Alaska Oil Exploration Loses by Three Votes...

[amicus]

Right effect, wrong cause.
I agree we need to use more nuclear energy. There are costs involved, but in the long run to me it seems cheaper than the effects of fossil fuels.
Fact is, Oil is a limited resource. This isn't the 1920s or 30s when the US was bursting with oil, more than we could handle. Every barrel is becoming more and more expensive. Drilling in Alaska is like putting a band-aid over a gaping flesh wound. The problems are consumption and long-term sustainability.

And even you can agree that Oil isn't going anywhere. The only people in any sort of rush are driven by greed and profit motive.

Well you may be right, but the fact is that we do not know the extent of oil reserves in Alaska.

I have conflicting research information on just how long oil reserves world wide will continue. There is a graph about peak production having passed some time ago which indicates we are in a decline; perhaps, perhaps not.

Canada is processing shale oil, which I understand contributes a healthy percentage to consumption there. Coal of which there is a 500 year supply still accounts for 52% of energy produced in the United States.

If you are saying on the long term, a few hundred years, I readily agree that fossibl fuels are on the way out.

However, conservation and restrictions on exploration and drilling do not add anything to our energy supplies.

I would prefer to see the market place function freely so that when demand and supply don't meet then a new source will draw captital, research and investment, whether it be hydrogen, geothermal, solar, wind or something entirely new.

I don't really care what it is, but I am certain that only the free marketplace will meet the demand in the future.

Government creates nothing but red tape.

nary a barrel of oil...


amicus...

 

[JamesSD]

Well you may be right, but the fact is that we do not know the extent of oil reserves in Alaska.

I have conflicting research information on just how long oil reserves world wide will continue. There is a graph about peak production having passed some time ago which indicates we are in a decline; perhaps, perhaps not.

Yeah, guessing Oil reserves is a lot like predicting the weather. You can take an educated guess, but at the end of the day it's only a guess.

I personally have high hopes for ethanol, especially with Genetically Modified corn. But then again, I'm a biochemist, so I'm probably biased.

 

[Liar]

Colly, the Democrats filibustered the legislation, requiring a 60 vote majority rather than a simple majority.

But that's not 'Dirty Politics' to you?'

amicus

I'd say it's both insane.

All I see is horse trading and loopholing. Don't you guys have rules? Due process? One issue is one issue. Anything else is as illegal as insider trading or bribes. We've had politicians doing time for trying to bundle issues under the table.

And filibustering? Everyone has say. Everyone has equal say. Then everyone shuts the fuck up and vote. Ok, there's the "tyranny of the majority" thing. I guess that's the curse you get for a two party system and regional representation.

I don't get how you get anything done. But it's fascinating none the less. Is there a good book or something 'bout it?

 

[gauchecritic]

Actually MiAmico we (that's the royal we) wouldn't care less if the billions of dollars profit made by the oil cartels were put into your own kind of governmental future. ie no government, by developing a boundless clean energy source which would in effect bring about their own demise. But they don't. They put the money in their pockets instead.

And just before you start quoting how much shell or ameco put into research just make sure your figures include percentages of profit. After tax.

And please don't go down the old worn and rutted road of individual investors expecting a return. Those particular investors have been dead more than a hundred years.

Oh yeah. Governments owning land. Whatever happened to Of, by and for the people?

 

[amicus]

I'd say it's both insane.

All I see is horse trading and loopholing. Don't you guys have rules? Due process? One issue is one issue. Anything else is as illegal as insider trading or bribes. We've had politicians doing time for trying to bundle issues under the table.

And filibustering? Everyone has say. Everyone has equal say. Then everyone shuts the fuck up and vote. Ok, there's the "tyranny of the majority" thing. I guess that's the curse you get for a two party system and regional representation.

I don't get how you get anything done. But it's fascinating none the less. Is there a good book or something 'bout it?

There was a book, if I recall, but it is out of date, forty years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advise_and_Consent

But yes, US politics at all levels is/are/always will be a gas.

We don't really have statesmen, as I used to think we should, rather we have those, 'politics is the art of compromise' kind of people that bubble up out of the middle class.

There is lots of old money. (Kennedy Clan) a lot of Ivy League Northeastern University 'good ole boys' connections, typical poitical hacks, Military people, the road to the White House is a study all its own.

amicus...

 

[amicus]

The intent of the constituion is to frame a government.

At no point, that I can see, is there any imperative to give up public lands to private exploitation. Can you point out the pertinent clauses that call for this?

