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Doug Burgum, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, told oil and gas executives in March that he believes “that the sum of our national assets is much larger than our national debt.” Burgum was suggesting that by leasing or selling off America’s public lands, the Trump administration could somehow eliminate America’s $33 trillion national debt.
The full economic value of America’s public lands comes from the fact that they are intact landscapes that provide benefits for all Americans. From hiking and hunting to clean water and wildlife habitat, economists have the ability to measure the economic value of nature. But Donald Trump and Doug Burgum aren’t interested in getting an accurate accounting on America’s public lands, let alone taking into account the unquantifiable aspects that most other Americans value. They see only two things: land to be sold and resources to be extracted.
In a new Westwise blog post, Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss walks through how actual economists look at the value of lands and nature. President Trump and Interior Secretary Burgum aren’t wrong when they say that public lands are incredible assets on America’s balance sheet. But proposals to pay down the national debt or create a sovereign wealth fund by selling American lands to oligarchs and leasing every possible acre for extraction aren’t just short-sighted and un-American — they’re terrible financial advice. As Weiss explains, attempts to balance the budget through natural resource extraction have consistently fallen short of expectations, and the land value of most public land parcels is minimal.
Most importantly, what’s missing from this accounting discussion is the truly unquantifiable nature of public lands. Even when the numbers on a balance sheet fully reflect the economic impact of intact ecosystems, that still doesn’t capture the beauty, inspiration, and solace that every American can find on our public lands.
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They’re trying to build an energy policy on the backs of the Tribes. We’ve already done that. We’ve already experienced it. So we’re saying don’t do it again.”
