WEBVTT - A New Threat to Public Lands 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:08.000 Also media. Hello everyone to welcome to if it can 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.039 happen here a podcast where I have just been attacked 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.000 for my identity as a British person by my colleague 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:15.760 Garrison Davis. 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.280 I gere it's going to happen again. Really, I never 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:22.960 This podcast is not a safe space. 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.840 Not for British people. Sadly, many many such places for us, 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:30.960 including Britain, which is a country which is not doing 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.200 so well right now. The Britain is still very safe. 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.240 I don't want to talk about Britain today. I do, incidentally, 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:38.839 I guess because I grew up in a country that 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:43.680 has virtually no fucking public land I mean in the commons. 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.840 Yes, actually kind of topical. 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:49.680 Yeah, it is. That is a question that actually, and 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.080 so earlier this year in September, I was staying with 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.800 which in people who are indigenous to the Northern Alaskan, 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:00.880 Interior Arctic and Subarctic, and one of them was like, hey, 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.760 how did you guys get so dislocated from your lands? 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:06.080 One of my friends who I was talking to, and 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:08.080 it was a really interesting question for you, right because 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.200 they have lived on that same land for as long 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.240 as human beings have existed in the Americas the twenty 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.640 five thousand years something like that. Like, the answer is 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:20.039 the enclosure of the commons, right, the answer is like 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:25.920 proto capitalism is what removed folks like me from the 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:29.920 land and identifying in a way that those people identify 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:33.080 with the land. But in the United States, we do 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:36.200 have a little bit or quite a lot actually of 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:40.440 public land, right, various different types of public land, various 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.880 different land protections that anyone can go to where you 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.280 don't have to be in America or a citizen. Anyone 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:52.240 can go to public lands and enjoy them. Unfortunately, Utah 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:57.640 Senator quote unquote based Mike Lee is once again attempting 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:01.200 to weaken protections on wilderness, which will render some of 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:02.760 the small parts of the USA they have not been 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:08.200 fundamentally damaged by capitalism, permanently and irrevocably changed. Are you 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:10.120 familiar with Mike Lee. 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.919 Yeah, he's the senator from Utah, the senator from Utah. Yeah, 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.560 and he's based as you have said, Yes, he's based. 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:16.799 Right. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:18.280 He's a hashtag poster. 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:19.920 He's a poster. Yeah. 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.000 He operates a Twitter account which some might deem as 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.639 offensive and tweets about current current events in a very 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:33.160 provocative way. Yeah, usually in line with some kind of 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:34.119 partisan sentiments. 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:35.880 Yeah, that's pretty fair. 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:40.480 Specifically, following the assassination of Melissa Hortman and her husband, 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.960 made a series of tweets that were I guess, kind 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.360 of insensitive, if not actually if not laying blame at 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:54.040 the governor of Minnesota in this kind of ironic joking 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.240 way where you have plausible deniability, but in general handled 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.520 that situation very grossly. And I think that that's what 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.680 most people might know his tweets for. But he's very active, 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.520 He's he's tweets about many things, many a thing. 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:10.720 Yeah, yeah, if he thinks that, he posts it. But yeah, yeah, 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:12.959 most people will know him as a guy who made 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:17.160 the extremely poor taste posts following those. 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:20.880 Murders nightmare on walls the street. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.320 Yeah, just nothing to be posting when some people have 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:25.920 been murdered. 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:28.640 I think in general, when people are murdered, I think 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:31.320 we as humans should should post. 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:35.000 The last Yeah yeah, right, if somebody has died, like, 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:37.640 just don't post, you know, maybe not to say this 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:40.000 is terrible, so your condolences or whatever, but realistically their 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.360 family aren't looking on on Twitter dot com to see 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.280 you who who's sending their condolences. But the sure as 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:47.760 funk we'll find out if you try and make a 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.640 funny about it. So to just don't just resist urge 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:56.560 to post another urge that Mike Lee sadly have is 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:57.840 I don't like that at all. 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:02.960 Yeah, we're talking about Mike Lee's urgents. 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:07.160 Okay, it's in the broadcastable space. Mike Lee has the 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.240 urge to sell off public land. He has tried twice 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.240 this year. We spoke about this a little bit on 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.000 ed right, we talked about it in the context of 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.239 the Big Beautiful Bill or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:22.680 Yeah, he did try that like half a year ago. 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:26.520 Yes he did. Well, Garrison, I regret to inform you 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:29.440 that Mike Lee is back somehow. 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:30.719 Mike Lee has returned. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.400 Yeah, and this time he has got a new thing. 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.479 So last time, if you remember, he talked about selling 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:40.680 off the public land to make affordable housing. 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.559 Sure, sure, yeah, not going to look into this any further. 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:50.039 And that was exactly what he was relying on. That 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.400 no one gave a shit about the millions of acres 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:54.240 that we all get access to, and they would just 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:55.360 trust him on that one. 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:59.960 Based Mike Lee and his abundance exactly. 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.719 It's him and there's o run shaking hands when it 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.680 comes to affordable housing, but something they care about very much, 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.719 I'm sure, something that Mike Lee has campaigned on for years. 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:12.440 He did not stick Landing on that because people read 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:14.800 the proposal and they noticed that it was going to 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.360 do nothing for housing affordability whatsoever. If it did create 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:20.279 any housing at all, it was going to be like 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:25.159 super rich people's McMansions. You know, this was not going 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.240 to do anything to move the needlearn affordable housing in 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.000 the US. This time, he has found a cause which 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:37.159 receives even less scrutiny. Can you guess what it is, Garrison. 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:43.000 Ah, for why we need to sell the public lands. Yes, 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:48.520 I'm trying to not just look ahead on your script. 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:50.680 Yeah, there is a document in front of you which, 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:55.839 as he asked, it, so close your eyes. I feel 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:57.280 like there's like two or three things in the US 0:05:57.320 --> 0:05:59.640 where everyone just seems to turn a blind eye to, 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:00.720 like I. 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:03.640 Mean, this is it for like is it for like 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.200 developing land for like oil data centers? 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:09.880 Uh, that probably is what's happening. But he's he's smart 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:11.400 enough not to say that, right. 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:15.560 Super Gold magic card as in the as in the 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:19.239 film Eddington. I mean, I would guess the data centers, 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:21.320 but that that's that I could be wrong. 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:26.880 It's border security. Oh great, of course, right. You could 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:29.120 have said anti terrorism and probably got there to you. 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.560 But no, it is. It is securing US southern well 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:38.440 all aboarders, actually southern border, northern border, Eastern and western 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:43.160 maritime borders. Obviously they're they're looking to prevent any more 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.400 people coming in from Canada. Was not a border stick 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:53.200 that that is correct? That borders because literally, so you 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:54.599 go to search something. 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.000 Full off the map of the United States, I was like, 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.360 I don't think you. Maybe I'm misremembering, but you does 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:01.320 not a border state. 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:03.880 Is absolutely not a border state. 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:04.080 Gas. 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:04.839 It's actually not. 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.039 A border state. It is above Arizona, which. 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:12.240 Is yeah, so that is perhaps what's going on here. 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:15.240 Mike Lee has found a way to sell off public 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:17.760 lands without selling off U to ohur public lands. Oh 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.360 in this case, not really sell off, but destroy and 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:23.640 degrade in a way which is very clearly going to 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:28.200 lead to commercial exploitation. Right, what Lee proposes, what Lee's 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:30.440 bill has a bunch of cosponsors. I believe the only 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:35.000 border State Senator co sponsoring it is head cruise that 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:39.480 makes sense, big public lands, respector. But Lee's bill would 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:44.600 allow the Department of Homeland Security to quote inventory illegal 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.880 roads and trails on public land within one hundred miles 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:50.960 of the border and then convert them into navigable roads. 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.320 That that is the part that makes no sense, right, 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.600 Like when you look at Lee's statements, and I will 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:01.240 read one of Lee's statements here. So this is a 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:06.640 statement on the Senate Energy Committee web page where they 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:10.280 talk about Energy Natural Resources Committee. His quote from Mike 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:16.280 Lee explaining his bill quote, Biden's open border chaos is 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:21.320 destroying America's crown duels. I'm going to pause here to 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.800 note this. According to my watch, we're at November seventh, 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:32.040 twenty twenty five, while your watches rog Yeah, we are 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.520 once again asking the most important question of our time. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:39.080 It was President who is He used the president tense. 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.760 It didn't It's not even like talking about twenty twenty 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.640 and pretending that Trump was a president. He's doing it. 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:51.079 Right now that the art Quorterer policies are destroying our 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:52.240 natural airs. 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.959 Yeah, we were a year after the election. You've had 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.000 time to come to terms with this. You can't just 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.800 keep pointing at Joe, but apparently I guess you can. 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.600 They're going to keep doing that for three more years 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:07.520 until there's a new guy. 