July, 16 2020, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, 575-613-4197, eriksg@westernlaw.org
Stuart Ross, Clean Air Task Force, 914-649-5037, sross@catf.us
Michael Saul, Center for Biological Diversity, 303-915-8308, msaul@biologicaldiversity.org
Natasha Leger, Citizens for a Healthy Community, 970-399-9700, natasha@chc4you.org
Carol Davis, Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, 928-221-7859, caroljdavis.2004@gmail.com
Hilary Lewis, Earthworks, 202-887-1872 x101, hlewis@earthworksaction.org
Jeff Kuyper, Los Padres ForestWatch, 805-770-3401, jeff@lpfw.org
Anne Hedges, Montana Environmental Information Center, 406-443-2520, ahedges@meic.org
Mike Saccone, National Wildlife Federation, 202-797-6634, sacconem@nwf.org
Mark Pearson, San Juan Citizens Alliance, 970-259-3583 x1, mark@sanjuancitizens.org
Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians, 303-437-7663, jnichols@wildearthguardians.org
Will Roush, Wilderness Workshop, 206-979-4016, will@wildernessworkshop.org
Alan Rogers, Wyoming Outdoor Council, 307-262-9865, alan@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org
Federal Court Rejects Trump Administration Cancellation of Methane Pollution Rule
Twice defeated, Zinke makes third attempt to allow more gas pollution, waste.
San Francisco, California
A federal judge late yesterday reinstated the Bureau of Land Management's 2016 methane waste rule, aimed at protecting people and the climate from methane waste and pollution from oil and gas extraction on public lands. The ruling is the third defeat for the Trump administration's efforts to suspend, delay or repeal the rule.
The rule requires oil and gas companies operating on public lands to take reasonable measures to prevent the waste of publicly owned fossil gas. It will go back into effect in 90 days. Such measures significantly reduce pollution from methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and are an important step to address the climate crisis.
"The Trump administration has abused every opportunity -- legal or otherwise -- to maximize the oil and gas industry's profits at the expense of taxpayers, public health, and the climate," said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. "We welcome the court's forceful repudiation of the Trump administration's reckless and unlawful conduct."
In 2018 a broad coalition of conservation and citizens' groups challenged the cancellation of most provisions of the rule after defeating prior Trump administration attempts to end these protections. In today's ruling the court found the administration had downplayed the significance of the rule's benefits to public health, local communities and the climate. The court also determined the Bureau's cost-benefit analysis ignored global climate costs.
"It's despicable that the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to gut modest protections for our lungs and our climate to benefit a dirty, climate-destroying industry," said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We're grateful that the courts continue to reject these unscientific, indefensible attempts to give fossil-fuel companies a license to pollute."
The coalition's lawsuit sought to reinstate the 2016 rule to reduce methane waste and pollution and address the longstanding problem of reduced production royalties caused when the fossil-fuel industry wastes publicly owned methane. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates lost royalties at nearly $23 million annually under the pre-2016 regime. The 2016 rule will help taxpayers reclaim about $800 million in royalties over the next decade.
A Delaware-sized methane "hot spot" in New Mexico's San Juan Basin is the major contributor to San Juan County's "F" grade on ozone from the American Lung Association. In Texas and New Mexico's Permian Basin, recently the highest-producing oil basin in the world, gas flaring is now at an all-time high of 750 million cubic feet per day. That's a 650 percent increase over less than a decade, and the highest emissions ever recorded from a U.S. oil and gas basin. These data show that voluntary methane waste measures aren't working.
In addition to flaring and methane emissions, gas waste associated with oil and gas development results in smog pollution and releases other toxic pollutants, such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
The 2016 rule was crafted over four years with input from the oil and gas industry. It accounted for nearly 300,000 public comments and earned approval from 75 percent of Westerners.
"This District Court decision rejects the Trump administration's reckless and unlawful attempts to rollback protections for air, public health, and communities threatened and harmed by fracking on public lands," said Bruce Baizel, Energy Program Director at Earthworks. "The decision further affirms the rightful role for considerations of climate impacts on future Bureau of Land Management considerations."
"The Bureau's methane rule is a common-sense solution to protect our climate, reduce air pollution and save taxpayer money," said Will Roush, executive director of Wilderness Workshop. "The court's reinstatement of the rule is step forward for people across the west and especially those in communities disproportionately impacted by pollution from oil and gas development."
"Today's decision protects our forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and monuments from harmful greenhouse gasses caused by oil development," said Los Padres ForestWatch Executive Director Jeff Kuyper. "From the Sespe to the Carrizo Plain and beyond, California's public lands--and the communities that depend on them--can all breathe a lot easier."
"Unabated methane releases from oil and gas operations on public lands will harm both wildlife and the ability of people to use and enjoy our natural treasures--all while fueling the fire of the climate crisis," said Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. "Rescinding the 2016 rule represented an illegal, unwarranted, and unwise step backwards in efforts to conserve and restore our public lands and reduce the harmful emissions. Today's court decision represents a huge victory for sound science, public health, and the environment."
