“Do you think God is going to come down here and save you for being stupid? He doesn’t save stupid people, Abel.”
Those lines—from There Will Be Blood, a movie about an obsessed oil driller—came to mind reading the Center for American Progress’ recent report on oil and gas drilling within national parks. Surprising fact: 12 U.S. national parks already contain active fossil fuel extraction operations. And the National Park Service has prepared a list of another 30 where drilling is a good possibility.
So one day we could have 42 parks with rigs operating within their boundaries. Which God will allow—if you believe what movies tell you—not because He blesses the idea of oil rigs in some of the most handsome or historically significant sites in this country. God will allow it because He does not save stupid people.
According to the CAP, the NPS list was based on the parks’ proximity to oil and gas resources, existing drilling near the parks’ boundaries and “non-federal mineral rights within the parks.” (Non-federal rights include private land within the parks or mineral rights to park land that predate a park’s creation.)
Current regulations make it hard to exercise those rights, so the immediate threat to the Everglades (one of the parks on the NPS list) seems small. But CAP states that those federal safeguards against drilling are at risk from “some politicians in Washington…who propose to roll back or even completely eliminate federal oversight of energy on public lands in favor of more relaxed state regulations.”
That would open the possibility of oil rigs in the Everglades or Grand Teton National Park (also on the NPS list), and the roads to support them, and all the other infrastructure. And the use of toxic chemicals at those sites. And, of course, the risk of spills.
If you think this is alarmist, you might be right. (Or, another interpretation, you might be stupid.) Either way, it’s hard to gin up a lot of fear over this happening because it doesn’t feel like an immediate threat and because the notion of an oil geyser or natural gas flare in Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon or Dinosaur National Monument seems so ludicrous (if you don’t think about those 12 currently active extraction sites).
Still, this warrants a permanent spot on your radar. Because when these lands are gone, they’re gone. (As they say in the movie: “That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It’s gone. It’s had. You lose.”) And if they go, we’ll all be at risk for getting dope-slapped—here, or in heaven—and asked, “What were you thinking?”
Map of potential oil and gas extraction sites within U.S. National Parks from the Center for American Progress.
