November, 20 2008, 11:57am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Nada Culver,
303-650-5818 ext. 117, nada_culver@tws.org
Alex Daue,
303-650-5818 ext. 108, alex_daue@tws.org
Bush Administration Misses Yet Another Opportunity to Guide America to a Sustainable Energy Future
While Failing to Protect Treasured Public Lands
DENVER
The Bush
administration's Bureau of Land Management and Department of Energy today
issued a plan for energy corridors throughout the West, squandering an
opportunity to move the United
States toward a renewable energy based
economy and opening iconic public wildlands to destructive development. The
plan comes despite pleas for a new direction in energy development from
Congress, state agencies, tribal governments and over 14,000 members of the
public.
The agencies'
West-Wide Energy Corridors Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement
outlines a plan for more than 6,000 miles of corridors, encompassing nearly 3
million acres in 11 states, on public lands slated to accommodate high-capacity
electric transmission lines and oil and natural gas pipelines.
The final energy
corridor plan contains some important improvements for public lands protections-
imposing protective management conditions, moving certain objectionable
corridors and clarifying that pipelines cannot be sited without environmental
review-but crucial commitments to a clean energy future are not made. Iconic
places such as New Mexico's Sevilleta
National Wildlife Refuge, Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument and Arches National
Park, and other protected areas throughout the
West stand to be directly impaired by massive oil and natural gas pipelines and
electric transmission lines that will slice through them or skirt their borders.
The agencies were
required to identify energy corridors on public lands under the 2005 Energy
Policy Act. Testimony at a Congressional oversight hearing and comments on the
draft plan by hundreds of attendees at public meetings, as well as thousands of
written comments, provided a blueprint for smart, environmentally sensitive energy
corridors that would support renewable energy. Instead, the agency designated a
corridor network which fails to provide adequate protections for public lands and
locks in transmission to polluting coal-fired power plants.
"New Mexico and other Western states are
working hard to bring clean, renewable energy online, but the proposed
corridors fail to access our best wind and solar resources," said Joanna
Prukop, secretary for the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources
Department. "We specifically identified needed corridors to support New Mexico's
renewable resources. They ignored us."
Most of the corridors
will average 3,500-feet in width (ranging up to five miles) and can accommodate
up to nine 500-kV electric transmission lines, 35 massive liquid petroleum
pipelines and 29 natural gas pipelines. The agencies are also moving forward
with plans to designate energy corridors in the other 38 states and Alaska.
The proposed plan
establishes one energy corridor that would cut through Utah's
Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument and is only a stone's throw from
the spectacular Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area. Another
massive corridor would come within a few yards of Arches
National Park's boundary, while driving
directly through the town of Moab.
Citizen-proposed wilderness, Forest Service roadless areas and National Wildlife
Refuges throughout the West are also impacted.
"These
corridors, along with the Bush administration's last-minute oil and gas
leasing of land near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and the EPA
proposal for reduction in air quality standards at these same parks, will
irreparably harm the tremendous beauty of the red rock canyon country around
Moab that attracts millions to southeast Utah each year," said Phil Brueck, a member of the Executive Council of the
Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. "The government is making
these decisions in the waning moments of their power with little thought to the
wildlands they'll ruin, the national parks and monuments they'll
damage, the expansive views they'll degrade or the communities
they'll fracture. It also troubles me that because these decisions are
happening so fast and are mired in so much bureaucracy, that the American
public isn't even aware of the thieves stealing their crown jewels!"
The public is also not
being given their usual right to file protests on the final version of this PEIS,
even though as many as 165 local BLM and Forest Service land management plans
will be amended to incorporate these corridors.
"We appreciate the
improvements that have been made, but the plans can not be considered a success
because they inadequately address renewable energy, cut out the public's
right to protest, and will turn national monuments and wildlife refuges into
industrialized energy corridors," said Nada Culver
of the Wilderness Society. "These problems need to be fixed."
For more information,
log onto www.wilderness.org/content/energy-corridors
Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has led the conservation movement in wilderness protection, writing and passing the landmark Wilderness Act and winning lasting protection for 107 million acres of Wilderness, including 56 million acres of spectacular lands in Alaska, eight million acres of fragile desert lands in California and millions more throughout the nation.
