Another Gift to Our Progeny

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique

And a swinging hot SPOT

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees

And put them in a tree museum

Then they charged the people

A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go,

That you don't know what you've got

Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

        --Lyrics by Joni Mitchell.

Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, has introduced legislation in the U.S. House of representatives that would  destroy regulations limiting oil and natural gas drilling within national parks.  H.J. Res. 46 would eliminate regulations passed by the Obama administration in November 2016 to oversee drilling on federal land. They apply to so-called “split state” land acquired by the federal government for national parks where private owners maintain their rights to potentially lucrative minerals underground. “Job creators,” the second-highest level of archangels in the religio-political firmament of Republican mythology, are among the intended beneficiaries of Gosar’s largesse.