Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands

In "Plundered Promise," leading resource management scholar Richard W. What has been done to our public lands? Irreplaceable forests harvested for lumber. They are but the most visible signs of the fundamental flaws in the current system of federal lands management. The book is must reading for anyone interested in the past or future of our public lands, or in the influence of contemporary politics and capitalism.. Behan presents an engrossing history and analysis of public lands management in the United States, as he describes how we arrived at the current situation and examines what we can do to rectify it.Behan begins by outlining his provocative thesis that American political and economic institutions have overshot their historic roles, and, rather than responding to public needs, have drawn society into their service. Vast expanses of rangeland leased at rates far below market value. These and other actions have brought unparalleled benefit to private interests -- and massive costs to society at large. Behan stresses the urgent need for reform and presents a radical proposal for getting there: The devolution of authority over public lands to "localizedconstituencies," and the reining in of

Plundered Promise: A 21st Century Forest Policy Primer This book is worthwhile reading for anyone who proclaims a political opinion, or perhaps simply draws a breath. It is not an unbiased book, and you are unlikely to agree with every argument. I don't, but, after teaching forest policy and economics to university students for 25 years, I regret not having had the advantage of this book as a text. It would ideally complement a standard text in an undergraduate policy course, and it wou. A book for many A lot of people might find Behan's book illuminating. Among them: anyone whose job moved overseas to a cheaper labor force; anyone who has looked from the window of a commercial airplane flying from Seattle to Los Angeles and marveled at the size of clearcuts on public forestland. Anyone who has wondered why the treasury doesn't receive fair value for the minerals extracted from publicly owned land, for the grazing rights, for the t. Corporations and corrupt government degrade Federal Lands Mr. Behan's main theme in PLUNDERED PROMISE is how political and economic overshoot has led to the increasing plunder of public lands for private profit. His deeper look at how the growth of corporations, hyperconsumerism, and centralized oligarchical government has led to the plundering and degradation of US Federal lands frames our present Bush administration problems and he directs the reader to authors such as Cobb-Daly, Kemmis,

That system, he writes, borrows from the European tradition of "crown lands," created by fiat to reserve areas from general use; benefiting more than a handful of nobles, the system also incorporates elements of Native American beliefs about the common ownership and stewardship of land. Given current efforts to develop resources on federal reserves, it is also timely, and of much interest to environmental activists and students of resource policy alike. --Gregory McNamee. This development of a common estate, Behan argues, was not articulated to protect lands from a resource-hungry, uncontrolled economy that turns public services into private goods, which is their condition today. Behan's wide-ranging, sometimes even scattershot book is provocative, and it is likely to excite discussion among those on all sides of public-lands controversies. The resultant degradation of public lands, he continues, points to the need for new methods and models