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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday he has sent recommendations from his review of more than two dozen national monuments to President Donald Trump, indicating that some could be scaled back to allow for more hunting and fishing and economic development.
The recommendations follow a 120-day study of 27 national monuments across the country, created by presidents since 1996, that Trump ordered in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.
The review has cheered energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates but has drawn widespread criticism and threats of lawsuits from conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry.
There were fears that Zinke would recommend the outright elimination of some of the monuments on the list, but on Thursday, speaking to the Associated Press in Billings, Montana, he said he will not recommend eliminating any.
Zinke said in a statement that the recommendations would "provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses, and recreation." He did not specify which monuments he plans to recommend be scaled back.
The Associated Press reported that Zinke said he would recommend changing the boundaries for a "handful" of sites.
If you're taking millions of acres off the table for one site, you fail at knowing the definition of a monument.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKCN1B41YA
Also at RT, CNN, The Washington Post and The Hill.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @05:47PM (4 children)
This is ridiculous. There's a huge number of words out there with multiple meanings. Nothing magical about profit that it can't have multiple meanings as well. I get that you don't want semantic mixing of the term, but that isn't actually happening here. The claim is being made that personal profit is usually societal profit as well. Sure, it's not always true, there are plenty of examples of activities that have huge externalities to them that outweigh the benefit of the activity to the involved parties. But most activities don't have those huge externalities.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:28PM (3 children)
You are ridiculous. Words can have multiple meanings, no one is saying profit can only mean one thing. However, when making an argument you can't substitute in the various definitions to support the narrow definition of privatized business profits.
EXACTLY! So can we stop this pointless debate? National parks / monuments are a public good, privatizing them is the continuation of robbing the public for corporate profits.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:57PM (2 children)
Unless we benefit more from privatizing them than the loss of the public good. Then it's not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
If something is better then it is better. If it isn't better then it is not better. I will go with historical evidence of corporations abusing natural resources for their own profits instead of this hypothetical privatized system you imagine.
Draft up your proposals, include a contract that enforces environmental protections and limits on what the private owners can do, THEN we can discuss whether the public land should be privatized. You want me to trust the market / corporations? I refer again to historical evidence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:39PM
And? Abusing natural resources is not necessarily a bad thing. All our stuff is made from abused natural resources.
Why should the rights of the land owner be limited in such a way? What's going on here is that for the past twenty years, the federal government has been using the Antiquities Law to reserve large tracts of land by presidential decree. It's relatively mild right now with perhaps 1-2k square miles land area and ~50k square miles of sea area reserved per year on average over the past two decades. But there's nothing legally to prevent future presidents from escalating this to vast fractions of the US in the future and using the power to push their agendas. There needs to be some pushback.