It’s been two years since United States Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the Honoring Chaco Initiative, a multiphase plan with the potential to transform how land stewardship decisions about mineral extraction, remediation and cleanup of extraction sites on federally controlled lands are made in the Greater Chaco Region of northern New Mexico. But members of the Greater Chaco Coalition are…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Twenty-five years after he signed the bipartisan Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) into law, President Jimmy Carter’s iconic smile was in full display, as he and Mrs. Rosalynn Carter, leaning against the railings of a small marine vessel, looked through their binoculars at the natural wonders of Kenai Fjords National Park. As if on cue, iconic animals appeared…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Three environmental groups on Thursday filed a 30-day
notice of their intent to sue the Biden administration for refusing to respond to a petition to wind down fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters.
Signed by a coalition of more than 360 progressive advocacy organizations, the January 2022
petition submitted to President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland provides a framework to slash federal oil and gas production by 98% by 2035 using long-dormant provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and the National Emergencies Act.
Research published after the petition was submitted shows that wealthy countries must end oil and gas production entirely by 2034 to give the world a 50% chance of meeting the Paris agreement’s more ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C—beyond which the climate emergency’s impacts will grow increasingly deadly, especially for the world’s poor who have done the least to cause the crisis.
And yet, not only has the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) ignored the coalition’s regulatory blueprint for more than a year, but the agency on Monday approved the Willow project—ConocoPhillips’ massive oil drilling operation in Alaska’s North Slope. This decision, which prompted a pair of separate lawsuits, was the latest but far from the only time that Biden has reneged on his 2020 promise to curb federal fossil fuel extraction. A recent analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity shows that the Biden administration rubber-stamped more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018.
“Biden’s approval of the climate-killing Willow project shows how desperately we need rules cracking down on runaway oil and gas extraction on public lands,” Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity said Thursday in a
statement. “The climate deadline to end oil and gas extraction in the U.S. is 2034, and the natural place to start is on land the federal government controls. It’s pathetic that legal action is needed to force the administration to act.”
With Thursday’s notice, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and WildEarth Guardians informed Haaland that they intend to sue DOI for “unreasonable delay” if, 30 days from now, the agency “has still not initiated rulemaking or provided a substantive response” to last year’s petition.
The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to respond to such petitions within a “reasonable” amount of time, the groups explained. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, they argued, DOI’s 14-month period of inaction violates federal law.
“We can’t frack our way to a safe climate and this lawsuit aims to ensure President Biden’s administration heeds the reality that we need to transition the United States away from both the consumption and production of oil and gas.”
“Far from living up to his promise to protect the climate, President Biden is actually undermining his commitment to the American public to end fossil fuel leasing,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “We can’t frack our way to a safe climate and this lawsuit aims to ensure President Biden’s administration heeds the reality that we need to transition the United States away from both the consumption and production of oil and gas.”
As a presidential candidate, Biden vowed to prohibit new oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters and to require federal permitting decisions to weigh the social costs of additional greenhouse gas pollution. Although Biden issued an executive order suspending new fossil fuel leasing during his first week in office, his administration’s actions since then have flown in the face of earlier pledges.
On August 24, 2021, DOI argued that it had no choice but to restart lease auctions due to a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee who ruled in favor of Big Oil-funded Republican attorneys general who sued Biden over his moratorium. In a memorandum of opposition filed on the same day, however, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that while Doughty’s decision blocked the implementation of Biden’s pause, it did not force the DOI to hold new lease sales, “let alone on the urgent timeline specified in plaintiffs’ contempt motion.”
Just days after Biden described global warming as “an existential threat to human existence” and declared Washington’s purported commitment to decarbonization at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the DOI ignored the DOJ’s legal advice and moved forward with Lease Sale 257. The nation’s largest-ever offshore auction, which saw more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico offered to the highest-bidding oil and gas drillers, was blocked in January 2022 by a federal judge who argued that the Biden administration violated environmental laws by not adequately considering the likely consequences of resulting emissions.
“Interior’s delay on our petition to phase down fossil fuel extraction and development is not only unreasonable, it is simply unacceptable.”
Despite Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas pollution in half by the end of this decade, the DOI held lease sales in several Western states in 2022, opening up tens of thousands of acres of public land to fossil fuel production.
Moreover, the White House supported the demands of right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.)—the top congressional recipient of fossil fuel industry cash during the 2022 election cycle and a longtime coal profiteer—to add oil and gas leasing provisions to the Inflation Reduction Act. The DOI has so far announced plans for multiple onshore and offshore lease sales in 2023.
The president’s 2021 freeze on new lease auctions was intended to give the DOI time to assess the “potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities on public lands or in offshore waters.” The agency’s review of the federal leasing program effectively ignored the climate crisis, however, focusing instead on proposed adjustments to royalties, bids, and bonding in what environmental justice advocates characterized as a “shocking capitulation to the needs of corporate polluters.”
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that about 25% of the nation’s total carbon dioxide emissions and 7% of its overall methane emissions stem from fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters. A 2015 analysis prepared for the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth warned that federal fossil fuels already leased to industry contain up to 43 billion tons of potential planet-heating pollution, and those not yet leased hold another 450 billion tons. According to peer-reviewed research, a nationwide ban on federal oil and gas leasing would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 280 million tons per year.
“It’s tragic that climate chaos has raged on Biden’s watch,” Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, said Thursday. “People are dying, sea levels are rising, and we are rapidly reaching the point of no return.”
“Interior’s delay on our petition to phase down fossil fuel extraction and development is not only unreasonable, it is simply unacceptable,” said Templeton. “We hope that our lawsuit clears the administration’s apparent apathy and spurs the urgent action that this code-red moment calls for.”
Seven groups on Monday filed a legal challenge to the U.S. Interior Department’s Lease Sale 259, which would offer 73.3 million acres of public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to the highest-bidding oil and gas drillers.
Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Healthy Gulf, Bayou City Waterkeeper, and Friends of the Earth filed the lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia. The complaint asks the court to “vacate or enjoin any leases issued or actions taken pursuant to the unlawful [sale] unless and until defendants comply with the law.”
President Joe Biden’s administration “previously canceled this and other sales, citing delays and ‘conflicting court rulings,’” the groups explained in a joint statement. But then right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—the top congressional recipient of fossil fuel industry cash during the 2022 election cycle and a long-time coal profiteer—made his support for Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), contingent on the inclusion of oil and gas leasing provisions.
Congressional Democrats, with zero votes to spare in the Senate amid unified Republican opposition, passed a Manchin-approved version of the IRA last August. Lease Sale 259, one of the largest offshore auctions in U.S. history, is now scheduled for March 28, less than a month before the 13th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon BP disaster.
The groups acknowledged that the IRA directs the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to hold the lease sale. However, they stressed, “it does not require such a vast area to be auctioned to industry, nor does it exempt the sale from any existing laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act.”
“Holding this offshore oil lease sale without careful environmental review is both unlawful and morally reprehensible.”
“Lease Sale 259 would offer up all unleased areas in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, which could lock in a massive drilling operation to extract more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years,” the groups warned.
Such a move would fly in the face of the Biden administration’s purported commitment to slashing planet-heating pollution and speeding up the adoption of renewables, critics argued.
“This administration has pledged to oversee a historic transition to clean energy, but actions speak louder than words,” said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. “We don’t need a billion new barrels of crude oil threatening people and ecosystems in the Gulf.”
Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth, said, “Yet again we find ourselves in the courtroom with the Biden administration over another unlawful and disastrous oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Last year, a federal judge blocked Lease Sale 257, the nation’s largest-ever offshore lease sale wherein more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico were put on the auction block.
“With each carbon bomb he drops, the president’s pledge to end oil and gas drilling feels long forgotten,” said Templeton. “BOEM should be proceeding with the utmost caution and ensuring that its oil and gas decisions comply with federal laws, not adding to our climate crisis.”
\u201cToday we & our Gulf partners filed a federal court legal challenge to the Department of the Interior\u2019s lease sale 259 that would offer 73.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing. https://t.co/7XuIJnDgDj\u201d— Bayou City Waterkeeper (@Bayou City Waterkeeper) 1678125892
According to the complaint, BOEM’s approval of Lease Sale 259 “was based on insufficient and arbitrary environmental analyses” in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The agency’s final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) “failed to take the required ‘hard look’ at the significant impacts of this massive lease sale,” the suit alleges.
Specifically, the complaint says, BOEM “did not rationally evaluate the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, relying instead on problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that this massive lease sale will result in only ‘slightly higher domestic emissions’ than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments.”
In addition, BOEM “arbitrarily dismissed the impacts of onshore oil and gas infrastructure—refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industrial sources that process fossil fuels and related products from Lease Sale 259—on Gulf communities,” according to the suit. The groups also accuse the agency of ignoring “the latest air quality data” and presenting “an incomplete and misleading picture of oil spill impacts and risks based on flawed modeling that failed to properly consider reasonably foreseeable accidents.”
Moreover, the complaint continues, BOEM “failed to properly disclose and consider the significant harm from ship strikes, pollution, and oil spills on endangered species such as the Rice’s whale” and five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles. The agency claimed that such impacts would be “negligible,” even as experts fear the Rice’s whale population has dropped below 50.
Finally, the suit accuses BOEM of failing “to consider reasonable scaled-back alternatives to its proposed action,” and refusing “to adequately respond to plaintiffs’ comments on the draft SEIS, offering only boilerplate responses and failing to grapple with and respond to substantive technical and legal critiques.”
“The Biden administration needs to end new extraction, phase out drilling, and start taking its commitment to climate action seriously.”
Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said that “selling off more of our lands and waters to the fossil fuel industry is the last thing we should do at a time when we need to be rapidly transitioning away from oil and gas to meet our nation’s climate goals and create a livable planet for all.”