Also, could you point out the relevant court decisions that make the national parks act unconsitutional?

http://www.nps.gov/legacy/legacy.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_park

Prologue

Fundamental ideas were first articulated in the 19th century by people from various countries. In 1810 the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a "sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy". The painter George Catlin, in his travels though the American West, wrote in 1832 that the Native Americans in the United States might be preserved: by some great protecting policy of government . . . in a magnificent park . . . A nation's park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!. Similar ideas were expressed in other countries – In Sweden, for instance, Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld made such a proposition in 1880.
[edit]

Establishment


Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park.

The first effort by any government to set aside such protective lands was in the United States, when President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on June 30, 1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias (later becoming the Yosemite National Park) to the state of California:
[T]he said State shall accept this grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall he held for public use, resort, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time.

In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first truly national park. When news of the natural wonders of the Yellowstone were first published, the land was part of a territory. Unlike Yosemite, there was no state government that could assume stewardship of the land, so the Federal Government took on direct responsibility for the park, a process formally completed in October 1, 1890.

Following the idea established in Yellowstone there soon followed parks in other nations. In Australia, the Royal National Park was established just south of Sydney in 1879. In Canada, Banff National Park (then known as Rocky Mountain National Park) became the first national park in 1887. New Zealand had its first national park in 1887. In Europe the first national park were a set of nine parks in Sweden in 1910.

After World War II, national parks were founded all over the world.



http://www.nature.nps.gov/Winks/



http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/magazine/sept2003/conservation.html

By Paul Smyth

Paul Smyth serves as deputy associate solicitor in the Division of Land and Water Resources in the Department of the Interior's Solicitor's Office.

This article explores the history of preservation and conservation law in this country as it relates to federal public resources and the federal land managing agencies responsible for those resources.

Withdrawal and reservation. As the public domain diminished, concerned leaders feared that special places such as Yellowstone could be lost to homesteading or mining unless the lands were withdrawn from the operation of the public land laws and reserved for a particular purpose, such as preservation as a national park. In response, after designating certain individual parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite in the late nineteenth century, Congress enacted the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916, creating the National Park Service to manage national park system lands.

Earlier, near the turn of the twentieth century, Congress had created the national forest system, also by withdrawing these lands from entry by homesteaders and miners and reserving them for particular purposes. In the Reclamation Act of 1902, Congress delegated authority to the Bureau of Reclamation to reserve dam sites from the public domain. Through all of these withdrawals and reservations, the massive disposal of the public domain into private hands was largely halted.

In the reservation era, federal lands were protected by wholly removing them from the operation of the public land laws. So, the lands were either subject to the Homestead Act, Mining Law, and other disposal laws or they were not. As the twentieth century progressed, however, Congress began giving the secretary of the interior more and varied tools by which to administer the public domain more flexibly. For example, the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 removed coal, oil, and gas from the operation of the General Mining Law and gave the secretary discretion whether to lease lands valuable for these minerals.


Lingering effects of historical policies. While FLPMA officially ended the disposal era in 1976, federal land managers are still dealing with the legacy of nineteenth-century disposal policy. For example, state land grants were never uniform blocks of land but often consisted of recurring patterns of land resulting from the rectangular survey system. Congress originally intended these land grants to generate income for fledgling states in support of schools and other governmental services. The State of Utah has a constitutional provision that state lands be held in trust and managed for income to support state schools. Over time, as Congress and the president withdrew and reserved federal lands, an increasing number of Utah's state lands were captured within these reservations.

These inholdings have created difficult and persistent federalism issues because the management mission of the surrounding federal reservations is incompatible with the legal requirements for the captured state tracts.

Railroad land grants are another problem inherited from the nineteenth century. Congress granted the railroads public lands along each side of the right-of-way along designated routes for railroad construction. Opponents of the grants had argued that these grants were a federal giveaway. As an answer to this criticism, Congress adopted a practice of granting only "every other" section along the rights-of-way. This solution created vast swaths of intermingled private and federal "checkerboard" lands throughout the country.

Another nineteenth-century legacy is abandoned mines and mine waste. Long-abandoned mines and mine tailing piles are still degrading watersheds throughout the country, often with no responsible parties available to pay for cleanup. Abandoned mines are not the only hazardous waste issues. For example, former defense sites have been transferred to federal civilian land managers for historic preservation or for wildlife habitat. These lands often are contaminated and require significant cleanup funds.



http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=AvmeXqXSn...lt.astate.edu/lsaunders/2773NotesProgress.htm

The above link provides an interesting history of a progressively activist period of time wherein many pieces of social legislation in addition to the National Parks Act were created…

I did not find the precise information I was searching for, but in some of the above readings you will find references to railroad land grants, homesteading grants, and other methods of disposal of land that basically refer to government as the ‘steward’ of the land until such time it was needed by the citizens.

