So who is Ryan Zinke? Where does he really stand?
When Zinke sought reelection in 2016, his Democratic challenger, former Montana state superintendent of public instruction Denise Juneau, mounted a campaign that focused scrutiny on the congressman’s anything but ironclad commitment to the environment in general and public lands in particular. Juneau had plenty of ammunition.
Zinke’s rating on the League of Conservation Voters National Environmental Scorecard during his first year in the House was 3 percent—80 points below that of Montana senator Jon Tester and worse than a good many Republicans.
Even as he announced that he was not an advocate for the wholesale bartering off of public lands, Zinke voted for the private exploitation of those lands, and for moves that environmentalists feared would loosen safeguards against sell-offs. He refused to recognize that, while privatization advocates certainly don’t pass up opportunities for ownership, the essential goal of privateers throughout history has been pillage. And Zinke is quite enthusiastic about opening up opportunities for corporations to pillage public lands.
An ardent advocate for overturning a temporary bar on the issuance of new coal-mining leases for public lands, which was ordered in 2016 by the Obama administration’s Department of Interior after it was established that there was a twenty-year coal supply available without new leases, Zinke wrote congressional legislation to direct the Department of Interior to restructure its approach on leasing issues. He also voted to initiate a 4 million acre pilot program for local management of federal lands, HR 2316 (the Self-Sufficient Community Lands Act), which was sponsored by one of the most environmentally unfriendly members of the U.S. House, Idaho Republican Raúl Labrador. The Juneau campaign explained in the summer of 2016 that “Denise is opposed to any attempt to chip away at management of and access to our public lands. Congressman Zinke cannot say the same. Both the Montana and National Republican Party platforms advocate for the transfer or sale of our land.”
Zinke won a new term in a good year for Republicans, but the former Trump vice presidential prospect was not satisfied to serve the new president from a Montana House seat. He began angling almost immediately for a place on the Trump team. And he soon got that place. (It didn’t hurt that the congressman’s wife, Lolita Hand Zinke, was a member of Trump’s transition team.)
Trump’s announcement of Zinke’s selection for the Department of the Interior post was typically vague—“He has built one of the strongest track records on championing regulatory relief, forest management, responsible energy development and public land issues”—but the response of environmental groups was precise: “If the task is plundering our public lands on behalf of fossil fuel empires, Rep. Ryan Zinke is the man for the job,” announced Friends of the Earth’s Marissa Knodel. “Representative Zinke and Donald Trump are determined to turn our public lands and waters into energy sacrifice zones. Zinke denies climate change science, and champions increasing fossil fuel development for corporate profits over the health and safety of people and the planet.”
Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said Zinke’s nomination “jeopardizes the places that are so much a part of the American spirit and the backbone of the outdoor recreation economy.”
“Public lands are held in trust for all of us and should be managed as an investment in the future,” explained Brune. “Yet, Zinke is firmly in the past, clinging to plans to mine, drill and log public lands to benefit corporate polluters, supporting dangerous and dirty projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, and opposing efforts to clean up our air. The need to keep dirty fuels in the ground is urgent, especially on public lands. We cannot afford to have someone in charge who dabbles in climate denial.”
Zinke pushed back, telling members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that “upfront, I am an unapologetic admirer of Teddy Roosevelt.” Zinke even said that Roosevelt “had it right” on some specific conservation issues. Scientific American reported that “with a right-wing movement to wrestle control of public lands from the federal government gaining momentum, Zinke’s rhetoric offered conservationists some measure of comfort.”
But it was cold comfort. As the magazine noted: “Zinke’s views on easing energy development on public lands seem largely in line with his party.”
The Sierra Club’s Matthew Kirby, an expert on western public lands issues, was not buying the Teddy Roosevelt comparison.
“While he continues to paint himself as a modern Teddy Roosevelt,” said Kirby, “his very short voting record shows him repeatedly siding with industry.”
Ultimately, 170 environmental and conservation groups signed a letter urging the Senate to reject Trump’s nominee because “Representative Zinke’s voting record suggests he will put corporate profits ahead of conservation and public involvement. His record includes voting to turn management of public land over to industry-
dominated panels, while dispensing with environmental laws in order to ramp up unsustainable logging levels, voting to strip the president of authority to designate national monuments in seven western states, and voting to block the Bureau of Land Management from limiting harm to water, air and wildlife from hydraulic fracking. Rep. Zinke even voted against designating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—an area of global environmental significance—as wilderness to protect it from oil and gas drilling.”
