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interior department
Biden Admin Sued for Hiding Records on Opposition to Fossil Fuel Phaseout
The lawsuit aims to "shed light on the Biden administration's dumbfounding refusal to align our country's federal fossil fuel programs with its own climate goals," said one campaigner.
Nov 28, 2023
A national conservation group sued the Biden administration on Tuesday for failing to respond to a public records request pertaining to the Interior Department's dismissal of a petition that called for a phaseout of oil and gas extraction on federal lands and waters.
Submitted last year, the petition from more than 360 environmental and Indigenous organizations called on the Interior Department to initiate a rulemaking process aimed at reducing oil and gas production on public lands and waters by 98% by 2035.
The department rejected the petition earlier this year, claiming that it "has a robust rulemaking agenda already underway to address the climate crisis and implement reforms to our conventional energy programs" and doesn't have adequate resources to "undertake the proposed rulemaking at this time."
The administration's reply came after the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) sued the administration for not responding to the petition for more than a year.
CBD is now taking legal action against the Interior Department again, this time for violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In July, CBD requested that the Interior Department turn over records related to the agency's deliberations about the fossil fuel phaseout petition and its response.
"At the time of the filing of this complaint, over 130 days have passed since the Center submitted its FOIA request to Interior. To date, however, Interior has not provided any requested records," the new lawsuit states. "Accordingly, the Center challenges Interior's FOIA violations resulting from its failure to respond to the Center's request and seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to require Interior to promptly search for and produce all responsive records without further delay."
"The administration needs to explain its failure to take bold, urgent action but instead it's hiding public records."
Taylor McKinnon, CBD's southwest director, said in a statement that the lawsuit "will shed light on the Biden administration's dumbfounding refusal to align our country's federal fossil fuel programs with its own climate goals."
"All-time high federal oil production is causing our planet's life support systems to shut down under the stresses of the climate emergency," said McKinnon. "The administration needs to explain its failure to take bold, urgent action but instead it's hiding public records."
The suit comes days before the start of the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, closely watched and critically important talks that Biden has decided to skip.
Under Biden's leadership, U.S. crude oil production is on pace to surge to a record 12.9 million barrels this year. During his first two years in office, the Biden administration approved more than 6,400 permits for oil and gas drilling, exceeding the number of approvals during former President Donald Trump's first two years.
According to a CBD analysis released Monday, drilling projects that the Biden administration has approved could "erase" emissions-reduction progress from the Inflation Reduction Act, the president's signature legislative achievement.
"The Biden administration is canceling out its own climate progress by greenlighting major oil and gas projects," said Shaye Wolf, CBD's climate science director.
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Climate Advocates Blast GOP Funding Bill as "A 'How-To' Manual for Destroying the Planet"
"While Americans take refuge from record-setting extreme heat and suffer from wildfire smoke, the House majority proposes slashing environmental funding to the lowest level in 30 years."
Jul 18, 2023
Legislation that the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee is set to mark up on Wednesday would take an axe to U.S. climate spending, cutting the Environmental Protection Agency's budget by a staggering 39% while promoting fossil fuel development as huge swaths of the planet face devastating heatwaves.
Kyle Jones, director of federal affairs with the Center for Policy Advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement Tuesday that the Republican bill is "historically bad... the worst of its kind we've ever seen."
Jones went on to say that the legislation—one of a dozen appropriations bills currently moving through the House—"reads like a 'how-to' manual for destroying the planet."
"While Americans take refuge from record-setting extreme heat and suffer from wildfire smoke, the House majority proposes slashing environmental funding to the lowest level in 30 years," said Jones. "This is a non-starter, based on galling scientific ignorance and reactionary politics."
Made public last week amid record-shattering heat and other extreme weather across the U.S., the GOP's Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies funding bill calls for $4 billion in total cuts to the EPA budget—slashing the agency's clean water funds, emissions-reduction grants, and other programs.
The bill would also cut the Interior Department's budget by $721 million, remove the Gray Wolf from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife, and prevent the EPA from considering the social cost of carbon in any regulatory action.
Meanwhile, the Republican legislation aims to bolster the industry fueling climate chaos by requiring the Interior Department to hold at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in both the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska each year.
"The bill includes an exhaustive list of anti-environment riders that seek to derail any effort to combat climate change and undermine clean water and clean air protections," Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the top Democrat on the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, said during a hearing on the measure last week.
Republicans "give an open invitation to exploitative oil, gas, and mineral leasing by blocking environmental regulations and even overriding judicial review," Pingree added. "At the same time, the bill suppresses clean energy production."
