EMERSON IS BLUNT ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL ELITISTS

The battle over environmentalism and its meaning in 21st century America continues unabated. Into this continuing drama recently stepped U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson -- in a big way.

At a meeting earlier this month in West Plains, Mo., of the Mark Twain Timber Purchasers Group, Emerson unloaded on the topic. The group includes sawmill and flooring mill owners, chip mill employees, together with federal and state employees of the Forest Service and the Department of Conservation.

"Sporting a pair of blue jeans and a knit shirt," The Associated Press reports, "the Republican congresswoman held nothing back ... as she vented before a group of loggers and millers." Emerson says she is passionate about protecting the rural way of life. That's why, the AP reports, she doesn't disguise her contempt for "elitist" environmentalists -- the sort of people from, say, California or St. Louis -- who vacation or retire in southern Missouri and threaten the rural way of life.

"I've seen incredible permeation of environmental elitist types" who come to Missouri and try to change the way people live," Emerson said. Moreover, Emerson maintained, environmentalists have done an "incredible job" of getting the national media on their side, as well as federal agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"You, who live off the land, don't count because you don't belong to the Sierra Club," Emerson said. "You know you need good management of the forest, using sound science. ... For these people, sound science isn't important." Emerson cites the example of forest roads: "Suddenly, the president says there will be a moratorium of forest roads." Still, she says, timber harvest in the Mark Twain National Forest is well below the 60 million board feet per year that loggers are supposed to be cutting.

On a recent tour of a flooring company in West Plains, Emerson learned that the company's huge inventory of rough-cut oak represents only a six-week supply. "This administration doesn't want us to cut our trees. They want us to import them so we can leave our trees alone," she said. "But that puts jobs at risk."

It is rare that a public official speaks so frankly in public about such controversial issues. There is much truth in what Emerson says, and her bluntness reflects mounting frustration on many levels. This frustration includes a national media that mostly reports any environmentalist claim uncritically, while casting any of their critics as enemies of the environment.

Good stewards of the land practice sound environmentalism that we used to call sound conservation. We're glad to see Emerson speaking out on these issues.