Owned By No One, Depended On By Everyone.

Land, water, air, and the species that depend on them are commons in the older sense — owned by no one and depended on by everyone. Federal stewardship of these resources is governed by an aging mix of statutes including the 1872 Mining Law, which still sets royalties at zero for federal mineral extraction. The proposals here address three distinct failures: legacy contamination from a century and a half of unaccountable mining, below-market subsidies to extractive industries grazing and drilling on federal lands, and inadequate waste and energy standards for federal operations themselves — each priced by what the market or the public has been forced to absorb in the absence of accountability.