[HN Gopher] Conservation should be allowed to pay its own way on...
___________________________________________________________________
Conservation should be allowed to pay its own way on public lands
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-10-20 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (legal-planet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (legal-planet.org)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Isn't one of the major rationales for allowing this so cheaply
| for economic uses that it creates jobs and other spinoff economic
| activity?
|
| I can see why the government wouldn't be pleased if someone did
| nothing with it.
|
| They expected not only rent payments, but payroll taxes, job
| creation, etc.
| sp332 wrote:
| Sure, but the alternative here is also pretty good. Conserving
| the land and not putting more oil on the market is also an
| outcome worth subsidising.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean if you're an environmentalist of course you would
| think that -- I think that. But it's a little naive to think
| anyone else really cares when it's that or cheaper gas and
| employment.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| It depends, for example the Ducks Unlimited organization
| restores and saves a lot of marsh land that may be used for
| development but generally an oil/gas company wouldn't find
| the land very useful.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Except the government is interested in renewables out
| competing oil, not starving the market of energy before the
| world transitions.
|
| The latter leads to higher prices and discontent.
| [deleted]
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, the subtext here is that BLM isn't really selling the
| land for any purpose but allowing extraction if you want.
| They're selling the land specifically for someone to start
| drilling.
|
| There's not really a good way around this because even if there
| it was ruled that BLM couldn't refuse the lease next time they
| would just change the lease terms to be really really
| expensive, far more than conservationist movements could
| afford, and then offer a rebate once extraction began.
| some_random wrote:
| -"Hi, I have an old black walnut tree that for whatever reason I
| want/need removed. Since the value of the wood is higher than the
| cost of removing a tree, I'm taking bids for who to allow to do
| the job."
|
| +"That sounds like a good deal, how about $250?"
|
| -"Deal! When will you start cutting?"
|
| +"Oh, I'm not going to remove it! It's too beautiful, I'm just
| going to leave it be in your property"
|
| The government isn't trying to raise money by selling oil rights,
| it's trying to get someone to produce domestic oil by allowing
| access to federal lands.
| [deleted]
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Then, the government will tax you so they can pay someone to
| remove that carbon from the atmosphere.
|
| "Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in
| time we created a lot of value for shareholders."
| jdasdf wrote:
| I fully agree here. If you want to buy a plot of land, and leave
| it totally untouched, you should be able to, no matter what that
| land is, where it is, and what it could be used for.
|
| I hold the same stance on being able to own an empty field in the
| middle of a high cost of living city, when that field could
| easily be built up into an apartment. Its your property, you
| should be the one deciding.
|
| Ultimately private property ownership rights should be
| strengthened, and that is something that both conservationists,
| and those who seek to make use of the land for their own profit
| should agree on.
|
| Unfortunately, like with many things, people are often jealous
| and unhappy about letting others do as they like with their own
| things. This should always be called out for the immoral greed
| that it is.
|
| There are certainly arguments to be made that property owners
| have some responsibility to those around them, and society in
| general.
|
| I don't think anyone would make a serious argument that a
| property owner should simply be able to store large amounts of
| fuel and explosives in the middle of town without taking any
| precautions to avoid accidental explosions that would harm
| peoples lives.
|
| But the problem that i often see is that the restrictions and
| responsibilities grow and grow and grow, until they are entirely
| disconnected with the goals of public protection of life and
| property.
|
| No, there is no legitimate reason for zoning. No, there is no
| legitimate reason to prevent or enforce resource collection. No,
| there is no legitimate reason to mandate specific color to be
| used when painting a building, or that said building follows any
| specific design requirements or safety requirements.
|
| There are certainly certain requirements that should be enforced
| in order to protect other quiet enjoyment of their own land. For
| example, it makes perfect sense that noise levels be set, or
| emissions standards be set and that property owners should be
| responsible for ensuring that their property is not throwing out
| noise or emissions onto the commons and other properties above
| said standards.
|
| That's perfectly legitimate.
