, if and when they need the fossil fuel resources there so much that they feel compelled to actually develop such a great place. Wilderness Designation is warranted, and it could also hamper future generations, so I don’t know. I am inclined to say I would support permanent Wilderness protection for ANWR, but I would have to see a strategic analysis of its resources, not the pie in the sky information we have heard from industry, but actual dollars and cents costs to develop it versus what kind of benefits are there. When you weigh those out against the ecotourism values, the ecosystem service values, the unique habitat and animal values, the unique cultural and human habitat value for the people who live there, then we could see. Such an analysis could help sell the Wilderness designation in Congress. It’s a tough question. Again, it for sure should be put off-limits to development at this point. Let future generations handle that.

21. Do you support protection of remaining National Forest roadless areas consistent with the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule?

Yes, I do. Certain high-value mature timber can be logged using helicopters and horses, where no roads are needed. If it’s not high value enough to justify using those two tools, then it’s not high value enough to log at all. Let the market drive the extraction. Just keep it roadless.

22. Do you support ending taxpayer-financed subsidies for commercial logging, grazing, and mineral extraction on public lands?

No. What I support is the government getting its fair share of revenues and royalties from resource development on public lands, and making sure that those are cash receipts, not in-lieu-of payments. If a timber sale on public land is going to generate real, actual money, then by all means, sell that timber. But road construction should not be considered as payment by the timber outfit, especially when that new road construction is how the timber company is accessing its timber. That’s ridiculous and leads to a vicious cycle. The public is not getting its due in those situations. As I wrote above, my experience is that federal royalties for mineral and gas extraction are just way too low; they should be up around 25% to 30%. Grazing on public land does not bother me, and I think environmental advocates have made more of this particular issue than it deserves. It’s either cows or condos out west, and I’ll take the cows every time because that means the surrounding private land remains as productive open space. Once you end the grazing and chase off the rancher, whatever private land he has gets converted into houses, and the actual stories of this happening are so painful to me that it boggles my mind that anyone would really complain about grazing. The Nature Conservancy’s Malpai Borderlands project in the Southwest really summed it all up for me: Work with the rancher and they will work with you. Show them what concerns you, whether it’s desert tortoises or flowers, and they will find a way to address your concerns. Beat them over the head, accuse them of being bad stewards, and you end up losing everything. Some environmental advocates enjoy falling on their swords to make their point; I think that protecting the environment is more important than scoring political points. That private ranchland is the environment in its totality – soil, water, air, critters, plants, watersheds, scenic views, wildlife habitat…. If we keep it, then you get everything else, too.