Just about everyone in America not living in the city of Houston knows that local planning and zoning ordinances are a basic fact of life.

But what would happen if the federal government attempted to apply those same local rules to 1.76 billion acres offshore? Carving up our oceans as if they were city blocks – using the same system to prevent domestic energy exploration as the anti-development crowd uses to defeat the local Wal-Mart. Sounds outrageous, right?

If you thought the Department of the Interior was bad, wait until you get a load of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). An office run directly out of the White House, CEQ has teamed up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to put forward a new “science-based” approach to regulating our nation’s oceans. The eggheads at NOAA call this thing “marine spatial planning.” All you need to know is that it will result in less access to less energy (and fishing, and tourism opportunities) along America’s outer continental shelf.

Thankfully, if news out of Washington, D.C. is any indication, our elected leaders on Capitol Hill aren’t letting this scam go unnoticed. Led by coastal state representatives and Alaska’s own Don Young, 69 members of the House (59 Republicans, 10 Democrats) sent a letter to CEQ head Nancy Sutley this week demanding an explanation for why they’re doing this, and a clarification on just how many jobs we expect to lose under a policy that bigfoots Interior on offshore management policy. From the AP:

Dozens of U.S. representatives sent a letter Monday to the head of the President’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force with concerns that the policy will block offshore energy development and cost jobs.

Sixty-nine House members, including Alaska Rep. Don Young, signed the letter in which they responded to the task force’s interim report released last month.

We’d be remiss here if we didn’t mention the role that NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco is playing in all this. Previously a big-time marine professor at Oregon State, Ms. Lubchenco has written extensively in the past about “our unsustainable use of resources,” the “explosive growth of the human population,” and the “social compact” that “exploiters” such as fishermen and other commercial interests violate daily.

So spare us the press release, please. There can be little doubt that the new NOAA administrator is using this plan to initiate massive changes in the way Americans access their energy offshore – despite what’s being said about the plan publicly.

Here’s an excerpt from the House letter that address these specific points:

We are particularly concerned about the Task Force’s impact on our nation’s ability to safely develop its own offshore energy, including oil, natural gas and renewable energy.  It is critical that the Task Force’s proposals do not inhibit energy activity offshore in domestic waters and undermine the Department of the Interior’s Five Year Leasing Program for offshore energy development.

So, where does any of this leave us today? Tough to say. The oceans plan was recently put up for public comment for a measly 30 days – roughly 210 days fewer than the Interior Department’s five-year energy plan was available to comment on by the American public. How did that comment period end up? CEQ won’t say. We wonder why that is.

A column that ran earlier this week in the Washington Times — authored by Alaska’s longtime (and sole) representative in the U.S. House, Don Young – explores the recent back-and-forth on cap-and-trade between former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). It’s a good read. But the piece also harkens back to some of the important lessons that Alaskans (and everyone else, for that matter) learned during the deliberation over the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS) – at its time, the single largest construction project North American had ever seen.

Here’s what Rep. Young had to say about the connection between the TAPS debate of yore and the national energy dialogue in which we’re presently engaged:

American energy marvels such as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) are the real drivers of the American economy. TAPS didn’t require a government mandate; it required the federal government to get out of the way. This pipeline would never be built today. TAPS was successful only because of the oil embargo and, more significantly, because the legislation curtailed the ability of environmentalists to file lawsuits to block the project — an effort in which, unfortunately, they have become well versed. …

This summer, as TAPS prepares to send its 16 billionth barrel to the consumer, I am reminded that Sarah Palin is correct and Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Boxer are again on the wrong side of energy issues.

That got us to thinking about some of the statements made on Capitol Hill during those touch-and-go debates on whether to authorize the pipeline – a structure that, as Mr. Young mentioned, has delivered the lower 48 more than 15 billion barrels of American oil over its 30+ years of service.

For instance: Most folks don’t know that Vice President Joe Biden, the former senior senator from Delaware, was very much in the thick of the discussion back in 1973 when the Senate was deciding on how to proceed.

New to the Senate back then, at the ripe old age of 30, Biden nonetheless took on a leadership role in trying to strangle the pipeline in the cradle – not only voting NO on the famous Spiro Agnew-tie-breaking vote of July 17 (which streamlined the NEPA process, and allowed the construction to proceed), but then voting NO again the next day on final passage of the authorization, a proposal that carried the support of 77 of his colleagues.

Of course, the debate didn’t end there. The authorization was sent to the House, where changes were made, and eventually made its way back to the Senate in the form of a conference report. There again, as liberal Democrats joined conservative Republicans in support of TAPS, Sen. Biden refused to support it. The final vote on TAPS was recorded in November 12, 1973. Biden found himself on the wrong end of an 80-5 vote. Even Walter Mondale ended up voting for final passage, insisting upon his colleagues that “however great differences may be regarding the particular means in transporting these resources, virtually everyone agrees we need this oil.”

Not everyone, apparently. Worth remembering as Congress continues to drag its feet on a plan that would guarantee the future viability of the pipeline by making available billions of additional barrels of oil in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.