Biden's federal oil-drilling reforms — one quick thought

Increasing the royalty payment, per High Country News' list of all that President Biden's proposed reforms include, sounds good.

But?

At the state level, it gets Western states with lots of drilling on BLM or Forest Service land even more addicted to oil money. That's especially if they're relatively low-population and also relatively poor.

Looking at you right in the eyeballs, New Mexico and fake green governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. Note that between federal, state and private land, New Mexico oil drilling has almost doubled in the past five years. It has passed North Dakota into No. 2 on state oil production. (Most the recent explosion in shale drilling in the Permian Basin is on the NM half of the Delaware Basin.)

Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, #BigCoal and #KeepItInTheGround

Jeremy Nichols, climate director,
Wild Earth Guardians, advocate for
Keep it in the Ground strategy

From one of my favorite magazines, High  Country News, a go-to source for environmental and other news from the Western states, we have two juxtaposed stories.

The first is about Florida presidential candidate and senator-in-absentia Marco Rubio rounding up plenty of endorsements from Western Republican elected officials. As part if it, it notes that Rubio's pandering on anti-environmental stances may be near the bottom of all GOP presidential candidates, and that's lower malebolge territory indeed.

The second is about Hillary Clinton seeking votes and support in coal-producing areas of the West. I don't have a problem with job retraining or other issues — if it's not for coal alone. Remember, we export both jobs and pollution to places like China. Their more inefficient industries cause more acid rain than ours (for Japan, Taiwan and the Koreas as well as China) and more carbon dioxide to warm the whole world than ours. So, job retraining for coal miners should be no more robust than job retraining for jobs lost to "free" trade (and those largely unenforced "side agreements" on both labor and environmental issues that started with Clinton's husband and NAFTA).

Beyond retraining, continued and expanded support for the West's abundant resources on solar and wind energy should be priority No. 1. Yes, they don't have a lot of permanent jobs at individual sites, but let's get more solar panels and wind turbines manufactured there. (Note: Solar and wind need to themselves be environmentally friendly; bigger wind turbines helps there, but thermal solar, at least currently, is a big, big bird killer.)

This, Big Coal, relates to a third story (subscription required). It notes that 40 percent of U.S. coal is mined from federal reserves. In other words, don't think West Virginia and private mountaintop removal. Think BLM lands like the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. It also notes that this is one of President Obama's weakest areas on climate change: his "all of the above" energy strategy has been applied to coal as well as oil on BLM lands.

Jeremy Nichols, leading the charge to "keep it in the ground," is no outsider. He's from Boise, and his dad worked for the BLM. As his activism notes, part of the problem is that Washington has been hands-off on a lot of this, leaving interpretation of environmental impacts and other permitting issues to individual BLM districts.

In any case, the battle has only begun. Nichols says he does "opposition research" at places like Interior Department "listening sessions." I hope he learns strategies that do address local economic concerns, and that he learns to be careful on his language and its possible misinterpretation.

Texas GOP discusses Cliven Bundy

Texas Republican leaders were quick to defend Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, even before the librul media called him "sort of a welfare queen in a cowboy hat."


Rick Perry said that he couldn't say much of anything, on advice of counsel retained over the Public Integrity Unit veto, lest he be misinterpreted as intimidating somebody.

Ted Cruz said that the Bureau for Land Management reminded him of Castro's Cuba and therefore it was socialistic for trying to deny Bundy the right to freely appropriate land in the most libertarian of ways, by paying nothing for it. As for Bundy's talk about lazy Negros vs. hard-working Hispanics with better family structures than many whites, Cruz said, "Duh, look at me!"

John Cornyn said what Ted Cruz said because, per Lyndon Baines Johnson, Cornyn has voluntarily put his pecker in Cruz's pocket.

Louie Gohmert said "BLM? Blacklands Management? Black Land Management? Black Lazy Malingerers? Oh, yes, I agree with Bundy."
But he then qualified that, saying Hispanics only pretended to work hard until their first US-born anchor babies arrived.

