Well, well, well, well. I just finished my weekly Bismarck Tribune newspaper column, my 447th in a row, having never missed a deadline (except for a techno-glitch). Im happy to report that that comes to approximately 569,957 words, more than half a million altogether. AND IN THAT ENTIRE TIME, SO FAR AS I CAN TELL, I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN A SINGLE SENTENCE THAT SAID I OPPOSE EXPANDED DRILLING IN NORTH DAKOTA, THAT I WANT TO LIVE THE WAY I-WE LIVE WITHOUT ACCEPTING THE FACT OF OIL PRODUCTION IN NORTH DAKOTA, OR THAT THERE SHOULD BE NO FURTHER OIL WELLS HERE OR ELSEWHERE. Im happy to report that what I wrote today never once mentions oil activity in North Dakota. I was unaware that any expression of concern, caution, or restraint, any call for a serious statewide conversation about the future of North Dakota, is regarded in some circles as anti-development. Fair and thoughtful people can disagree about how we should manage the industrialization of our landscape. How could we not when the economic miracle is so fraught with growing pains---and the social strain is so counter-balanced with magnificent news for North Dakota: full employment, the second highest average salary per capita in America; a giant and growing budget surplus, a reversal of rural decline and outmigration; new business, new citizens; new life for such places as Crosby, Grassy Butte, Stanley, etc. As with all phenomena and human experiences, there are winners and losers, and there is a dark as well as amazingly bright side to the Bakken Oil boom. In a robust democracy honest citizens should debate these great questions, and they can do so without calling each other names, deliberately distorting other peoples WELL KNOWN positions, or resorting to the logical fallacies of the 1) straw man argument, 2) ad hominem, 3) the law of the occluded middle, 4) reductio ad absurdum, and 5) George W. Bushs view that you are either with us or agin us. We need this dialogue and debate in North Dakota. One question we might all ask is this: Are there places in North Dakota that are too valuable to us as a commonwealth to monetize, or should we simply drill and pump wherever the oil happens to be with nothing being considered sacred, except perhaps the three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park? Is everything fungible? My view is that our state regs are sufficient to regulate oil drilling on private lands, and private mineral rights, and that government would have to have extremely compelling reasons to stand between a willing buyer and a willing seller. But on public lands, should our policy be drill that too with the same development protocols, or is there room for a lighter industrial footprint in lands owned and managed by the commonwealth? This is a conversation worth having. Another question is: How much of the vast revenue stream should we set aside for conservation of our landscapes? The word conservation is problematic, of course, because it clearly means different things to different people. But if the boom is adversely affecting wildlife, woody draws, marshlands, wetlands, and places of great beauty or fragility, should we attempt to offset some of those strains with public funds, just as we offset crime strains with public funding of more policemen, FBI agents, judges, etc.? How much would be enough? And who should administer these funds? There are also serious questions about what to do with the surpluses, how much to use (like Norway) as a permanent endowment, and how much to use more immediately to build a fabulous 21st century in North Dakota? Or, whether it is possible to pace the boom in such a way as to lighten the social strains, without denying people their use of their mineral property rights? Or, what to do to help ease the strain for those who own surface rights to their property, but not the mineral rights? Or what level of encouragement or caution our state officials should show in their public activities? Or how transparent our state agencies should be as we sort through the complexities of the oil boom? Or, how stern should we be about ending the flaring of natural gasses at the wells, without severely hampering the capacity of the industry to develop our lands, and in what time frame? Or what to do about the many small and large sacred lands that have been important to our American Indian citizens from a time long before Lewis and Clark or the Homestead Act appeared? Or how to adjust the needs of the Bakken Oil Zone with pressing social and infrastructural needs throughout the rest of North Dakota? Or, whether we need to move towards an annual ND Legislative Session in the face of the new sophistication and pace of North Dakota life. And on and on and on. Although I trust my state government, and have high regard for the Governor, the Lt. Governor, the Attorney General, the Industrial Commission, and the PSC, I do not believe that those entities should be regarded as the sole determiners of what is in the best interests of the people of North Dakota. In fact, I would greatly welcome the state governments invitation for a serious, thoughtful, fact-based statewide conversation about these matters, in which the people were encouraged and empowered to help shape the future of the state, not limited to binary votes every second and fourth year about who should manage things. This is an unprecedented moment in North Dakota history, and in the history of the Great Plains. We all have a vital stake in the future and nobody is allowed to decide whose voice is legitimate and whose voice should be stifled with ridicule, innuendo, and deliberate mischaracterization. Im a Jeffersonian. I believe in the free marketplace of ideas. I believe that public discourse is the way in which free citizens govern themselves. Our formal government deserves a high level of deference and respect. They are in a position to see things we mere citizens cannot always see, and furthermore they have put themselves forward (at some expense to their private lives) to be vetted by the votes before they took power. Why have a government if you are not willing to let them manage our public affairs? But having formal government (and public officials) does not preclude citizen involvement in our own destiny. WE are the sovereign. In fact, successful societies are always those where there is robust public dialogue. The motto of the Enlightenment comes from Voltaire: Madam, I disagree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it. Here in North Dakota, we suffer from too little public debate, not too much. My beans have sprouted. My tomato plants look so frail in their little 2x2 containers. I saw my first crocuses of the year last Saturday, on Bear Butte--the best of all places to see such beauty and lyricism. Another question we might ask is: where will we go hereafter to refresh the human spirit? I hope the answer is not: south Dakota. csj
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 17:56:52 +0000
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