|
| But enforcing how those owners adhere to those standards is not.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > No, there is no legitimate reason for zoning. No, there is no
| legitimate reason to prevent or enforce resource collection.
| No, there is no legitimate reason to mandate specific color to
| be used when painting a building, or that said building follows
| any specific design requirements or safety requirements.
|
| You've established that you draw the line at "store large
| amounts of fuel and explosives", but this would allow me to buy
| a house in a quiet neighbourhood, tear it down and build an
| auto shop, a 24/7 manufacturing facility or a night club.
| aww_dang wrote:
| A purely private system could be imagined where individuals
| could seek redress for damages.
|
| The private property argument generally doesn't give an owner
| the right to interfere with another property owner's use of
| property. Private courts and contract law are often promoted
| as part of this argument. Even within the public law system
| there are noise ordinances.
|
| One difference might be where a manufacturing facility is
| causing quantifiable damages in the form of pollution, yet a
| public regulator such as the EPA determines that the
| pollution is within their guidelines. In this case the
| property owner may have little or no recourse against the
| pollution. Another case could be the state building an
| interstate highway through a neighborhood, causing pollution
| and diminishing the quality of life for residents.
|
| https://www.nyclu.org/en/campaigns/i-81-story
| jdasdf wrote:
| > this would allow me to buy a house in a quiet
| neighbourhood, tear it down and build an auto shop, a 24/7
| manufacturing facility or a night club.
|
| And that's just fine.
|
| If they are causing noise above the standard, or causing
| emissions, then then should surely be brought to answer for
| that. But if they take precautions to ensure noise levels
| aren't above the standard (which should be the same
| everywhere), there is no problem at all to build a nightclub
| there.
| kansface wrote:
| You presuppose that there is ever any sort of enforcement
| for noise pollution, or any other form of the degradation
| of the commons.
| jdasdf wrote:
| That issue is solved by not restricting enforcement to
| police.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| TFA is about _public land_ that is not for sale, only up for
| potential leasing arrangments to allow for resource extraction.
|
| Questions about property rights do not apply (certainly not to
| the same extent)
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Societies decide what they deem "legitimate reason", so you can
| like or dislike it - if you cannot get enough people on your
| side, unlikely to matter.
|
| And no, sitting on a resource and not using it is - at least in
| edge cases - not ok. Leaving other people to die because you
| refuse to extract something life saving on your property might
| push the bounds of propriety, for example.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The property rights issue at question here is if the owner
| should be able to preferentially sell or or lease it to uses it
| aligns with, and not to the highest bidder.
|
| E. G. If you have a plot in the city and want to lease it to an
| interest you agree with.
| jdasdf wrote:
| They certainly should, but once sold, it's sold and you have
| no further interest in it.
| pc86 wrote:
| Typically yes, but isn't the issue here that they purchased
| natural resource extraction rights as well? Those
| explicitly disappear after a certain amount of time if
| they're not used.
| pc86 wrote:
| Private citizens and corporations can absolutely do this,
| provided they're not discriminating against a protected
| class. A covenant or warranty on a deed are some ways of
| doing this, but you can also just not sell.
|
| I think a bigger question in this instance is whether the
| government should be making these types of pseudo-moral
| decisions or if they should be bound by more restrictions
| than the average citizen/corporation.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I think the author is not _wrong_ , that if land if offered up
| for extractive use, it must be offered on the same terms for non-
| extractive use or non-use. But in general, this is land that
| should not be offered up for use at all.
|
| In _The Ministry For the Future_ , Kim Stanley Robinson presented
| another option: an investment vehicle backed by proof of carbon
| sequestration. One way of earning this carboncoin was to own or
| buy oil/gas/coal resources and legally commit to keeping them in
| the ground. As demand for fossil fuels declined, generating
| carboncoin quickly became a more profitable investment than
| trying to extract and sell fossil fuels.