“Offshore drilling devastates millions of acres of nature, contributes to an increasing number of climate disasters, and creates a quarter of our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Manuel. “While the IRA represents a historic step forward in achieving our nation’s climate goals, we cannot let the bad provisions of the bill, including oil and gas leasing, undercut what we stand to gain.”
Kristen Schlemmer, legal director for Bayou City Waterkeeper, echoed Manuel, noting that vulnerable residents of the Gulf Coast are already reeling from petrochemical pollution, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and intensified storms.
“We’re at a point where we should be moving away from fossil fuels, not enabling an astounding amount of drilling for more than a generation to come,” said Schlemmer. “For communities along the Houston Ship Channel, which are predominantly Black, brown, and lower-income, Lease Sale 259 creates an especially toxic combination of risks.”
“More drilling means more facilities in their backyards,” she added. “This will compound already elevated rates of cancer and heart and lung diseases, while also increasing risks during major storms.”
In the words of Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at CBD, “Holding this offshore oil lease sale without careful environmental review is both unlawful and morally reprehensible.”
“More oil drilling in the Gulf is too big a risk for the communities and wildlife living there, and too harmful to the climate,” said Monsell. “The Biden administration needs to end new extraction, phase out drilling, and start taking its commitment to climate action seriously.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Seven groups on Monday filed a legal challenge to the U.S. Interior Department’s Lease Sale 259, which would offer 73.3 million acres of public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to the highest-bidding oil and gas drillers.
Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Healthy Gulf, Bayou City Waterkeeper, and Friends of the Earth filed the lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia. The complaint asks the court to “vacate or enjoin any leases issued or actions taken pursuant to the unlawful [sale] unless and until defendants comply with the law.”
President Joe Biden’s administration “previously canceled this and other sales, citing delays and ‘conflicting court rulings,’” the groups explained in a joint statement. But then right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—the top congressional recipient of fossil fuel industry cash during the 2022 election cycle and a long-time coal profiteer—made his support for Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), contingent on the inclusion of oil and gas leasing provisions.
Congressional Democrats, with zero votes to spare in the Senate amid unified Republican opposition, passed a Manchin-approved version of the IRA last August. Lease Sale 259, one of the largest offshore auctions in U.S. history, is now scheduled for March 28, less than a month before the 13th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon BP disaster.
The groups acknowledged that the IRA directs the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to hold the lease sale. However, they stressed, “it does not require such a vast area to be auctioned to industry, nor does it exempt the sale from any existing laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act.”
“Holding this offshore oil lease sale without careful environmental review is both unlawful and morally reprehensible.”
“Lease Sale 259 would offer up all unleased areas in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, which could lock in a massive drilling operation to extract more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years,” the groups warned.
Such a move would fly in the face of the Biden administration’s purported commitment to slashing planet-heating pollution and speeding up the adoption of renewables, critics argued.
“This administration has pledged to oversee a historic transition to clean energy, but actions speak louder than words,” said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. “We don’t need a billion new barrels of crude oil threatening people and ecosystems in the Gulf.”
Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth, said, “Yet again we find ourselves in the courtroom with the Biden administration over another unlawful and disastrous oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Last year, a federal judge blocked Lease Sale 257, the nation’s largest-ever offshore lease sale wherein more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico were put on the auction block.
“With each carbon bomb he drops, the president’s pledge to end oil and gas drilling feels long forgotten,” said Templeton. “BOEM should be proceeding with the utmost caution and ensuring that its oil and gas decisions comply with federal laws, not adding to our climate crisis.”
\u201cToday we & our Gulf partners filed a federal court legal challenge to the Department of the Interior\u2019s lease sale 259 that would offer 73.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing. https://t.co/7XuIJnDgDj\u201d— Bayou City Waterkeeper (@Bayou City Waterkeeper) 1678125892
According to the complaint, BOEM’s approval of Lease Sale 259 “was based on insufficient and arbitrary environmental analyses” in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The agency’s final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) “failed to take the required ‘hard look’ at the significant impacts of this massive lease sale,” the suit alleges.
Specifically, the complaint says, BOEM “did not rationally evaluate the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, relying instead on problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that this massive lease sale will result in only ‘slightly higher domestic emissions’ than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments.”
In addition, BOEM “arbitrarily dismissed the impacts of onshore oil and gas infrastructure—refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industrial sources that process fossil fuels and related products from Lease Sale 259—on Gulf communities,” according to the suit. The groups also accuse the agency of ignoring “the latest air quality data” and presenting “an incomplete and misleading picture of oil spill impacts and risks based on flawed modeling that failed to properly consider reasonably foreseeable accidents.”
Moreover, the complaint continues, BOEM “failed to properly disclose and consider the significant harm from ship strikes, pollution, and oil spills on endangered species such as the Rice’s whale” and five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles. The agency claimed that such impacts would be “negligible,” even as experts fear the Rice’s whale population has dropped below 50.
Finally, the suit accuses BOEM of failing “to consider reasonable scaled-back alternatives to its proposed action,” and refusing “to adequately respond to plaintiffs’ comments on the draft SEIS, offering only boilerplate responses and failing to grapple with and respond to substantive technical and legal critiques.”
“The Biden administration needs to end new extraction, phase out drilling, and start taking its commitment to climate action seriously.”
Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said that “selling off more of our lands and waters to the fossil fuel industry is the last thing we should do at a time when we need to be rapidly transitioning away from oil and gas to meet our nation’s climate goals and create a livable planet for all.”
“Offshore drilling devastates millions of acres of nature, contributes to an increasing number of climate disasters, and creates a quarter of our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Manuel. “While the IRA represents a historic step forward in achieving our nation’s climate goals, we cannot let the bad provisions of the bill, including oil and gas leasing, undercut what we stand to gain.”
Kristen Schlemmer, legal director for Bayou City Waterkeeper, echoed Manuel, noting that vulnerable residents of the Gulf Coast are already reeling from petrochemical pollution, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and intensified storms.
“We’re at a point where we should be moving away from fossil fuels, not enabling an astounding amount of drilling for more than a generation to come,” said Schlemmer. “For communities along the Houston Ship Channel, which are predominantly Black, brown, and lower-income, Lease Sale 259 creates an especially toxic combination of risks.”
“More drilling means more facilities in their backyards,” she added. “This will compound already elevated rates of cancer and heart and lung diseases, while also increasing risks during major storms.”
In the words of Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at CBD, “Holding this offshore oil lease sale without careful environmental review is both unlawful and morally reprehensible.”
“More oil drilling in the Gulf is too big a risk for the communities and wildlife living there, and too harmful to the climate,” said Monsell. “The Biden administration needs to end new extraction, phase out drilling, and start taking its commitment to climate action seriously.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Although President Joe Biden vowed on the campaign trail to phase out federal leasing for fossil fuel extraction, his administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity’s analysis of federal data released Wednesday, the Biden White House greenlit 6,430 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in 2021 and 2022—a 4.2% increase over former President Donald Trump’s administration, which rubber-stamped 6,172 drilling permits in its first two years.
“Two years of runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership by President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires phasing out fossil fuel extraction, but instead we’re still racing in the opposite direction.”
Of the drilling authorized so far by the Biden administration, nearly 4,000 permits have been approved for public lands in New Mexico, followed by 1,223 in Wyoming and several hundred each in Utah, Colorado, California, Montana, and North Dakota.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, these “Biden-approved drilling permits will result in more than 800 million tons of estimated equivalent greenhouse gas pollution, or the annual climate pollution from about 217 coal-fired power plants.”
Just last week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told the elites gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production, knowing full well that their business model is inconsistent with human survival.”
Reams of scientific evidence show that pollution from the world’s existing fossil fuel developments is enough to push temperature rise well beyond 1.5°C above the preindustrial baseline. Averting calamitous levels of global heating necessitates ending investment in new oil and gas projects and phasing out extraction to keep 40% of the fossil fuel reserves at currently operational sites underground.
As a presidential candidate, Biden pledged to ban new oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters and to require federal permitting decisions to weigh the social costs of additional planet-heating pollution. Although Biden issued an executive order suspending new fossil fuel leasing during his first week in office, his administration’s actions since then have run roughshod over earlier promises, worsening the deadly climate crisis that the White House claims to be serious about mitigating.
“The president and interior secretary have the power to avoid a climate catastrophe, but they need to change course rapidly.”
The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) argued on August 24, 2021 that it was required to resume lease auctions because of a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee who ruled in favor of a group of Big Oil-funded Republican attorneys general that sued Biden over his moratorium. In a memorandum of opposition filed on the same day, however, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that while Doughty’s decision prevented the Biden administration from implementing its pause, it did not compel the DOI to hold new lease sales, “let alone on the urgent timeline specified in plaintiffs’ contempt motion.”
Just days after Biden called global warming “an existential threat to human existence” and declared Washington’s ostensible commitment to decarbonization at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the DOI ignored the DOJ’s legal advice and proceeded with Lease Sale 257. The nation’s largest-ever offshore auction, which saw more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico offered to the highest-bidding oil and gas giants, was blocked in January 2022 by a federal judge who wrote that the Biden administration violated environmental laws by not adequately accounting for the likely consequences of resulting emissions.
Despite Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas pollution in half by the end of this decade, the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management held lease sales in several Western states in 2022, opening up tens of thousands of acres of public land to fossil fuel production. The DOI has so far announced plans for three new onshore oil and gas lease sales in 2023. The first will offer more than 261,200 acres of public land in Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming to the highest-bidding drillers. The second and third will put a total of 95,411 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah on the auction block.
In addition, the Biden administration published a draft proposal last summer that, if implemented, would permit up to 11 new oil and gas lease sales for drilling off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico over a five-year period.