"For over three years, this administration has attempted to get rid of BLM's waste rule based on a myriad of inadequate justifications, trying to grant favors to their corporate friends at the expense of the public's well-being," said Darin Schroeder, attorney from Clean Air Task Force who co-represented National Wildlife Federation with the Western Environmental Law Center. "We are grateful that the rule of law has yet again prevailed."
The Western Environmental Law Center represented the Center for Biological Diversity, Citizens for a Healthy Community, Dine Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, Earthworks, Los Padres ForestWatch, Montana Environmental Information Center, San Juan Citizens Alliance, WildEarth Guardians, Wilderness Workshop and Wyoming Outdoor Council in the case. The Western Environmental Law Center and Clean Air Task Force jointly represented the National Wildlife Federation.
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to safeguard the public lands, wildlife, and communities of the American West in the face of a changing climate. We envision a thriving, resilient West, abundant with protected public lands and wildlife, powered by clean energy, and defended by communities rooted in an ethic of conservation.
(541) 485-2471LATEST NEWS
UN Expert Calls for 'Defossilization' of World Economy, Criminal Penalties for Big Oil Climate Disinformation
Fossil fuel companies have for decades "instilled doubt about the need to act on, and the viability of, renewables," said U.N. climate expert Elisa Morgera.
Jun 30, 2025
As health officials across Europe issued warnings Monday about extreme heat that could stretch into the middle of the week in several countries—the kind of dangerous conditions that meteorologists have consistently said are likely to grow more frequent due to human-caused climate change—a top United Nations climate expert told the international body in Geneva that the "defossilization" of all the world's economies is needed.
Elisa Morgera, the U.N. special rapporteur on climate change, presented her recent report on "the imperative of defossilizing our economies," with a focus on the wealthy countries that are projected to increase their extraction and use of fossil fuels despite the fact that "there is no scientific doubt that fossil fuels... are the main cause of climate change."
"Despite overwhelming evidence of the interlinked, intergenerational, severe, and widespread human rights impacts of the fossil fuel life cycle," said Morgera, "these countries have and are still accruing enormous profits from fossil fuels, and are still not taking decisive action."
World leaders must recognize the phase-out of fossil fuels "as the single most impactful health contribution" they could make, she argued.
Morgera named the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada as wealthy nations where governments are still handing out billions of dollars in subsidies to fossil fuel companies each year—direct payments, tax breaks, and other financial support whose elimination could reduce worldwide fossil fuel emissions by 10% by 2030, according to the report.
"These countries are responsible for not having prevented the widespread human rights harm arising from climate change and other planetary crises we are facing—biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, and economic inequalities—caused by fossil fuels extraction, use, and waste," said Morgera.
She also pointed to the need to "defossilize knowledge" by holding accountable the companies that have spent decades denying their own scientists' knowledge that continuing to extract oil, coal, and gas would heat the planet and cause catastrophic sea-level rise, hurricanes, flooding, and dangerous extreme heat, among other weather disasters.
Defossilizing information systems, said Morgera, would mean protecting "human rights in the formation of public opinion and democratic debate from undue commercial influence" and correcting decades of "information distortions" that have arisen from the public's ongoing exposure to climate disinformation at the hands of fossil fuel giants, the corporate media, and climate-denying politicians.
Morgera said states should prohibit all fossil fuel industry lobbying, which companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron spent more than $153 million last year in the U.S. alone—with spending increasing each year since 2020, according to OpenSecrets.
"More recent research has documented climate obstruction—intentional delaying efforts, including through media ownership and influence, waged against efforts for effective climate action aligned with the current scientific consensus," wrote Morgera. "Fossil fuel companies' lobbyists have increased their influence in public policy spaces internationally... and at the national level, to limit regulations and enforcement. They have instilled doubt about the need to act on, and the viability of, renewables, and have promoted speculative or ineffective solutions that present additional lock-in risks and higher costs."
While a transition to a renewable energy-based economy has been portrayed by the fossil fuel industry and its supporters in government as "radical," such a transition "is now cheaper and safer for our economics and a healthier option for our societies," Morgera toldThe Guardian on Monday.
"The transition can also lead to significant savings of taxpayer money that is currently going into responding to climate change impacts, saving health costs, and also recouping lost tax revenue from fossil fuel companies," she said. "This could be the single most impactful health contribution we could ever make. The transition seems radical and unrealistic because fossil fuel companies have been so good at making it seem so."
In addition to lobbying bans, said Morgera, governments around the world must ban fossil fuel advertising and criminalize "misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry" as well as media and advertising firms that have amplified the industry's disinformation and misinformation.
Several countries have taken steps toward meeting Morgera's far-reaching demands, with The Hague in the Netherlands introducing a municipal ordinance in 2023 banning fossil fuel ads, the Australian Green Party backing such a ban, and Western Australia implementing one.
The fossil fuel industry's "playbook of climate obstruction"—from lobbying at national policymaking summits like the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference to downplaying human rights impacts like destructive storms and emphasizing the role of fossil fuels in "economic growth"—has "undermined the protection of all human rights that are negatively impacted by climate change for over six decades," said Morgera.
