With oil and gas development booming in western North Dakota there are concerns about the impact of that activity on the land around it, and it’s more than just the environment. There is history, culture and scenery worth protecting in the western part of the state. That being said, when you hear some people talk…
Clay Jenkinson: America's Misdirected Militarism, And The Quest For Theodore Roosevelt
Where is Theodore Roosevelt when you need him? So the Russian Federation swallows Crimea in direct violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, signed by the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, one of our principal concerns was the status and disposal of the USSR’s…
North Dakota Oil, Fracking Documentaries Long On Politics And Short On Facts
Earlier this week I wrote about a documentary about the oil boom in North Dakota that was being screened by a George Soros-backed left-wing group in Washington DC. A former North Dakotan and SAB reader who lives in DC went to the event and provided the insights below. — I biked over to the Center…
On Television: Can We Protect Property Rights And The Environment At The Same Time?
) I was on Chris Berg’s 6:30 Point of View program last night debating the “extraordinary places” regulations proposed to the North Dakota Industrial Commission by Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. The commission adopted the policy, but only for public lands, leaving private lands free. On the show, columnist Clay Jenkinson argued for the inclusion of…
Clay Jenkinson Column: North Dakota's Energy Sacrifice Zone
A few weeks ago I wrote here that I regarded the Special Places initiative as perhaps the most important moment of North Dakota history in my lifetime. This last week the North Dakota Industrial Commission voted unanimously to “approve” Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s proposal—but so stripped of its original intent as to be essentially pointless…
Clay Jenkinson Column: Hand On The Lever, Not Head In The Sand
For what little it is worth, I am solidly in favor of the Bakken Oil Boom. I’m just one citizen of 700,000, of course, and I don’t regard myself as having any special insight. But I love North Dakota with all my heart and I want this our shared homeland to thrive in every sense…
Ralph Kingsbury: Clay Jenkinson's Oil Boom Column Disappoints
Unless you consider yourself a scholar, or at least have never been a resident of the western part of the state anytime in the past 30 years or so you may not know who Clay Jenkinson is. Among other things, he is a former Rhodes Scholar who stayed in North Dakota. That alone makes him…
Clay Jenkinson Column: Welcome To The New North Dakota, Enjoy Our "Growing Pains"
Ah, yes, the new North Dakota. A minor oil spill here and a “minor” oil spill there, a barroom brawl tonight and a domestic homicide tomorrow, a wellhead natural gas explosion in Tioga and an oil train derailment and fire in Casselton. Traffic fatalities now so frequent in northwestern North Dakota as to have ceased…
Jenkinson Column: Aspiring To Higher Laws In North Dakota Life
For the past five days I have been holed up at a fabulous Spartan resort just inside Idaho west of Missoula, Mont., with a dozen folks from all over America. We gathered in the mountain snow at Lochsa Lodge for the sole purpose of discussing one of the world’s great books, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden;”…
Roosevelt Descendant Bashes Oil Boom, But Hasn't Been To North Dakota In Five Years
Yesterday I wrote about Winthrop Roosevelt narrating a video for the Center for American Progress (a left-wing George Soros subsidiary) in which he claims that North Dakota’s “unchecked [oil] development is on a collision course with one of America’s truly special places.” He’s talking about Theodore Roosevelt National Park, of course, but the problem is…