The president’s 2021 freeze on new lease auctions was meant to give the DOI time to analyze the “potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities on public lands or in offshore waters.” Nevertheless, the agency’s long-awaited review of the federal leasing program effectively ignored the climate crisis, instead proposing adjustments to royalties, bids, and bonding in what environmental justice campaigners described as a “shocking capitulation to the needs of corporate polluters.”
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that roughly 25% of the country’s total carbon dioxide emissions and 7% of its overall methane emissions can be attributed to fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters. According to peer-reviewed research, a nationwide prohibition on federal oil and gas leasing would slash carbon dioxide emissions by 280 million tons per year.
The Biden administration “has not enacted any policies to significantly limit drilling permits or manage a decline of production to avoid 1.5°C degrees of warming,” the Center for Biological Diversity lamented. The White House even supported the demands of right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.)—Congress’ leading recipient of fossil fuel industry cash and a long-time coal profiteer—to “add provisions to the Inflation Reduction Act that will lock in fossil fuel leasing for the next decade.”
On numerous occasions, including earlier this month, progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups have implored the Biden administration to use its executive authority to phase out oil and gas production on public lands and in offshore waters. A petition submitted last year came equipped with a regulatory framework to wind down oil and gas production by 98% by 2035. According to the coalition that drafted it, the White House can achieve this goal by using long-dormant provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and the National Emergencies Act.
“The president and interior secretary have the power to avoid a climate catastrophe, but they need to change course rapidly,” McKinnon said Wednesday. “Strong executive action can meet the climate emergency with the urgency it demands, starting with phasing out fossil fuel production on public lands and waters.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
More than 300 environmental and Indigenous rights groups said Wednesday that the Biden administration must take a number of concrete actions to protect the nation’s public lands and waters from fossil fuel industry exploitation and bring U.S. policy into line with climate science — and the president’s own campaign pledges. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
More than 300 environmental and Indigenous rights groups said Wednesday that the Biden administration must take a number of concrete actions to protect the nation’s public lands and waters from fossil fuel industry exploitation and bring U.S. policy into line with climate science—and the president’s own campaign pledges.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the climate coalition noted that President Joe Biden “made a bold promise to ban new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, and within days of taking office issued his Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”
“However, since then, the Biden administration and Interior’s leadership has fallen short Interior issued new permits to drill at a rate faster than the Trump administration during Biden’s first year in office,” the letter continues. “The Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management pushed forward with new oil and gas lease sales, including a sale in the Gulf of Mexico that was vacated by a federal court for a faulty environmental review. And Interior’s final report on the leasing program failed to take into account climate impacts from extraction on public lands and waters.”
The groups also pointed to the Biden administration’s recent decision to go ahead with a major oil and gas lease sale off Alaska’s coast, ignoring warnings that the auction would imperil marine life, pollute coastal communities, and contribute to the nation’s rising carbon emissions.
“The climate science is clear: Several analyses show that climate pollution from the world’s already-producing fossil fuel fields, if fully developed, will overshoot the targets in the Paris Climate Agreement and push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the letter states. “Avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects and phasing out production to keep as much as 40% of already-developed fields in the ground.”
In a press release, the coalition outlines nine steps the Biden administration can and must take to manage “public lands and waters in a manner consistent with climate science”:
“Indigenous and frontline communities continue to bear the brunt of the climate crisis, and we are calling for the administration to end fossil fuel expansion and implement a just transition,” Lake continued. “There is simply no time to lose and our public lands need to be a part of the solution.”
Recent research estimates that fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters has accounted for nearly a quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas pollution since 2005, making the end of such development critical to efforts to bring the country’s emissions into line with its domestic and international commitments.
“More drilling and more fracking is just a recipe for more climate disaster,” Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement Wednesday. “For our future, President Biden needs to get real, start keeping oil and gas in the ground, and truly drive meaningful action to save our climate.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The Interior Department has documented the deaths of more than 500 Indigenous children at Indian boarding schools run or supported by the federal government in the United States which operated from 1819 to 1969. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher, and the report located 53 burial sites at former schools. The report was ordered by the first Indigenous cabinet member, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose grandparents were forced to attend boarding school at the age of 8. “It’s kind of a misnomer to actually call these educational institutions or schools themselves when you didn’t have very many people graduating, let alone surviving the dire conditions of those schools,” says Nick Estes, historian and co-founder of The Red Nation. Estes says the institutions were part of a “genocidal process” of “dispossession and theft of Indigenous people’s lands and resources.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: A new report by the Interior Department has documented the deaths of 500 Indigenous children at Indian boarding schools run or supported by the federal government in the United States, but the actual death toll is believed to be far higher. The report also located 53 burial sites at former schools, which were run for over a century. The report marks the first time the Department of Interior has documented some of the horrific history at the schools, known for their brutal assimilation practices forcing students to change their clothing, language and culture.
The report was ordered by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo. Her grandparents were forced to attend boarding school at the age of 8. She spoke on Wednesday.
INTERIOR SECRETARY DEB HAALAND: For more than a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government, specifically the Department of the Interior, and religious institutions. …
When my maternal grandparents were only 8 years old, they were stolen from their parents’ culture and communities and forced to live in boarding schools until the age of 13. Many children like them never made it back to their homes. …
The federal policies that attempted to wipe out Native identity, language and culture continue to manifest in the pain tribal communities face today, including cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance of Indigenous people, premature deaths, poverty and loss of wealth, mental health disorders and substance abuse. Recognizing the impacts of the federal Indian boarding school system cannot just be a historical reckoning. We must also chart a path forward to deal with these legacy issues. …
The fact that I am standing here today as the first Indigenous cabinet secretary is testament to the strength and determination of Native people. I am here because my ancestors persevered. I stand on the shoulders of my grandmother and my mother. And the work we will do with the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative will have a transformational impact on the generations who follow.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. On Thursday, Matthew War Bonnet, who was brought to a boarding school on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota at the age of 6, testified about his experience before the House Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples.
MATTHEW WAR BONNET: My boarding school experience is very painful and traumatic. I remember when I first got to school. The priests took us to this big room which had six or eight bathtubs in it. The priest took all us little guys and put us in one tub, and he scrubbed us hard with a big brush. The brush made our skins and our backsides all raw. And we had to have our hair cut. The school then put all the little guys in the same dormitory. We were together, the first through fourth grades. At nighttime you could hear all the children crying.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the history of Indian boarding schools run or supported by the U.S. government, we’re joined by Nick Estes in Minneapolis, writer, historian, author of the book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. He’s co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
Nick, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about the significance of this new Interior Department report.
NICK ESTES: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.
And as you could hear in the voices of the people, Secretary Haaland, this is a very emotional experience for a lot of Indigenous people in this country. And it should be an emotional experience for non-Indigenous people in this country. This is quite a historic moment in time. Although it’s not new news to Indigenous people, it might be new news to those who are hearing this horrific genocidal process that has taken place.
I think, you know, there’s a reason why the forcibly transferring of children from one group to another group is an international legal definition of genocide. That’s what we’re talking about, because taking children, or the process of Indian child removal, has been one strategy for terrorizing Native families for centuries, from the mass removal of Native children from their communities into boarding schools, as this new report lays out, from their communities into their widespread adoption and fostering out to mostly white families, which happened primarily in the 20th century.
This is a historic report in that regard, because it documents, I think for the first time, the federal government admitting to this genocidal process. Of course they don’t use that language in this report, but many of the researchers, most of whom were Indigenous, who did the legwork on this first volume — I think it’s going to be the first volume of several volumes — to say that this is a widespread — this was a widespread, systematic destruction, not just of our culture but of our nations, as well as an open, you know, theft of land.
And I think that’s important to talk about here, that settler colonialism isn’t just about targeting Native people because they hate our culture, our language or our religion, but this boarding school system came at a time when the United States government, at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, was looking to consolidate its western frontier through the Dawes Allotment Act, which resulted in hundreds of millions of acres of Indian territory being opened up for white settlement and using Indian children as hostages. And that’s the language of the policy reformers at the time. That’s the language that they were using. They were saying, “We are going to use these children as hostages” for the, quote-unquote, “good behavior” of their people.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you have visited and reported on one particular Indian boarding school, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that was opened in 1879. Can you talk about that as an example of what took place around this country?
NICK ESTES: Carlisle really became the archetype of off-reservation Indian boarding schools. And in fact, the Carlisle Indian School, the first classes that entered were from Lakota people, my nation, from specifically the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Agencies, because we had put up a historic resistance against the Dawes Allotment Act, and it was a way to essentially break the tribal bonds of our people.
And so, that first class that went, it’s documented in Luther Standing Bear’s two autobiographies that he wrote. He’s from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. And he talks about these schools as not being so much schools, but as prisoner of war camps, where they learned — they didn’t learn, you know, the ABCs or language and mathematics, the things that you would expect to learn at schools. Instead, they learned military discipline, because General Pratt, or Colonel Pratt, he was a military man. And this was a strange arrangement between the U.S. military and the Department of Interior to run this off-reservation boarding school, but the militarized discipline became instilled in many of the off-reservation boarding schools, as well as the inculcation of U.S. patriotism, flag worship and religious obedience.
And so, the first classes that went to the Carlisle Indian School, according to the testimony of Luther Standing Bear, who was part of that first incoming class, half of them didn’t even return home. Many of them died at that school. So, it’s kind of a misnomer to actually call these educational institutions or schools themselves when you didn’t have very many people graduating, let alone surviving the dire conditions of those schools.
And in this report, they document the forced labor. The unpaid labor of Native children was used to essentially subsidize the lack of resources that the federal government was not providing to Indian education at this time, too. So it was a horrific experience for those who didn’t make it out, but it was also a horrific experience for those who did make it out.