At the top of that list of groups warning that Zinke’s “views are out of step with the majority of Americans who want to see our public lands protected from rapacious development, endangered species conserved and a livable climate future” was the name of the Sierra Club. That’s an environmental organization formed by John Muir, with whom President Theodore Roosevelt camped at Yosemite in 1903. The experience had a profound impact on the former president, who came away convinced that public lands should be “preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”
This was an expression of the conservation ethic that Republicans once embraced. That ethic did not die with Teddy Roosevelt. It survived for decades. Through much of the twentieth century, the GOP defined itself as a party that extended from Roosevelt. But no more.
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MARS INCORPORATED
Newt Gingrich and Robert Walker
Trump Space Advisors
President Trump announced in his January 20, 2017, inaugural address that “we stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space.” What Trump did not say is that his vision of space has nothing to do with the sixties-era ideal of missions “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before,” or the understanding that those missions must be undertaken with an anti-
colonialist, anti-imperialist “prime directive” to avoid interference with the social development of those new worlds.
Trump was not channeling John F. Kennedy’s 1962 address at Rice University, in which the thirty-fifth president explained: “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.”
In fact, Trump’s vision is all about “repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.” The billionaire developer said as much during the campaign that made him president. While Trump professes t
o “love NASA,” he said on the campaign trail that “in the old days, [NASA] was great. Right now, we have bigger problems, you understand that. We have to fix our potholes. We don’t exactly have a lot of money.”
So how does Trump imagine “unlocking the mysteries of space”? And to what purpose? He’s been quite clear on this front. “You know, space is actually being taken over privately, which is great,” candidate Trump explained in New Hampshire in 2015. “It is being taken over; by a lot of private companies are going after space, and I like that maybe even better, but it’s very exciting.”
Trump has aligned himself with advocates for the exploitation of the outer limits.
In what Politico refers to as “a struggle for supremacy between traditional aerospace contractors and the tech billionaires who have put big money into private space ventures,” Trump and his advisors know which side they are on. “The early indications are that private rocket firms like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and their supporters have a clear upper hand in what Trump’s transition advisers portrayed as a race between ‘Old Space’ and ‘New Space,’ according to emails among key players inside the administration,” the DC-insider tip sheet explained. “Trump has met with Bezos and Musk, while tech investor Peter Thiel, a close confidant, has lobbied the president to look at using NASA to help grow the private space industry.”
“It is a big fight,” said former House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Bob Walker, a veteran Republican operative. Walker, whose lobbying firm’s promotional materials identify the former congressman as “one of Washington’s most influential lobbyists” and brags about being “a trusted advisor to several of the key leaders on Capitol Hill [who] is frequently invited to private meetings where policy and strategy are discussed and determined,” drafted the Trump campaign’s space policy and counseled the transition team on how to approach the universe. What does Walker say? “There are billions of dollars at stake. It has come to a head now when it has become clear to the space community that the real innovative work is being done outside of NASA.”
Walker and other Trump allies and advisors talk up the industrialization of space and argue that policies must be reshaped so that investors won’t have to worry that “they might be competing with the government.” National security writer Bryan Bender reported a few weeks into Trump’s presidency that “the proposals being considered by the new administration also call for a ‘space industrialization initiative’ in which NASA, with its $19 billion annual budget, would be ‘refocused on the large-scale economic development of space,’ according to the summary.”
Who is counseling Trump on all things spacey? Walker, to be sure. He advised the campaign and the transition team on NASA and space issues; and once the administration was in place he continued to appear as a “Trump Space Advisor” on programs such as the PBS NewsHour to discuss topics like “What do the stars hold for the Trump administration?” “Trump Space Advisor” is not a formal title. SpaceNews refers to him as “a key advisor.” Walker’s still very much in the private sector, but he’s very close to key players in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence. And he is clearly in the know when it comes to decisions on space policy. It was Walker who announced in early May that the administration was reestablishing the long dormant National Space Council. “The recommendation coming out of the Trump campaign to create the National Space Council is going to happen,” he announced. “It’s a way of ensuring that the nation’s resources are all directed towards national goals.”
Walker was being modest. Since he was the key player in drafting the Trump campaign’s space policy, he could just have said “my recommendation.”
A line from Walker is frequently quoted in papers on commercialization of space. “Most of our laws and regulations governing space activity were written to make it easier for government to function in space,” he says. “Now we need to make it easier for the private sector to undertake space development.” In a preelection opinion piece, written with Peter Navarro (a business professor at the University of California-Irvine and senior policy advisor to the Trump campaign who now serves as what the Wall Street Journal calls “the White House’s most hawkish trade adviser”), Walker stated: “Government must recognize that space is no longer the province of governments alone.”