Morgera pointed to three ways in which states' obligations under international humanitarian laws underpin the need for a fossil fuel phaseout by 2030:
- The survival of states that contributed minimally to climate change is impaired by loss of territory to sea-level rise and/or protracted unsafe climatic conditions;
- People are substantially deprived of their means of subsistence because of the severe deterioration of entire ecosystems due to climate change due to flooding, drought, and extreme heat; and
- The cultural survival of the populations of small island developing states, Indigenous peoples, people of African descent, peasants and small-scale fishers is impaired by loss of territories, protracted unsafe climatic conditions and/or severe ecosystem degradation.
Morgera's report was presented as more than a third of Tuvaluans applied for a visa to move to Australia under a new climate deal between the two countries, as the Pacific island is one of the most vulnerable places on Earth to rising sea levels and severe storms.
Morgera said that fossil fuel industry's impact on the human rights of people across the Global South—who have contributed little to the worsening of the climate emergency—"compels urgent defossilization of our whole economies, as part of a just, effective, and transformative transition."Keep ReadingShow Less
Environmental and Indigenous Groups Mobilize to Stop 'Alligator Alcatraz'
"This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect," said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades.
Jun 30, 2025
As Florida's Republican government moves to construct a sprawling new immigration detention center in the heart of the Everglades, nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz," environmental groups and a wide range of other activists have begun to mobilize against it.
Florida's Republican attorney general, James Uthmeier, announced last week that construction of the jail, at the site of a disused airbase in the Big Cypress National Preserve, had begun. According to Fox 4 Now, an affiliate in Southwest Florida, construction has moved at "a blistering pace," with the site expected to be done by next week.
Three environmental advocacy groups have launched a lawsuit to try to halt the construction of the facility. And on Saturday, hundreds of protesters flocked to the remote site to voice their opposition.
Opponents have called out the cruelty of the plan, which comes as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's crusade to deport thousands of immigrants per day. They also called out the site's potential to inflict severe harm to local wildlife in one of America's most unique ecosystems.
Florida's government has said the site will have no environmental impact. Last week, Uthmeier described the area as a barren swampland. He said the site "presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don't need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there's not much waiting for 'em other than alligators and pythons," he said in the video. "Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide."
But local indigenous leaders have said that's not true. Saturday's protest was led by Native American groups, who say that the site will destroy their sacred homelands. According to The Associated Press, Big Cypress is home to 15 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites.
"Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe's traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations," Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress wrote in a statement on social media last week.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have disputed the state's claims that the site will have no environmental impact. On Friday, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Everglades, and Earthjustice sued the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. They argued that the site was being constructed without any of the environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
"The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species. This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect," said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades.
Governor Ron DeSantis used emergency powers to fast track the proposal, which the Center for Biological Diversity says has left no room for public input or environmental review required by federal law.
"This reckless attack on the Everglades—the lifeblood of Florida—risks polluting sensitive waters and turning more endangered Florida panthers into roadkill. It makes no sense to build what’s essentially a new development in the Everglades for any reason, but this reason is particularly despicable," said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Reuters has reported that the planned jail could hold up to 5,000 detained migrants at a time and could cost $450 million per year to maintain. It comes as President Trump has sought to increase deportations to a quota of 3,000 per day. The majority of those who have been arrested by federal immigration authorities have no criminal records.
"This massive detention center," Bennett said, "will blight one of the most iconic ecosystems in the world."
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Kristi Noem Took Personal Cut of Political Donations While Governor of South Dakota: Report
"No wonder Pam Bondi gutted the public integrity section of DOJ. To protect utterly corrupt monsters like Kristi Noem."
Jun 30, 2025
The investigative outlet ProPublica revealed Monday that Kristi Noem secretly took a personal cut of funds she raised for a nonprofit that boosted her political career—and then did not disclose the income when President Donald Trump selected her to serve as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
ProPublica reported that in 2023, while Noem was governor of South Dakota, the nonprofit group American Resolve Policy Fund "routed funds to a personal company of Noem's that had recently been established in Delaware." The company is called Ashwood Strategies, and it was registered in June 2023.
"The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary," according to the outlet. "Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group—one that's not required to disclose the names of its donors—the original source of the money remains unknown."
Experts told ProPublica that the arrangement and Noem's failure to disclose the income were unusual at best and possibly unlawful.
"If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official's political future but also literally providing them with their income, that's new and disturbing," Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now works at the Brennan Center for Justice, told ProPublica.
Noem's lawyers denied that she violated the law but did not reply to ProPublica's questions about whether the Office of Government Ethics was aware of the $80,000 payment.
Unlike many Trump administration officials, Noem is not a billionaire. But "while she is among the least wealthy members of Trump's Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice," ProPublica observed, noting that she was "photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants."
"In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C. restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for 'dinner, activities, and Easter gifts,'" the outlet continued. "She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting, and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds."
Political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote Monday that it was "no wonder [Attorney General] Pam Bondi gutted the public integrity section of DOJ."
"To protect utterly corrupt monsters like Kristi Noem," he added.
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