A healthy environment is obviously important for outdoor industry companies like Patagonia and L.L. Bean.  But a lesser-known fact is that the outdoors is also a significant resource to companies who choose to locate near great places in order to lure employees to work for them.

That was the message delivered by a group of business leaders who visited Washington, D.C. this week to tell their elected officials that protected public lands like national parks, national monuments, and wildness areas are key to attracting talent and maintaining their bottom line.  As Jeff Welch, the co-founder and president of Bozeman, Montana-based communications and advertising firm MercuryCSC put it:

The outdoors for us in our region is a big competitive advantage, it helps us recruit people from all over the country, even other places in the world to come to Montana.  It’s really the only thing we have as a competitive advantage in a place like Bozeman.

And the president of software company Foundant Technologies, also located in Bozeman, echoed this sentiment:

We use the outdoors as a competitive advantage to attract and retain employees.  And so the outdoors and access to public lands and preservation of public lands are really critical to our business.

These anecdotes are supported by growing research about the economic value of public lands.  For example, a report from economic consulting firm Headwaters Economics found that the American West’s protected public lands help to create a high quality of life in the region, which draws both entrepreneurs and their employees.  This is one reason that the region has seen more employment growth over the last 40 years compared to the United States overall (graph below). Other growth indicators such as population and personal income have also increased more in the West than in the rest of the country.

The report from Headwaters Economics also discusses how the economy of the West is changing.  Whereas it once was based on resource extraction, it is diversifying to be more knowledge-based with industries like technology and health care.  As the group writes, “This western job growth was almost entirely in services industries such as health care, real estate, high-tech, and finance and insurance, which created 19.3 million net new jobs, many of them high-paying.”

The business leaders’ trip to Washington comes at an important time for public lands policy.  Sally Jewell, the former chief executive of outdoor company REI, was confirmed as the Secretary of the Interior last month.  She will have a number of important decisions on her plate regarding public lands, from new rules about drilling and hydraulic fracturing to protecting landscapes that local communities want to see set aside for future generations.

And she will also have the challenge of better balancing energy development and conservation on public lands considering that during the first term of the Obama administration, 6.3 million acres of public lands were leased to oil and gas companies while only 2.6 million acres were permanently protected.

Republicans at a hearing in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday questioned the effects of sequestration on national parks.  Committee members slammed National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis for overplaying the impacts on parks.  As Greenwire reported:

Several Republican lawmakers—including [Rep. Darrell] Issa [(R-CA), chairman of the committee]—also accused Jarvis of exaggerating the effects of sequestration in the months before it went into effect.

Issa hit Jarvis for his statements about the “draconian effects of sequestration,” claiming that “‘a whistle-blower’ has told the committee that a few parks indicated sequestration wouldn’t affect services at all.”  Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) accused Jarvis of making “a political statement” by highlighting only the famous places that are being impacted.

Yet the on-the-ground facts show that the predictions are actually playing out.  National parks across the country are facing $153.4 million in cuts due to sequestration.  As Climate Progress has previously reported, this means national park superintendents are forced to make tough decisions about their employees’ livelihoods—for example, nearly 1,000 seasonal employees will not be hired this summer.

Here are some of America’s national parks that are already cutting jobs and closing areas because of sequestration:

-   Maine’s Acadia National Park will open many of its popular sites including visitors’ centers a month later than normal.  The news “disappointed” nearby businesses, which make money off of tourists visiting the park.

-  Several campgrounds along the Blueridge Parkway—America’s most visited national park unit—will close for the season.  Other sites that will close include concession areas, picnic sites, and a few visitors’ centers.

-  The James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Ohio has closed on Sundays (one of its busiest days), as well as Mondays and federal holidays.  The park unit will save money on utilities and because must pay higher salaries on Sundays.  Over 300,000 people visit the site every year.

-  The Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania will start its longer summer hours on May 1^st, a month later than usual.  It will also offer fewer interpretative programs.

-  Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota has closed its famous Painted Canyon scenic overlook to save money on the costs of staff, utilities, and custodial services.  Last year 300,000 vehicles stopped at the area to catch a glimpse of the badlands where Theodore Roosevelt once ranched.

In contrast to the harsh and unnecessary cuts forced by sequestration, President Obama’s budget requests an increase for the budget of the National Park Service, to ensure that visitors are well-taken care of at our national parks.

And yet, if changes are not made soon, additional impacts will be felt.  As Jarvis said at yesterday’s hearing, sequestration will cause “every park activity [to] be affected and impacts will continue to accumulate over time.”