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.839 Yeah. Yeah, So let's go on with Chairman Lee, his 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.960 chairman of this Senate Energy Natural Resources Committee. Right, Families 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.120 who want to enjoy a safe hike or camp out 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:22.720 are instead finding trash piles, burned landscapes, and trails closed 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.640 because rangers are stuck cleaning up the fallout. Cartels are 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.800 exploiting the disorder, using these lands as cover for their operations. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.560 This bill gives land managers and border agents tools to 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:38.040 restore order and protect these places for the people they 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:40.760 were meant to serve. He's doing the thing where he 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.240 says one thing and then his build does something completely different. Yeah, 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:46.120 what he is saying is, on the face of it, 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.600 somewhat ridiculous. But what he's claiming he's going to do 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.160 is protect these lands. Right. What the bill allows them 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.360 to do is to find roads that are not permitted 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:58.080 and turn them into navigable roads. 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:02.640 So just actually pave roads, yes, in the protected wildlife in. 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.080 The Yeah, well crucially in wilderness areas. Right. So the 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:11.360 nineteen sixty four Wilderness Act does not allow for there 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:16.720 to be any mechanized access. Lee's bill proposes not just 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.720 to amend the Wilderness Act for within one hundred miles 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:24.200 of the border, but to amend it entirely to allow 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:26.560 for the construction of roads. 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.920 So that they can police the public lands better. That's 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:30.880 that's what he's saying. 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.200 Yeah, right, Well, he's one of his claims is for 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.160 search and rescue, and that there are already exemptions that 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:40.000 allow for mechanize search and rescue access, right, like things 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.000 like helicopters, right, helicopters. Yeah, if you get and even 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:46.080 like you get like motorized gurneys, you can use thesar 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.440 things like that, right, like the even ATVs. Right, there's 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:50.800 a threat to human lives. 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:51.720 A Toyota tacoma. 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.480 Yeah, I mean you'd struggle in most wilderness lands with 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:57.959 the Tacoma, but yeah, you could. You could give it 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:02.000 a college try. But it's ludicrous. He hasn't even made 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.720 an effort to join the dots, you know. It also 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:10.640 calls for fire mitigation by clearing fuels and building fire breaks, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.920 and includes a provision that would quote address invasive or 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:16.880 non native species. 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:18.199 In the wilderness area. 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.040 Yeah, like, what are you going to go in there 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:20.880 and round us? 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:23.440 Everyone's planting and spreading invasive species. 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:25.560 Yeah, I mean, of course they are invasive species right late, 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:27.600 Like if you go to parts of where I live, 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.079 like you'll see mustard, which is not an indigenous species 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:32.559 because the climate's changing and people move around the world, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.400 and like, lots and lots of animals that weren't like 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.520 here twenty thousand years ago are here now. 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.079 I mean, you can make an argument for managing these areas. 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.520 I don't think he's coming at this from an environmental 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:44.240 conservation standpoint. 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:47.960 Yeah. I don't know what the non native species thing 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:50.960 is about other than like just like nativism for plants, 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.040 Like I genuinely can't work it out. If anyone has 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.160 any ideas, please let me know. It also attempts to 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:01.400 inventory damage done to public lands by my grants, like 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.000 what wildfires are caused by migrants? How many national parks 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:06.280 are trashed by migrants? 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.760 Oh my god? Yeah, as opposed to the Americans citizens 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.920 who treat these areas like dogshit. Yeah, is who simply 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:14.640 just don't do their jobs because they're too lazy. 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:18.360 Yeah, And like the literally thousands of people a year 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.680 who fucking drag their refrigerator or television onto public land 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.640 and execute it by firing squad. Yeah. Like yeah, maybe 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:26.320 make a bill about that. I mean, you want to 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:28.920 do something nice for public land. I want to give 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:32.280 a definition of wilderness from Howard. I think it's zamasav 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:34.240 and he ever read his name with a Wilderness Society, 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.520 who more or less wrote act It defines wilderness as 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.960 quote a wilderness in contrast with those areas where man 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.160 and his own works dominate the landscape is hereby recognized 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.480 as an area where the earth and its community of 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:50.120 life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:53.800 visitor and who does not remain. I don't actually really 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:58.240 like that definition. I like wilderness, but I'm not a 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:01.079 big fan of the idea of like quote unquote unti wilderness. Right, 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.360 like every bit of what is now the United States 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:06.880 is a place where indigenous people have been living and 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:10.040 surviving for tens of thousands of years, long before it 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.400 was the United States. It's not untouched. It's just not 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.120 fucked by extractive capitalism in a way that a lot 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.280 of our land has been in the last two hundred. 