And to this day, at the entrance of the Carlisle Indian School, there is a cemetery of hundreds of gravestones. And many tribal nations, including the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, have been working on returning their ancestors. Some of them have been successful. But it’s also important to point out that some of the children that died there are from tribal nations that don’t — you know, that have protocols around not disturbing their ancestors when they’re interred into the earth. And so this is a very delicate situation. It’s not just the problem of the federal government; it’s also the problem of the U.S. military.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask —
NICK ESTES: Because this is an active — it’s an active military base. I think that’s important to point out, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Estes, research by Preston McBride at Dartmouth, Dartmouth College, has suggested as many as 40,000 Native American children died at government-run boarding schools around the U.S. This report is saying 500. Can you talk more about this discrepancy?
NICK ESTES: Yeah, I think in the press briefing by the Department of Interior yesterday, it was pointed out by Deb Haaland, as well as Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland, that this was a preliminary report and that they’ve identified over 53 marked or unmarked gravesites at these various off-reservation boarding schools and on-reservation boarding schools. And I think it’s a really delicate matter, because, for example, the Rapid City Indian School, which is in Rapid City, South Dakota, the burial sites are actually within the community itself. There have been housing projects that had been built over the burial sites. And a lot of people are reluctant to identify them publicly because of the history of grave robbing at a lot of these sites. And so, I think what Preston is saying is very true, that this is an undercount, because it’s an initial survey of these specific gravesites. But I think as this investigation goes underway and more documents become available for the public, we’re going to see those numbers continue to rise. And it’s very tragic.
I think it’s important to point out that this initiative began last June, when several hundred Native children’s graves were found in Canada. But where are the headlines now about all the surveys that a lot of these First Nations are doing at these sites? And the numbers are in the thousands right now, but it’s not making headlines, you know? And so I think it’s important to pay attention to this as it unfolds and to really listen to a lot of the Native elders, as well as the Native researchers who have been doing this historically. This isn’t new news to us, you know. We don’t have a definitive number. All we have is the common experience of the boarding school system, as it has affected every single American Indian in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have reservations about the report? In fact, it’s true the Interior Department report said they expect to find thousands, if not tens of thousands, of deaths. But you’re talking about a report that was released by the Interior Department and worked on by the Bureau of Indian Affairs within that, which actually ran the whole boarding school system. But the new development, of course, is Deb Haaland is in charge, the first Native American cabinet member in U.S. history.
NICK ESTES: Yeah, I think it’s important to point out that Deb Haaland is — you know, I think she’s been in this position for just over a year now. And one year, you know, in the face of a century and a half of genocidal Indian policy, isn’t that much, when we think about how history unfolds.
But also I think it’s important to point out that the perpetrator of this crime against humanity is now going to be the adjudicator of justice, so to speak. And there were questions of Deb Haaland’s office yesterday about what reparations will look like on behalf of tribes. They’re modeling their truth and reconciliation process off of the Canadian model. But it’s important to point out that the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission only came about because of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of residential school survivors. And I would say that the Department of Interior has a poor track record in terms of adjudicating an accounting for its own crimes.
You know, we can look at the Cobell settlement, which happened in 2011. You know, the — excuse me — the banker, Elouise Cobell, she was from the Blackfoot Nation. She did a forensic audit of the United States and found that the federal government had mismanaged $176 billion of individual Indian moneys, and the Department of Interior awarded itself, because we’re still considered wards of the government, $3.5 billion. That’s almost pennies on the dollar of what she had accounted for in terms of damages that we were awarded.
And so, it’s no coincidence that Indian people are in the same department that manages wildlife and federal lands. You know, we have — I heard earlier in the broadcast that the Department of Interior is kind of going back on this overt federal leasing program. But it’s not just the question of Indian boarding schools, you know, because Indian boarding schools were one facet of a larger process of dispossession and theft of Indigenous people’s lands and resources, because the Indian boarding school system was actually using treaty annuities and federal funds that was meant for Indian education for this genocidal process. And this money was gained through the selling of our land to white settlers. It was also gained through the dispossession of those lands by the federal government itself. And so there’s a lot of accounting to be done here.
And the report itself identifies 39,000 boxes of materials that the federal government has. I think it’s about 9 — over 9 million pages of documents that need to be reviewed. And so, allocating just $7 million to this investigative process over a century and a half of genocidal policies is kind of a drop in the bucket in what needs to happen. But it is important to point out that there is — Representative Sharice Davids, who’s a Democrat from Kansas and also from an Indigenous nation herself, has a bill that’s going through Congress right now that will open up, I think, more federal money for an investigative process that will look not only into the federal Indian boarding school system but also look into the role of faith groups, specifically the Catholic Church and its role in these genocidal educational policies.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will certainly continue to follow all of this.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it has cancelled two mining leases near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, a move that will likely kill the project opposed by environmental activists and Indigenous groups.
The project, proposed by Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, was revived by President Donald Trump when he took office and reinstated the leases, slashing environmental regulations that would have prevented the mine from being built. However, the Department of the Interior recently found that those leases were issued improperly.
“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. We must be consistent in how we apply lease terms to ensure that no lessee receives special treatment,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement. “After a careful legal review, we found the leases were improperly renewed in violation of applicable statutes and regulations, and we are taking action to cancel them.”
The agency said that the Trump administration hadn’t followed simple procedural steps and that the revival of the project had violated Interior Department regulations. Now that the leases have been cancelled, the project is likely dead.
The lease cancellation follows the Biden administration’s announcement last year that it would be pausing all mining activity in northern Minnesota in order to review environmental impacts.
Environmental advocates celebrated Wednesday’s news. “Today is a major win for Boundary Waters protection,” Becky Rom, chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement. “This action by the Biden administration re-establishes the long-standing legal consensus of five presidential administrations and marks a return of the rule of law. It also allows for science-based decision-making on where risky mining is inappropriate.”
Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Antofagasta which would have operated the project, had spent nearly $1 million lobbying for the copper and nickel mines when Trump took office. Billionaire Andrónico Luksic, whose family controls the conglomerate, had also rented a house to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in hopes of buying favor with the presidential family.
Advocates said that the leasing flew in the face of evidence that the mining would have resulted in polluting heavy metal runoff that would have flowed directly into the Boundary Waters, causing irreparable damage.
The Boundary Waters are incredibly significant to Indigenous communities in northern Minnesota. In their opposition to the mining project, Ojibwe tribes have noted that the Boundary Waters have been used by Chippewa people for centuries and are still used by Indigenous people today to harvest fish and Manoomin, or wild rice.
The over one million acre wilderness area is also home to 230 species of wildlife that would have been threatened by the mine.
Twin Metals has spent years lobbying politicians to support the plan, claiming that it would benefit the state economically. But environmental advocates contend that any jobs created by the mines would be completely offset by the harm that the mines would do to the area.
The Boundary Waters is the most heavily visited wilderness area in the U.S., supporting over 17,000 jobs in the area and driving nearly $1 billion in economic activity. A 2020 study on the area by Harvard University economists found that any potential positive impacts of the mine would be negated by long-term detriments to the recreation and tourism industry in the area.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Climate campaigners and other progressive critics on Friday called out the Biden administration for a new U.S. Interior Department report about leasing public lands and waters to oil and gas companies, slamming its proposals as far too weak given the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
The report — prepared in response to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14008 — recommends adjusting royalty and bonding rates, prioritizing leasing in areas with known resource potential, and avoiding regions where drilling conflicts with conservation, historical and cultural resources, recreation, and wildlife habitat.
“Releasing this completely inadequate report over a long holiday weekend is a shameful attempt to hide the fact that President Biden has no intention of fulfilling his promise to stop oil and gas drilling on our public lands,” said Food & Water Watch policy director Mitch Jones in a statement.
the ol' black friday release
classichttps://t.co/kWsc7Sg72x
— Chris D'Angelo (@c_m_dangelo) November 26, 2021
Despite the president’s campaign pledge to ban new oil and gas leasing for public lands and waters, the administration last week auctioned off 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. In response to legal action from Republican state attorneys general, a federal judge ruled in June that Biden could not pause new leases.
The administration’s legal obligation to hold lease sales has not stopped climate campaigners from accusing the president of failing to deliver on his promises to tackle the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
“A minor increase in the royalties paid by climate polluters will have zero impact on combating the climate crisis,” Jones asserted Friday, “and will in effect make the federal government more dependent on fossil fuels as a source of revenue.”
“This shocking capitulation to the needs of corporate polluters is a clear sign that, when it comes to climate action, the White House does not actually mean what it says,” he added.
Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, was similarly critical, according to Reuters.
“These trivial changes are nearly meaningless in the midst of this climate emergency, and they break Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil and gas leasing on public lands,” said Spivak. “Greenlighting more fossil fuel extraction, then pretending it’s OK by nudging up royalty rates, is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland acknowledged the climate emergency in her statement about the report.
“Our nation faces a profound climate crisis that is impacting every American. The Interior Department has an obligation to responsibly manage our public lands and waters — providing a fair return to the taxpayer and mitigating worsening climate impacts — while staying steadfast in the pursuit of environmental justice,” she said. “This review outlines significant deficiencies in the federal oil and gas programs, and identifies important and urgent fiscal and programmatic reforms that will benefit the American people.”
However, as The New York Times noted, “the long-awaited report was nearly silent about the climate impacts from the public drilling program,” which frustrated climate activists.
“We expected the agency to do a programmatic review of the entire fossil fuel leasing program that takes into account not only the environmental harms of drilling at the local and landscape level, but also the impact on the global climate crisis that we’re in,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs for the Center for Biological Diversity.
“And that had never been done before,” Hartl pointed out. “The agency had never taken a cumulative look at the harm that would come from burning the fossil fuels that would come out of these leases. If you wanted to accomplish what the president had promised, this was the best mechanism to achieve that promise.”
As Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, put it: “Interior’s leasing report reads as if it was written in the 1990s, and does little more than confirm what advocates and other branches of government have been saying for decades.”
NEW: @Interior just released a months-late review of oil + gas leasing.