Republican members of the House Natural Resources Committee will do their level best at a hearing today to perpetuate a host of myths about the pace and efficiency of oil and gas development on federal lands compared to state and private lands. And as in the past, their level best won’t be on the level.

Today’s hearing, “State Lands vs. Federal Lands Oil and Gas Production: What State Regulators Are Doing Right,” is the latest attempt to show that the Obama administration, through regulations, bureaucratic obstacles, and an ideological hostility to the oil and gas industry, has thwarted traditional energy development on 700 million acres of federal and tribal lands and those private lands where it controls the mineral rights.

Those criticisms fly in the face of the facts:

• Oil production from federal lands and waters in every one of the last four years was higher than it was in 2008, according to an analysis of Energy Information Administration data by the Congressional Research Service.
• The oil and gas industry itself has cut back on its requests to drill on public lands, from an average of 6.6 million acres in 2006 to 2008 to 4.8 million acres annually from 2009 to 2012, a decline of 27 percent.
• The production of shale gas and shale oil in recent years is taking place “largely outside of the Federal lands” because that’s where those resources are, according to 2012 testimony by Adam Sieminski, administrator of the Energy Information Administration to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
• The vast majority of shale oil and shale gas plays exist underneath non-federal lands, a study by the Center for Western Priorities found. That study, “Follow the Oil,” showed that only ten percent of shale gas plays occur on federal lands, and only 7 percent of shale oil and mixed plays are on federal lands.
• High oil prices Market forces and depressed natural gas prices have been driving oil and gas developers to shift from drilling for natural gas to drilling for shale oil in places like North Dakota, where the resources largely lie beneath private lands. Oil and gas companies have made “market choices…to shift their production to oil and other liquid plays and away from gas,” according to Mark Squillace, professor of law at the University of Colorado. “And this means less activity on public lands.”
• State and federal permitting procedures for oil and gas are fundamentally different, with negotiations to resolve problems taking place before permitting begins on private land but after the process begins on federal land, making it almost automatically faster to get permits on lands where the state controls the permitting. As the Congressional Research Service reported, “A private versus federal permitting regime does not lend itself to an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.”
• The Congressional Research Service also found that between 2006 and 2011 the federal Bureau of Land Management has significantly cut its time for processing drilling permits from an average of 127 days to 71 days, while the time it has taken for industry to complete its processing chores has increased from an average of 91 days to 236 days.

Many critics of the federal oil and gas leasing program ignore that these resources are on publicly owned lands and waters — they belong to every American. And as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act makes clear, these lands are for multiple uses — including hunting, fishing, recreation, and grazing — and not just for oil and gas production. Despite this multiple use management requirement, the president has leased 2 acres for oil and gas production for every one acre of land conserved for future generations.

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee should be more concerned about that imbalance, rather than their fictitious statements about oil and gas production from federal lands and waters by President Obama.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.

Leaders from areas near new national monuments designated by President Obama visited Washington, D.C. this week to thank the president. So of course Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on eight bills designed to make it harder in the future for the president to protect special places that local communities have requested be conserved.

In giving the bills a hearing, members of the committee have offered a solution in search of a problem.  Community members representing the national monuments that President Obama has designated thus far were at the hearing to show support for the process and the monuments created.  As Molly Ward, Mayor of Hampton, Virginia (the location of Fort Monroe National Monument) said on the subject:

The bills up for discussion this morning will have but one result: to prevent other communities from enjoying the same kind of success that our nine communities recently enjoyed…. The Antiquities Act should remain unchanged and ready for the current and future presidents to respond quickly when Congress is unable to proceed quickly.

Nearly one month ago, President Obama used his executive authority to create five new national monuments, a move that was widely supported.  But rather than celebrating these successes, certain House members are instead attempting to reprise their role in making the last Congress the most “anti-environmental House of Representatives in the history of Congress.”  These bills fan the anti-government flames that have recently swept western state legislatures, which are attempting to turn over public lands to the states for private profits.

At issue is the 1906 Antiquities Act, which has been used by 16 out of the last 19 presidents to protect objects and places of “historic or scientific interest” on federal lands and waters.  Even President George W. Bush used the act to protect millions of acres of marine areas.

Contrary to claims that monuments are a detriment to local communities, the facts show that they actually provide economic benefits.  For example, a study of large monuments in the West by economic research firm Headwaters Economics determined that “the local economies surrounding all 17 of the national monuments grew following the creation of new national monuments.”

National monuments and other protected areas like national parks and wilderness also create jobs, as noted by economists.  In 2011, over 100 economists asked the president to “create jobs and support businesses by investing in our public lands infrastructure and establishing new protected areas such as parks, wilderness, and monuments.”

