Congress should fund the BLM (no, not that one)
How Donald Trump’s changes to the Bureau of Land Management are still slowing the energy transition
A MEMORABLE scene in season one of HBO’s hit series “The White Lotus” shows Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) asking her date how he got involved with the BLM, and why he decided to devote his life to activism. Greg Hunt (Jon Gries) is bewildered. Tanya, like many Americans, assumes that the initials stand for Black Lives Matter, an anti-racism group. “Black Lives Matter? I’m not involved in that,” he replies. Now it is Tanya’s turn for bewilderment. Finally, Greg reveals that he works for a distinctly different BLM: America’s Bureau of Land Management.
The Bureau of Land Management (the BLM from here on) is not one of America’s better-known federal agencies. It is just one of 11 bureaus within the Department of the Interior, and is responsible for managing 10% of America’s lands, or more than 245m acres, mostly in the western states. It issues permits for development on the country’s public lands. For a long time, that meant approving oil and gas drilling.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The other BLM”
United States May 20th 2023
- The fault lines in America’s China policy
- What do George Santos, R. Kelly and FIFA have in common?
- Pinball is booming in America, thanks to nostalgia and canny marketing
- Anoint my caverns with oil
- Congress should fund the BLM (no, not that one)
- San Francisco’s “woke maths” experiment
- It turns out that Democrats bus migrants, too
More from United States
Bayer wants legislative help to fight its cancer lawsuits
But the maker of Roundup weedkiller faces opposition from Republican and Democratic hardliners
After a season of Gaza protests, America’s university graduates are polarised but resilient
After enduring covid and turmoil over free speech, the class of 2024 finally takes its bow