LATEST NEWS
National Park Service Grants Free Access on Trump's Birthday—And Ends It for Juneteenth, MLK Day
Critics have ripped the decisions as "truly disgusting" and "literally the sort of thing dictators do."
Dec 05, 2025
"Why is MLK Day not worthy of a fee-free day anymore?"
That's what Kati Schmidt, communications director for the National Parks Conservation Association, wondered in an email to SFGATE, which reported Thursday on the National Park Service's recently announced free admission days for 2026.
"That has become a day of service throughout the country as well as celebrating an American hero who has several park units celebrating his legacy," Schmidt noted of the federal holiday honoring Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. each January.
In addition to MLK Day, three other previously free days were left off the US Department of the Interior's announcement last week about "resident-only patriotic fee-free days." Visitors will now have to pay park fees on National Public Lands Day, the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act—which President Donald Trump signed in 2020—and Juneteenth.
cool that the official position of the administration appears to be that black people don’t really count as americans
[image or embed]
— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 5, 2025 at 8:20 AM
In 2021, Congress passed and then-President Joe Biden signed legislation designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. After returning to the White House in January, Trump declined to recognize it on this past June 19.
As SFGATE reported:
"This policy shift is deeply concerning," said Tyrhee Moore, the executive director of Soul Trak Outdoors, a nonprofit that connects urban communities of color to the outdoors. "Removing free-entry days on MLK Day and Juneteenth sends a troubling message about who our national parks are for. These holidays hold profound cultural and historical significance for Black communities, and eliminating them as access points feels like a direct targeting of the very groups who already face systemic barriers to the outdoors."
Moore told SFGATE that his organization works to push back against "these kinds of systemic attempts that disguise exclusion as administrative or political decisions."
"Policies like this reinforce inequalities around access and visibly show how systems can create obstacles that keep communities of color from feeling welcomed in public spaces," he said.
Olivia Juarez, public land program director at the advocacy group GreenLatinos, said in a statement that "we condemn the omission of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Juneteenth, National Public Lands Day, and the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act from the list of free entrance days."
"The Great American Outdoors Act permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which enhances outdoor recreation access for all people from national public lands to neighborhood parks," she pointed out. "These observances are patriotic days that celebrate freedom and safety in the outdoors. They should be celebrated as such by removing a simple cost barrier that can make parks more accessible to low-income households."
Other critics have ripped the free day decisions as "truly disgusting" and "literally the sort of thing dictators do."
Journalist Jennifer Schulze said: "I love our national parks but don't go on his birthday. Find a state park to visit instead."
Along with the free admission changes, the Trump administration is under fire for putting the president's face on the new "America the Beautiful" annual passes—a display that may be illegal—and for hiking prices for foreign visitors to national parks.
Utah-based Juarez and GreenLatinos California state program manager Pedro Hernández both denounced price hikes for noncitizens—a move that notably comes as the administration pursues Trump's promise of mass deportations.
"By imposing higher fees on people without state-issued ID," Hernández said, "the Trump administration is advancing a xenophobic policy that disproportionately harms vulnerable populations like international students, newly arrived immigrants, and families seeking asylum."
"This approach eviscerates the true meaning of public lands and sends a clear, exclusionary message that our most cherished national parks have become yet another pay-to-play system," he added. "People should be welcomed—not priced out from our public lands."
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘Pretty Explicit White Nationalism’: Trump National Security Strategy Document Leaves Critics Aghast
One critic described the document as "a pretty explicit defense of using the state as a means of enforcing white supremacy."
Dec 05, 2025
The Trump administration on Thursday released its official National Security Strategy, and many critics noted that it was loaded with rhetoric frequently used by white nationalists.
Some of the most inflammatory rhetoric in the document is aimed at US-allied European countries that supposedly face "the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure" within the next 20 years.
In particular, the document accuses the European Union of enacting policies "that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence."
The document goes on to claim that "should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less," while emphasizing that US policy is to help "Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation."