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:21.400 Years, there could be touching without a fuck, that's what 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:26.160 you're saying. Person. 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:33.719 I saw this mischievous look come on their face, and 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:35.760 I didn't know which direction they were going to take it, 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:39.640 but I didn't expect that one. 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:41.920 Now this is podcasting. 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.160 Yeah wow, Yeah, we've just left the news reel. Let's 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:48.160 do an advertising break so we can't come back from that. 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:04.240 All right, we've returned de scandalized myself. Lee is currently 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:09.560 making his claims right that this will somehow make the 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:13.000 border safer and make people on public lands safer. 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.400 This is such the thinnest justification that you're throwing in 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.520 like this is so I severely doubt he sincerely even 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:21.160 believes this. 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:23.640 Yeah, I mean the border patrol have access to all 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:26.280 these lands, right, like I see I think the cumber 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:28.400 Wilderness of state Wilderness. I see border patrol in there 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:29.040 all the time. 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.000 I can see. There's many reasons for why our republic 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.400 and might be interested in like building road infrastructure in 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:40.080 these places and border security. Frankly, is insulting that you're 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.480 that he's even trying to use that as a zeitgeist justification. 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:48.480 Yeah, it's fucking ludicrous. Like the Trump administration is speed 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:53.600 running extractive capitalism on our public lands. Right, just yesterday 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:57.360 when we're recordings recording on Friday, Joe Biden as president. 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.680 As you will remember, Friday seven November twenty twenty, the 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:05.280 Trump administration nominated. Okay, I've outed myself. I'm not a 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.760 Biden I'm not a Biden truther. The Trump administration dominated 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.040 Steve Pierce to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Piers 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:17.120 is a former New Mexico congressman who has supported brilling 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:21.480 and fracking on federal land. He's also a serial loser 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:24.640 in congressional and state races in New Mexico. I think 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.360 he lost a Senate and a gubernatorial race, and he 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:31.440 has voted to shrink existing public lands. The Trump admin 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:37.160 did this before, right. People will probably if they're engaged 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.800 in public land advocacy, they will remember the attempts to 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:45.400 save the Bears Ears National Monument from oil exploitation, right, 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.160 which again is in Utah. Utah is for whatever reason, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:53.880 Utah is a hotbed of anti public lands settlement. Amusingly, 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.720 the previous nominee for the leadership of the BLM had 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:01.000 to be removed when emails condemning Trump's response to January 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:05.440 sixth came to light she I guess failed the loyalty test. 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:09.680 Trump has also put Doug Bergham at the head of 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:13.960 the Department of the Interior. Right, if you're wilar with 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:15.800 Bergham's shtick, guest. 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:18.080 His name sounds incredibly familiar. 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.360 Yeah, he was governor I believe in North Dakota. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.200 Like he did this pivot on like culture war issues 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:31.080 where he had previously been not opposed to abortion, for example, 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:34.280 and he just like took a massive swing to the 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:38.120 right in order to kind of align with the Muga 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:40.920 position over time. So he's not lying the Department of 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:44.960 the Interior. I wrote about this on my newsletter that 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:49.200 I write because when he was nominated, he received a 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.680 letter of support from the Outdoor Recreation round Table, a 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:58.680 bunch of outdoor brands, notably ARII was one of the 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:02.440 brands that supported nomination. Bergham is another big oil and 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.000 gas guy, right, He's a guy who has talked about 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.280 the need for energy exploitation on public land. I have 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.880 a whole scripted series and in working on about specifically 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.440 drilling in the Arctic refuge. But this goes far far 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:19.639 beyond that, right, this could potentially affect every piece of 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.000 public land, every national park, every national monument in the 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:22.919 United States. 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:25.000 And drill baby drill, Yes, drill baby. 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.960 Drill is pretty much our approach to public land these days. Amusingly, 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:33.960 ARII was shamed into rescinding their support of Bergham for that. Yeah. Yeah, 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.600 one of the few instances where people probably posted their 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.920 way to a change in in some in some kind 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:41.960 of some kind of policy. I guess, even though it's 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.960 only ARII policy. I want to talk a little bit 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:51.119 about how we got to this idea of public land 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:57.280 and the sort of way that it's sometimes referred to, 0:17:57.400 --> 0:17:59.600 and in a where I would prefer we talked about it. 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.119 I guess the idea we have right now is that 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.040 there are various tiers of public land. Right, there's Bureau 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:09.240 of Land Management land, which is often the least protected. 