|
This weekend, President Biden traveled to Glasgow, Scotland for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which will take place over the course of this week. Many have called COP26 the world's "last best chance" to come to a consensus around combatting climate change. Throughout the proceedings, President Biden will seek to convince world leaders that the United States is finally serious about addressing climate change, even as Congress has forced him to abandon high-impact elements of his climate agenda.
However, Biden also enters the conference with a new climate win, literally on American soil: on Friday, the Interior department announced that they will for the first time analyze national greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas drilling on federal lands. The department will defer offering some oil and gas leases that were scheduled to go up for auction while it completes environmental assessments. The exact number of deferred leases remains unknown.
The announcement is a first step towards reforming the leasing system so it accounts for the full climate and social cost of extracting oil and gas from America’s public lands. Jennifer Rokala, Executive Director of the Center for Western Priorities said in response, "[The] announcement is a big step in the right direction... At the same time, this decision demonstrates how crucial it is for the Biden administration to implement full top-to-bottom reforms of the oil and gas leasing system. A piecemeal approach is necessary in the short-term, but it is not a long-term solution, and the clock is ticking."
The inclusion of emissions in lease sale reviews will allow the administration to take into account the increasing social costs of climate change that result from burning fossil fuels from public lands. That cost could be very high, as fossil fuels extracted from federal public lands produce about one-fifth of all U.S. energy-related emissions.
Even with the new change, the administration still plans to auction off 80,000,000 acres for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in mid-November, just days after President Biden returns from the COP 26. That sale is projected to generate more than 1,000,000,000 barrels of oil in the coming decades.
|
Castner Range and Avi Kwa Ame are incredibly beautiful and sacred places to so many of us in Monumental SHIFT... we are honored to work with community leaders on the ground in advocating to protect those lands and so many more."