Jon Henley, Europe correspondent for the Guardian, noted in a Friday report that the document "appears to espouse the racist 'great replacement' conspiracy theory, saying several countries risk becoming 'majority non-European.'" Henley added that the document "underscores the Trump administration's clear alignment with Europe’s far-right nationalist parties, whose policies centre on attacking supposed EU overreach and excessive non-EU migration."
Scott Horton, legal affairs and national security contributor to Harper's and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, wrote on Bluesky that the document "reads like something written by Vladimir Putin," given its depiction of Europe as being "degenerate and... racially adulterated through the in-migration of dark-skinned people."
Progressive activist Max Berger argued that the document "contains some pretty explicit white nationalism." He pointed to the document's support for dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as a way to restore "a culture of competence."
Berger also flagged a section in the document that named "ending mass migration" as the top US national security priority, which he described as "a pretty explicit defense of using the state as a means of enforcing white supremacy."
Edmund Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times, also took note of the administration's emphasis on "competence and merit" in the document. This is ironic, Luce continued, because "this administration personifies the opposites" of those traits.
Journalist Michael Weiss argued in a post on X that the document shows that it is now official US policy to promote and assist far-right parties in Europe.
"[US Vice President] JD Vance's intervention in Germany's election, on behalf of [far-right party Alternative für Deutschland], was not a one-off," he wrote. "It is now ingrained in the U.S. National Security Strategy... Europe is be treated as enemy terrain to be destabilized by America's enabling of far-right parties."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Global System 'Rigged for the Wealthy' Delivers World With 'More Billionaires Than Ever'
New annual report on "ambitions" of billionaires by wealth management giant UBS shows just 2,919 individuals have a combined wealth of $15.8 trillion.
Dec 05, 2025
A new assessment by the international wealth management giant UBS this week shows that the number of billionaires in the world has reached new heights and that the acceleration of inherited wealth represents a new chapter for the ultra-rich in the 21st Century.
The latest UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report, unveiled Thursday, details how just 2,919 individual billionaires have a combined wealth of $15.8 trillion. The number of billionaires in the world is up nearly 9 percent from the previous year. In the United States—where nearly a third of those on the list reside—924 billionaires hold a collective $6.9 trillion in wealth.
The assessment by UBS—which surveyed its own billionaire clients as part of the survey, now its eleventh edition—emphasizes a surge of inherited wealth among the billionaire class. According to the report:
In 2025, 91 heirs (64 of them male and 27 female) inherited a record USD 297.8 billion. That’s 36% more than in 2024, despite fewer people inheriting overall. Globally, inheritance bolstered the number of multigenerational billionaires, with some 860 multi-generational billionaires now overseeing total assets of USD 4.7 trillion. That’s up from 805 with USD 4.2 trillion in 2024.
Across the world, multi-generational billionaires are slowly extending down the generations, with the number of second-generation billionaires growing by 4.6% in the 2025 report, the number of third generation
by 12.3%, and the number of fourth generation and beyond by 10%.
The growing number of billionaires, including a rapidly increasing share who inherited their wealth rather than generating it themselves, says UBS, "heralds a new era" for the ultra-rich as "the great wealth transfer is intensifying as heirs inherit more than ever before.
The coming decades, the report notes, "will see growing numbers of billionaires and centi-millionaires as the Great Wealth Transfer continues to accelerate. Billionaires are estimated to transfer approximately USD 6.9 trillion of wealth globally by 2040, with at least USD 5.9 trillion set to be passed to children—either directly or indirectly through spouses."
Of the $6.9 trillion currently held by US billionaires, the report estimates that $2.8 trillion of that wealth will be passed down to heirs over the next 15 years.
"The world has more billionaires than ever because of a system that’s broken for workers and rigged for the wealthy and CEOs who already make 285 times what workers do," said the AFL-CIO in response to the report.
The union federation says that organized workers winning better collective bargaining is the first step needed to "level the playing field" for working people, while others see the surging fortunes of the ultra-wealthy as just more evidence that taxing the rich must remain at the top of the economic and political agenda both at the national level and internationally.
With the UBS report showing that 91 of the new billionaires created this year arrived at their financial status through inheritance, Hal Singer, economics professor at the University of Utah, said, "That's 91 additional reasons for a wealth tax."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular