Zinke OUT at Interior

Thanks for that contribution, Surfdead. As I tried to post then, the replacement will be as bad or worse.

I tried to add this to my original post but took too long.

The SL Tribune just released this story online (for Sunday's paper presumably) about Tim DeChristopher, marking 10 years since he disrupted a BLM oil and gas auction by bidding on parcels

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2018/12/15/years-after-he-monkey/ 

Here's some of the lands he was trying to save from being auctioned off at a pittance of their worth.

And speaking of auctions, just last Tuesday the BLM held another near-record oil and gas lease auction that offered 154,000 acres to the highest bidder. 

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2018/12/12/feds-hold-biggest-utah/

From the story:

The sale conducted online Tuesday was the BLM’s largest in Utah in more than a decade. It would have been twice as big were it not for a recent court ruling questioning the truncated analysis proposed lease sales receive under new guidelines mandated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. To accommodate further review, the BLM holstered most of the parcels until its March sale.

That left 105 parcels on the block Tuesday, mostly in Uintah and San Juan counties, along with a group clustered near the Green River’s intersection with Interstate 70.

Tuesday’s bidding garnered acceptable offers on all but nine of the parcels, netting $2.8 million in bids, plus another $224,000 in annual rent and fees. The high bids were relatively low, topping out at $66 an acre for a White River parcel on land proposed for wilderness.

Join the resistance, or just find out more, at www.suwa.org

Here's some of the lands auctioned off Tuesday. Probably look good with some new roads and oil rigs on it, eh?

The view from Alkali Ridge, a national historic landmark rich in Puebloan archaeology in San Juan County. The BLM is leasing land here east of Blanding for oil and gas development, despite objections from American Indian tribes and historic preservationists.

Here's a nugget from the end of the Tim DeChristopher interview:

Do you see any signs of hope?

I see it in the resilience of people. There was a little video that went viral during the latest California wildfire with a father [escaping the burning town] with his 3-year-old daughter and she is saying, ‘Are we going to burn up, daddy?’ and he starts singing to keep her calm while they drive, with walls of flame on either side. It is that sort of beautiful resilience of the human spirit that gives me hope, not that things are going to be OK and we are not going to face unprecedented hardships, but that there is a loving part of our humanity that’s going to carry us through that time.