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On Earth Day, Congress Targets America’s Public Lands and Waters
First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010.
President Barack Obama walks the Anhinga Trail at Everglades National Park, Fla., Wednesday, April 22, 2015.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Obama traveled to Everglades National Park in Florida Wednesday to commemorate Earth Day and highlight the effects climate change is having on America’s public lands. But recent efforts from Senate Republicans are threatening the very program that helped protect the iconic national park and hundreds of others across the country.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing Wednesday morning to examine possible ways to limit the use and effectiveness of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a 50-year-old program that will expire in September without congressional reauthorization. In addition to helping fund protection of Florida’s Everglades National Park, the LWCF has supported the creation of more than 40,000 local outdoor recreation projects and helped protect more than 7 million acres of land across the country.
At Wednesday’s hearing, ranking member Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) defended the LWCF, calling for permanent reauthorization and full funding.
“We should remember on Earth Day that the Earth is lasting much longer than us, and the question is what good stewardship we are providing in the meantime,” she said. “So this iconic program that has helped to protect many of our nation’s iconic and most popular national parks, forests and public lands is, I think, a treasure in itself.”
President Obama also called on Congress to fully fund the LWCF in his Earth Day speech Wednesday.
Funded through revenues from offshore oil and gas development fees, the budget-neutral LWCF has attracted broad bipartisan support in the past. However, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is among a group of members in Congress who are arguing for significant changes to its structure, including diverting and placing restrictions on funding for the program.
At a House hearing last week, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) pushed back on proposals to alter the LWCF, saying that “diverting money from this fund away from its original purpose would set a dangerous precedent, and I hope that’s not the direction that this Congress goes.”
Attacking conservation laws and critical environmental programs is not new for this Congress. According to an analysis released last week, in the first 100 days of 2015, the new Republican-led Congress voted more for fossil fuel and anti-environmental priorities than on any other legislative area. In the Senate, 44 percent of all roll call votes were cast on energy and environmental topics in this Congress’s first 100 days, including on approving the Keystone XL pipeline, blocking action to address climate change, and selling off America’s public lands.
The new Congress’s anti-environmental efforts are summarized in a new video released today by the Center for American Progress:
The Senate hearing to undermine what is known as America’s best parks program, the LWCF, is not only fossil fuel-focused priority that Republicans are pushing on Earth Day.
“It used to be that even when Republicans spent significant time trying to undermine our environmental statutes, they would at least use Earth Day as tool to trumpet some small, consensus environmental bills with small improvements,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) in his opening remarks at a House subcommittee markup today on a bill to block the Administration’s Clean Power Plan. “Now, we don’t even get that. Now, we have a Republican Majority whose message seems to be, ‘Happy Earth Day: let’s pollute the planet.’”
Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.
The post On Earth Day, Congress Targets America’s Public Lands and Waters appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Source: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/22/3650183/earth-day-lwcf-funding/
