Abstract
When energy resources are controlled by the political sector, environmentalists are pitted against exploration and development companies in a setting that encourages confrontation.This problem became especially acute during the 1970s, when the energy crisis focused a great deal of attention on the overthrust belt in the Rocky Mountains, where the federal government controls nearly half of the land.Since then, the controversy has waxed and waned with fluctuations in energy prices.
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Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill, The Birth of a Transfer Society (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980); Gordon Tullock, “The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft,” Western Economic Journal 5 ( June 1967): 224–32.
U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), Federal Lands: Information on Land Owned and on Acreage with Conservation Restrictions, GAO/RCED-95–73FS, Washington, DC, January 1995, 35.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Draft Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,Alaska Coastal Plain Resource Assessment: Report and Recommendation to the Congress of the United States and Legislative Environmental Impact Statement, November 1986.
The model used by the Wilderness Society used cost data based on a study published by the National Petroleum Council, U.S.Arctic Oil and Gas (Washington, DC: National Petroleum Council, 1981). A real oil-price growth rate of one percent from the 1987 base price of $18 per barrel is employed in half of the trails, and growth rates of zero and 2 percent each are used in 25 percent of the trails for the base-price scenarios.
W. Thomas Goerold, “Environmental and Petroleum Resource Conflicts: A Simulation Model to Determine the Benefits of Petroleum Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska,” Materials And Society 11 (1987): 279–307.
For example, oil and gas leases on Montana’s Gallatin and Flathead national forests were set aside in 1985 because a district court judge ruled that the environmental assessment carried out by the Forest Service was inadequate. As of March 1999, the status of these leases has not changed. According to Leslie Viculik, oil and gas specialist with the Forest Service, the lease acres amount to approximately 1.3 million acres between the two forests (e-mail from Earl Sutton, U.S. Forest Service, Northern Region, March 15, 1999).
Ed Porter and Lee Huskey, “The Regional Economic Effect of Federal OCS Leasing: The Case of Alaska,” Land Economics 57 (November 1981): 594.
Richard Martin, “Resisting an Oil Rig Invasion,” Insight, March 14, 1988, 17–18; Ken Wells, “U.S. Oil Leasing Plan Is Challenged by Eskimos Trying to Protect Their Culture at World’s Edge,” Wall Street Journal, March 12, 1986.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Mineral Revenues 1997: Report on Receipts from Federal And Indian Leases (Denver: Minerals Management Services, 1997), Table 43, 122.
American Petroleum Institute, Should Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Be Put Off Limits? (Washington, DC: American Petroleum Institute, June 1984), 87.
James Everett Knight, Jr., “Effect of Hydrocarbon Development on Elk Movements and Distribution in Northern Michigan” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980).
American Petroleum Institute, Compatibility of Oil and Gas Operations on Federal Onshore Lands with Environmental and Rural Community Values (Washington, DC:American Petroleum Institute, 1984), 57; V. Van Ballenberghe, “Final Report on the Effects of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline on Moose Movements,” Special Report 1 (Anchorage: Joint State/Federal Fish and Wildlife Advisory Team, 1976); Stering Eide and Miller Sterling, “Effects of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline on Moose Movements” ( Juneau:Alaska Department of Fish and Game, June 1979).
Ken Baskin, “The Tug of War for the Wilderness,” Sun (autumn 1985): 7.
H. Smets, “Compensation for Exceptional Environmental Damage Caused by Indus trial Activities,” in Insuring and Managing Hazardous Risks: From Seveso to Bhopal and Beyond, ed. Paul R. Kleindorfer and Howard C. Kunreuther (Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag, 1987), 80; Bill Richards, “Amoco Ordered to Pay Award of $85.2 Million,” Wall Street Journal, January 12, 1988.
Walter J. Mead and Philip Sorenson, “The Economic Cost of Santa Barbara Oil Spill,” in Santa Barbara Oil Spill: An Environmental Inquiry (Santa Barbara: California Marine Science Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1972).
Los Angeles (CNN), “California oil spill endangers wildlife: headway made in cleanup,” September 30, 1997, on-line version, http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/30/ calif.oil.spill/; The Associated Press, “Workers combat 25 mile oil slick in Gulf of Mexico,” October 3, 1998, on-line version, http://www.willjohnston.com/articles_98/ october98/10_3_98wctosigom.html.
A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that world offshore oil and gas operations were responsible for 5 percent of the oil that gets into the world’s oceans. The study noted that rivers were the principal source of oil pollution in the seas, accounting for 41 percent of the total. Tankers and other transportation forms account for 20 percent, natural oil seeps account for 15 percent, municipal and industrial effluent accounts for 11 percent, atmospheric sources (e.g., rain) account for 4 percent, urban runoff accounts for 3 percent, coastal refineries 1 percent, and U.S. offshore production just 0.05 percent. See U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, “Offshore Oil Production Accounts for Little of World’s Ocean Pollution” (news release, Washington, DC, July 26, 1983).
For a complete discussion of the history of this production, see John Baden and Richard Stroup, “Saving the Wilderness:A Radical Proposal,” Reason 13 ( July 1981): 28–36. Also see Pamela Snyder and Jane S. Shaw, “PC Oil Drilling in a Wildlife Refuge,” Wall Street Journal, September 7, 1995, A14.
John G. Mitchell, “The Oil Below,” Audubon 83 (May 1981): 16–17.
See Marion Clawson, The Federal Lands Revisited (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1983).
For one of the earliest proposals of this approach, see Richard L. Stroup and John A. Baden, “Endowment Areas:A Clearing in the Policy Wilderness,” Cato Journal 2 (winter 1982): 691–708.
For details of this proposal, see Terry L. Anderson and Holly Lippke Fretwell, “A Trust for Grand Staircase-Escalante,” PERC Policy Series No. PS-16 (Bozeman, MT: Political Economy Research Center, September 1999).
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© 2001 Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal
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Anderson, T.L., Leal, D.R. (2001). Ecology and Energy. In: Free Market Environmentalism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299736_7
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