“The federal coal leasing program continues to be a success for America, contributing nearly $12 billion over the past ten years from royalties, rents, bonuses, and other payments according to BLM.”

“Premature shutdown of coal-consuming plants is a trend already occurring due to the influence of an increasing number of environmental regulations promulgated for such plants. The robust marketplace competition that exists between coal and natural gas.”

In January 2016, the Department of Interior (DOI) announced a three-year moratorium on new federal coal leases while it completes a review of the federal coal leasing program. DOI’s Bureau of Land Management commenced the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement review process in March.

As it assesses the issue of fair return to taxpayers, however, BLM is considering reform approaches that would significantly increase the costs of federal coal production.…

“[The Fish and Wildlife Service] recognizes that: ‘Golden Eagle populations in the United States may not be able to sustain any additional, unmitigated mortality and the threshold for this species is zero.’ Yet, remarkably, FWS has still concluded that ‘some take [of Golden Eagles east of the 100th meridian] can be permitted with implementation of offsetting mitigation’.”

“FWS’s mission is to protect our native wildlife, particularly Threatened, Endangered and other imperiled species, not to promote and ensure the development of wind energy projects, particularly if they are poorly-sited from the perspective of wildlife conservation.”

ABC remains seriously concerned about the fate of the Golden Eagle population under the FWS’s proposed rule. Uncertainty about Golden Eagle populations, especially the small eastern population, and lack of knowledge about their behavior, migratory movements, and habitat use are the biggest weakness of this rule.…

“A dispassionate observer might be forgiven for concluding that FWS’s new proposal, which never even acknowledges the rationale for its earlier 30-year rule, is still designed actually to accommodate the wind energy industry, rather than to protect eagles.”

“ABC questions whether the sacrifice of millions of our Nation’s ecologically important birds and bats justifies building any large, commercial wind energy facility in an area with high concentrations of birds and bats.”

“Individuals who kill federally protected eagles or possess their parts can be fined as much as $250,000 per bird and spend up to two years in jail. The FWS’s revised rule, however, gives the wind industry a free pass to kill thousands of eagles with little or no consequence. What’s more, the public is not going to be able to find out how many eagles are actually being killed.”

The following questions and answers were posted by The Atlas Society in conjunction with their upcoming Atlas Summit next week. Other posts at MasterResource on the philosophy of Objectivism and its application to energy can be found here.

Elsewhere, Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress is fully engaged in the climate and energy debates, employing the philosophy of Ayn Rand and her belief that truth is objective, discernible, and applicable to matters of everyday life. Through the work of Bradley and Epstein, Rand’s voice from decades ago resounds in today’s discussions of man’s need for plentiful energy.

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Five Ayn Rand Questions for Robert Bradley

1) Tell us who you are? What’s the couple of sentence summary of what you do and what you’ve done?

I am a classical-liberal intellectual, or at least a student of classical liberalism.…