EDITORIAL: Obama’s war on West

The domestic energy boom — fossil fuels, not renewables — is largely responsible for the country’s economic growth. As he does with so many issues, President Barack Obama wants it both ways. He takes credit for increased energy production on private lands — the administration couldn’t tout recovery otherwise — yet he does all he can to close off exploration on public lands that hold massive amounts of oil and natural gas.

The president’s latest attack on oil and gas came last week. As reported by The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin, the administration proposed setting aside as wilderness more than 12 million acres in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Although Congress would have to approve any new designation, the administration’s plan allows the Interior Department to immediately put the land under the highest level of federal protection. For now, Alaskans have no say in how to use this land. Which is to say there will be no oil exploration.

In his State of the Union speech, the president said he wanted to work with Republicans. But since the day he took office in 2009, he has never worked in good faith with the GOP. As the new session of Congress gets underway, the ANWR move is a signal that cooperation will be impossible through the 2016 elections.

And this isn’t just Alaska’s burden. Federal land use is a major economic issue for the western United States. The ANWR decision is a very bad sign for Nevada, which is 86 percent federal acreage, and all its neighbors. The Republican Congress needs to squelch the wilderness designation, and while it’s at it, seek more ways to open federal land to local control throughout the West.