Arizona congressman wants more drilling in national parks
IT’S SAFE to say that Rep. Paul A. Gosar, R-Arizona, is no friend of environmentalists. He boycotted Pope Francis’ speech to Congress in 2015 because the pontiff addressed climate change. He received a score of three per cent that year from the League of Conservation Voters, significantly below the House average of 41 per cent.
But his latest move came as a surprise to many. Gosar submitted a resolution on Monday that threatens to repeal the National Park Service’s authority to manage private drilling for oil, gas and minerals at 40 national parks, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Under what are known as the 9B rules, the Park Service, which controls the surface of natural parks, can decline drilling rights to parties that own resources beneath the surface if it determines that the operation would be an environmental threat. “The resolution is just the latest in a series of moves by federal lawmakers to weaken environmental protections for national parks under the Congressional Review Act,” said the association. “If these repeals are signed into law . . . it will not only stop these protections, it will also prohibit agencies from issuing similar rules and protections in the future, unless directed by Congress.” The parks with what is known as splitestate ownership of surface and underground resources include Everglades National Park, Mammoth Cave National Park and Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the association said.
Gosar has widely been considered an outlier. He was elected to Congress as part of a 2010 tea party wave, sometimes angering the Republican leadership with statements that appeared to undermine them. But in this Congress, his stature is rising. On Tuesday, the day after his resolution was referred to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, he was selected to chair its Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals.
“We are in a prime position to foster America’s energy revolution,” Gosar said in a statement after his selection, “and I intend to empower my colleagues to take real action and enact practical solutions. By listening and engaging with our nation’s energy producers and consumers, this Subcommittee can reduce the unnecessary and job-killing red tape that continues to hold back economic development.”