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Two near-simultaneous announcements on Tuesday underscored the immense challenge of addressing climate change in America. The Interior Department announced it will resume regular oil and gas lease sales while it appeals a court ruling that blocked President Biden's pause on those sales. At the same time, the Interior Department formally declared a water shortage on the Colorado River—a sign of the increasing effects of climate change caused by the unchecked burning of fossil fuels.
The water shortage declaration will primarily affect Arizona farmers while also reducing allotments to Nevada and Mexico this year. But hydrologists warn that the shortage is likely to intensify, triggering more cuts by 2025 or sooner.
While announcing the resumption of oil and gas lease sales in response to the court order, the Interior Department suggested the sales may look different than in the past, saying that the agency will use its “authority and discretion provided under the law to conduct leasing in a manner that takes into account the program’s many deficiencies.”
That approach was praised by Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala, who encouraged Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to use “every inch” of that discretion “to ensure any future lease sales fully account for the costs of drilling to our communities and our climate.”
The Interior department also announced a programmatic analysis to identify what changes will be necessary to meet President Biden's greenhouse gas targets for 2030 and 2050, and said it will launch a review of the federal coal leasing program later this week.
New map reveals lands at risk from oil drilling
To demonstrate the threat that unchecked oil and gas production poses to America’s public lands, the Center for Western Priorities released an interactive map showing three places that were leased to oil and gas companies before the pause on new leasing and are at risk of being developed today. The map highlights drilling proposals under consideration by the Biden administration that threaten hunting and fishing access, sage-grouse habitat, and wilderness-quality lands in Montana, Nevada, and Utah.
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The cutbacks are happening. The water's not there. We’ll shrink as much as we can until we go away. That’s all the future basically is.”