"This effort by the Republican House majority is a slap in the face to the millions of Americans suffering through weeks-long heatwaves and devastating floods."
The NRDC's Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland wrote in a blog post that the legislation marks "the Republican majority's latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil."
"To say these provisions would have devasting impacts on both climate and communities would be an understatement," Axelrod and Cleland added. "This effort by the Republican House majority is a slap in the face to the millions of Americans suffering through weeks-long heatwaves and devastating floods and who are looking to Congress for solutions to meet this historic and challenging moment."
As their appropriations bills make clear, House Republicans are looking to enact painful cuts across the federal government, drawing vocal opposition from congressional Democrats and increasing the likelihood of a shutdown.
Late last week, as Common Dreams reported, a GOP-controlled subcommittee advanced an agency funding bill that would cut the Department of Education's budget to below the 2006 level and slash programs that help employ hundreds of thousands of teachers nationwide.
Additionally, as The Washington Postnoted Tuesday, "a series of GOP bills to finance the federal government in 2024 would wipe out billions of dollars meant to repair the nation's aging infrastructure, potentially undercutting a 2021 law that was one of Washington's rare recent bipartisan achievements."
"The proposed cuts could hamstring some of the most urgently needed public-works projects across the country, from improving rail safety to reducing lead contamination at schools," the Post added.
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The GOP’s Environmental Appropriations Bill Is a Major Giveaway to the Fossil Fuel Industry
The Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil, this bill strips away the Department of Interior’s land and ocean management discretion.
Jul 18, 2023
In their latest legislative attack on our climate, the Republican majority in the House has written a bill that is so detrimental to our environment and communities, it may rank as the worst appropriations bill in decades.
For both our shared public lands and oceans, the bill carves out giveaways for the fossil fuel industry that go against not only our climate goals but also common sense. Instead of recognizing that federally managed lands and oceans host a myriad of uses and industries and contribute in countless ways to the national economy, the House majority seems to view them as having one purpose: unabated production of oil, gas, and coal.
The Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil, this bill strips away the Department of Interior’s land and ocean management discretion. In doing so, it tips the scales toward congressional control of the oil and gas leasing process, dictates the number of lease sales the administration must offer, and overrides any commonsense considerations as to which areas should or should not be leased.
At a time when we need to act swiftly on climate, these congressional proposals to write fossil fuel interests into law undermine the progress we need to make to tackle the climate crisis.
For offshore ocean areas, House Republicans have proposed:
- A new mandate that each five-year leasing program include at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico every year. This requirement has the effect of removing authority from the agency to decide the amount of lease sales needed to “best meet our national energy needs,” a requirement of existing law.
- An expedited environmental impact statement on the upcoming five-year program and timing requirements on starting and approving subsequent future five-year programs to avoid significant gaps in programs to force continuous leasing.
- A new requirement that at least two lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and two lease sales in Alaska are held every year to ensure that offshore oil and gas leasing occurs yearly regardless of the status of the five-year program.
- Additional requirements to offer all un-leased areas that aren’t strictly off limits—regardless of impacts to endangered species, sensitive habitats, vulnerable ecosystems, or other conflicts—further restricting the discretion of the agency to decide which areas to include in a lease sale.
For onshore federal public lands, House Republicans have proposed:
- A mandated leasing system that requires the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to hold four leases per year in each of nine specified states.
- Required, expedited lease sales upon the completion of all required administrative and environmental review.
- Elimination of the BLM’s discretion to apply any meaningful ecosystem or environment-related screens over what lands are eligible and available for oil and gas leasing, instead requiring that all lands deemed available under applicable resource management plans be immediately eligible for nomination.
- A requirement that BLM honor all industry nominations for leasing, regardless of prudent considerations like conflicts with sensitive or endangered species, potential for development, or any other rational screen that might help mitigate environmental and other harms to shared public lands.
- Required additional sales or resales if mandated lease sales fail to attract sufficient industry participation, resulting in an extraordinarily inefficient burden on BLM’s resources (which this bill also slashes to draconian levels).
At a time when we need to act swiftly on climate, these congressional proposals to write fossil fuel interests into law undermine the progress we need to make to tackle the climate crisis. To say these provisions would have devasting impacts to both climate and communities would be an understatement. This effort by the Republican House majority is a slap in the face to the millions of Americans suffering through weeks long heat waves and devastating floods and who are looking to Congress for solutions to meet this historic and challenging moment.
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