A cursory exploration of these articles will give an idea of the evolution of ‘public’ as opposed to private ownership and management of lands and resources.




http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSre...305&CFTOKEN=88462461#Federal Land Acquisition


Federal Land Disposal
The initial policy of the federal government generally was to transfer ownership of many of the federal lands to private and state ownership to pay Revolutionary War soldiers, to finance the new government, and later to encourage the development of infrastructure and the settlement of the territories. In October 1780, even before the Articles of Confederation were ratified, the Continental Congress adopted a general policy for administering any lands transferred to the Federal Government:
The lands were to be "disposed of for the common benefit of the United States," were to be "settled and formed into distinct republican States, which shall become members of the Federal Union, and shall have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom and independence, as the other States . . . ." The lands were to "be granted and settled at such times and under such regulations as shall hereafter be agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled . . . ."10
The need for revenues to pay off the national debt was a driving force in the debate over land disposal systems.11 The Continental Congress balanced the need for revenue with other needs (e.g., compensating veterans and providing for public schools) in enacting the Land Ordinance of May 20, 1785, to address the lands in the Ohio Territory (north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania). After extensive debates, the Continental Congress essentially followed the New England approach for land disposal, and included several provisions that were used in most federal land disposal legislation over the subsequent 50 years, including: prior rectangular survey before disposal; public auction of the surveyed lands; a minimum price ($1 per acre, but typically payable in highly depreciated securities); and at least one section (1/36th) of every 6-mile square township "for the maintenance of public schools within the said township."12
Questions about the governance of these lands (including potential statehood) were resolved by the Continental Congress in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and at nearly the same time and in nearly the same manner, by the Constitutional Convention drafting the new U.S. Constitution. The decision was for initial administration by a federally appointed governor, followed by shared authority between an appointed governor and a representative assembly, culminating in statehood on an equal footing with the original states.
The Constitutional Convention also addressed concerns about statehood for the western lands. Robert Morris of Pennsylvania expressed apprehensions about the impact of "western" representation by unschooled frontiersmen on the developed east;13 this concern was addressed in Article IV, §3, which requires the consent of both Congress and the legislatures of the existing states from which a new state is created. Charles Carroll of Maryland noted the concern of small states that this consent provision, together with the existing state claims to the "western" lands (e.g., the Ohio Territory), could prevent eventual statehood for those lands, because the state claiming the land could deny its consent;14 this was then addressed in Article IV, §3, by the last phrase in the section — that nothing in the Constitution was intended to "prejudice any claims either of the U.S. or of any particular State" — on the presumption that the original states would cede (if they hadn't already) title to those western lands to the central government.
The new federal government took various actions regarding lands, including settling conflicting claims, granting lands for military service and other purposes, and selling the remaining lands under various programs. The first land offices to resolve land claims and sales were established by Congress in Ohio in 1800,15 and the General Land Office was established in 1812 to administer the disposal of federal lands.
Congress enacted numerous laws to grant, sell, or otherwise transfer federal lands into private ownership, including the Homestead Act of 1862, the General Mining Law of 1872, and many others.16 Land sales were a significant source of federal revenues during the 1830s, while grants to railroads in the 1870s were major incentives to improve the nation's transportation system. Nearly 816 million acres of the public domain lands were transferred to private ownership between 1781 and 1995.1'7 Most (97%) occurred before 1940; homestead entries, for example, peaked in 1910 at 18.3 million acres, but dropped below 200,000 acres annually after 1935,18 because the best agricultural lands were already taken. The federal government also granted 328 million acres to the states.19 The single largest state grant was in 1958; under the Alaska Statehood Act 20 the State of Alaska could select up to 103.35 million acres (under certain constraints). Also, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act 21 authorized various regional and village native corporations to select 40 million acres of federal land (within the constraints identified in the Act).

This is another interesting piece, Colly, still not what I recall reading lo those many years ago, but perhaps you can sense my direction.


Amicus….

 

[cloudy]

I'm VERY glad that it's been voted down for now.

Where they were proposing to drill is where the Gwich'in people have always lived and hunted, and drilling there would most likely destroy their way of life.

It's also sacred ground to them, or the 'Sacred Place Where Life Begins.'

Hell, they've grabbed damn near every other sacred ground. For the money folks, nothing is sacred except a damn dollar.

 

[Xelebes]

*shakes head, smiles* I have not seen those buttons, but scarier still to me are the Clinton's and the Kerry's and the Kennedy's who are hell bent to socialize America for the greater good.

I like my freedom, JustLegal, and I would just as soon like to keep it, thank you.

amicus...

Wait, Kerry stood for something? Let me quote Neo from Matrix here.


