DuBois column - Cowboys, climate change & the new congress

 

Cowboys, climate change & the new congress 

Can an arbitrary number on climate control, selected by the UN and Biden, affect your grazing permit? Read on, friend, read on. 

 Climate change

A world leader on climate change has announced we are failing to meet the goal of limiting increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

One Alok Sharma, who presided over the previous climate change conference (COP), told attendees at this year’s COP that limiting the temperature rise to that level had to be a “red line.”

The 1.5 degree Celsius was the agreed upon goal at the at the 2015 U.N. climate summit in Paris.

 The current climate conference has also released a draft agreement that includes funds for “loss and damages,” a long-sought provision paying reparations from  the western, more developed nations to the relatively poor undeveloped nations. Let’s call this what it really is -  income redistribution that uses climate change as the action forcing event. The draft text , if adopted, would begin a two-year implementation process to create a funding mechanism no later than 2024.

Now the Biden administration has just released their Roadmap for Nature-Based Solutions to Fight Climate Change wherein they propose nature based solutions for floodplain management, calculating the value of nature, for energy, and as a guide to all federal planning and permitting. You name it and they have a nature based solution

Just what are these nature based solutions? The White House describes them as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, or restore natural or modified ecosystems as solutions to societal challenges, like fighting climate change. Examples include protection or conservation of natural areas, reforestation, restoration of marshes or other habitats, or sustainable management of farms, fisheries, or forests.”

Uh-oh. You see where this is leading.

Right into the hands of the enviros, who are critical of the Biden plan because it doesn’t use enough of the nature based solutions. They want the Biden administration to offer more specific actions to protect old growth forests, which they claim has 35 percent of forest land, but only 25 percent have some type of formal protection.

That formal protection gets me. What they really mean is more wilderness, wildlife refuges, national monuments, etc., but they just won’t come out and say it. Those lands currently must be managed to comply with the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Acl, the Clean Water Act, the National  Environmental Policy Act, and many others. There is nothing informal about it. The idea these lands are unprotected is just outhouse soup.

New congress

The results of the recent midterm elections have moved the entire Congress to the left. with the progressives making significant gains in the Democrat party.

The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.),says “There’s no question that this will be the most progressive Democratic caucus in decades.”  Michael Starr Hopkins, a Democratic operative says, “They have power and they should use it… Period”

And make no mistake, the progressives are closely aligned with the enviros.

Cowboys

What will come of all this climate change push. especially for ranchers and rural property owners? 

It seems clear the enviros will use climate change as the lever to lobby for all the items on their agenda, but of most interest to us they will use it as the reason to: 

--increase funding for all their programs. with special emphasis on wildlife habitat and land acquisition

--designate more wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, national monuments, national parks, wild and scenic rivers and other land use designations

--place more emphasis on “lands with wilderness characterists” and roadless areas during the planning process, and

--climate change will take a much more prominent place in all planning documents and decisions, including those on livestock grazing 

In NM we have almost 30 WSAs and other places like Otero Mesa where you just know the envirocrats are making plans. Also to be considered are Forest Service “roadless areas” in the Carson, Cibula, Coronado, Gila, Lincoln and Santa Fe National Forests. 

You better get ready for the ride. 

Here is hoping you have a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. 

Until next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch. 

Frank DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western Heritage Foundation

ppeared  in the NM Srockman and the Livesrock Market Diges