| mherdeg wrote:
| How do you measure whether these investment vehicles are having
| the desired effect? I think folks were generally not thrilled
| about driving a train full of biofuel back and forth between
| the US and Canadian border even though it apparently generated
| a very profitable amount of renewable identification number
| credits ( https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/biofuel-credits-
| behind-myster... ).
| NoGravitas wrote:
| That's always the problem, isn't it? Existing carbon offsets
| are basically fraudulent.
| splistud wrote:
| The best part is that those who believe that extraction
| leases are rife with 'corporation giveaways' don't see that
| carbon offsets will be just as fraudulent.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| I think paying for "conservation" on public lands is not nearly
| as straightforward as the article implies. "conservationists" are
| not always doing things in the interest of better land use. In
| Bozeman there's a wealthy neighborhood ($3m+ per house) that
| outbid the logging companies for the BLM forestry contract
| adjacent to their land. They claimed it was for natural habitat
| conservation, but the land has become completely impassable with
| bramble. It used to be a fantastic place to hike and ski tour in
| the winter, but it's become so overgrown it's hard to access by
| human or wild animal. We were really looking forward to the
| improved access to the land once the forest was harvested. The
| director of forestry for the area had a really thoughtful plan
| for harvesting the land. Completely aside from the economic loss
| from not harvesting, there wasn't a conservation benefit either.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Kind of like Yosemite is a bit of a nature theme park, with hippy
| tent city. I was trying to take a photo a of a deer and lined up
| two other photographers in line. One shot, 3 kills.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Do you know how much it costs to camp inside Yosemite? If you
| do, your definition of "hippy" differs a little from mine.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| No I don't, it was a few years back. And my cousin paid for
| the campsite. How much? I live in Canada, and its like $55
| here, add in firewood, and its almost like staying in a
| hotel. I'm actually kind of outraged by this, because I think
| it puts extended campaign out of reach of many poorer inner
| city families. In a country filled with nature! Even Soviet
| Russia tried to make this affordable for its poorest
| citizens. Forget about Russian dacha equivalent cottage in
| Canada. It will set you back a few hundred thousand dollars,
| need permits, minimum size, zoning and yearly taxes. It's
| mad.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| US$26-US$36 a night at present (which, to be fair, is
| actually cheaper than I thought; I was there a couple of
| months ago but camped outside the park). Still not really
| hippy territory in my mind.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Wouldn't this issue resolve itself if public lands were privately
| owned instead?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| It would probably end up looking like western Texas, where
| resource companies go through and buy the mineral rights from
| the property owners. It's rare to find a plot of land where you
| actually own anything you dig out of the ground anymore.
| em-bee wrote:
| not really. if you are sitting on a rich resource that the
| country wants to use to boost its economy then they will find
| ways to force you to open up
| woeirua wrote:
| While this is an interesting idea, it's pretty comical to think
| that conservationists could ever come up with enough money to
| seriously outbid oil and gas companies in lucrative areas. The
| only reason this person was able to get this lease is that this
| area is uneconomic to produce from.
|
| Also, the BLM and other leasing organizations use these leases as
| a way to incentivize develompent in rural areas. Everyone
| involved has a strong incentive to ensure that leases are
| actually used for something.
|
| As an aside, here's a paper [1] that summarizes the tax revenue
| that individual states receive from oil and gas production. Any
| longterm solution to oil and gas production needs to seriously
| address how these tax bases (especially in rural areas) stay
| stable or grow with decreasing oil and gas production. Otherwise
| you should expect increased resistance to decarbonization as
| people literally see their schools close, roads deteriorate, etc.
|
| [1] https://media.rff.org/documents/RFF-DP-16-50.pdf
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| >it's pretty comical to think that conservationists could ever
| come up with enough money to seriously outbid oil and gas
| companies in lucrative areas. The only reason this person was
| able to get this lease is that this area is uneconomic to
| produce from.
|
| Not a hard disagree, but it certainly gets easier the less
| economic it is to produce/extract from the area. A good example
| would be coal, where plants in the US are already being closed.