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.280 We have national parks, we have National monuments, we have 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:16.040 national forests, and we have wilderness, right, wilderness being among 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.720 the most protected. The problem with this approach is that 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:25.160 ecosystems don't necessarily respect property lines. Right. So let's take 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.760 for example, the witch in Alaska. Right, they have hundreds 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:33.679 of thousands of acres of their own, but their traditional 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:36.359 way of life, and indeed, like their existence depends on 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.280 the existence of the porcupine cariboo herd. The porcupine caribou 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.679 herd makes the longest migration of any land mammal on Earth, 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.920 and it carves on the coastal plane, the coastal plain. 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:51.000 The gwich In way of saying it would be I 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.280 have heard this said a lot of times. My sincere 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:56.960 apologies if I don't get it right, like I'm trauma best. 0:18:57.240 --> 0:19:02.040 What's a gwandai goodly means a sacred place where life begins. 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.600 It's a very sacred place. Gwitchin don't go there themselves 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.960 because it's a sacred place. But it is not in 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:12.359 their land. It is part of the Arctic refuge, a 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:16.960 place where the Trump administration is selling oil and gas leases. Right, 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.000 So if the cariboo can't carve, it doesn't matter. It 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:22.800 still matters to the Guichin have all this land, but 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.080 they won't have their cariboo right because the herd will 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:27.720 be so disrupted by oil and gas relin where it's 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.160 carving that it will then disrupt that whole landscape. Right 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:37.080 without Cariboo, that landscape would be fundamentally different. So right now, 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:42.359 the way we talk about public lands, I think we 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:46.040 talk about them like in terms of leisure, right Like 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:50.040 often they're scene as having a value. Like I guess 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.200 the classic example would be maybe don't remember this gig 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:57.600 Patagonia when an advertising campaign called the places we play 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.920 in the last Trump administration, it's not it, right Like, 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:03.400 that is not cool. I think if we only see 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.399 wilderness as a place where, like folks go outside to 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:11.320 do send the na on climbing routes and fucking shreds 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.920 and mountain bike trails, bro, then we fundamentally like missed 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.520 the value of it, right Yeah, this goes back a 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.840 long long time. For instance, if we look back in 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:23.600 ninety twenty nine with specifically with the protection of the 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.560 Arctic Refuge, we can see this piece that Bob Marshall wrote. 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:29.400 Bob Marshall was a forest at the time, but he's 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:32.760 kind of important in this creating this idea of like 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.240 wilderness and wilderness protections. He talked about the quote unquote 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:39.360 emotional values of the frontier being preserved in the wilderness, 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.080 which again I think kind of tells us a lot 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.720 a lot of what's going on here. 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:49.320 It's a very very Theodore Roosevelt brained approach to conservation. 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:51.320 Yeah, right, Like we can go out there and we 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:54.440 can all pretend to be like the guys who participated 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.600 in the genocide of indigenous peoples of North America. I 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.280 guess like he also he considered using the definition attract 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:04.760 of solitude and savageness, which, again, like it says a 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:08.720 lot about it's removing the people from the land, right, like, 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.919 both literally and in our conception of it. And I 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.400 don't think we should do that. Right when we talk 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:16.960 about wilderness, we need to talk about it hand in 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.480 hand with the indigenous people of this country and their 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:25.840 traditional management practices which allowed this place to be unspoiled 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:30.040 until folks started to exploit it in the last couple 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:32.800 of hundred years. They'll take an ad break, hopefully we 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:37.040 get something for like fracking or some other petrochemical industry, 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:51.840 and it will be right back. We are back and 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:56.359 we are talking about Senator Mike Lee again, Garrison, would 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:01.280 you like to guess which industries have emerged on the 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:05.399 top of Senator might Lee's donor list When I cruise 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:06.600 unto open secrets. 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:08.639 Is it fracking and drilling. 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.280 It's actually real estate. He's got a ton of money 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:15.840 from real estate. About six hundred and sixty five thousand. 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:19.080 Six hundred and sixty five thousand is not that much 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.520 money when you consider the millions of acres of public 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:27.880 lands which would be completely and permanently altered by this, right. 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:29.720 Yeah, he really should be asking for a lot more 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:34.159 money to sell off secure the bag. If you're going 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.320 to do this, it's grossly undervalue. Yeah. 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:39.280 I always look at campaign donations and I kind of 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:41.840 expect them to be in the billions or trillions when 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:46.399 like you're looking at just this massive and permanent change 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:47.760 in government policy. 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:49.679