Rather than end new oil + gas leasing as Biden promised, it proposes minor changes to increase public revenues from drilling.
This is deeply disappointing & NOT a plan to #BuildBackBetter.
Quick thread
:
— Collin Rees (@collinrees) November 26, 2021
“The report is woefully inadequate and contains almost no new insights, despite arriving more than six months later than promised,” he continued. “The government’s royalty rates and bonding requirements are far too low and lead to public money subsidizing Big Oil’s profits while our federal lands and waters suffer egregious harm.”
“But President Biden promised to end the leasing program entirely due to its deadly threat to the climate,” Rees said. “Interior’s recommendations fall far short of that goal and ring particularly hollow days after the largest lease sale in U.S. history.”
“Secretary Haaland and President Biden must end all federal leasing and permits for oil and gas extraction,” he added. “Anything less is unacceptable and a damning failure of their climate promises and responsibility to future generations.”
Kyle Herrig, president of the government watchdog Accountable.US, urged Senate Democrats to follow the lead of their House colleagues and ensure reforms to the leasing program are included in their version of the Build Back Better budget reconciliation package.
“The Interior Department’s report makes it abundantly clear that under the current oil and gas leasing program, taxpayers and the environment are losing out while Big Oil profits handsomely,” he said. “Lawmakers should be prioritizing Americans’ best interests, not wealthy oil and gas companies’ bottom lines.”
“If Congress is serious about combating climate change and protecting our nation’s cherished public lands,” Herrig added, “senators must ensure bold reforms to the nation’s public lands leasing program are included in the Build Back Better Act.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Environmental groups have joined together to challenge a controversial decision to lease out millions of acres of public waters for oil leasing.
The Biden administration announced plans to open up millions of acres for oil and gas exploration in response to an order by a federal judge in Louisiana.
While the Biden administration had paused oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, a Louisiana judge granted a preliminary injunction to 13 states, stating the government was obligated to offer acreage to the oil and gas industry and that the leasing pause would be economically damaging for the states.
Environmental law organization Earthjustice has criticized the ruling as “legally wrong,” noting that, while the order must be followed, the government is not legally required to return to business-as-usual. The federal government could choose to offer new oil and gas leases in a way that is limited and deliberate.
The administration has appealed the judge’s ruling but will proceed with new oil and gas leasing while the appeal is pending.
Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the administration will offer 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to the oil and gas industry, the largest offshore oil lease sale in the nation’s history.
Earthjustice has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland and the Bureau of Ocean Energy on behalf of Healthy Gulf, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and the Center for Biological Diversity.
“This lease sale is deeply disappointing. The Biden administration has folded to the oil industry based on its campaign of disinformation and political pressure, ignoring the worsening climate emergency we face,” stated Brettny Hardy, Earthjustice attorney. “Our planet cannot handle more stress from oil and gas production and yet the Biden administration is plowing ahead with a lease sale that will have impacts for decades into the future.”
Earthjustice argues that the environmental analysis of Lease Sale 257 is out of date and “relies on improper modeling to conclude that not having the lease sale will result in more greenhouse gases.”
“Despite campaign promises to be climate and environmental justice champions, the Biden administration has opted to resume oil and gas lease sales,” said Hallie Templeton, Deputy Legal Director at Friends of the Earth. “To add insult to injury, federal officials have violated federal law by relying on outdated and flawed environmental analysis while continuing to treat the Gulf of Mexico as a sacrificial zone to Big Oil.”
The proposed sale would result in the production of up to 1.12 billion barrels and 4.4 trillion cubic fossil fuels over the next 50 years.
The decision comes after the IPCC released its “code red for humanity” report. The report noted that humankind has caused unprecedented warming and irreversibly altered the planet, providing a sobering reminder of the severity of the climate crisis and the urgent need for ambitious action.
Global temperatures have already risen 1.2°C and continue to rise. The IPCC report shows that human activities are the primary driver of this rise and are responsible for roughly 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900.
Historically, the United States has emitted more carbon dioxide than any other country. The nation is responsible for more than a quarter of all carbon dioxide emitted since the 1750s.
As the world’s second-largest emitter, it is imperative that the U.S. federal government shift away from business-as-usual and take ambitious, concrete action to combat the climate crisis instead of kicking the can down the road.
“We need to end offshore oil drilling, not burden future generations with this dirty and dangerous folly,” said Kristen Monsell, Oceans Legal Director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history, responded to comments from former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) late last month in which the CNN commentator wrongly suggested white European colonizers “birthed a nation from nothing.”
In an interview with HuffPost on Tuesday, Secretary Haaland called Santorum’s remarks “unfortunate” and suggested that part of the problem behind the former senator’s misguided comments might stem from his lack of education on the subject of Native people’s histories.
The comments from Santorum resulted in immense criticism of his ignorance about the contributions of Indigenous peoples living on the North American continent prior to the arrival of Europeans.
Speaking on April 23 before a gathering of Young America’s Foundation, an organization for young conservatives, Santorum pushed his uninformed idea, which is not backed by history, that white colonizers started out with nothing to form what would eventually become the United States. The comments he made completely ignored the historical role played by the Native peoples of this continent in helping to form the nation.
“We birthed a nation from nothing. Yes, there were Native Americans, but there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture,” Santorum said.
Since making those comments, Santorum has faced calls from several groups for him to be fired from his role as a political commentator for CNN — including from IllumiNative, a nonprofit focused on challenging negative narratives about Native Americans, which described Santorum’s comments as dangerous for “fueling white supremacy by erasing the history of Native peoples.”
“CNN should not give Rick Santorum a national platform where he can spew this type of ignorance and bigotry against communities of color on air,” IllumiNative’s founder Crystal Echo Hawk said. “Allowing him to spread racism and white supremacy to the American public is reckless and irresponsible.”
Santorum tried to backpedal on his comments, but failed to adequately address the problems that existed in his original statement last month. Speaking on CNN earlier this week, Santorum said:
I misspoke. What I was talking about is, as you can see from the runup, I was talking about the founding of our country. I had given a long talk about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the ideas behind those, and that I was saying we sort of created that anew, if you will. And I was not trying to dismiss Native Americans.
CNN host Don Lemon, reacting to Santorum’s comments later that same evening, criticized the former senator’s attempt to explain away the controversy.
“I cannot believe the first words out of his mouth weren’t, ‘I’m sorry,’” Lemon said, adding, “Did he actually think it was a good idea for him to come on television and try to whitewash the whitewash that he whitewashed?”
“Perhaps we haven’t done a good job about educating Americans about history, because Native American history is American history,” noted Secretary Haaland on Tuesday. “When we think about the influence that Native Americans have had on the forming of the United States, right? The U.S. Constitution is based on the Iroquois Confederacy. Native Americans from some tribes here in this country have some of the oldest democracies in the world.”
“I mean, I could probably suggest a few pieces of reading for the senator that would, you know, help him to branch out on his knowledge of American history,” the Interior secretary added.
Indeed, the very legislative body that Santorum once served in has itself recognized the vital role Native Americans played in the forming of the U.S. A resolution that passed concurrently by the House and Senate in 1988 “[acknowledged] the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the United States Constitution.”
Santorum’s attempts to backpedal on his comments earlier this week, however, did not halt calls for him to be fired. Fawn Sharp, the president of the National Congress of American Indians, which had previously called for Santorum to lose his job at CNN, reiterated her disappointment with the network, and her organization continued to call for Santorum to be terminated from his role.
“I was optimistic he would own it, he would recognize it and he would apologize but he did none of those things,” Sharp said.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Progressives on Thursday introduced a $10 trillion climate and jobs bill that would reduce emissions, rebuild infrastructure and address environmental justice over the next decade. The bill rivals President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, which calls for a much smaller investment.
While Biden’s bill calls for a $2 trillion investment in infrastructure over the next decade, the Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (THRIVE) Act calls for $1 trillion per year over 10 years for investment in infrastructure, jobs and climate initiatives. The proposal is being led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) and it aims to cut climate emissions in half by 2030 and is centered around equitable change.
Highlighting the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the American Rescue Plan, Dingell said in a press call organized by the Green New Deal Network, “[As the nation is] pivoting from relief to recovery, we’re working together to advance good paying union jobs, racial equity and climate action.”
“The pandemic has shined a light on the cracks of our society. It’s placed a burden on vulnerable communities,” said Dingell. “That’s why we need a bold economic renewal plan, and the THRIVE Act is exactly what we need.”
“The climate crisis is here. It’s here. This is not some future issue.” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), a sponsor of the bill, highlighting wildfires in his state and public health issues due to air pollution. “The most expensive thing our nation has ever done is not be ready for this pandemic. So we have to do the right thing and make investments now to be prepared to save lives” and address the climate crisis, Crow said.
One of the main focuses of the bill is job creation — a March report by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that the THRIVE Act would create about 15.5 million jobs per year. The bill stipulates that the jobs must be high quality, with at least a $15 an hour wage and with benefits like paid family and sick leave.
“Unions and the environmentalists have come together and are working together to ensure that we rebuild our country’s economy with a focus on justice and healing,” said Dingell.
The bill would also ensure that historically oppressed groups are at the front line of the transition to a greener nation by creating a 20-member board of representatives from frontline communities, unions and Indigenous nations to help guide where investments should be made. Fifty percent of investments from the bill, it stipulates, must go toward frontline communities, which suffer the most from climate impacts.
“Policymakers cannot ignore the realities that are facing millions of Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant and working families all across America. The four crises facing America are literally killing us. They are climate change, the public health pandemic, racial injustice and economic inequality,” said Markey in the press call. “We can’t defeat any of these crises alone. We must develop a roadmap for recovery that addresses them all.”
The bill pays particular care to Indigenous people, and requires the government to respect Indigenous nations in the investments put forth by the bill. It attempts to ensure that Native communities would be consulted and their consent sought before things like pipelines are built on Indigenous territory.