| Expensive? Yes. But probably cheaper due to market dynamics
| and, for someone interested in conservation/preservation, has
| more bang for their buck, given the miserable nature of coal.
| mcguire wrote:
| You might think so, but the lease purchase isn't exactly
| competitive. I did some poking around and, anecdotally, the
| lowest lease I could find was $11-$27/acre last year in
| California (https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-drilling-
| california/u-s-...). The highest was $15,000/acre
| (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-
| drilling/drille...) (Last year was a bad one for petroleum
| capitol expenses.)
|
| Overall, the BLM had 26,600,000 acres under lease in 2020 (down
| from 47M in 2008) (https://www.blm.gov/programs-energy-and-
| minerals-oil-and-gas...) and received an average of
| $444,000,000 (" _Total Receipts: The total amount of money
| generated from the Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale. This
| includes rents, bonuses, and administrative fees._ ") per year
| over the last 4 years or about $17/acre.
| (https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-gas)
|
| BLM royalties, well, it's a confusing article.
| (https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-
| gas...) Being generous, the BLM received $4B in 2018 on roughly
| the same 26M acres; that is $153/acre.
|
| For comparison, the Nature Conservancy received about $1B in
| 2019 (https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-
| are/accountabil...).
|
| According to the paper you link to, the value of the petroleum
| was $269B (total value) and state/local tax revenues and the
| states' share of federal leases were about $28B (~10% tax rate;
| not bad).[1] Unfortunately it doesn't have the acreage that
| produced it. Being really, incredibly conservative and assuming
| the only land involved is BLM's 26M acres, that's $1077/acre.
|
| [1] According to the BLM, states receive half of its revenue;
| according to that paper, that amounted to $1.5B in 2013 which
| seems pretty reasonable according to the BLM numbers above.
| neltnerb wrote:
| So if you're a big enough company that you can basically
| assume that a lease will be available whenever you want
| (which makes sense for a large number of leases, turnover
| must exist), you just bid enough to justify it once something
| looks worth the risk.
|
| And until it's worth the risk, leasing it is just a donation
| since no one would be trying to extract things from it
| anyway.
|
| It does start to sound like a corporate giveaway where only
| big companies ever really win. On a per-parcel basis it seems
| like it is beneficial (i.e. a local group maybe can keep a
| particular area protected), but on aggregate it doesn't seem
| likely to do much. The companies that want to extract
| resources have many options and lots of time to wait.
| lisper wrote:
| > it's pretty comical to think that conservationists could ever
| come up with enough money to seriously outbid oil and gas
| companies in lucrative areas
|
| It would be less comical if there were a global carbon tax that
| reflected the actual costs of the externalities of fossil
| fuels. And yes, I know that's not likely either, but a boy can
| dream.
| ootsootsoots wrote:
| The free market of voters is not clamoring for such things.
|
| Frankly I don't see a solution aside from labor constraining
| supply.
|
| Teacher strikes worked.
|
| Internet blackouts stopped SOPA.
|
| Country by of and for the people who keep putting up with
| bullshit.
|
| Be men and tell your bosses you're keeping your laptop shut
| until things change.
|
| A lot less real risk in such a revolution.
|
| Or do as comfortable, affluent folks do and wait until it
| actually effects you.
|
| New technology, same old biology.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| They would then demand a tax on the sun as well.
