Conservation should be allowed to pay its own way on public lands
legal-planet.org
legal-planet.org
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.
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.
Those huge benefits come with huge externalized expenses, too.
This is an important point. This much acreage would have cost $28 million in the Permian Basin.
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.
There is an old satirical essay by the French economist Frédéric 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
+"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.
"Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."
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.
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.
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
On the other hand, I can't help but think those wealthy folks are setting themselves up for something like California fire season...
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.
The latter leads to higher prices and discontent.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
I don't know how concerned those people were with sustainability or with being custodians of the land. But, even if they cared nought about such things, that need not mean that the state of the forest during their reign is not a worthy target for modern-day conservationists.
glaciers -> tundra -> grasslands -> forests managed by native peoples -> decimated forests due to settler activities -> depopulation and deindustrialization -> un-managed forests
glaciers -> tundra -> grasslands -> forests managed by native peoples -> unmanaged forests -> decimated forests due to settler activities -> depopulation and deindustrialization -> un-managed forests
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."
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.
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.
E. G. If you have a plot in the city and want to lease it to an interest you agree with.
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.
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.
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.
If a police officer can issue a ticket for making too much noise, or bring someone to court for polluting too much there is no reason why any other citizen should be prohibited from doing the same on the exact same terms.
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.
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.
Questions about property rights do not apply (certainly not to the same extent)
Ah yes, the classic "calling people out for immoral greed is the real immoral greed"
This is like if I bought all the vegetables in the world and decided to bury them at a secret location. Well of course, if you didn't like that, it's not because your entire family is starving to death, it would be because you were the one being greedy and immoral, and you should mind your own business.
You're not arguing against authoritarianism, you're actually saying it's good, you're mostly just defining who the authoritarians should be.
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.
so cities are starting to realize that unused housing is a problem and are making moves to do something about it.
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.
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.
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.