The point, Walker and Navarro argued in SpaceNews, is to “assure that each space sector is playing its proper role in advancing U.S. interests.” This notion of an “America First” space policy is a big deal with the people Trump listens to and empowers. One of Navarro’s compatriots helped frame things out as a member of the so-called beachhead team at NASA, where he briefly served as White House Liaison.
Dr. Greg Autry, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship—yes, entrepreneurship—at the University of Southern California, has long been one of the nation’s leading champions of commercial spaceflight, arguing that the U.S. can “establish a profitable space economy.” He’s also been a big champion of relying on “space assets” to win wars. “Our commitment to today’s warfighters and those yet to serve demands that we maintain our space advantage over any and all adversaries,” argues Autry.
An agile thinker and ardent advocate, Autry’s writings give a good sense of the thinking among those who have influenced the Trump team’s approach to the stars. He is all for space exploration; however, he writes: “We will not plant a flag, collect some rocks and then pack up. Our goal must be to establish an economically sustainable human presence in our Solar System.” The professor comes from the business school, not the planetarium; he identifies as “a serial entrepreneur in video games, computer services, Internet content, enterprise applications, health care IT and material upcycling,” and he writes about “engaging the warp power of the private sector” to launch probes and “deliver American astronauts to orbit.” NASA still exists in his brave new world, but the emphasis will be on building “the new space economy.”
“The cost of an investment in extremely long-term exploration and research made by a nation financing large budget deficits will be borne by multiple generations,” explains the synopsis of one of Autry’s major papers on interplanetary development. “The decision to burden future citizens with the cost of a public space program begs a question of intergenerational equity with both economic and environmental aspects. While these two facets are [sic] most often been considered in a context of dialectical opposition, space exploration offers a paradigm shift that aligns economic development with environmental stewardship by actually offering to remove human economic activity from the planet.”
Autry is no “One World” or “United Federation of Planets” visionary. The co-author (with Navarro) of the book Death by China: Confronting the Dragon: A Global Call to Action, which was made into a documentary that the New York Times reviewed as “alarming and alarmist,” “unabashedly one-sided” and “short on solutions,” is all about “American commercial space operations and missions of exploration that leverage these entrepreneurial capabilities.”
International cooperation? “[We] will never accept a secondary position in space to China or Russia,” writes Autry. “Authoritarian political ideologies and state-dominated economies have no place in the future and must not spread to the stars. The U.S. must also ensure that the aging international Outer Space Treaty and other laws are interpreted in a manner that leaves commercial firms free to act responsibly in space.”
The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, forms the basis for international space law. It’s a roadblock to the commercialization of space, and a lot of other bad ideas, like the placement of weapons of mass destruction in the orbit of Earth, on the moon or on any other celestial body. The treaty declares that “outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or
by any other means” and it outlines a vision of space exploration by all countries for the benefit of all mankind.
There are sound arguments to be made for reexamining international space law. But this is a complicated and often frustrating endeavor, as the ongoing refusal of the United States, Russia, China, Japan and India to ratify the visionary 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies well illustrates. But those who would commercialize and colonize space are not pointing in the right direction. And the suggestion that existing laws should be “interpreted in a manner that leaves commercial firms free to act responsibly in space” opens up the possibility of conflicts—and threats—that most Americans have not begun to imagine.
Unfortunately, Trump’s inner circle invites those conflicts. One of the new president’s closest allies and steadiest defenders is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who the Atlantic notes has been “touting space colonization” for more than three decades. Gingrich, who now predicts that Trump will be the “most effective anti-left” president in modern American history, made his own bid to become commander in chief in 2012. There are many explanations for why Gingrich did not become president, but there is good reason to suggest that the most striking argument against his election was argued by Gingrich himself, when he made a Trump-like call to make America great again by colonizing the moon for commercial and political purposes.
“At one point early in my career I introduced the Northwest Ordinance for space and I said when we got—I think the number is 13,000—when we have 13,000 Americans living on the moon they can petition to become a state,” Gingrich told a Florida crowd before that state’s 2012 Republican primary. “And I will as president encourage the introduction of the Northwest Ordinance for space to put a marker down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future.” The colonization plan was ridiculed. NBC’s Saturday Night Live sent the candidate into space and had him developing an “admoonistration” as “Newt Gingrich: Moon President.” The eventual Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, turned to Gingrich during a Jacksonville debate and announced that “if I had a business executive come to me and say I want to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’”