|
| There is an old satirical essay by the French economist
| Frederic Bastiat on how the candlemakers demanded protection
| from the Sun:
|
| Economic Sophisms and the candlemakers' petition Contained
| within Economic Sophisms is the satirical parable known as
| the candlemakers' petition in which candlemakers and tallow
| producers lobby the Chamber of Deputies of the French July
| Monarchy (1830-1848) to block out the Sun to prevent its
| unfair competition with their products.[9] Also included in
| the Sophisms is a facetious petition to the king asking for a
| law forbidding the usage of everyone's right hand, based on a
| presumption by some of his contemporaries that more
| difficulty means more work and more work means more wealth.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat
| handrous wrote:
| How does a call to add the costs of negative externalities
| to product prices have anything to do with what you posted?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Or the sun? How does generating energy from sun add
| carbon to the atmosphere, besides looking at like supply
| chain production of panels.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| It's not necessarily that it's an uneconomic lease (I don't
| have any facts). But that initial payment is not the value paid
| to the government. The lease bid is premised on the risk of
| exploration, and the huge royalty payments to the government
| that accrue from any production. Tying up the ground with the
| initial bid without exploration and production locks away all
| of that value. To be equivalent, the environmental bid would
| have to offer the NPE of all of the royalty revenues that would
| have otherwise been produced, discounted for the likelihood of
| discovery. And there's no way they could afford that. Natural
| resource production comes at some cost, but it also produces
| huge benefits to society. Nobody wants to see a hole in the
| ground, but everybody wants schools and roads . . . and, yes,
| gasoline. Lease bid fees are not relevant to the conversation.
| woeirua wrote:
| Most areas, especially in the contiguous United States, have
| already been explored to some extent. These ultra cheap
| leases reflect the fact that the likelihood of economically
| producing hydrocarbons in this area is extremely unlikely.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Or, the ultra-cheap leases represent giveaways of public
| goods to corporate interests. Political consideration of
| these deals is more about personal+crony enrichment than it
| is about generating public tax revenue.
| mcguire wrote:
| Royalty payments aren't really huge. Tax revenues _are,_ but
| note that the environmental leaves the petroleum _in the
| ground,_ where it can be recovered later.
|
| Those huge benefits come with huge externalized expenses,
| too.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| What do you mean by production? I assume you mean extraction,
| not production. These companies cannot synthesize fossil
| fuels at scale.
|
| In which case, the no-extract bid has the added benefit of
| not taking the resource out of the public's hands. The
| royalty is a pittance compared to the true value of the
| publicly owned resource.
| alach11 wrote:
| > The only reason this person was able to get this lease is
| that this area is uneconomic to produce from.
|
| This is an important point. This much acreage would have cost
| $28 million in the Permian Basin.
| Iolaum wrote:
| Overall taxes paid to governments are not going down. Hence
| it's __just__ a matter of government re-allocating taxes from
| something that is growing to something that is shrinking.
|
| I really don't see why, for example, school funding should only
| come from oil proprerty taxes and not from other tax streams as
| well.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| This is actually really common with natural resource extraction
| rights (not just in the US) - use them or lose it.
|
| What is a bit surprising is that the same problems that show up
| with land use/housing, i.e. someone just sitting on a valuable
| resource, not using it, and watching prices go up is not
| considered an issue here. We cannot just allow all resources to
| be owned by organizations or people with no willingness to use
| them. So this is not something super simple to solve in the
| bigger scheme of things.
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| Land Value Tax.
| em-bee wrote:
| well there are places where this is changing. adding a tax for
| people buying houses as investment instead of living there,
| etc.
|
| so cities are starting to realize that unused housing is a
| problem and are making moves to do something about it.
| wrycoder wrote:
| At least in the Eastern US, this is a problem.
|
| While I love and support open spaces and natural habitat, at
| some point, the trend to buy up property and put it into
| permanent conservation results in only the wealthy being able
| to afford the remaining housing amid the beautiful, quiet
| greenery.
| closeparen wrote:
| In California they don't bother to buy it up. They just get
| public policy implemented so that the owners can't use it for
| anything. I would be over the moon if conservation interests
| were limited to land they owned.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you want to live amid beautiful quiet greenery, what else
| are you supposed to do?
|
| Yes, it costs more money to live there, because it's more
| desirable and of limited supply. You can't really buy enough
| homes and lots to form a 10 acre plot and smash all but one
| of the homes and replant the greenery, or if you could, it's
| not cost or time effective vs buying a 10 acre plot that's
| already greenery or if that's not available, buying a small
| plot surrounded or at least adjacent to a conservation
| limited plot.
| mherdeg wrote:
| > We cannot just allow all resources to be owned by
| organizations or people with no willingness to use them.
