Yes the resident logic is a bait and switch for further developments. Wilderness should stay wild. Leave it as is and do nothing. It's amazing how many powerful politicians and obviously lobbied individuals keep trying to change that.
*: subject to the land swap, which Carter argues is illegal
We did.
Congress used our tax dollars to purchase Alaska and then later on carved out part of that purchase as this reserve. It is in no way more their land than it is the New Yorker’s or the Californian’s.
When you don’t have sole ownership of a piece of property you don’t have sole say in its use. I am sorry that’s Alaskans feel upset that they don’t have the right to use our property as they see fit
In many cases, the "people" who want to develop things are actually not people but rather businesses or agents of businesses.
Go to rural or remote places which have been upgraded and you will find locals lamenting about the changes which invited industry. Many people like their environment undisturbed.
This is wildly incorrect. Alaskans have vastly higher relative representation in the federal government than New Yorkers, and it really isn't close. It's something like 3x as many house/senate votes per capita!
It's just not absolute. New Yorker are Americans, just like Alaskans, and so New Yorkers get a say about what to do with American resources like federal wilderness areas, just like Alaskans get a say with how to regulate New York guns shops, medical procedures or tax rates.
We call that "democracy", and while it's currently sorta falling apart in this country (due in no small part to the kind of absolutist arguments being deployed right here in this subthread) it's the best scheme we've picked. People really need to start finding ways to live with it instead of burning everything down.
I got to see this first hand during the Barnette Shale gas drilling boom in the mid-2000s. As Texas, particularly the DFW area was very pro-oil&gas, many people were very much in favor of fracking and the possibilities it opened up.
Many of those people stopped being in favor once actual wells appeared in their neighborhoods. At one point I could see five different wells from the second floor of my suburban home. Their noise was audible all the time, and our roads became clogged with heavy trucks delivering liquids and materials necessary for the fracking process. Oh, our roads got destroyed rapidly from those trucks as well.
The few landowners who got lucrative mineral lease deals were very happy, but "the people" living all around were definitely not happy. So a small few individuals profited well, a few oil and gas companies profited very well, and the general population suffered.
That was even before the earthquakes started.
Keep in mind also that "the people" are generally speaking rather like sheep -- not stupid necessarily, but given to following the herd. "Everybody knows" that Texas is an oil state, so it's only natural that you will be in favor of the industry your state is famous for. To go against that means you no longer fit with your neighbors, colleagues, church members, sometimes even your family (if you're from Texas you probably have a cousin who works in the industry) etc.
However, after negative outcomes appear too often or too clearly, the concept of "the people" fractures. I can't speak for the SF folks, but I would bet that there are quite some strong differences of opinion amongst them, just as there are people living in nature who are very opposed to development around them.
And you think “gentrification” (i.e. private sale/renting of private property in low-income neighborhoods to yuppies) is essentially the same as the President unilaterally deciding to sell part of a congressionally established National Wildlife Refuge to land developers, because you can find someone unhappy with either one?
The distinction you’re pointing to—federal versus private ownership, is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Nobody is “gifted” anything—the federal government leases or sells the land. And from the perspective of the local community the distinction doesn’t make a difference. They care about the economic development, not the legal particulars of the property rights. The legal particulars also don’t matter to the conservationists—their objection isn’t the price that the government is getting for these leases.
Hand-waving away all of the details because you think “jobs” outweigh “the legal particulars” is a free pass to support pretty much anything you personally prefer (or personally profit from), irrespective of its harms.
I’m sure it would create a lot of short term jobs if we leased Yellowstone to the Disney company to develop into a theme park. But “maximizing short-term local economic development” is not how we make decisions about what to do with congressionally established nature preserves.