"Whoa."

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I suggest this may come back to haunt the left as they opt to deny Americans the right to utilize resources in our own country and sentence the Nation to continued energy dependence on foreign sources.

I suggest they get off their asses and actually start developing all of the alternative energy resources we've had available to us but sitting there useless for the past 35 years or so...

that would, perhaps, beg the question, wouldn't it? No more dependence on oil at all would make drilling in Alaska AND dependence on foreign sources pretty damned irrelevant...

but it won't happen with Mr. Texas T - er - Bush, in the white house...

Now, Gore might have at least had the agenda to make it happen <shrug> if the election hadn't been insisted right out from under him

I'm hoping for a greener president this time 'round..... democrat preferred, republican will do I guess

 

[thør]

I'm VERY glad that it's been voted down for now.

Where they were proposing to drill is where the Gwich'in people have always lived and hunted, and drilling there would most likely destroy their way of life.

It's also sacred ground to them, or the 'Sacred Place Where Life Begins.'

Hell, they've grabbed damn near every other sacred ground. For the money folks, nothing is sacred except a damn dollar.

The Gwitch'in folk live on the south side of the Brooks Range, not in the 1002 area (coastal plain of ANWR) proposed for petroleum exploration. Note the word, "exploration". As previously mentioned in this thread, no one KNOWS what quantity of recoverable petroleum is in the ground beneath the coastal plain. Additionally, if exporation was allowed, you can be sure that there would be 3 watchdogs for every worker to insure that any development occurring was as benign as possible. The squabble in DC reminds me of a couple kids fighting over a box of unknown content.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I'd say it's both insane.

All I see is horse trading and loopholing. Don't you guys have rules? Due process? One issue is one issue. Anything else is as illegal as insider trading or bribes. We've had politicians doing time for trying to bundle issues under the table.

And filibustering? Everyone has say. Everyone has equal say. Then everyone shuts the fuck up and vote. Ok, there's the "tyranny of the majority" thing. I guess that's the curse you get for a two party system and regional representation.

I don't get how you get anything done. But it's fascinating none the less. Is there a good book or something 'bout it?

Few, if any bills make it to the president's desk with just one issue on them. It's a rariety. Our represenatives add "pork barrel" provisions that benefit their districts to everything they can. that's bi-partisan screwing around, dosen't even count the dirty party politics that are played.

I suspect ever system has a filibuster like proceedural apparatus for slowing or stalling legislation. That's all it really is, a way to stall. But in some cases, it's the only option the sane have for stopping the insane. It's built in there to give the minority some means of influencing policy, even while they are the minority party and as such is probably a good thing all around.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

The Gwitch'in folk live on the south side of the Brooks Range, not in the 1002 area (coastal plain of ANWR) proposed for petroleum exploration. Note the word, "exploration". As previously mentioned in this thread, no one KNOWS what quantity of recoverable petroleum is in the ground beneath the coastal plain. Additionally, if exporation was allowed, you can be sure that there would be 3 watchdogs for every worker to insure that any development occurring was as benign as possible. The squabble in DC reminds me of a couple kids fighting over a box of unknown content.

If we follow that analogy though, once one of them gets to open it, the whole box is ruined.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I'd say it's both insane.

All I see is horse trading and loopholing. Don't you guys have rules? Due process? One issue is one issue. Anything else is as illegal as insider trading or bribes. We've had politicians doing time for trying to bundle issues under the table.

And filibustering? Everyone has say. Everyone has equal say. Then everyone shuts the fuck up and vote. Ok, there's the "tyranny of the majority" thing. I guess that's the curse you get for a two party system and regional representation.

I don't get how you get anything done. But it's fascinating none the less. Is there a good book or something 'bout it?

The system is designed to keep TOO MUCH from getting done, even if that means too little is. I prefer the current system as a safeguard against tyranny.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Also, however imperfect the reservation system is (mainly due to the poor quality of the land in question), it is all that is left of the land and sovereignty of the tribes. It really amounts, de facto, more to autonomy than true sovereignty, but it preserves SOMETHING of what our ancestors stole from theirs (or, in my case, some of my ancestors stole from other ancestors of mine). Bear in mind that few agents of the Federal Government bothered to tell the tribes that treaties require Senate ratification to be valid, so the tribes naively thought that the treaties were in effect automatically. It would be interesting to look at the treaties and see how many were ratified by the Senate. The ones that weren't should be. They have lived on that land all of their lives, it has always been theirs, and they should get legal title to it. It's all that they have left.

 

[Liar]

There was a book, if I recall, but it is out of date, forty years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advise_and_Consent

Tnx. I'll have a dig at the library and see what comes up.