During his confirmation hearing Tuesday, Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana, promised not to hand over federal land to state control when he takes on the role of secretary of the interior.
By standing firm against that one nightmare promise from the 2016 Republican platform, Zinke seems to have avoided the kind of fury Democrats have directed at President-elect Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency pick Scott Pruitt and his Energy Department nominee Rick Perry.
But although Zinke says he won’t hand federal land to states, he is likely to lease vast tracts to the oil, gas, and coal industries — and flip green the yellow light that Obama’s administration put on federal lands fossil fuel development.
Although Zinke repeatedly invoked Teddy Roosevelt on Tuesday, and promised to strike a balance between conservation and energy development, he also indicated he would support efforts to review or overturn a list of Obama administration rules including the ban on drilling in parts of the Alaskan Arctic, the moratorium on coal extraction on public land, new stream protections, and rules preventing methane flaring during oil and gas extraction.
Asked by Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski, head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, “Will you commit to a formal review of all of the Obama Administration’s actions that took resource-bearing lands and waters in Alaska effectively off the table?” Zinke replied, “Yes.”
Asked if he would support Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso’s efforts to use the Congressional Review Act to halt a newly passed Interior Department rule meant to limit oil and gas companies from venting and flaring methane, Zinke said, “Yes.” He also indicated he would not oppose use of the act to overturn a stream protection rule, which limits coal mining near water.
Nominee for U.S. Secretary of Interior, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), is sworn in during his confirmation hearing before Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 17, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
And asked if he would commit to end the Interior Department’s moratorium on federal coal leasing, Zink said “The war on coal, I believe is real,” and stated his support for an “all of the above” energy strategy.
It’s no wonder the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group that spends much of its time trying to overturn government limits to drilling on federal lands, gave such a rousing endorsement of Zinke, declaring that it “strongly supports the confirmation of Congressman Ryan Zinke,” adding, “Western producers with reasonable access to federal public lands can help him create hundreds of thousands of high-paying blue-collar jobs. Congressman Zinke is the right person to enact this vision while protecting the landscapes that all Westerners love and cherish.”
The Independent Petroleum Association of American and the American Petroleum Institute have also expressed their support for Zinke.
As Sen. Murkowski put it, “We hope the cavalry is on the way.”
Zinke comes from western coal country. Around 40 percent of U.S. coal comes from the Powder River Basin, located mostly in Montana and Wyoming. Most of that Powder River Basin coal comes out of federal land. Montana also borders Alberta, Canada, home of the tar sands. The Keystone XL pipeline would cross the Canadian border into the U.S. through Montana, and Zinke is a supporter of the pipeline.
If Zinke took seriously scientists’ warnings about the threat of climate change and the need to decarbonize our energy system, he might think twice about allowing new fossil fuel extraction on public lands. But during questioning from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Al Franken, Zinke repeated lines popular among Republicans unwilling to address the issue.
Although he noted that he’s seen glaciers recede as he ate lunch during visits to Glacier National Park in his home state, and said of climate change, “I don’t believe it’s a hoax,” he added, “I think where there’s debate is what that influence is, what we can do about it.” He affirmed that he is not a climate scientist and said that, “There’s a lot of debate on both sides of the aisle.”
Sanders cut him off, “Actually there’s not a whole lot of debate now. The scientific community is virtually unanimous that climate change is real and causing devastating problems.”
Top photo: Rail cars are filled with coal at Cloud Peak Energy’s Antelope Mine north of Douglas, Wyo. on Jan. 9, 2014.
Why is there rarely a counter to the non fact that PBO instigated a war on coal?
The corporatist Mr Obama, who does not presume to tell states how to regulate, just that they must.
Mr Zinke was the one who called HRC the antichrist. That was not just a throwaway line.
It is Zinke with an “e” and I’ve seen reports stating that he’s from Nebraska – sheesh.
They should either get serious or get lost.
LFTR and Hydrogen cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY
LFTRs (a recently-coined term), and their cousins have been on the fantasy energy-cornucopia drawing boards since the 1960s. The list of problems with developing them is a very, very long list. Although there are several fantasy proposals and one (maybe two) more-or-less-actual projects underway, nothing real or practical has “materialized.” ;^) Also, of course, there’s that annoying issue of producing nuclear waste in water-soluble form. . . oops.
I’m not going to bother to watch your video, but there’s really only one important thing to know about “hydrogen cars.” Hydrogen, although the most common element in the universe, does not exist in elemental form on Planet Earth. That means that using it for fuel first requires separating it from hydrogen-containing compounds and it is this that presents the fundamental problem: it takes energy to perform that separation and, as the Second Law of thermodynamics tells us, “you can’t break even.” That is, you are not going to be able to “produce” more energy than you expend.
Thus, hydrogen is not an energy source, although it could be an energy carrier.
It is dissolved in a “fluorine salt” not in water. The benefit is that the full amount of reactive material is consumed in the process. Which is why they can be used to “burn” nuclear waste.
LFTRs run at over 600 C. A LFTR is a liquid/molten salt reactor. the US built such a test reactor in the 1960s for use in a nuclear powered airplane.
The heat by-product of the reactor is used to help split the water molecule. It isn’t about breaking even. It’s about having plentiful cheap power to spare.
Instead of running a pressure reactor to spin a turbine, it runs in a closed-loop, high temperature gas turbine.
Science is hard. You are probably wise not strain yourself by watching videos that contain complicated science stuff.
Reading comprehension problem? I was, quite clearly, talking about the waste products, not the fuel. It is the wastes, the fission products, in their fluoride forms that are water soluble and thus highly unsuitable for long-term storage.
The tiny handful of molten salt reactors that have ever been built have been mothballed for over 40 years and none have actually been built since. Does that not suggest to you that my assessment of the problems as daunting just might be correct?
Yes, science is hard. I suggest you do some serious research into the issues surrounding the construction and operation of LFTRs, not just read all the Magical Thorium Cornucopia sites that litter the Internet.
I also suggest that you ask yourself why the existing nuclear power industry had not embraced LFTR technology, especially in the wake of Fukushima Daichi, which has effectively crippled the possibilities for new, “traditional” fission reactors. Might that industry understand something you don’t?
Third, I suggest you be careful about whom you insult. You’ve been around here long enough to know that I don’t make claims I can’t support.
Finally, I think you should consider whether or not it would actually be a good idea to provide humans with a new source of “plentiful, cheap power to spare.” The evidence of our entire history as a species suggests that seven-heading-toward-ten billion humans would use that power to exhaust all of the worlds resources even more quickly and thoroughly, destroy more of the biosphere, fill the planet’s sinks with even more waste, etc.
You see, there is no reason to believe that humans are smarter than yeast.
Does that not suggest to you that my assessment of the problems as daunting just might be correct?
No. It suggests that the nuclear power industry is a by-product of the nuclear weapons industry.
Because they are currently burning coal and oil causing, Global Warming. Which is . . . . the end of the fucking world!
Because “they” are corrupt, lying, greedy, man-whores. Which is why Fukushima melted down in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93PW8lcblpQ
Much better would be electric cars charged by rooftop solar panels. That’s by far the least environmentally harmful way to go.