Posted on 07/27/2002 6:10:45 AM PDT by Brad C.
Address by the Honorable Walter J. Hickel
Commonwealth North
April 4, 2002 - Hotel Captain Cook, 12 noon
Crisis in the Commons: the Alaska Solution
Thank you for the opportunity to talk today about a new book
….which I hope will be a handbook for Alaska leadership for generations to come…
…and a guide for those parts of the world…
… that are struggling with how to fight poverty, the breeding ground of terrorism.
The idea in this book is much bigger than one person or one generation.
And I hope that many of you in this room will pick up on it, make it your own, expand on it and put it to work.
You may want to send copies to your friends around the country who are looking for fresh approaches to the world situation.
Ten days ago I was in Washington, DC and an old friend, former senator Patrick Moynihan said, "Wally, this is a new idea."
The long time innovator and Democrat, who worked for presidents of both parties, accused me with a twinkle in his eye of becoming a radical.
Well, in doing so, he was really saying it was the Alaska people who were the radicals. Because it was here, out of the hearts and minds of many, that this new idea was born.
When Governor Bill Egan and I co-founded this organization, we chose a name symbolic of Alaska: commonwealth, because most of our wealth is owned in common.
In 23 years, Commonwealth North has again and again wrestled with how we, as owners of vast common resources, can best respond to the obligations that ownership demands.
In September of 1990, I had breakfast in this hotel with Terrence Armstrong of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University….
…and he invited me to deliver a series of lectures at Cambridge that would be the core of this book.
Instead, I soon found myself back in Juneau, lecturing the legislature…
….representing you, the owners, on the issues of an Owner State.
Another reason that prompted me to write this book has been 20 years of working to bring the Arctic together…
..helping the Northern Forum get started in 1991 – an organization of 25 regions around the North…
… regions that have similar opportunities and problems.
I have wanted to share with them some of the lessons we have learned in Alaska.
In 1997, I finally accepted that invitation to Cambridge, and the discussions there convinced me that the world could use a handbook on how to manage the commons.
Not just a book of theory. But a book of practical experience. Our experience.
So we went to work.
Today, let me share some of what we learned in writing this book.
First of all, we set out to define the commons.
We, the people of the world, own most of this planet in common.
Take a look at the map of the Northern Hemisphere behind me.
All of the blue…the oceans and the lands…plus Alaska in gold…are "common property dominant."
They are over 50 per cent owned in common.
And most are much more.
The oceans are all commons.
Alaska is nearly 90 per cent commons.
Russia and China are nearly 100 per cent commons.
Canada is roughly 80 per cent. And so on.
America is not used to thinking in these terms.
When I talk about the commons with my relatives in Kansas, they think I’m a communist!
It fascinates me that the human race lives in a World Commons and is not aware of it.
Very few academics and world leaders are thinking about how we should care for and use the commons…
…for the benefit of the total.
Especially for the benefit of the local population…rather than for a political leader, an oligarch, a ruling family, or a group of multi-national corporations.
And that’s what my new book is all about.
It is about a growing crisis…and a solution to that crisis.
It’s a crisis because the commons is easily exploited.
We saw that in Alaska in territorial days.
In 1955, Alaska’s Delegate to Congress Bob Bartlett warned our constitutional convention of two dangers:
First: "…exploitation under the thin guise of development. The taking of Alaska’s mineral resources without leaving some reasonable return for the support of Alaska governmental services…" and
Second, he warned of "outside interests, determined to stifle any development in Alaska which might compete with their activities elsewhere."
The Seattle canned salmon interests, the Alaska Steamship Company and the Alaska Mining Syndicate were examples of those who monopolized and exploited us.
They used their political influence to control key committees in Congress to pass laws to protect their interests…
The White Act…so they could legally steal our fish.
The Jones Act…so they could legally monopolize our shipping.
The weak Organic Acts of 1884 and 1912 so they could control our territorial government.
And for years they successfully opposed Statehood.
Finally, when we won statehood in 1958, we also won control of nearly a third of our assets.
We kept the wealth in public hands, but we harnessed the free enterprise, incentive system to develop our wealth, and we did it all in the framework of a constitutional democracy.
We started as poor people on rich land, and we’ve become a remarkable success…while protecting the beauty and the glory or our lands and seas.
Commercial fishing is a classic example of the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons" that we had to face head on.
The temptation is for each fisherman to race all others to catch the last fish.
I helped fight for the 200 mile limit - the Magnuson-Stevens Act of 1976 – a major victory led by Sen. Ted Stevens -- that helps protect the offshore commons.
And in the early 1990s, with the help of Clem Tillion, we established Community Development Quotas and Individual Fishing Quotas in the North Pacific.
Last September, national environmentalists and fisheries experts praised these programs as models for the nation at the Alaska Dialogue sponsored by the Institute of the North.
And our fisheries are just one example of how Alaska is showing the way for how to care for the commons.
Our generation didn’t invent the fundamental ideas behind "the Alaska solution."
They are much older than that. It was Alaska’s Native peoples.
The philosophy for successful living in the North was born when the first councils of elders sat down to solve problems of using and caring for the living resources upon which they depended.
They put the community first. They cared about the total. That was the natural way to survive on this harsh land.
Now, fast forward to Teddy Roosevelt, our youngest president at 43.
This man, a blue blood of conservative heritage, saved the free enterprise system by confronting and busting the great monopolies of his time.
And, as you know, he had a vision for the West.
He added enormously to the national forests, fostered great irrigation projects, and reserved lands for public use.
And he did something that would eventually affect Alaska more profoundly than any other state.
He separated the federal lands of America from the energy resources beneath them.
This approach became law -- after his death -- with the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920.
It required that the revenues from energy resources on the federal commons shall forever remain with the government.
