What Part of Deadline…

August 19, 2015

A new study from a group called the R Street Institute has found that federal agencies missed half of all the deadlines imposed by Congress. Not just recently, not just in the current Administration, but for more than 20 years. The most shocking thing about this study is that nobody is shocked. There is so […]

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Try Something New

August 19, 2015

Yesterday I testified before an unusual committee in Congress, one with a membership made up almost entirely of westerners, and in particular westerners whose districts are mostly federal land. That is unique in Congress because rural westerners are a small minority. They normally have trouble explaining to their colleagues the nuances of public lands and […]

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Another One Bites the Dust

August 19, 2015

Voltaire once wrote that “men argue; nature acts.” We see that action repeatedly in catastrophic forest fires across the western United States, and each time we hope it may be the last. This week we’re seeing yet another forest go up in smoke – Glacier National Park in Montana – while land managers, politicians, lobbyists, […]

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Still Cuckoo

August 19, 2015

Last week I wrote about the federal push for private landowners in Mesa County to help identify and designate habitat for a bird called the yellow-billed cuckoo – the original mascot of Cocoa Puffs cereal. My column has rarely generated more feedback, because so many people are frustrated with the notion that environmental protection always […]

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Cuckoo Over Birds

July 18, 2015

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The federal government wants private landowners in arid western states to help identify and designate important habitat for a certain bird species, so the land can be protected against development, and thereby save the bird from some dire fate. If that sounds familiar, it’s because we have […]

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What, Me Worry?

June 26, 2015

I recently shared a conference podium with Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. He argues persuasively that our use of technology and energy has transformed the natural environment into a livable one. “Most of the natural world is too hot, too cold, has too much […]

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Not All Renewables Are Created Equal

June 17, 2015

This week the U.S. House Appropriations Committee is working on the annual spending bill that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, and there are all the usual arguments over how much the funding should increase. President Obama asked Congress to raise last year’s $30 billion by 10 percent, which is unlikely (the first draft […]

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And Justice for All

June 11, 2015

I speak and write often about policies that limit public access to public lands, because I worry about a giant philosophical divide, based on the theory that mankind’s presence is always bad for the environment. People are not part of the environment in this theory. They are an intrusion that should be stopped whenever possible. […]

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Let the Sun Shine on Freedom

June 1, 2015

There is a fairly touchy conversation underway in the halls of the Nation’s Capitol about the future of the solar energy investment tax credit (ITC), because it is set to expire at the end of 2016, and President Obama has asked Congress to make the credit permanent. The solar ITC is 30 percent, meaning the […]

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High Speed Happy Hour

June 1, 2015

Some of us in the big square States apparently do not understand the need to subsidize every aspect of life in the nation’s Capitol. Every few years, some of us push back against the massive taxpayer subsidies for Washington, D.C. National leaders always come through for D.C., though, explaining to the rest of us how […]

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