If it's ignorance we're after, this policy is perfect. Literally drilling-down for information is off limits. In its place: a policy of burying our head in the dirt.
For those who respond that this is the Grand Canyon we're taking about, a special case deserving a special carve-out, check out the Pew Trust's puckishly named Campaign for Responsible Mining, which lists the Grand Canyon as one of 10 national parks 'at risk' due to a 'claims-staking frenzy.' With the Grand Canyon as precedent, how many millions of acres of federal land will be fenced off from resource assessment and exploration – and at what cost?
Because the fact is, there are risks to not knowing. According to the 2010 Bureau of Land Management review - the very study compiled to support the Grand Canyon ban - we find this warning:
'Failure to develop uranium resources on the subject lands that have the potential of becoming part of the second most important uranium-producing region in the United States has far reaching economic implications, which are beyond the scope of this report. In the United States, strategic and critical minerals are those minerals which [sic] are necessary for vital military, industrial, and civilian uses during a national emergency but are not produced in sufficient quantities domestically. The shortfall in domestic production of these minerals is currently offset by imports, which may not be available in the case of national emergency.'
Secretary Salazar may forecast sunny skies for the next 20 years, but does that justify denying his successors the right to carry an umbrella?
Of course, nothing in politics is permanent. A future president or Congress responding to a future crisis will find the Constitutional room to reverse course. We will race then to remedy our deficient knowledge of our own resource riches and fast-track their development. One hopes the crisis of the moment will be kind enough to wait for us to respond.
But for now, we'll embark on a policy of willful blindness - one that closes off huge tracts of prospective land at a time when the race for resource access is becoming one of the defining facts of 21st Century geo-politics.
They say what you don't know can't hurt you. Thanks to the U.S. Department of Interior, one day we may just find out whether that's true.