The THRIVE Agenda and corresponding THRIVE Act was originally introduced by the former Rep. Deb Haaland (D-New Mexico), who now serves as the first Indigenous Interior Secretary, and who has long been a champion of Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Polling from Data for Progress last year showed that the THRIVE Agenda pillars, including investing in green infrastructure and recognizing Native sovereignty, are popular — and the agenda has gained over 100 co-sponsors since Haaland introduced it.
The THRIVE Act also has the support of Democrats like Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Representatives Ilhan Omar, (D-Minnesota), Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Ro Khanna (D-California). Though it has little hope of being passed into law, elements of the bill could end up being incorporated into Biden’s infrastructure plan, just as parts of the Green New Deal have been embraced by Biden.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Human rights defenders on Friday applauded the announcement by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that the Bureau of Indian Affairs will establish a unit tasked with investigating missing and murdered Indigenous people.
The Interior Department said in a statement Thursday that “approximately 1,500 American Indian and Alaska Native missing persons have been entered into the National Crime Information Center throughout the U.S., and approximately 2,700 cases of murder and nonnegligent homicide offenses have been reported to the federal government’s Uniform Crime Reporting program.”
The agency said that the new Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) “will help put the full weight of the federal government into investigating these cases and marshal law enforcement resources across federal agencies and throughout Indian country.”
The MMU will build on the work of Operation Lady Justice, a task force on missing and murdered Indigenous people launched in 2019.
“Investigations remain unsolved often due to a lack of investigative resources available to identify new information from witness testimony, re-examine new or retained material evidence, and review fresh activities of suspects,” the Interior Department statement said. “The MMU, in addition to reviewing unsolved cases, will immediately begin working with tribal, BIA, and FBI investigators on active missing and murdered investigations.”
In the United States…re #MMIWG
How are we doing in Canada @GCIndigenous @JustinTrudeau @CrownIndigenous ? https://t.co/y1fwRw1frp
— Canadian Femicide Observatory (@CAN_Femicide) April 2, 2021
Haaland — the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history — said Thursday that “violence against Indigenous peoples is a crisis that has been underfunded for decades. Far too often, murders and missing persons cases in Indian country go unsolved and unaddressed, leaving families and communities devastated.”
“The new MMU unit will provide the resources and leadership to prioritize these cases and coordinate resources to hold people accountable, keep our communities safe, and provide closure for families,” Haaland continued. “Whether it’s a missing family member or a homicide investigation, these efforts will be all hands on deck.”
“We are fully committed to assisting tribal communities with these investigations, and the MMU will leverage every resource available to be a force-multiplier in preventing these cases from becoming cold case investigations,” she added.
According to the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, Indigenous women are murdered at 10 times the national average. Statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show homicide is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native girls and women ages 10 to 24 and the fifth-leading cause of death for those between the ages of 25 and 34.
A 2016 National Institute of Justice report (pdf) found that 84% of Indigenous women have experienced violence in their lifetimes, 41% had been physically injured by intimate partners, and 67% were concerned for their safety.
Two years later, a survey (pdf) published by the Seattle-based Urban Indian Health Institute reported 5,712 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous girls in 2016, of which only 116 were logged in the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database.
ACTION ALERT
Please circulate widely! #MMIWG #MMIWGActionNow #NoMoreStolenSisters pic.twitter.com/ESwlerOTjQ
— National Indigenous Women's Resource Center (@niwrc) March 29, 2021
May 5 is National Day of Awareness for missing and murdered Native women and girls.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Congressional progressives on Monday unveiled a new bill to invest $10 trillion in renewable energy, green infrastructure and climate justice initiatives over the next decade. The Transform, Heal and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (THRIVE) Act, counters President Joe Biden’s yet-to-be-unveiled $4 trillion infrastructure package.
The bill is “a new roadmap to build back better and build back greener,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) in a press conference. Markey and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) are the lead sponsors of the bill in the Senate and House, respectively. The bill, which will be formally introduced in April, has the support of much of the rest of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“We are facing a series of intersecting crises: climate change, a public health pandemic, racial injustice and economic inequality,” said Markey. “We can’t defeat any of these crises alone. We must develop a roadmap for recovery that addresses them all.”
One of the bill’s main goals is to cut emissions. It aims to cut climate pollution in half by 2030 and establishes goals to achieve zero emissions from both new buildings by 2025 and the electricity sector by 2035. It would also extend public transportation options to most Americans by 2030, and states that the funding cannot be used for fossil fuels, emissions offsets or geoengineering.
“Our nation has rarely been challenged like it’s been in the past year,” said Dingell in the press conference. “Though we’re beginning to see brighter days on the horizon, we aren’t nearly out of the woods yet.” Dingell said that “the moment is now” to act boldly on climate and justice and points out that policies like Social Security were born in times of national crises.
The new bill directs that half of the climate investments in the bill are directed at frontline communities, which suffer the brunt of the climate crisis and economic crises facing the country. It aims to even out generations of racial and economic health inequities and includes provisions like upgrading and replacing corroded water infrastructure. Frontline communities are less likely in the U.S. to have access to clean water.
An analysis by the Sierra Club found that the THRIVE Act could create 15 million jobs while cutting pollution. The Sierra Club is part of the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of 15 environmental, progressive and labor groups coalescing around the THRIVE Agenda who helped shape the bill.
The THRIVE Agenda, a nonbinding resolution which was introduced by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland when she was a New Mexico representative, outlines commitments to labor rights, robust climate policy, and addressing socioeconomic and racial injustices. According to polls by Data for Progress, the agenda’s pillars are popular among the public.
“We need a plan that will end the unemployment crisis, but we need this plan to also fight systemic racism, protect public health and drastically cut down on climate pollution,” said Markey on Monday. “We cannot go back to business as usual. We have a chance to truly, in this moment, to build back better and greener than ever before.”
Those involved with the agenda and bill told Kate Aronoff of The New Republic that they view it as a “down payment” on the Green New Deal — a way to lift the country out of the pandemic and propel it forward from where it was before on many fronts. But THRIVE is generally built to capture a wider swath of Democrats; Dingell, for instance, didn’t co-sponsor the Green New Deal resolution when it was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) in 2019.
Though the bill isn’t yet fully fleshed out, it could include provisions that Democrats have introduced over the past months, such as BUILD GREEN Act’s $500 billion investment over the next decade to help electrify public transit, or a $454 billion proposal to create a more robust electric car manufacturing chain in the U.S. The bill itself endorses the Protecting the Right to Organize Act that the House passed earlier this month.
The bill rivals Biden’s upcoming infrastructure bill and places progressive pressure on the White House from the left. The infrastructure bill, which is reported to have ballooned from $3 trillion to $4 trillion in the past week, has received criticism from the left. Groups like the Sunrise Movement, which has proposed its own $10 trillion Green New Deal down payment, say that the bill is not ambitious enough to meet the scale of the crises in the country.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Haaland is the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in our history, heading the department that, in the nineteenth century, abandoned Indigenous peoples for political leverage. Continue reading
The post Secretary of the Interior First: Deb Haaland, Member of the Pueblo of Laguna appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.
A diverse coalition of progressive and Indigenous figures and organizations on Monday celebrated the Senate’s confirmation of Deb Haaland to head the Department of the Interior — making the New Mexico Democrat and Green New Deal supporter the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history.
She was confirmed by a 51-40 vote in which only a handful of Republicans joined with all members of the Democratic caucus who were present; nine lawmakers, including three Democrats, did not vote. “I look forward to collaborating with all of you,” Haaland said in a tweet directed at senators. “I am ready to serve.”
She won. We won.
In a historic vote, the Senate confirms Deb Haaland of the Laguna Pueblo and first district of New Mexico the next Interior Secretary.#DebForInterior pic.twitter.com/oCQgRQ8d1W
— #DebForInterior (@jnoisecat) March 15, 2021
While climate justice and Indigenous rights advocates have praised President Joe Biden’s selection of the congresswoman to lead a department that oversees hundreds of million of as “a perfect choice,” both conservative Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns about her positions on fossil fuels.
“It’s clear that Big Oil was afraid of her confirmation — and for good reason,” said David Turnbull, strategic communications director at Oil Change International. “The nine senators that voted against her confirmation on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee have on average accepted nearly $900,000 from Big Oil, Coal, and Gas over the course of their careers.”
“The confirmation of Deb Haaland as secretary of the interior is a tremendous win for Indigenous communities, the waters, parks, and lands across our country, and the climate,” he added. “Haaland is a proven climate champion, and will usher in a new era of climate leadership in the Department of the Interior, reversing the tide of the last four years of dirty energy policies enacted by the Trump administration.”
Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter similarly welcomed Haaland’s appointment as an opportunity to depart from the planet-wrecking agenda of former President Donald Trump — whose attacks on climate and environmental policies led some campaigners and experts to back Biden’s presidential bid.
“Deb Haaland’s historic, pathbreaking confirmation is a victory for Indigenous communities, for the climate movement, and for everyone who wants to undo the Trump-era assault on our air and water,” said Hauter. “The massive outpouring of public support for Haaland is a testament to her uncompromising record and her clear commitment to ending the exploitation of public lands by fossil fuel corporations.”
“Biden’s unambiguous call to end fracking on public lands must now become a priority for the White House,” she said. “There is no one better to lead on this issue than Deb Haaland, who understands that our transition away from fossil fuels is an environmental justice priority and a climate necessity.”
Deb Haaland is now the first Indigenous person to lead the Department of the Interior- ushering in a new era of Indigenous authority over stolen land.
She now has the power to crack down on fossil fuel corporations and evict oil companies that drill on public lands and waters. pic.twitter.com/3S0E2I7IKb
— Sunrise Movement
(@sunrisemvmt) March 15, 2021
“In Congress, Rep. Haaland has demonstrated a deep concern for environmental justice, conservation, and climate change,” said Kathleen Rest, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We look forward to working with the new secretary of the interior to protect our nation’s ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the climate — for the benefit of communities across the country, including tribes.”
Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, lauded Biden for listening to “the Indigenous movement groups and allies that pushed for her confirmation, despite the Senate Republicans’ unfair, aggressive campaign against her.”
“Haaland is not only one of the first co-sponsors of the Green New Deal,” Prakash pointed out, “but she believes that achieving Indigenous sovereignty over stolen land is instrumental to transforming our economy and stopping the climate crisis.”
“Now, she must wield her power to crack down on fossil fuel corporations and evict companies that drill for oil on public lands and in public waters,” the activist added. “We are excited to see the progress she makes and will be standing with her as she pushes us closer to the vision of a Green New Deal.”
Sarah McMillan, WildEarth Guardians’ conservation director, and Adam Kolton, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, highlighted the significance of not only Haaland’s well established positions on dirty energy and land management, but also the perspective she brings as an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo.
“We congratulate Secretary Deb Haaland and celebrate this historic and momentous day when the Department of Interior, which manages more than 450 million acres and houses the Bureau of Indian Affairs, finally has an Indigenous woman to lead the way,” said McMillan. “As our country is finally awakening to the injustices that Indigenous people have endured, and in the throes of a climate and nature crisis, we must chart a new path after four years of out-of-control exploitation and devastation.”
Deb Haaland defended Native Americans and her views on renewable energy during her Cabinet confirmation hearing.
She said all senators, independent of their party, share an obligation to keep the U.S. livable for future generations. pic.twitter.com/fWs0uPpA1k
— AJ+ (@ajplus) March 15, 2021
As Kolton put it: “We cannot right the wrongs of colonization or undo the history of violence toward and the displacement of Indigenous peoples in our country. But the confirmation of the first Native American to lead any U.S. Cabinet agency, particularly one that is responsible for the stewardship of millions of acres of once stolen and now public land, is a historic and hopeful moment.”
“Haaland brings to the job an understanding of the Native American experience and a deep personal connection and commitment to preserving the lands and waters that sustain people and communities across the country,” he added. “She was the first U.S. representative to champion the need to pursue an ambitious national goal of conserving 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, and as interior secretary she will play a critical role in implementing President Biden’s ambitious conservation agenda, confronting the climate crisis, and advancing the cause of environmental justice.”
A host of conservation groups in the state she represented in Congress — including New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wild, and Conservation Voters New Mexico — also applauded Haaland’s confirmation.
“The global climate crisis is attributed to settler colonialism and the exploitation of natural resources cultivated from stolen Indigenous landscapes and the mismanagement of those resources,” said Pueblo Action Alliance director Julia Bernal. “There needs to be a paradigm shift and having a Pueblo Indigenous feminist perspective in this Cabinet position could instill a lot of hope for meaningful tribal consultation and more importantly tribal consent.”
Bernal explained that “Haaland will bring that worldview into land and water management practices that will work towards a just transition to a cleaner energy economy and more equitable approaches to better frontline and Indigenous communities who have suffered from the presence of the oil and gas industry.”
Noting the department’s widely criticized history on interacting with tribes, she added that “places like Chaco Canyon and Bears Ears and the waterways that supply Indigenous people in the Southwest could have longer standing chances if they are managed through a Pueblo Indigenous feminist perspective that implement[s] core values like respect and reciprocity and give[s] personhood to our waterways.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s pick for the secretary of the interior, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-New Mexico) on Thursday with all Democrats and four Republicans voting to advance her confirmation, which will be on Monday. Haaland’s confirmation comes a day after the Senate confirmed Michael Regan to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Haaland, the first Indigenous person to be appointed to that position, has been celebrated by progressives as “a big deal.” When her nomination was announced, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) tweeted, “Historic appointment. A visionary Native woman in charge of federal lands. Unequivocally progressive. Green New Deal champion. Exquisitely experienced.”
Haaland is a supporter of the Green New Deal and has said that she will “move climate change priorities, tribal consultation and a green economic recovery forward,” as she told the Guardian last year. To climate activists, Haaland will not only be able to undo damage from the Donald Trump years, but also move the county forward on climate goals. As interior secretary, she will have jurisdiction over federal lands and can set policy on things like oil leasing.
“Deb Haaland will set a new course for the agency and its all-important management of public lands, after four years of ransacking by the oil and gas industry,” said Robert Weissman, president of progressive advocacy group Public Citizen, in a statement. “Fossil fuel corporations are panicking because Haaland will carry out the mission of the agency and protect our federal lands instead of doing the bidding of dirty energy corporations.”
One of Haaland’s priorities as a House member has been to “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” as her campaign website says. The Republicans who have voiced opposition to Haaland’s appointment over the past weeks, such as Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), have taken millions of dollars from fossil fuel companies. Haaland’s nomination, as Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) said, was a “proxy fight” for fossil fuels.
Haaland will be the first Native American to serve as interior secretary and the first Indigenous person to serve in a U.S. president’s cabinet ever. As an Indigenous woman, she has faced many deep challenges in her ascent to this position. And Native people have had reason to celebrate her nomination, not only because of her potential impact on climate and Indigenous representation in the cabinet, but also because, as head of the Department of Interior (DOI), Haaland will be in charge of maintaining the government-to-government relationship between the DOI and Native American tribes.
“As Interior Secretary, Haaland would play a monumental role in improving the federal government’s relations with Indian Country,” said Nikki Pitre, director of the Center for Native American Youth, when Haaland’s nomination passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “She will be a fierce advocate for all of us, in a way that no one else can.”
The climate community also praised the Senate’s Wednesday confirmation of Michael Regan to head the EPA. As EPA administrator, Regan will have wide purview over climate and environmental rules. Regan, who will be the first Black man to run the agency, said that “environmental justice is something that is near and dear to my heart” in his Senate hearing in February.
While climate groups celebrated Regan’s confirmation, they noted that he faces huge challenges ahead. “Reversing Trump’s gutting of the EPA’s pollution, climate and science programs will be the first task, but the agency’s failings run much deeper,” said Kierán Suckling, the director of the Center for Biological Diversity in a statement. “He’ll never succeed in making environmental justice the EPA’s central mission, stop the extinction crisis or save America from climate chaos unless he cuts through the Gordian knot of industry control.”
Regan has held various positions relating to the environment over the past decades, including lower-level EPA jobs in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
He’s been the head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality since 2017, where he’s had a mixed record, reports HuffPost. Though he created an emissions reduction plan for the state and rejected a key water permit for a natural gas pipeline, he also empowered polluter Duke Energy and greenlit the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which environmental groups fought fiercely against.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Four major appointments offer a telling roadmap of the Biden administration’s positions on energy and the environment. They range from the very green to the nuclear awful. In Biden’s appointments to top environmental positions, he has done well overall. But in his appointments to top energy posts, he has selected nuclear power devotees.
Excellent, indeed extraordinary, is the choice of Rep. Deb Haaland to be secretary of the interior. Now facing stiff opposition from Republican senators representing the fossil fuel industry, Haaland would be the first Native American in that position; indeed, she’d be the first Native American to be a member of any cabinet of a U.S. president.
As interior secretary, Haaland would oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), whose long, bitterly contentious relationship with Indigenous communities has often been ugly and hostile. Established in 1824 by then-Vice President John Calhoun, a South Carolina slave-owner, the BIA has banned ceremonial dances and forcibly placed Indigenous children in boarding schools. Overseeing its 8,700 employees, Haaland’s control of the BIA could mark a major revolution in Washington’s relations with Indigenous people, which have been deeply polarized for two centuries.
Hailing from the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, Haaland identifies as a 35th-generation New Mexican. She is one of the two first-ever Native American women to be elected to the U.S. Congress. She is known and respected as a solid environmentalist and a strong advocate of safe energy. She participated in the Indigenous encampment fighting to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, which Biden has yet to kill. Her opposition to oil and gas leasing on public lands and longtime advocacy of renewable energy has drawn ferocious opposition from Western Republicans who clearly do not want her confirmed.
Laguna Pueblo is located next to the largest open-pit uranium mine on Earth which closed in 1982 and caused cancer in her community.
Haaland has also fought the atomic energy industry, championing the Radiation Compensation Exposure Act. Last year, she won the 2020 Nuclear-Free Future Award. She has been an outspoken opponent of the “Consolidated Interim Storage for Spent Fuel and High-Level Waste,” a major industry dump proposed for siting amid the Latinx and Indigenous communities in New Mexico, widely considered to be a blatant case of environmental injustice.
As Julian Brave NoiseCat of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee stated, Haaland’s appointment “is a historic win for Indian Country, the environment, and progressives. The congresswoman is perfect for the job.… That’s why I worked with tribal leaders, progressive activists, environmentalists, feminists and so many others to urge Biden to do the right thing and make history.”
“Like many of our people,” said NoiseCat, “[Haaland] lived on food stamps. She raised her daughter as a single mother. She started a salsa business on her reservation and cooks for family and friends on traditional Pueblo feast days. Like so many across the country, she’s still paying off student loans. Unlike so many in the halls of power, she’s one of us. Sometimes, Native folks lovingly call her ‘Auntie Deb’ on social media for exactly this reason.”
The League of Conservation Voters gives Haaland a score of 98 percent on environmental issues. Corporate Republicans, largely owned and operated by oil and gas interests, are demanding Biden withdraw his nomination of Haaland.
Ironically, she is receiving strong support from Alaska’s Republican Congressman Don Young, long an environmental nemesis, who has worked well with Haaland in the House. He’s acknowledging to fellow Republicans that they have disagreements but told them last week, “You’ll find out that she will listen to you.”