Last Congress, and this Congress thus far, have been paralyzed when it comes to preserving America’s special places.  As the Washington Post wrote in an editorial yesterday:

…one can hardly blame the president [for designating new monuments]. Despite bipartisan support for various land conservation proposals, the last Congress was the first since 1966 that failed to set aside any land — any at all.

If members of Congress object to the use of the Antiquities Act to protect special places, they should use their legislative authority to introduce and work to pass bills that do so.  Otherwise, as the president told Congress in his State of the Union address: “… if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”

New Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s first day was today. One of the first things that will cross her desk is a letter asking her to halt coal mining leases on public lands in the Powder River Basin.

Coal is the largest single source for U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Domestic coal use has leveled off and coal companies want to export it to other countries. But we as taxpayers can stop this from happening because we own much of the coal still in the ground.

The Powder River Basin stretches from Wyoming to Montana. Each of the top ten coal mines in the country are in the Basin, and most coal deposits on public lands are mostly located there. This area holds 1 trillion tons of coal — though only 25 billion tons of it are economically feasible to actually pull out of the ground.

The letter (full text found here) points out that those 25 billion tons would not only be unfeasible, they would be disastrous:

Coal remains the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States. Coal mined in the Powder River Basin alone (80 percent of which is federal coal) is the source of 13 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions. As the steward of one of the world’s largest coal reserves, Department of Interior can no longer ignore the enormous climate impact of new and existing coal leases….

Absent a moratorium and reform, Interior is poised to approve 3.5 billion tons of new coal mining, which would be an unprecedented expansion of federal coal extraction. DOI cannot facilitate these massive extraction projects without undermining President Obama’s commitment to address climate change.

The climate argument should be all that is needed in this debate, but there is even more to the story. American taxpayers subsidize coal through tax breaks, public lands loopholes, and railroad subsidies. In January, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) asked Secretary Jewell’s predecessor Ken Salazar to investigate if U.S. taxpayers were getting bilked by coal companies mining public lands and selling their product to foreign markets.

This is important because the Bureau of Land Management, which administers the lands and leases, is supposed to “ensure that the development of coal resources is done in an environmentally sound manner and is in the best interests of the Nation.”

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The effects of massive government budget cuts that took effect on March 1 are being felt across the country already, from the closure of air traffic control towers to cancellation of White House tours to hundreds of thousands of furloughs. Another agency that is beginning to make cuts — just as the spring and summer tourism seasons kick off — is the National Park Service.

The park service faces an approximately 6 percent cut under sequestration and a recently-passed funding bill which means major impacts on how the parks function and the visitor experiences at them. A memo from park service Director Jon Jarvis on March 8 warned that permanent positions will not be filled, and he wrote:

… we will hire over 1,000 less seasonal employees this year. Seasonal employees are our utility infielders, the “bench” we turn to when fires break out, search and rescue operations are underway, and every other collateral duty. Many of these folks return year after year — they are the repositories of amazing institutional knowledge.

In total, 3,000 jobs at the agency may be affected. Here are some of the national park superintendents who are being forced to make hard choices about their parks and staffs:

• Dan Wenk is Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, which faced a $1.8 million sequestration cut. After considering all of his options, Wenk decided to open most entrances to the park two weeks late this year, losing 50,000 visitors. He also will hire fewer seasonal employees and bring them on later (saving $450,000), and freeze all permanent hires (saving $1 million).  As the Washington Post reported, opening two weeks late has a “ripple effect on jobs and tourism [that] could means millions of dollars in lost income.”  Luckily, a local coalition has provided the funding to open the roads on time this year.
• Phil Francis is the Superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the most visited national park unit in America. To meet the $784,000 cut required by sequestration, Francis has closed a number of facilities and also looked to his workforce. As he put it, “The hiring freeze has saved us some money on permanent staff and we just cut seasonal hiring by more than thirty jobs. With fewer people to be hired, we squeezed money out of diminished support costs….”  Additionally, visitors centers, picnic areas, and more than 400 campsites will be closed.
• Eric Brunnemann, Superintendent at Badlands National Park, will cut seasonal hires by 24 percent. These positions “support interpretive talks and walks, school programs, custodial services, road, fence and building repair and maintenance, science and research activities, natural resource monitoring, and search and rescue operations,” according to National Parks Traveler.

As these examples show, sequestration is having major impacts on the lives of government employees like park rangers and superintendents. And, as the summer begins, visitors will also start noticing the impacts like fewer park rangers, poorly-maintained restrooms and campgrounds, and longer lines to get into parks.

