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Steve Griffin, Deseret News
President Joe Biden began his term with a flurry of executive orders, many of which were designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While the intent of these orders may be positive, one of them is a blow to Utah and other Western states.
To be specific, the administration’s decision to suspend new oil and gas leases on federal lands will do little to change the country’s energy mix while disproportionately impacting rural economies.
The country’s use of oil and gas is driven by demand for those products. As long as people are willing to pay for them, they’ll keep being produced. There is a virtually unlimited supply on private land in other parts of the country that are unaffected by the order, and those communities will be happy to step up and fill the gap. This order won’t constrain the supply enough to matter. The only way to change our energy mix is to shift the demand to clean technologies.
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The quest to fulfill energy demands places whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals at substantial risk. When seismic surveys are used to explore for oil and gas, shock waves and rapid changes in pressure can cause tissue destruction and deafen marine mammals, who are highly dependent on their key senses for survival.
In the interest of conservation and prudent development of the natural resources, President Truman’s 1945 Proclamation asserted federal jurisdiction over natural resources, the subsoil, and the seabed of offshore resources of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the United States. Proclamation 2667, 10 Fed. Reg. 12,305 (Sept. 28, 1945). The goal of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), passed in 1953, is to balance protection for marine animals and restoration of coastal beaches and wetlands, with management of oil and gas exploration. 43 U.S.C. §§ 1331–1356(b) (1953). The 1978 OCSLA amendments addressed increasing demand
Interior secretary to meet with state leaders, tribes.
(Susan Montoya Bryan | The Associated Press) U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland listens to tribal leaders during a round-table discussion at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M., on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. The visit marked Haaland s first to her home state after being confirmed as head of the federal agency, making her the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position. She was in southern Utah on Wednesday.
| April 8, 2021, 12:43 a.m.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will visit the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on Friday after her foray into San Juan County, where she met privately Wednesday with tribal and state leaders to discuss the future of Bears Ears National Monument.
KSL TV
SALT LAKE CITY For the third time in five years, a U.S. Department of Interior secretary is visiting Utah amid a debate over two controversial national monument designations that will likely never fully be resolved.
In a release sent late Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Interior announced that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland received briefings from federal employees, visited the Bears Ears Education Center in Bluff, San Juan County, met with tribal leaders and was meeting with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and members of Utah s congressional delegation.
On Thursday, she will be joined by tribal leaders in more tours of the Bears Ears region and will meet with stakeholders in San Juan County who include local elected officials, ranchers, conservation organizations, mining companies, paleontologists and archaeologists.