Another hopeful appointment is Biden’s choice of North Carolina’s Michael Regan to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Regan served in the EPA’s air quality and energy programs during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Back in North Carolina, he formed his own consulting firm, then became administrator of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
In North Carolina, Regan took over a government agency in utter, calculated chaos, demanding serious rebuilding. After four years of Trump, the agency Regan will inherit in Washington is also in shambles.
Regan garnered praise in North Carolina for winning the nation’s largest coal-ash clean-up settlement from Duke Power. He also got Chemours, a massive chemical company, to clean up toxic pollution from the Cape Fear River.
He became a key figure in overseeing North Carolina’s Climate Change Interagency Council and its work to achieve carbon neutrality in the state by 2050. And in 2018, Regan set up the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s first Environmental Justice and Equity Board.
Regan would be the first Black man to become an EPA administrator.
“He will be great,” said former Charlotte, North Carolina, Mayor Jennifer Roberts in an interview. “He’s an excellent choice.”
But Regan drew strong fire from environmentalists with his approval of a water quality certification of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The pipeline would have carried methane gas across the much-loved Appalachian Trail. Duke Energy and Dominion Energy later canceled the project due to green opposition.
And Regan has also drawn strong criticism for a perceived unwillingness to stand up to North Carolina’s powerful agricultural lobby, especially on the issue of factory farming. How hard Regan would fight against such interests at the national EPA remains to be seen.
Additionally, during his tenure in North Carolina, there was opposition to wood pellet biomass facilities that were permitted to expand production, causing climate, forest and human health impacts disproportionately affecting communities of color, as has been reported on Truthout.
Biden’s appointment of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as secretary of energy represents a win for the never-ending promotion of nuclear power. She has strongly opposed fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy, but she is a nuclear power advocate.
Granholm was governor of Michigan when the Obama administration bailed out automobile manufacturers during the 2008 recession. She became a champion of electric vehicle technology to preserve her state’s vehicle industrial base.
Granholm “has spoken really clearly about moving away from fossil fuels,” said Jamie Henn, a co-founder of 350.org. The group has been a leader in the fight against climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels — including in vehicles.
But on nuclear power, Granholm’s record is poor, according to Kevin Kamps, who is a radioactive waste specialist with the national anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear, and was for three decades a member of the board of directors of the organization Don’t Waste Michigan. He said that in 1999 and 2000, when Granholm was Michigan’s attorney general, “a coalition led by Don’t Waste Michigan approached her AG office for help in our resistance to the weapons-grade MOX — plutonium-uranium Mixed Oxide nuclear fuel.” But, “Unfortunately, Granholm and her staff turned us down. She would not aid our resistance in any way.”
Kamps explained in an interview that Granholm’s “refusal to help resist MOX in 1999-2000 foreshadowed her eight years as governor, from 2003 to 2011. Even though we fought many very significant — safety, health, security and environmental protection — battles that entire time, Granholm’s administration very rarely, to never, helped us.”
Granholm worked closely with Michigan nuclear utilities like CMS/Consumers Energy, said Kamps, noting, “A former CMS executive served as a campaign leader in one of Granholm’s runs for governor.”
Still, “despite her lackluster record on nuclear power and radioactive waste issues, I do thank and praise Granholm for her administration’s environmentally protective offshore wind power development plans in Michigan,” Kamps said.
In her statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources as it considered whether to confirm her appointment by Biden, Granholm declared, “If confirmed as Secretary, I will support the whole-of-government approach and work … with Congress to empower the U.S. nuclear industry to develop, demonstrate, and export American-made nuclear technology.”
Meanwhile, Maria Korsnik, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading U.S. group promoting nuclear power, said in a statement issued upon Granholm’s nomination by Biden: “We welcome the nomination of Governor Jennifer Granholm as the incoming Secretary of Energy…. Under Gov. Granholm’s leadership, we hope to see continued bipartisan support for nuclear energy in playing a pivotal role in addressing the worsening climate crisis as recognized in the Biden team’s ambitious climate plan.”
Of course, Korsnik’s statement avoids acknowledging that nuclear power is a contributor to climate change; that the “nuclear fuel cycle” — especially mining, milling and fuel enrichment — is carbon-intensive; and that nuclear power plants themselves emit Carbon-14, a radioactive form of carbon.
Most regrettably, Granholm’s stance on nuclear energy might fit in well with the long avidly pro-nuclear U.S. Department of Energy.
This leads us to the worst news among Biden’s environmental and energy appointments: his selection of nuclear power zealot Christopher T. Hanson as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Before becoming one of the NRC’s five appointed commissioners, Hanson served in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy — an entity which is a direct throwback to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its mission to promote nuclear power.
The AEC was abolished by Congress in 1974 because of its inherent conflict of interest for its dual roles of both promoting and at the same time regulating nuclear power. In the place of the AEC, the NRC was formed to regulate atomic energy and, later, the Department of Energy (DOE) was created to promote nuclear power, with the Office of Nuclear Energy within the DOE being the lead component pushing atomic energy at the agency.
Meanwhile, the NRC has also continued to promote nuclear power.
In 2012, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, then-NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, a Ph.D. physicist, insisted that in all NRC decisions there be an integration of “lessons learned” from that catastrophe in Japan. The nuclear industry applied pressure and Jaczko was forced out as NRC chairman.
The nuclear industry will have no such problem with Hanson, an ardent, outspoken member of the nuclear power cult. As he said upon his appointment by Biden, “I look forward … as the commission … faces new opportunities as nuclear energy technologies continue to evolve and use of nuclear materials expand in the future.”
The American Nuclear Society (ANS) said of Hanson’s appointment, “On behalf of America’s nuclear professionals, we applaud President Biden for designating ANS member Christopher T. Hanson as chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
As an NRC Commissioner, Hanson voted against every one of more than 100 legal and technical objections raised by environmentalists to “Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities” for nuclear waste, despite their violating the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, according to Kamps.
Thus, the NRC’s long, sorry history as a rubber stamp for the industry may be getting yet another nuclear pusher at its head. This comes at a time when the 94 nuclear power plants in the U.S. have already reached an average age of 40 years old, which was initially established in the U.S. as the age threshold past which they would be deemed unsafe due to embrittlement of metal components by radioactivity and other issues. Many are exhibiting serious, disturbing signs of embrittlement and general deterioration. Only the NRC has legal authority to inspect these increasingly dangerous reactors and enforce the safety standards that might prevent another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster. Unfortunately, Biden’s choice to head the commission does not appear to be someone who will do what needs to be done to protect the public, as opposed to the industry.
Trump was horrible on environmental and energy issues — rolling back decades of environmental regulations, ordering a government-wide denial that the climate crisis was happening, seeking to position the U.S. as a leader in pushing nuclear power globally.
Action at the grassroots is needed to get the Biden administration to provide more than a mixed bag of improvements, to get to the needed big change.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Monday highlighted a Wall Street Journal story on Deb Haaland — President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of the Interior — with a tweet accurately stating: “Interior secretary nominee has joined pipeline protests and opposed fracking.”
While Cornyn intended the message to be a criticism of Haaland — who, if confirmed by the Senate, would be the first-ever Native American cabinet secretary — progressives said the New Mexico congresswoman’s steadfast opposition to fracking and destructive fossil fuel infrastructure projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline are precisely what make her the most qualified candidate for a role tasked with protecting federal lands and overseeing the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“Thank God,” Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-New York) said in response to Cornyn’s tweet. “Confirm her immediately.”
Climate scientist Michael Mann tweeted at the Texas Republican, “You make a compelling argument for approving the nominee, senator.”
As the Journal reported, Haaland in recent years “has joined with pipeline protesters, supported the Green New Deal, and opposed fracking on public lands. For a cabinet post that oversees the government’s longstanding, multibillion-dollar partnership with drillers on federal lands, Ms. Haaland’s environmental politics are in contrast to those of her predecessors.” If confirmed, Haaland would succeed former oil and gas lobbyist David Bernhardt.
The Journal goes on to quote from a 2017 Medium post in which Haaland, then a congressional candidate, wrote, “Fracking is a danger to the air we breathe and water we drink.”
“The auctioning off of our land for fracking and drilling serves only to drive profits to the few,” Haaland continued. “We must not destroy protected Native ancestral lands and important cultural and heritage sites for the sake of a relatively short-term oil and gas fix, especially when it results in the degradation of sacred sites, land, water, and air.”
Last month, as Common Dreams reported, Biden ordered a 60-day pause on new leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands, a temporary ban that climate activists said they hope will be made permanent.
These are the exact reasons Deb Haaland is the right pick for Interior secretary. https://t.co/gZjqAeUL8D
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) February 15, 2021
While the fossil fuel industry and Republican senators have objected to Haaland’s history of fighting oil and gas pipelines and backing the Green New Deal — Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana) told the Journal that it is “unprecedented” for an Interior Department nominee to support such “radical policies” — members of the Senate Democratic caucus made clear that the congresswoman’s positions are well-suited to a time of climate emergency.
“We need an Interior Secretary who has the guts to take on fossil fuel CEOs whose greed is destroying the planet,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “We need an Interior Secretary who will protect our environment. I’m confident Deb Haaland is that person and I am proud to support her nomination.”
In a letter to Daines and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) last week, leaders of the Global Indigenous Council, Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, and Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Association urged swift confirmation of Haaland, who has yet to have her first confirmation hearing. Daines, as the Journal reported, has threatened to use procedural delay tactics to obstruct Haaland’s confirmation.
“There is good reason for tribal nations and their tribal members opposing projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline,” the Indigenous leaders wrote, referring to the fossil fuel project that Biden halted last month by revoking a federal permit. “Not only would that have created immense vulnerability to reservation communities along its proposed route, it, like similar initiatives from a bygone age, threatened environmental catastrophe.”
Having an Indigenous person serve as Interior secretary is “way overdue,” the letter continued. “We are proud to support Representative Deb Haaland to be that woman to make history.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.