|
| Should we allow people to use resources really, really slowly?
| Like can you buy natural gas wells and instead of capping them
| (an expensive operation required by regulation when you're
| done) just extract a tiny amount of gas? The story in
| https://www.bloomberg.com/features/diversified-energy-natura...
| was fascinating because it's not clear that that company has
| done anything illegal, just found a very profitable niche.
| trutannus wrote:
| I think this article misses an important aspect of
| conversationalist thinking: a lot of them want the land to be
| _completely untouched_. Had a legal battel with conservationists
| trying to close of a section of property at some point, and part
| of the objective from them was to prevent the land owners from
| using the land and somehow harming it as a result. They lost,
| however it was enlightening to see a different mindset.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| I worked in New Mexico in the 90s with a 'gravel' operation
| that was selling off the gravel left over from mining
| operations decades and decades before. Tall piles of just rock
| we loaded into trucks and sold.
|
| At some point they discovered that the old timers left enough
| gold in the tailings piles that it made sense to use modern
| techniques to reclaim that already out of the ground gold
| before selling the gravel. That triggered a multi-year legal
| fight to 'stop them from raping the land through gold mining'.
| Not only did they want the 'mining operation' stopped, now they
| also wanted the current owners to 'properly' remediate ancient
| mines scattered through the property. Some of these mine were
| legitimately historical places where South American's were
| coming north to mine Turquoise and Silver several hundred years
| ago.
|
| We ended up not only losing access to the tailings piles for
| gravel use, but were then required to clean up the mess left by
| mining operations that had not existed for a hundred years or
| more. It shaped the way I view most people that claim to want
| to save the environment to this day. There is rarely any middle
| ground anymore and has become and all or nothing platform.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| In New England similar groups buy up land and just let it
| sit, maybe maintain a hiking trail through it.
|
| New England went glaciers -> tundra -> grasslands -> forests
| managed by native peoples -> un-managed forests.
|
| The ecological state theses environmentalists are promoting
| is basically the status quo of the early 1700s and late 1800s
| through present day. It's hard to define what the "natural"
| state is since it went from periods of rapid change to
| various states shaped by human activity with little in
| between. Generally speaking most people consider the forests
| as they would have existed as managed by the natives prior to
| European settlement as the state that is most worthy of
| reconstruction.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You missed a step or two in your historical timeline
|
| glaciers -> tundra -> grasslands -> forests managed by
| native peoples -> decimated forests due to settler
| activities -> depopulation and deindustrialization -> un-
| managed forests
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Yeah, I specifically ended the timeline around 1650 or
| so. Basically once European diseases showed up there has
| been no stable state, just a bunch of 50yr states. Though
| what we do know is that the impenetrable forested
| thickets of the late 1600s and early 1700s are basically
| the same as what we have now (with less non-native
| species) to grow up after you cut down all the multi-
| hundred year old trees for lumber. The fact that we
| routinely clear cut any given parcel and the average
| parcel of land has not burnt in hundreds of years gives
| us very different forests that what would have grown up
| on un-managed land in say the year 1500 or would have
| grown up in the immediate absence of natives circa 1630.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Fair enough, so:
|
| glaciers -> tundra -> grasslands -> forests managed by
| native peoples -> unmanaged forests -> decimated forests
| due to settler activities -> depopulation and
| deindustrialization -> un-managed forests
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| More or less but the level of resolution there doesn't
| really capture the rapid changes that happened after the
| natives were kicked out. Settlers would cut some lands
| while simultaneously ignoring others. Some areas that
| were historically grasslands thanks to continued native
| settlement reverted to forests. Some forests were clear
| cut for farm and pasture. But then they turned around and
| selectively logged some of the newly grown up forests,
| and repeated grazing/farming altered the substrates so
| when pastures were left and grown over in the 1850s
| different stuff grew back. And remember, basically any
| time you get a mature forest prior to 1980 or so someone
| comes along and logs it within a couple decades. And all
| of this is happening in a patchwork manner and the
| environment is inter-connected so (for example)
| decimating a bird species in most of its range will
| effect the plants it caries ability to show up on land
| left to grow over in its range. Then you have stuff like
| the chestnut blight, etc, etc. It's really hard to paint
| accurately with a broad brush after Europeans showed up.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > they would have existed as managed by the natives prior
| to European settlement as the state that is most worthy of
| reconstruction
|
| This is magical thinking; the First Nations are, and were,
| human. The Huron, for instance, would move their
| settlements once they had "used up" all the readily
| available resources (mostly game animals) in the area. The
| First Nations were only better "custodians" of the land
| because they lacked the means to abuse the land as
| thoroughly as European "settlers".
