Joe Biden’s administration is poised to sell oil and gas leases on vast stretches of public lands in the western United States, despite the Interior Department’s conclusion that doing so could cost society billions of dollars in impacts for climate change.
Officials announced last week that government regulators will analyze for the first time greenhouse gas emissions generated by the extraction of fossil fuels on public lands in the country.
Burning those fuels accounts for 20% of America’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, making them a prime target of green activists who want leases suspended, and President Biden promised during his campaign end new exploration leases.
But officials from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said there is little it can do for now to prevent the impacts of fossil fuel use. That’s in part because they can’t discern the effect of public land emissions from those from other sources, officials wrote in just released documents.
The determination applies to land lease sales planned for early next year in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and other states.
“BLM has limited reality to significantly or measurably prevent the cumulative impacts of climate change that would result from global emissions”Agency officials wrote in their Montana lease proposal.
Similar statements were included in documents published by the government for sales in other states.
Leasing plans remain subject to change as the government continues to analyze greenhouse gas emissions and the effects on people and the environment, agency officials said Tuesday.
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