November, 15 2020, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project, (307) 399-7910, emolvar@westernwatersheds.org
Matt Nykiel, WildEarth Guardians, (719) 439-5895, mnykiel@wildearthgurardians.org
Kate Hudson, Waterkeeper Alliance, (914) 388-5016, khudson@waterkeeper.org
John Weisheit, Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, (435) 260-2590, john@livingrivers.org
Legal Protest Blasts Plan for 430 Square Miles of Fracking Leases in Wyoming
Trump plan threatens 43 million tons of climate pollution ahead of Biden’s promised leasing ban.
WASHINGTON
Citing harm to wildlife, clean air and the climate, conservation groups filed a legal protest over the weekend challenging a Trump administration plan approving the sale of fracking leases on 275,000 acres of public lands in Wyoming. Fracking those leases would destroy habitat for greater sage-grouse, worsen air quality and cause up to 43 million tons of climate pollution -- as much as a coal-fired power plant emits in 11 years.
The online auction, which will offer 118,219 of the 275,000 approved acres, is scheduled Dec. 15-17. President-elect Biden has pledged to ban new oil and gas leasing on federal public lands and waters when he takes office Jan. 20.
"Each ounce of climate pollution lends urgency to Biden's plan to end fossil fuel leasing on public land and waters," said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. "This Wyoming plan is a recipe for disaster. Our climate can't afford one more acre of public land committed to fossil fuel development."
The leases continue the Trump administration's defiance of climate scientists' call to cut greenhouse gas pollution by half in the coming decade. The Trump administration has offered more than 7 million acres of public lands in the lower 48 states for fracking leases, and 4 million acres have been sold. Lawsuits have so far invalidated the leases on about 60% of those 4 million acres.
"The unrestrained leasing of our public lands for oil and gas extraction not only jeopardizes local and regional water quality and quantity but also intensifies climate impacts across the Western United States," said Kate Hudson, Western US Advocacy Coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance. "All communities -- but especially our Native American nations -- are increasingly threatened with a devastating combination of irreversible drought and catastrophic fire. We call on the Biden administration to abandon aggressive fossil fuel extraction from our public lands and equitably address the climate crisis before it is too late."
The protest challenges the Bureau of Land Management's failure to analyze harm from climate pollution and assess how volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides will worsen ozone pollution. Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin already suffers pollution levels that exceed federal health standards.
"This last gasp assault on our climate and public lands firmly bolsters the need for President-elect Biden to make good on his commitment to ban federal fossil fuel leasing and reverse the damage wrought by four years of climate and science denial under Trump," said Matt Nykiel with WildEarth Guardians. "For four years now, we've been on the frontlines fighting back against the Trump administration's attempts to sell out our public lands for fracking and we don't intend to back down until President-elect Biden holds true to delivering bold action for climate."
"Regional warming from greenhouse gas pollution is drying the Colorado River and forcing emergency actions to send water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming to Lake Powell in Utah," said John Weisheit with Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper. "The disastrous decision to increase fossil fuel extraction and greenhouse gas pollution at this crucial juncture is a decision that also accepts a future of dangerous water poverty for the Colorado River Basin."
The protest also challenges the Bureau's failure to prioritize leasing outside of sage-grouse habitat and to fully assess potential harms from fracking to grouse populations. Estimates from multiple state wildlife agencies show that grouse populations are plummeting. The grouse once occupied hundreds of millions of acres across the West, but their populations are dwindling as oil and gas development, livestock grazing, roads, powerlines and other activities have destroyed and fragmented their native habitats.
"With its last dying gasp, the Trump administration appears hellbent on committing as much sage grouse habitat as possible to its failing energy dominance agenda," said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project. "But the courts have made clear that this stampede to lease key sage grouse habitats for drilling and fracking is illegal, and the Biden administration has signaled a pivot to climate-friendly policies on public lands, so this commitment of public lands to industrial destruction may be short-lived indeed."
The protest was filed by WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance and Western Watersheds Project.
Background
Fossil fuel production on public lands causes about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. Peer-reviewed science estimates that a nationwide federal fossil fuel leasing ban would reduce carbon emissions by 280 million tons per year, ranking it among the most ambitious federal climate-policy proposals in recent years.
Federal fossil fuels that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential climate pollution; those already leased to industry contain up to 43 billion tons. Pollution from already-leased fossil fuels on federal lands, if fully developed, would essentially exhaust the U.S. carbon budget for keeping the world below a 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase.
Western Watersheds Project is an environmental conservation group working to protect and restore watersheds and wildlife through.
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Echoing early May criticism of U.S. House Republicans' blueprint for the next Farm Bill, anti-hunger and green groups on Friday fiercely condemned the GOP's discussion draft text of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.
Released by U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.), the draft is competing with a Democratic proposal—Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow's (D-Mich.) Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act.
While Thomspon claimed that his bill "is the product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies," Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the panel's ranking member, said that the draft "confirms my worst fears."
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Leaders at advocacy groups on Friday similarly slammed the Republican bill. Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
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The AFL-CIO said on social media that it "strongly opposes" the Republican proposal, adding: "Families rely on Food for Peace—and also SNAP, SNAP's Thrifty Food Plan, and other federal nutrition and food security programs. We cannot support making harmful policy changes or funding cuts to any of them."
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Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "weakening safeguards that protect people from pesticides, slashing protections for endangered species, and recklessly expanding industrial logging should have no place in the Farm Bill."
"It's unfortunate that chairman Thompson has put forward such a destructive farm bill to appease the most fringe members of Congress," Hartl added. "This bill can't pass the House and it's a waste of everyone's time."
In a joint statement released Friday after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Democrats on Thompson's panel, Scott and Statenow stressed that members of their party are "committed to passing a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill that strengthens the farm and family safety nets and invests in our rural communities."
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The display of an inverted flag officially symbolizes "dire duress" according to the U.S. code, and has been used at various times by people across the political spectrum to signify distress over U.S. policy and disapproval of the government.
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Alito told the Times on Friday that he "had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag" and that "it was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."
But Durbin (D-Ill.) said the display on January 17, 2021—and for several days before that—clearly created "the appearance of bias."
"Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, including the question of the former president's immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering," said the senator.
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In the coming weeks, the court is set to rule on Trump's claim that he has immunity in his federal election interference case and in a separate case regarding whether January 6 defendants should be charged with obstructing an official proceeding.
Despite four ongoing criminal cases, Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in November.
"The court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust," said Durbin. "Supreme Court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest."
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