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Trump Takes Aim at Western Monuments That May Hold Oil Riches

26 points by jtraffic 9y ago

nateberkopec 9y ago
I live very close to one of the National Monuments being discussed (Rio Grande Del Norte). It's a big tourist draw, not to mention it's wildlife and historical significance. Letting oil companies potentially put that in jeopardy to extract resources is really just a wealth transfer, putting the citizens at risk for the benefit of a few big oil companies.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  It's not only wealth transfer, it's potential wealth destruction. I only had a chance to spend a day in the area as I was driving through. This sounds cliché, but it's one of those places that makes you think. The immense beauty captured my full attention and for the rest of the drive, I turned my cell phone and radio off and sat in awe in a sort of mindless medication. Places like this truly are priceless, especially for city folk like. myself overstimulated by modern society. It's unfortunate that some people look at wilderness only for what value can be extracted out of the land. It's not only wealth transfer, it's potential net wealth destruction. Slightly off topic, but Trump recentl made a speech where he said that no one's religious rights will ever be violated again in this country. It reminded me of the Native American people trying to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline because it crosses through their waterways and some of their sacred lands. I know it's politics and what he said was code for allowing Christian organizations to discriminate against LGBT individuals and to also exclude birth control from their health care benefits, but it must be so disheartening to hear something a President say that and know that it doesn't apply to your religion, like he doesn't even acknowledge that you exist. It's just depressing knowing that, if we incentivized correctly, our energy issues with high density fuels could be solved forever and forms of energy that require wasteful, polluting extractive and refining techniques will no longer externalize their costs
  - wordupmaking 9y ago
    Basically: Destroying the wealth everybody can have for free, like beauty, truth and simple contentment, to sell cheap thrills that never quite satisfy. I don't care how cliché that sounds, I'm tired of how well that cliché holds up in the reality I see. And yes, I also think that it's ultimately a net negative, I'm not even sure the people who get wealthier and more powerful actually get wealthier and more powerful. Their thrills don't seem to last either, they kind of seem to get smaller, and apart from the destruction of the world around us basically everybody of us engages in and suffers from, some of them them also have a vastly bigger inner gulf to cross. I.e. to enjoy a sunset someone with a clean conscience only has to have the time and the sunset, but people with corpses in the basement still have to dig out from under those corpses and then get up the stairs and out the front door. There's a lot of shrillness these days, and I think exactly for that reason; people with mouths full of dirt screaming about how they wouldn't want to see a sunset anyway, how only losers would enjoy those more than the cold stone they're stuck under. A whole lot of posing going on. FWIW, I don't think any of us are exempt, I surely am not. Yeah I didn't start a war of aggression yet, and so on, but I hurt others for various dumb reasons, and often failed to even try to make up for it for even dumber or no reasons. It's a matter of degree though, and I would not want to swap with people in even deeper shit.
  - SpikeDad 9y ago
    I'm sure he meant only western Christian "rights" which are of course not rights at all.
orasis 9y ago
I'm sitting in my camper right now in the middle of Utah. Fuck these East coast pricks that have never even seen this land.
- TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
  It's the local reps who are pushing this: "Representative Rob Bishop, a Republican from Utah who heads the House Natural Resources Committee, has focused his ire on Bears Ears" I'm starting to think the tide has turned on people's desire to give land back to the states (see Chaffetz). Enough people have moved to Utah/Colorado for the outdoors that it's not going to be easy for the local establishment to sell off the land at a discount to their donors. At least in the opinion of this east coaster...
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  It's the east cost "pricks" that put the land into National Monuments, specifically presidents like Obama. Unless you mean you want the land to be raped for the profit of your local pricks?
niftich 9y ago
Maps of the Bears Ears National Monument can be seen here [1][2], to give an idea as to what's being talked about. It includes the area between the current eastern boundary of Canyonlands NP "below the rim" of the mesas like Hatch Point Mesa and Harts Point Mesa. In this 2014 article from Moab Sun News [3], it is mentioned that oil and gas surveys are being done in Harts Point (up on the mesa; outside of Bears Ears NM and not visible from "below the rim"); as well as in Lockhart Basin, the area sandwiched between the Mesa and Canyonlands (and thus protected by the new Bears Ears National Monument). A quote from the article: Walt Dabney, Moab resident, and retired superintendent of Canyonlands National Park (CNP), said that he is "very concerned," about any possible development taking place below the rim in the Canyonlands Basin. While superintendent of CNP, he made a formal objection to the BLM, saying that there shouldn't be any leases down in the basin because of the, "certainty of compromising the national park qualities of Canyonlands National Park." "When you stand on the rim, there is an assumption by anyone who looks into that basin, that they are looking into the park. "What they are really looking at is an illogical, political compromise that resulted in protecting only a portion of the basin. Any development placed in there will significantly diminish the quality of the park." On the map, this is the northwesternmost protrusion of Bears Ears NM; a relatively small area. It includes significant portions of land further south (beyond the southern boundary of Canyonlands NP), including the northern rim of Goosenecks, all of the Valley of the Gods, the Moki Dugway, the roads leading to Natural Bridges and Hite Crossing, all of the Dark Canyon Wilderness, half of the Abajo Mountains, and the like, forming a continuous protected area from the existing patchwork of protected land and adjacent BLM-or-private land that looks visually identical yet hasn't enjoyed the same protections. And remarkably, it does so in a way to protect viewsheds. [1] http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/sites/default/files/maps/resources/uw_BearsEars_Proclamation_8.5x11.pdf http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/sites/default/files/maps/res... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bears-ears-map.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bears-ea... [3] http://www.moabsunnews.com/news/article_7b85d6f0-3e77-11e4-aac7-001a4bcf6878.html http://www.moabsunnews.com/news/article_7b85d6f0-3e77-11e4-a...

