Yellowstone National Park is giving high priority to upgrading employee housing. That is proving a good strategy, writes Shawn Regan of PERC in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. It is essential for keeping quality employees who are often alone or nearly alone in isolated parts of the 2.2 million-acre park. When he became Yellowstone’s superintendent in…
Tag: Parks
Biden’s ’30 by 30′ Plan: 30 percent of U.S. Land ‘Protected’ by 2030
President Biden plans to raise the percentage of land “protected” in the United States from about 12 percent to 30 percent over the next nine years. That would mean protecting an additional area more than four times the size of California. From the White House fact sheet: “The order commits to the goal of conserving…
Oops! Maybe Biden Can’t Cut Back on Oil and Gas Drilling, After All
Sweeping election promises are easy, especially when the media don’t examine them. But once the election is over (or nearly over), the truth starts coming out. Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni write in the Washington Post that, yes, last February Biden told a New Hampshire town hall: “And by the way, no more drilling on…
Nuclear energy . . . the Great American Outdoors bill . . . Anesthetics can change climate?
Nuclear energy may be safer than we think, says a new study from the Global Warming Policy Foundation. A reason to support the Great American Outdoors bill, just passed by the Senate: it would fund maintenance of our national parks, says PERC’s Brian Yablonski on Fox News. Religious diversion? The Vatican recommends divestment from fossil…
Monumental Abuse of the Antiquities Act, Part I
The 1906 Antiquities Act was one of the most ill-considered laws ever written, giving presidents dictatorial power to declare large swaths of the public’s land off limits to a variety of uses normally allowed on federal lands. Under President Barack Obama, this power turned into a monument acquisition spree.
The Antiquities Act grants the president discretionary power “to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest … to be national monuments.” Congress originally passed the law as an emergency measure to prevent the looting of antiquities on Indian lands. It was intended, as the debate surrounding it shows, only to be used when public lands or artifacts faced immediate threats of destruction and the normal pace of congressional action might take too long to prevent harm.
What Went Wrong with the Obama-Era “Waters” Rule?
In his new PERC policy paper, R. David Simpson reports on his experience reviewing the cost-benefit analysis of an Obama-era regulation defining “WOTUS.” (In Washington lingo, that is “waters of the United States.”) Simpson, an economist formerly with the Environmental Protection Agency, expresses regret that he did not press harder to improve the EPA’s cost-benefit analysis of the rule, issued in 2015. The rule was designed to extend the federal government’s jurisdiction over U.S. waters under the Clean Water Act, bringing relatively isolated streams and wetlands under government regulation.
“Should EPA Reverse Its Endangerment Finding on Greenhouse Gases?”
Treating carbon dioxide as an air pollutant is somewhat ironic since carbon dioxide is well-known as a gas that enriches plant growth. Undoubtedly, there is more to come.