Politics & Power Quote by Ken Salazar

“Balanced approach” is doing heavy political labor here: it’s the language of the reasonable referee, the centrist who’s supposedly above ideology. Salazar uses it as a throat-clearing move to preempt the standard charge that environmental protection equals economic naïveté. By conceding the frame of “solving our nation’s energy problems,” he signals seriousness about scarcity and security, then pivots to the moral boundary he actually wants to draw.

The real argument isn’t technical; it’s symbolic. “Off limits” turns a messy policy dispute into a bright-line ethic. You can negotiate leases, royalties, mitigation plans. You can’t negotiate a taboo without looking like you’re selling something sacred. Calling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a “national symbol” shifts the terrain from barrels and jobs to identity and restraint: a test of whether a country can say no when it has the power to say yes.

There’s subtext in what’s missing. He doesn’t cite emissions targets, Indigenous sovereignty, or biodiversity metrics. The pitch isn’t to win an environmental impact statement; it’s to win the story Americans tell themselves about stewardship. In the mid-2000s energy debates Salazar lived in - rising oil prices, post-9/11 “energy independence,” drill-versus-preserve fights - “commit ourselves to recognize” reads like a warning about slippery slope politics. Protecting ANWR becomes a line in the sand against the logic that every untouched place is merely a future resource.