With the few strokes of a pen on Monday, President Obama created five new national monuments, and took an important step towards establishing a stronger public lands conservation record for his presidency. The package of monuments created with the longstanding authority granted to presidents by the 1906 Antiquities Act includes the first landscape of any real size protected by this administration, the 242,500 acre Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument.

The administration still has a lot of ground to make up if it is to achieve a proper balance between the amount of public land it has leased for oil and gas development and the amount it has permanently protected. That goal, giving permanent protection to public land areas equal in size to what is drilled, is endorsed by the Center for American Progress and was ably amplified by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during an important early February speech. As CAP has pointed out, President Obama’s record on public land conservation is far weaker than his recent White House predecessors.

Even so, President Obama appears to be gaining some enthusiasm for the conservation powers he can use to circumvent a hostile House of Representatives and satisfy the public’s thirst for protecting prized federal lands from inappropriate commercial development. The Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad authority to designate monuments and has been used by 16 of the 19 presidents since Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law, is one of those powers.

There are other actions the president can take without waiting for any say so from Congress.

In western Colorado, he can protect more than 100,000 acres of spectacular country revered for its hunting, fishing, clean water, and ranching by simply having the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management let 61 oil and gas leases expire in the next few months. Since purchasing the ten-year leases on national forest land in the Thompson Divide in 2003, oil and gas companies have mostly sat on them, moving to get actual development permits only recently.

Now those permits are soon to expire, and residents and public officials have mobilized to protect the Thompson Divide permanently. Local landowners and others have raised $2.5 million to buy back the leases, and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has introduced legislation to withdraw all public land in the 221,000 Thompson Divide area from mineral leasing while protecting valid existing leases.

The few energy companies that have bothered to respond to the citizens’ coalition offer of $2.5 million have spurned it. If the BLM has the good sense to reject industry requests for extensions on the leases, those oil and gas companies might get more reasonable about negotiating a buyout. With a buyout, Bennet’s legislation could protect most of the area forever.

To the west in Utah, President Obama has another opportunity. He can reverse some of the destructive actions of the previous administration which in its waning months issued long range plans governing public and commercial uses for some 11 million acres of BLM-managed red rock canyon country. Those plans, typically in effect for 15 or 20 years, offered up 80 percent of those public lands to oil and gas, and designated 20,000 miles of dirt paths open to motorized travel.

Sued by conservation groups in a case that is still in federal court, the Obama administration has defended those land management plans. It should instead seek a settlement with the conservation groups and agree to revise the plans to better protect some of the most spectacular public landscapes in the U.S.

Tom Kenworthy is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

This weekend, Senate Democrats passed a federal budget for Fiscal Year 2014. In order to do so, Senate rules allow for consideration of any amendment that is brought to the floor. Senators introduced hundreds of amendments, which resulted in a “vote-o-rama.”

Many conservatives offered amendments to undermine existing and potential public health safeguards, particularly those that would attempt to reduce climate pollution. Below are seven deadly amendments to curtail protection for our children’s health and heritage. As usual, these conservatives are focused on protecting dirty energy companies profits at the expense of public health.

• Blunt #261: This amendment would have blocked future legislation to impose a carbon tax or fee to reduce industrial carbon pollution and raise revenue. Specifically, the amendment would create a “point-of-order” against any carbon tax measure that could only be overcome with a three-fifths vote of legislators. While it would have been a mostly symbolic move, the fossil fuel industry’s friends in the Senate are reiterating their opposition to government action on climate pollution. However, the impacts of climate change have already been felt across the country — in 2011 and 2012, the United States suffered from 25 climate related storms, floods, heat waves, drought, and wildfires that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, with a total price tag of $188 billion. The Blunt amendment would allow these damages and costs to grow unchecked. Result: FAILED 53-46
• Coats #514: This amendment would have struck down key Clean Air Act protections by authorizing the President to exempt any industrial facility from complying with air toxics standards for two-year periods. Essentially, the amendment would have given a free pass to coal-burning power plants from EPA’s 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which were put in place due to the well-documented health risks of mercury, arsenic, and the millions of pounds of additional hazardous chemicals. Methylmercury from coal pollution accumulates in fish, poisoning pregnant women and small children. Mercury can harm children’s developing brains, including effects on memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills. Upgrades to the aged and dirty coal plants will also significantly reduce harmful particle pollution, preventing hundreds of thousands of illnesses and up to 17,000 premature deaths each year. “The ‘monetized’ value of these and certain other health benefits would amount to $37–90 billion per year,” the Environmental Protection Agency determined. Republicans are once again trying to protect the dirty energy industry over our children’s health. Result: FAILED 46-53
• Alexander #516: This would “repeal … the wind production tax credit.” The PTC provides a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity to encourage investment in clean wind energy. A CAP analysis determined that “wind power helps lower electricity prices.” Along with state renewable portfolio or electricity standards, the PTC has enabled “the wind industry … to lower the cost of wind power by more than 90% [and] provide power to the equivalent of over 12 million American homes.” A Navigant Consulting analysis predicted that eliminating the PTC would cost 37,000 jobs. Some argue that we should end tax provisions for clean technologies, including wind. However, this ignores the fact that the oil and gas industries have received $80 in support for every $1 for wind and other renewable energy sources over the past 95 years. In addition, the Alexander amendment would ignore the annual $4 billion in special tax breaks for big oil companies. Result: Did not come to the floor for a vote.
• Inhofe #359: This amendment would “[prohibit] further greenhouse gas regulations for the purpose of addressing climate change.” This would have prevented the EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act as interpreted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that EPA is required to regulate carbon and other climate change pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. EPA proposed the first carbon pollution standard for new power plants in 2012. After it is finalized, EPA must set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants — responsible for two-fifths of U.S. carbon pollution. Such reductions are essential to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. Result: FAILED 47-52