That’s why – as a 30-year old carpenter and builder – I made it my personal crusade to insure that Alaska, as a state, would have a sufficient land entitlement.
When the Statehood Act was written and passed in 1958, it included 103 million acres and the identical terms of the Mineral Leasing Act.
The revenues from Alaska’s subsurface energy resources were specifically designated to the new state.
Not to us as individuals…but to our state government.
These resources were to be the engine to fund our judiciary, our law enforcement, to build our roads and public buildings, our state university and school systems…
…and to establish an economy that would free us from dependence on Outside interests.
We became the first Owner State.
As I describe in some detail in this book, an Owner State requires leadership.
Public lands are easily exploited if politicians are afraid to stand up to special interests.
Or they are left untouched, their resources untapped, if politicians are afraid of controversy.
Our Owner State has prospered because of the oil found at the North Slope.
And I believe, instead of running out, Alaska’s energy resources have only just begun to help our nation.
And energy is the key to our freedom.
In The Alaska Solution, I describe Alaska today as a diamond, a brilliant star, a state with an outstanding quality of life, a glorious natural environment, and an economy with enormous potential.
What if the same could be said of Russia and other great commons areas of the world?
Having visited Africa many times where my son, Jack, served as a doctor and medical missionary, I have come to believe that there is no legitimate reason for poverty.
And please permit a personal note -- Ermalee and I were honored to attend a function in Las Vegas two weeks ago where Jack, who worked for 15 years in Africa, was awarded the Dr. Livingston Award.
Yes, Alaska could dramatically assist those parts of Africa that are ready to try a new approach…
…neither classical capitalism, nor socialism.
But something new coming out of the North.
A few days ago I received a letter from Maurice Strong, the Canadian who served as the Secretary General of the Earth Summit.
He wrote that the world commons "is shaping up to be one of the world’s major challenges in this new century…
… one which is fraught with a great potential for conflict as well as an imperative for cooperation…"
In my view, the future of the human race depends on learning to care for, use and develop the commons.
So, the message of this book…and of my comments this morning…is to call on Alaskans to see the great opportunity before us.
Let’s stop wringing our hands over our problems.
Most states – including many nations – would readily swap their problems for ours.
We have the money. The only question we face is what pot to take the money from.
A fiscal gap!! I think not!!
I recommend, as Commonwealth North suggested in its May 1999 study, that we have two dividends.
Half our dividend can continue to be distributed to the people of our state…but the other half should go to our local governments…
…for the things Congress intended us to spend the money on when they wrote the Statehood Act.
Let’s move beyond the agenda of despair.
Let’s junk the idea that government is the enemy.
This government has got to spend money to build a culture!
Where are the pioneers, Alaska?
Where is the courage and the guts and the vision?
Let’s get busy maintaining and improving our schools and public facilities.
Let’s foster the arts and help the needy.
Let’s provide access to our national parks and our resources. The last new highway in Alaska was built in 1972.
Let’s extend the railroad to Nome and link it East to Canada.
Let’s build that tunnel under the Bering Sea to Russia.
Yes, Alaska. There is still much pioneering to be done.
And let’s be proud of what we have created here.
It’s time to share what we have learned with the world.
Our approach can assist the nations of the commons where poverty has become an endless cycle…..and terrorism has taken root.
As our national leaders wrestle with the next Marshall Plan, let’s offer to President Bush Alaska’s own ambassador corps…or peace corps…
…..and take our model and message to the parts of the world that are desperate for answers.
"The War on Terrorism" will be a never-ending conflict unless we strike at its roots.
And while those roots are complex, they are fundamentally economic.
Learning to care for and use the commons responsibly for the benefit of the total is "The Alaska Solution."
This can be a light from the North.
A "voice from the wilderness" coming from our young state.
Let’s do it together.
And, in case you are wondering, I plan to be around for another 30 years to help make it happen.
And when I can’t be there, we will have this book…
…we’ll have the fine work of this organization…
… and we will have the Institute of the North to teach about the commons, and the great promise it can provide.
We’d appreciate your help.
Thank you.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hickel, I patented the method.
Compare this to Texas where most of the lands are in private hands. When Texas came into the union, she was allowed to keep her lands because she had been a sovereign nation. These state disposed itself of those lands.
And a little document called the Constitution forbids it.
In a country consisting chiefly of the cultivators of land, where the rules of an equal representation obtain, the landed interest must, upon the whole, preponderate in the government. As long as this interest prevails in most of the State legislatures, so long it must maintain a correspondent superiority in the national Senate, which will generally be a faithful copy of the majorities of those assemblies. It cannot therefore be presumed, that a sacrifice of the landed to the mercantile class will ever be a favorite object of this branch of the federal legislature.
I can think of a few treaties that accomplished precisely that.
Ahhh but I think I have found the provision that cracks it. The US Constitution guarantees the citizens of the United States a "Republican form of government" in the several States. State control of land is hardly Republican government as the founders saw it. Certainly the declaration of water as a "public good" in the California Constitution violates that provision because control of water is control of land.
It's 75% according to my father who was in a possition to know. He was a "right-of-way" agent for the U.S.F.S for many years.
The government owns 99% of Alaska.
I didn't patent the commons idea, which predates Mr. Hickel by several centuries. I patented a particular management method that engenders a solution to that problem using a free market, something distinctly different than political control or what Mr. Hickel proposes. If you read Garret Hardin's essay which coined the term: The Tragedy of the Commons, you will note that he proposes "private property or something like it" as a solution. I have merely designed a structure to get it done.
Well that new bike path they built all over the state could've been an addition to the two lanes too small highway that goes through the state. Millions upon millions spent and we still have bumper to bumper traffic. But the summer time tourists have a nice bike path.
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