A Representative for New Mexico, Republican Steve Pearce, says the oil industry is at risk of a shut down if forced to avoid killing a species of lizard.
Pearce has received over $1.2 million in campaign contributions from the industry he is trying to protect. He recently explained to a public gathering that protection of a nearly extinct lizard would interfere with the availability of funds for his next campaign, as well as possibly affect the economy of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas.
Pearce, focusing on the reptile this week in town meetings throughout his congressional district, said people would be put in peril if the federal government classifies the dunes sagebrush lizard as “endangered.”
“Most of the oil and gas jobs in southeast New Mexico are at risk,” he said. “In the ’70s, they listed the spotted owl as endangered and it killed the entire timber industry.”
I spot a problem. The spotted owl was not listed as an endangered species until 1990, as clearly stated in a US Fish and Wildlife Service record of review. Pearce is off by 20 years!
April 30, 1990. The status review team recommended that the northern spotted owl be listed as threatened throughout its range. This review resulted in the final listing on June 26, 1990.
Moreover, the timber industry actually saw profits boom in the 1990s, after the owl was listed as endangered.
Despite predictions of disaster for the industry after federal logging was reduced in Oregon to protect endangered species, profits of the 12 largest publicly traded forest products companies in the Northwest were up 43 percent in 1994 compared to 1993, the Oregonian reported.
So Pearce is spreading false information about the risks and the effects of regulation.
What he should explain is how his financial backers have enjoyed uncontrolled oil and gas drilling. They simply don’t like following the rules. Don’t make me bring up the BP disaster. Their disdain for the health of residents in Pearce’s districts, combined with herbicide spraying by the ranching industry, has forced a rare lizard to the brink of extinction.
Saying that an oil company is at risk in this scenario is like saying the coal industry is at risk of failure if it has to protect its canaries in the mines.
The oil industry is very hardy and resilient. It not only can survive the protections required to save a desert lizard but it actually can generate jobs when required to find solutions to prevent and detect environmental damage (reducing overall cost burdens by removing the need for high-cost cleanup). Protection of the lizard should be thought of in terms of overall risk reduction to residents and as a potential test for creation of long-term employment opportunities.