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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsZinke's Plan to Fund the Park Service Is Pure Fantasy
When I interviewed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke at Denali last year, he complained about how Interiors revenues from natural resource commodities had crashed over the decade since President George W. Bush left office. In 2008, just offshore, the DOI made about $18 billion a year, he said. Last year was $2.3 [billion]. Total oil and gas revenues were $21.6 billion in 2008, according to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, compared to $4.3 in 2016, so theres no doubt: It was a huge drop. As I mentioned in my profile of Zinke in the January issue of Outside, I asked him what caused the shortfall.
The price of oil and gas declined. True, no doubt, Zinke said. But also, the regulatory framework in some cases became punitive and arbitrary.
Zinke has a quick fix for this discrepancy: Hold a fire sale of public land and offshore energy leases and get government regulation out of the way. With these silver bullets, Zinke says he can drive revenues back toward the high-water mark, and he intends to: Zinke says hell use the windfall to pay for nearly $12 billion worth of deferred maintenance in the national parks.
Zinke calls this plan the Public Land Infrastructure Fund, linking it to President Trumps pledge to rebuild Americas highways and bridges. On March 7, a mostly Republican group of senators introduced a bill modeled on the concept. Our parks and refuges are being loved to death, Zinke said in recent comments about Trumps 2019 budget, which would cut Interiors funding by close to $2 billion, or about 13.3 percent. The budget also zeroes out most conservation grants to the National Park Service and the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which Zinke went to bat for as a Montana congressman. But not to worry: The Public Land Infrastructure Fund initiative, according to Interiors fiscal year 2019 Budget Justification, has the potential to generate up to $18 billion over ten years for parks and other public lands infrastructure.
The idea that Americans should throw open the gates on public lands and the seafloor to energy developers, inviting landscape and habitat degradation in order to raise funds to fix roads and bathrooms in the national parks, is a tough sell. Especially when were asked to entrust this plan to what may be the most overtly anti-conservation administration in history. On the economic side, its also a fantasy.
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Sophia4
(3,515 posts)Drove behind a TESLA and a car saying no emissions on the back last night. Two cars in one night using no gasoline. And more and more of my neighbors' roofs boast solar panels.
Every country with a lot of gas and oil and every producer of gas and oil is in panic mode. It's no wonder.
As alternative energy technology improves, Zinke's ideas will seem more and more oldfashioned and outlandish.
Wind, water, solar and who knows what else or what combination will dominate, but gas and oil will slowly become less and less valuable. It will take time, but there is no point in flooding the market with the stuff and inflicting so much damage on our environment just because . . . .
Zinke is sinking.