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.
