Trump's Pen Did Not Save Keystone XL.

Over at Reason, John Stossel notes an occurrence of the type I warned about several times during Trump's first term:

Twenty years ago, entrepreneurs tried to open a mine in Alaska. Before they even got the application in, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) vetoed it.

Why? Because groups like the [Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)] say the mine "would be a catastrophic threat to the wildlife and ... fragile ecosystem."

They get their way because when Democrats run the EPA, they not only support NRDC's positions, they even hire NRDC employees.

The next Republican administration removed the EPA's veto. The Army Corps of Engineers then studied the mine and concluded that it wasn't an environmental threat.

So, is Pebble a bustling mine today? No.

Democrats got elected and vetoed it again.

Physicist Mark Mills wonders why anyone would try to open a mine in America today. "Why in the world would you put millions, maybe billions of dollars at risk, spending those decades to get a permit, knowing there's a very good chance they'll just cancel a permit? How in the world do you build mines in America knowing that that's the landscape you have?" [link omitted, bold added]

Stossel doesn't say which administration tried to green light the mine or how, but the details don't matter: Without using legislation to uproot agencies of improper government, such as the EPA, it will be impossible to stop them from violating the rights of Americans.

Image by Executive Office of the President of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Case in point? (scroll upwards) The Keystone XL Pipeline, which I remember Trump authorizing, via executive order, during his first week in office. Biden revoked the permit on his first day in office -- after the four years of back-and-forth legal maneuvers by the special interests, governments, and the company that wanted to build the pipeline stalled it long enough for him to do so. (The historical account between the two signatures was about 750 words long!)

The company ultimately gave up, for exactly the reasons Stossel notes above.

-- CAV