CAP’s Tom Kenworthy in a WonkRoom cross-post.
The budget agreement unveiled today includes a gift from the Grand Oil Party to its big energy benefactors: It blocks the Interior Department from implementing a policy to protect pristine public lands from development. The rider to the FY2011 continuing resolution prevents Interior from using funds to implement the wild lands policy through the end of this fiscal year, which ends on September 30:
SEC. 1769. For the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, none of the funds made available by this division or any other Act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce Secretarial Order No. 3310 issued by the Secretary of the Interior on December 22, 2010.
Secretarial Order No. 3310 is the wild lands policy announced late last year by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, which restored a decades-old practice of allowing interim protections for Bureau of Land Management areas prized for recreation, wildlife, and other non-commercial uses. In a controversial 2003 out-of-court settlement with the state of Utah, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton had revoked BLM’s authority to protect lands with wilderness characteristics pending final congressional action on whether to include them in the nation’s wilderness system. That “no more wilderness” deal opened up millions of acres of western lands to potential development including oil and gas production.
The inclusion of this rider is a victory for western GOP lawmakers who have been pushing to open up more western lands to oil and gas development. These “lords of yesterday” have been led by House Natural Resource Committee’s Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA).
Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
change you can believe in.
Has anyone calculated the new slope of our decline after this debacle? Or are they waiting for more outcomes from capitulating to this Disaster Capitalism? I swear remote coastal Chile looks better with every passing day.
Best,
D
If we are really serious about climate change, we each be carbon free. Too many of us are consuming carbon products every single day and feel no guilt. Look at your house. Is it carbon free? Are there any petroleum products anywhere in the house? Are the fabrics in your furniture natural? If there is any synthetic content in them, then you are a contributor to global warming. Don’t just criticize, clean up your act and live carbon free. If you use anything made from petroleum, you are a global warming polluter. Look at your car. Can you in good conscience use a machine that is laden with petroleum products and still call yourself green? Refuse to use anything derived from or associated with petroleum, natural gas, coal, and wood combustion. Only use products produced with your own labor, or from wind and solar.
This may mean they can’t issue any more permits, either, or continue reviewing those previously submitted …
Does anyone know?
Re: Mike Nelson…. if only it were that simple. Many of our choices (and availability of those choices) is dictated by the population as a whole. Cutting funding for high speed rail, for example, has helped ensure that we continue to not have the option to use mass transit on many medium-haul trips. Cutting funding for alternative energy continues to restrict the ability to get off of carbon-emitting products for transportation of essential goods and services. The list could go on and on. There is a coordinated effort here to REMOVE/RESTRICT the choices you suggest.
Too many of us are just paying lip service to the idea of living free of carbon energy. There many petroleum products we wear and use every day that we could easily get rid of, but we don’t. Just start with your clothing and food. Make sure all of it is a natural product produced without carbon energy. That means that you make and grow all of what you wear and eat. It takes work and it is harder than just complaining about the problem. If you don’t live the solution, who else will?
Mike Nelson, how do you propose apartment dwellers grow all their own food? Where are the labels that tell us that the energy to produce is non-carbon?
Sounds nice in isolation or in college.
Best,
D
Dano @2 — Coastal Chile has tsunamis rather frequently.
As for the budget resolution provision, my comments are unprintable.
Surely there will major demos and protests about this? ME
“In another swift blow to California’s $43 billion high-speed rail plan, federal officials Tuesday stripped all proposed funds for the mega-project this year — casting more doubt on the bullet train line’s extension into the Bay Area and Southern California.
Officials in Washington had said Monday that President Barack Obama and congressional leaders had cut this year’s high-speed rail budget from $2.5 to $1 billion during Friday’s last-second deal to avert a government shutdown. But on Tuesday, officials eliminated the final $1 billion, essentially erasing all subsidies for local high-speed rail projects, including California’s 520-mile line from San Francisco to Los Angeles.”
David @8:
Yes. Hazards abound on the planet.
Best,
D