I’ve been reading about the Biden administration’s effort to assess to what extent oil and gas removed from leased Federal lands is contributing to America’s greenhouse gas production. They want a moratorium on new leases until they can conduct their studies. But a judge in (of course) Louisiana has said they cannot interrupt the leasing of government property to private corporations — I’ve not yet found out why the Judge would give such a perverse judgment. The oil and gas empires are belching their outrage at any disturbance of the sweet deal they have when they lease land that belongs to you and me so they can remove much of the value from it. Their surrogates, sc., the Western congressmen in their employ, are, of course, adding their shrieks to the outcry. It is not clear that the Administration will be able to find and remove abuses from the oil/gas leasing racket.

Some good is being done, e.g., Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) has proposed H.R. 1517 that would raise royalty rates for the first time since 1920. But the oily-gassy people are as slick as their products, and they have spread so much cash around that it will probably be impossible to curb them.

I naively ask why do we allow this leasing of government land, to oil interests, to mining interests, to cattle interests, to timber interests. Great and small corporate enterprises are based on their ability to extract products from Federal land by paying a trifle of what these products are worth. This exploitation of government land amounts to an on-going government subsidy paid to people who are the first tier of the fossil fuels colossus. Looks to me like a rip-off of the American people and an unregulated source of perilous air pollution.