Greg Abbott tried to claim the BLM was in the process of stealing millions of acres of Texas land when it actually has almost zero land in Texas. He then promised that questions about eminent domain for Keystone XL was just a trick by environmentalists to get him to mention that Earth Day was this week. He claimed that questions about seizure of the YFZ Ranch, knows for its previous fundamentalist Mormon ownwers and their underage marriages, was just a trick to remind people of Ted Nugent and underage girls. He then promised to tell even more lies about the BLM as preparation for his next suit against Obama. When asked about how he could have such apparent double standards, he said it was a dirty liberal trick to talk about him and a  "stand"-ard for anything.

He did add that Bundy was totally right about Hispanics. He said the Mexican-American wife he had recently discovered he had after 30-some years of marriage was proof of that.

Dan Patrick said Bundy was wrong about Hispanics. Although continuing to ignore his own getting some Ill Eagles to do lots of work for cheap, he said he knew that they stink and were contaminating America. Patrick said "no comment" if he had personal knowledge of the "contamination" from contracting venereal disease from a Hispanic.

David Dewhurst said he agreed that Hispanics were hard workers at every country club where he was a member. He said he was unfamiliar with Cliven Bundy, and wondered if he was related to Peg or Al Bundy.

Jerry Patterson promised to defend the Red River against Oklahoma and the BLM with the hogleg in his boot. He then invited Bundy to Texas, as long as he brought all his guns, and said he'd find Bundy land in the Christmas Mountains.

Ken Paxton touted his under-the-table financial genius, saying he would incorporate Bundy's ranch and sell stock to investors.

Joe Straus said to himself that he wished someone would let the air out of Abbott's wheelchair tires.

Is Jewell a diamond in the rough for Interior?

If you're a real environmentalist, I doubt that President Obama's nomination of Sandy Jewell, CEO outdoor gear maker/seller REI, as Interior Secretary, is a diamond in the rough.

Sure, REI is an outdoor recreational equipment maker. So is Honda, with its four-wheelers. Beyond that, when I heard on the radio that her previous background included work at subprime mortgage bottom feeder Washington Mutual and eXXXonMobil before that (well, just old Mobil, technically), I was definitely underwhelmed. She may wind up making us appreciate the days of Kenny Boy Salazar for all we know.

And, speaking of, she's already indicated she wants to continue his public-private partnerships for conservation and related issues. Translation: She's OK with more corporate branding in places like national parks,

Plus, Interior's traditionally gone to a Western politician. This probably doesn't sit totally well with Congressional Democrats.

She sounds like she's personally an outdoorswoman, and therefore appreciates conservation needs. And, that she might have some ideas on how to boost involvement, especially (I hope) by minorities.

And, she's got her work cut out in gearing up for the Park Service's centennial.

I hope she does that right, AND ... without too much in the way of private branding. I don't want to see "The National Park Service Centennial Commemoration, Sponsored by REI."

Speaking of, I'd love for just one senator to ask her about her time at WaMu and what she knew about the subprime mess. It's legit, not just for running her over, but for just how sound of a management background she has.

Anyway, yes, the League of Conservation Voters has already given her an air kiss. I'm sure other Gang Green groups will do the same.

I want to see how folks like the Center for Biological Diversity respond.

And, CBD has. Not throwing her under the bus, but Kieran Suckling and gang are ... "guarded":

America’s public lands and endangered species are in dire need of visionary leadership. We hope Sally Jewell brings the same determination and transparency to running the Department of the Interior as she did to REI.  

It’s clear the secretary of the Interior nominee has a passion for national parks, but the challenge is whether she will value our wildlands and wildlife in the face of endless pressure by industry to drill for fossil fuels in areas within Interior’s jurisdiction. If she can stand strong against bad ideas such as Arctic oil drilling and fracking on public lands, then she will likely be a success. Nature needs a true champion at this point in history.

I think that's about where I stand.

And, Suckling et al know that oil and the Bureau of Land Management will be a big issue, continually so.

Update, Feb. 9: Tim Egan at the NYT has a laudatory column about Jewell while noting that Obama can't rest his environmental laurels just on her appointment. The line about environmentalists being a "silent majority" amongst the "wise use" folks, general libertarians and even anti-government conspiracy theorists in the West is a good one.

BLM gets enviromental slapdown on ORVs

(Again.) Federal judge Susan Illston said the agency didn't follow environmental standards in laying out ORV trails in SoCal.

That said, the agency has three-plus years for a redo, upsetting, rightly, most enviros.