Today, Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act (24 pg pdf), an energy bill that started off as a big energy/climate bill, then shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. I've named it the Wimp Bill: Land & Water Conservation Fund, Homestar (energy efficiency Improvements), Massive Oil Spill Response, and Pickens Plan for natural gas. The last is an ethanol-like boondoggle, but the rest of the bill is not bad. In particular, the part of the bill fixing the Land & Water Conservation Fund deserves support. It just isn't a climate bill. Or a strong energy bill. Or, truthfully, anything having anything to do with anything.
The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund was established in 1964 to provide monies and matching grants to federal, state, and local governments for the acquisition of land and water and easements thereon, for the benefit of all Americans, specifically recreation and the protection of natural treasures in the forms of parks and protected forest and wildlife areas. It's funded by oil drilling revenues, and it provides up to $900M/year for worthy projects, as Congress sees fit to appropriate. (The key phrase in the previous sentence has been highlighted for reasons that should shortly become obvious.) Past projects have included parks as big as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks and as small as thousands of local playgrounds, soccer fields, and baseball diamonds.
The idea is a good one: when extracting one resource, set aside some funds to replenish another resource. However, it's subject to Congressional vagaries, and replenishing resources seems to fall way down on the priority list. The full $900M has only been funded once or twice since 1965. In 2008, Congress actually appropriated, not $900M, but $37M in funds for the LWCF to dole out. In 2009, Congress allocated $300M to the LCWF to use in funding projects -- its greatest allocation in many years, but still quite a bit less than $900M. By now, a $17 billion backlog has built up.
Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) introduced S.2747 last fall, now cosponsored by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and 16 Democrats, a short bill designed to fully fund the LWCF. On the House side, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) had H.R. 3534, a far more complicated bill including a 3 page fix to the LWCF as part of its 238 pages. And now Reid has included a LWCF fix in the WIMP bill. His version would mandate $900 million per year in the fund for the next five years, with a floor $500 million thereafter and the option for more.
Advocates for national parks, including this blogger, are delighted. The National Parks & Conservation Association asks that people take action by signing a petition. The bill (whether Reid's, Bingaman's, or Rahall's) is a common sense solution to an obvious problem.
On the other hand, advocates for meaningful climate change solutions, including this blogger, are dismayed. A LWCF fix seems pretty far distant from pressing issues of carbon, climate, and catastrophe. Reid's press release is just a little too much smug bullsh!t for my taste:
Division D of the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act would provide full funding for Land and Water Conservation Fund over the next five Fiscal Years to ensure land and water is protected long into the future—even from the effects of climate change.
Uh, Senator Reid? Next time, instead of protecting lands from the effects of climate change by funding them for five years, can you actually solve the climate change problem?