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Yes, not all the land
| was being actively maintained at any one time but the
| 200ft pines, abundance of fruit/nut bearing plants and
| game species that come with them is a direct result of
| native land management practices throughout the broader
| region despite any particular square not necessarily
| being actively managed at any particular point in time.
|
| Relocating (and they didn't relocate far, remember this
| is inhabited land after all, you can't just set up shop
| on the neighbor gang's turf) is the native equivalent of
| leaving a field fallow. But because the natives were
| working with animal and plant species the feedback loop
| is potentially decades long (depending on local
| resources) vs farmers who will leave a field fallow every
| few years.
|
| I agree that they would have left the place barren had
| they had the means but you have to consider that what
| they were doing was stable on a 500+yr timeline which is
| a pretty good run.
|
| My point here is that the impenetrable thicket a lot of
| environmentalists want to maintain is not particularly
| representative of "peak forest". I'm sure they all want
| to see blueberries and 200ft pines but just doing nothing
| won't achieve that because that's not a state that new
| england forests can (and certainly not today since we've
| got all sorts of invasive species and pests) get
| themselves into without human intervention either
| directly on a particular parcel of land or on enough near
| proximity land to influence the ecology of the parcel in
| question.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's far from clear that native Americans lacked the
| means of initial European settlers.
|
| I agree that we should not indulge in "magical thinking",
| but non-American cultures display a wide variety of
| sensibilities with respect to defining "used up". There
| are traditions even within Europe that are relatively
| respectful of carrying capacity, but they have mostly
| been trampled on by industrialization and capitalism.
| It's entirely possible that native American resource
| management was closer to these older European traditions
| than those of the last 200 years.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Well, don't forget that the timeline for most forested
| areas would look more like "forests managed by native
| peoples -> land clear-cut by European settlers -> un-
| managed forests," though I'm sure "un-managed" is debatable
| here; humans never left.
|
| Much of New England was clear-cut, either to harvest old-
| growth timber or for farmland. The forests we see today
| date to after the westward expansion, when farmers left the
| rocky New England soils for easier tilling in the Midwest
| and Great Plains states. So really, when people want to
| conserve the land in that state, they're saying "let's let
| the new-growth forests come back and maybe become old-
| growth forests again."
| mistrial9 wrote:
| UCLA Law Professor publishes a paper in Science journal, writes
| an intro for the general reader.
|
| What is said here is true for US Forest Service land in
| California, based on a layman's reading of some relevent
| documents. The forests were declared to be valuable in their
| utility to the market, then the legal system was built around
| that founding principle. Extractive industry is a greater good
| for society than the dirt and bugs that were already there.
|
| Those times are past. We are on a trajectory to see doubling of
| extinctions by some measures, along with fundemental changes in
| plant populations, rainfall and human habitability. Sure,
| Canadians can rejoice in Calgary for the coming long summers, but
| the rest of the world, essentially, its not going to be pretty.
|
| This article is US-centric and thats OK, other places need to
| define their own response. This is a sad day but at least, be
| proactive with what stands right now.
| bell-cot wrote:
| If the oil & gas rights on >1,100 acres were sold at auction
| for only $2,500...that suggests that (at least in the minds of
| the other bidders) there is d*mned little worth the effort of
| trying to extract there, to generate any "greater good for
| society".
