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As someone else pointed out, it's not ownership, it's a 10-year lease. This all sounds pretty routine; "a feature, not a bug", designed to promote economic dev

As someone else pointed out, it's not ownership, it's a 10-year lease. This all sounds pretty routine; "a feature, not a bug", designed to promote economic development and be accommodating in general. If you don't like development in general, or Oil & Gas development in particular, you won't be happy with this arrangement. But I would think there would be more outrageous examples than this one.

icedistilled 6y ago
It's not ownership, but it does permanently alters the land and permanently removes value in both terms of both recreation and mineral value. So while they technically don't own it, they get to forever change it and extract a lot of money from our public land at rock bottom rates.
- ultrarunner 6y ago
  It permanently alters the land, but often all that means is travel infrastructure like roads or trails. These end up increasing the potential recreation value in a place that would be otherwise inaccessible. Whether humanity ought to recreate in these areas or not is another question (we are currently experiencing numerous wildfires in Arizona and the Southwest in general). But it’s not necessarily a clear case of destroying the land permanently. Rain alters land permanently as well, but few are motivated to stop that process on this type of land.
  - icedistilled 6y ago
    Please See this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553446 And please look up the Converse Basic Grove of Sequoias. The whole place was destroyed to make fence posts. Oh, my bad I suppose "lease" is the current euphemism for destroying the land like that. But hey! cutting down all those giant sequoias improved the recreation opportunities, right? That's an extreme example but any natural resource extraction irreparably damages land. Even grazing or roads have significant impacts that take hundreds or thousands of years to recover. Roads dramatically change the landscape and cause huge impacts. And the roads usually serve some purpose, i.e. more damaging activities. Crisscrossing the landscape with roads has a huge impact on the land and does not enhance the recreational opportunities other than the ability to take instagram pics from your car.
    - ultrarunner 6y ago
      I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith. There are obviously numerous activities that take place via wilderness access. Given my chosen username on here I’m quite familiar with the concept. Implying that Instagram photos are the goal is a strawman, and not even a good one. My hope was to suggest that the world is a complex place and nuance is warranted.

icedistilled 6y ago

It's not ownership, but it does permanently alters the land and permanently removes value in both terms of both recreation and mineral value. So while they technically don't own it, they get to forever change it and extract a lot of money from our public land at rock bottom rates.

ultrarunner 6y ago
It permanently alters the land, but often all that means is travel infrastructure like roads or trails. These end up increasing the potential recreation value in a place that would be otherwise inaccessible. Whether humanity ought to recreate in these areas or not is another question (we are currently experiencing numerous wildfires in Arizona and the Southwest in general). But it’s not necessarily a clear case of destroying the land permanently. Rain alters land permanently as well, but few are motivated to stop that process on this type of land.
- icedistilled 6y ago
  Please See this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553446 And please look up the Converse Basic Grove of Sequoias. The whole place was destroyed to make fence posts. Oh, my bad I suppose "lease" is the current euphemism for destroying the land like that. But hey! cutting down all those giant sequoias improved the recreation opportunities, right? That's an extreme example but any natural resource extraction irreparably damages land. Even grazing or roads have significant impacts that take hundreds or thousands of years to recover. Roads dramatically change the landscape and cause huge impacts. And the roads usually serve some purpose, i.e. more damaging activities. Crisscrossing the landscape with roads has a huge impact on the land and does not enhance the recreational opportunities other than the ability to take instagram pics from your car.
  - ultrarunner 6y ago
    I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith. There are obviously numerous activities that take place via wilderness access. Given my chosen username on here I’m quite familiar with the concept. Implying that Instagram photos are the goal is a strawman, and not even a good one. My hope was to suggest that the world is a complex place and nuance is warranted.