26 points by jtraffic 9y ago

I live very close to one of the National Monuments being discussed (Rio Grande Del Norte). It's a big tourist draw, not to mention it's wildlife and historical significance. Letting oil companies potentially put that in jeopardy to extract resources is really just a wealth transfer, putting the citizens at risk for the benefit of a few big oil companies.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
It's not only wealth transfer, it's potential wealth destruction. I only had a chance to spend a day in the area as I was driving through. This sounds cliché, but it's one of those places that makes you think. The immense beauty captured my full attention and for the rest of the drive, I turned my cell phone and radio off and sat in awe in a sort of mindless medication. Places like this truly are priceless, especially for city folk like. myself overstimulated by modern society. It's unfortunate that some people look at wilderness only for what value can be extracted out of the land. It's not only wealth transfer, it's potential net wealth destruction. Slightly off topic, but Trump recentl made a speech where he said that no one's religious rights will ever be violated again in this country. It reminded me of the Native American people trying to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline because it crosses through their waterways and some of their sacred lands. I know it's politics and what he said was code for allowing Christian organizations to discriminate against LGBT individuals and to also exclude birth control from their health care benefits, but it must be so disheartening to hear something a President say that and know that it doesn't apply to your religion, like he doesn't even acknowledge that you exist. It's just depressing knowing that, if we incentivized correctly, our energy issues with high density fuels could be solved forever and forms of energy that require wasteful, polluting extractive and refining techniques will no longer externalize their costs
- wordupmaking 9y ago
  Basically: Destroying the wealth everybody can have for free, like beauty, truth and simple contentment, to sell cheap thrills that never quite satisfy. I don't care how cliché that sounds, I'm tired of how well that cliché holds up in the reality I see. And yes, I also think that it's ultimately a net negative, I'm not even sure the people who get wealthier and more powerful actually get wealthier and more powerful. Their thrills don't seem to last either, they kind of seem to get smaller, and apart from the destruction of the world around us basically everybody of us engages in and suffers from, some of them them also have a vastly bigger inner gulf to cross. I.e. to enjoy a sunset someone with a clean conscience only has to have the time and the sunset, but people with corpses in the basement still have to dig out from under those corpses and then get up the stairs and out the front door. There's a lot of shrillness these days, and I think exactly for that reason; people with mouths full of dirt screaming about how they wouldn't want to see a sunset anyway, how only losers would enjoy those more than the cold stone they're stuck under. A whole lot of posing going on. FWIW, I don't think any of us are exempt, I surely am not. Yeah I didn't start a war of aggression yet, and so on, but I hurt others for various dumb reasons, and often failed to even try to make up for it for even dumber or no reasons. It's a matter of degree though, and I would not want to swap with people in even deeper shit.
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  I'm sure he meant only western Christian "rights" which are of course not rights at all.

orasis 9y ago

I'm sitting in my camper right now in the middle of Utah. Fuck these East coast pricks that have never even seen this land.

TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
It's the local reps who are pushing this: "Representative Rob Bishop, a Republican from Utah who heads the House Natural Resources Committee, has focused his ire on Bears Ears" I'm starting to think the tide has turned on people's desire to give land back to the states (see Chaffetz). Enough people have moved to Utah/Colorado for the outdoors that it's not going to be easy for the local establishment to sell off the land at a discount to their donors. At least in the opinion of this east coaster...
SpikeDad 9y ago
It's the east cost "pricks" that put the land into National Monuments, specifically presidents like Obama. Unless you mean you want the land to be raped for the profit of your local pricks?

niftich 9y ago

Maps of the Bears Ears National Monument can be seen here [1][2], to give an idea as to what's being talked about. It includes the area between the current eastern boundary of Canyonlands NP "below the rim" of the mesas like Hatch Point Mesa and Harts Point Mesa. In this 2014 article from Moab Sun News [3], it is mentioned that oil and gas surveys are being done in Harts Point (up on the mesa; outside of Bears Ears NM and not visible from "below the rim"); as well as in Lockhart Basin, the area sandwiched between the Mesa and Canyonlands (and thus protected by the new Bears Ears National Monument). A quote from the article: Walt Dabney, Moab resident, and retired superintendent of Canyonlands National Park (CNP), said that he is "very concerned," about any possible development taking place below the rim in the Canyonlands Basin. While superintendent of CNP, he made a formal objection to the BLM, saying that there shouldn't be any leases down in the basin because of the, "certainty of compromising the national park qualities of Canyonlands National Park." "When you stand on the rim, there is an assumption by anyone who looks into that basin, that they are looking into the park. "What they are really looking at is an illogical, political compromise that resulted in protecting only a portion of the basin. Any development placed in there will significantly diminish the quality of the park." On the map, this is the northwesternmost protrusion of Bears Ears NM; a relatively small area. It includes significant portions of land further south (beyond the southern boundary of Canyonlands NP), including the northern rim of Goosenecks, all of the Valley of the Gods, the Moki Dugway, the roads leading to Natural Bridges and Hite Crossing, all of the Dark Canyon Wilderness, half of the Abajo Mountains, and the like, forming a continuous protected area from the existing patchwork of protected land and adjacent BLM-or-private land that looks visually identical yet hasn't enjoyed the same protections. And remarkably, it does so in a way to protect viewsheds. [1] http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/sites/default/files/maps/resources/uw_BearsEars_Proclamation_8.5x11.pdf http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/sites/default/files/maps/res... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bears-ears-map.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bears-ea... [3] http://www.moabsunnews.com/news/article_7b85d6f0-3e77-11e4-aac7-001a4bcf6878.html http://www.moabsunnews.com/news/article_7b85d6f0-3e77-11e4-a...