This article appears in the April 21, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Restore Great Infrastructure Projects, Produce Food!
[Print version of this article]
Mr. Moore is former President of the Alaska Trollers Association, and a longtime civic leader in Alaska.
Good morning. I’m Jim Moore. I am a commercial fisherman. I live in southeast Alaska, and I am very grateful to be invited to have a small part of this wonderful conference. We want to see a beautiful future for our children. We’re in a position to—we have to act.
I was thinking of an ironic thing here a little while ago. In a world where there is starvation of millions of people—and this should never be, with our degree of technology and advancement, you know. To be in a food producing industry such as ours, or as in agriculture, you would think that that would be a pretty secure job. But it’s not.
We’re fighting for survival, ironically. The major threat that our fishing industry in southeast Alaska—I’m a troller, primarily. A troller—a long-liner—a troller is someone who tows hooks through the water, and entices the fish to bite. Salmon is the target species.
This industry—there are probably 1,500 families that are dependent on this livelihood, is on the chopping block. It is slated for destruction. It’s being destroyed by a lawsuit originating from an extreme left-of-center radical environmental, deep environmental group. How can they do this? It’s beyond anybody’s imagination that they would be able to get so far with this lawsuit, which they are winning.
This problem stems from the fact that, back in the seventies, we had legislation—the ESA (Endangered Species Act), the EPA (Environmental Protection Act), and all these kind of things. It was thought, this is a really good idea. And there were some good intentions there. But it’s been weaponized. It’s being used to shut down industry, critical infrastructure, and this is the problem that I wanted to point out. We need to do something.
In fact, a weaponized ESA not only poses an immediate threat by disrupting food production, but unless serious flaws in the legislation are addressed now, the nationwide infrastructure upgrade necessary to put the economy on a solid footing will be next to impossible.
We need that platform of infrastructure in order to be able to—well, you know, peace is equivalent with development, and we can’t develop under this situation.
I can’t imagine the great projects of our nation’s past, like the TVA, or the Four Corners, or rural electrification, or the Trans-Continental Railroad, ever happening within the straitjacket of these hyper-protectionist, zero-growth laws, in their present form.
Wouldn’t now be the time to make some changes?