|
| So why not let the tree-huggers buy up leases on a bunch of
| neigh-worthless land? Far better than them spending their money
| on lawyers, to sue real oil & gas companies over the real wells
| that they're busy drilling & running in worthwhile locations.
|
| /conservative viewpoint
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There were no other bidders.
| indymike wrote:
| Some of something is better than all of nothing.
| athenot wrote:
| > The high bidder, Tempest Exploration Co. LLC, paid $2,500 for
| the 1,120 acre lease by credit card and began paying annual
| rental fees. What soon did prove remarkable, though, was the
| revelation that the company had been created by the
| environmentalist, Terry Tempest Williams. She intended to keep
| the oil in the ground. BLM promptly canceled the lease.
|
| I wonder if the right way to hack this is not publicly state that
| you want to keep the oil in the ground but be very, very bad at
| extracting it... taking years to "start", digging with a shovel
| once in a while. Basically doing nothing while claiming to do
| something.
| prox wrote:
| Sounds like your average bureaucracy then.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Here, it's working correctly. The point of paying for these
| permits is not to extract maximum money from the citizens who
| own the land; it is to make sure the land is being used.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Reminds me of Steve Black's story about using scaffolding for
| adverts: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-so-much-
| scaffolding-up-in...
| dugmartin wrote:
| I've seen something similar where I live. Most towns have
| sign ordinances only allowing up to 4'x8' signs. The hack is
| to buy a broken down panel truck and wrap the cargo box with
| your sign and then park it in front of your business.
| Fiahil wrote:
| This approach also works extremely well if you want to stall or
| cancel a project in a big corporation for political reasons.
|
| Just embed one of your engineer in their team to gain
| knowledge, but fail to deliver on almost all items except a
| few. You will end-up pitting "your" exec against "their", and
| it will take them forever to solve the problem. If conflict
| resolution looms, just send everyone in summer or winter
| vacation for several weeks.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This used to be an exploited loophole. Wealthy people would use
| inexpensive "mineral exploration" leases to get long-term
| control of areas of Federal land that they wanted to use for
| other purposes. The only real cost was maintaining the bare
| minimum fiction that they were doing mineral exploration -- dig
| the occasional hole in some corner of the property, move a bit
| of dirt around. Meanwhile, they were doing all kinds of other
| personal things with the land and building structures enabled
| by having the lease.
|
| The US DoI started clamping down on the use of fake mineral
| leases a few decades ago and put policies in place to strongly
| discourage this kind of abuse.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The idea behind it is that the government _should_ be setting
| quotas, limits, divisions, etc based on maximizing _conservation_
| (not _preservation_ ). They should be preserving some areas, like
| wilderness areas. They should also be allowing limited/regulated
| use of some resources in some areas to support industry, jobs,
| conservation, etc (and should be done in a sustainable way).
|
| So if they are doing it right, there shouldn't be a need to have
| people buy the lease and not use it. At the same time, it doesn't
| make too much sense care if people don't use the lease so long as
| they pay the money (except in the scope of organizing to
| manipulate prices and markets, and this doesn't cover missed
| royalties/taxes).
|
| I guess it really comes down to debating if we should be
| balancing multiple uses and group interests, or if we should be
| choosing as a society (really an oligarchy in my
| opinion/experience) to pick a winning position/group/use and ban
| all others.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| So maybe just bid on the land and be a super ineffective fossil
| fuel company. Pump one barrel of oil a year...
| openasocket wrote:
| There's a ton about public land usage that has to be reformed.
| There's a law, dating back to the days of the Gold Rush, that's
| still on the books. If public lands are determined to have hard
| minerals (e.g. gold) someone can stake a claim and purchase the
| lands, and that overrides any previous usage of the lands, like
| leases for grazing or logging. The law also fixes the price per
| acre when purchasing public land through this method. And said
| rate hasn't been updated since the law was passed, so it's
| embarrassingly low, like $150 per acre IIRC.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-20 23:02 UTC)