Rep. Scott Tipton has joined with the Republicans in an all-out assault on the nation’s public lands. His actions show that he feels environmental protections need to be gutted, and our public land should be privatized.
He is a sponsor of a bill that will nullify the Bureau of Land Management’s “Planning 2.0” rule. The rule governs all planning for 250 million acres, and repealing this rule will decrease public involvement and remove “the most current data and technology to decide whether and where drilling, mining and logging will happen on public land.”
This follows Rep. Tipton’s vote for H.R. 5 that changes the way Congress calculates the cost of transferring federal lands to the states, making it easier for Republicans to give public land away to their connected friends in the oil and gas industry.
Add on top of that his support of the repeal of the methane rule, which will increase pollution in Southwestern Colorado, and result in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from wasted vented gas.
In Rep. Tipton’s race against Gail Schwartz, he vehemently denied her claims when she said he showed “a pattern of actions that will force states into selling off federal lands to private enterprise.” Now, Schwartz’s warning holds true because actions speak louder than words.
William T. Williams
Hesperus
