Ole for "enlibra" -- if Gov. Mike Leavitt can just get his environmental compromise effort to fly. People on both sides of the heated debate would do well to take Leavitt's offer to meet halfway more seriously. But don't bet on it.

Then again, defining "halfway" is more than half the battle. Reason and compromise are in short supply whenever environmental issues are in play. Few issues engender more passion in Utah than wilderness.The governor's gospel of enlibra -- derived from Latin phrases "en" meaning to direct toward; and "libra," to find balance -- was heartily preached last week at the Environmental Summit on the West in Phoenix. Sponsored by the Western Governors Association, the conference included a healthy dose of rational talk about Leavitt's prescription for compromise. That was encouraging.

But anyone who thinks all parties were speaking the same language is mistaken. While most everyone praised the principles behind enlibra -- adoption of national environmental standards with local solutions and implementation, rewarding results and not programs, facilitating collaboration and not polarization and putting markets before mandates to encourage change -- they also displayed feelings of mistrust and misunderstanding about where the "middle" really is.

Environmentalists, who have no strong incentive to budge because 3.2 million acres of public land in Utah is tied up at the moment as de facto wilderness, view any shift toward greater protection as a moderate move. Ranchers and rural politicians, however, claim to have moved toward the middle in recent years while environmental groups have moved further to the extreme. Any serious movement either direction was not evidenced last week amid the rhetoric.

In spite of the stalemate, Leavitt's enlibra approach favoring consensus where it can be found and piecemeal wilderness designation makes sense. We suspect he is right that 70 percent to 80 percent of Americans are moderate when it comes to environmental issues. They want clean air, open space and clean water balanced with reasonable, careful development that provides adequate economic opportunities.

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But those aren't the folks active in the debate. For the vocal minority on both ends of the spectrum, "enlibra" is a foreign phrase they fail to understand, much less take to heart.

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