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Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico

President Obama plans to use his executive authority to permanently protect five new national monuments next week.  This marks a significant step for the administration: It is now willing to step in and protect special places when Congress refuses to act.

The new monuments will be:

-  Rio Grande del Norte, in New Mexico

-  San Juan Islands, in Washington

-  First State, in Delaware

-  Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad, in Maryland

-  Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers, in Ohio

Of particular note is Rio Grande del Norte, which at 240,000 acres is the largest monument that the administration has designated thus far.  Also, First State National Monument in Delaware will change the fact that the state is the only one in the U.S. without a national park unit.

The announcement of these designations under the 1906 Antiquities Act fits well with President Obama’s challenge to Congress during his State of the Union address:  “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”  The last Congress was the first since World War II that failed to protect a single new acre of parks, monuments, or wilderness, despite millions of acres proposed for protection by adjacent communities.  As John Podesta, Chair of the Center for American Progress put it, “The last Congress was the most anti-environmental in history, so President Obama is right to respond to the calls of local communities that want their public lands protected.”

The permanent protection of hundreds of thousands of acres is also critical because it is the administration’s next step towards putting the conservation of public lands on equal ground with energy development. In the president’s first term, he leased 6.3 million acres of public lands to oil and gas companies, while only 2.6 million acres were protected by Congress and the executive combined.   Last month former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt called on the administration to permanently protect one acre for each one drilled.

Today’s news is welcome for any American who see the economic, health, and other long-term benefits of protected public lands, and is an important advancement for the president in the establishment of his conservation legacy.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a gem of an editorial titled “Drill, Barack, Drill.” You might be able to guess what it’s about from the title.

It takes a report from the Congressional Research Service about drilling on public lands, engages in some flagrant cherry picking, shoots out some outright falsehoods, and concludes that the Obama Administration has been standing in the way of fossil fuel development on federal lands.

The truth, while sobering, is very different from the creative accounting performed by the Wall Street Journal ed board. Here’s the reality.

WSJ Says: “All of the increased [oil] production from 2007 from 2012 took place on non-federal lands.”

That’s one cherry to pick. There’s a whole tree though. Looking at the whole CRS report gives you the full story:

When comparing fiscal year 2010 with 2007, growth in the federal share of production was about 82 percent of the total.

That’s a lot of growth in production not on private and state lands. The report also says that crude oil production will continue to be significant, and “could remain consistently higher than previous decades.”

WSJ Says: “Federal share of total U.S. oil production has slid under Mr. Obama to 26% in fiscal year 2012 from 31% in fiscal 2008.”

In fact, oil production from federally owned places was higher in every one of the past four years compared to 2008, when oil hit a record high price of $142.50 per barrel. In fiscal year 2008, total crude oil production was 1,550 thousand barrels per day. The rate of production for the next four years has been: 1,731, 1,989, 1,715, and 1,627 thousand barrels per day. The Wall Street Journal may be trying hard here, but none of those numbers is smaller than 1,550.

The domestic boom is driven by ample tight oil (shale oil) and shale gas resources on private lands. In 2012, Adam Sieminski, the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that:

Because the shale resource basins are largely outside of the Federal lands, so too is shale production. In this case, the geology is working in favor of non-Federal landowners.

The rapid increase in natural gas production from shale resources, found largely outside the Federal lands, over the last 5 years has significantly reduced natural gas prices and the relative attractiveness of conventional natural gas resources, including those of Federal and Indian lands. (EIA)

Also, most oil and gas shale plays in the contiguous U.S. are on private lands:

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