“It’s good to see President Obama call for more renewable energy to reduce carbon pollution from the federal government’s operations, but his administration needs to get serious about the federal government’s much bigger carbon problem – fueling the climate crisis by giving away our coal, oil, and gas from federal lands and waters. President Obama and Interior Secretary Jewell can take immediate steps that would have a real impact: rejecting Shell’s plans to drill for oil in the Arctic and putting a moratorium on the sale of federal coal. We also need a comprehensive plan to address the broader problems of federal fossil fuels and climate change, but our land, water, and climate are threatened by fossil fuel companies and outdated federal rules right now, and these are two immediate steps the Obama administration could take.”
Earlier this week, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell delivered a speech in which she called for “an honest and open conversation” about the federal coal program and climate change. A Greenpeace report last year showed that the federal coal program has leased 2.2 billion tons of taxpayer-owned coal during the Obama administration, unlocking 3.9 billion metric tons of carbon pollution. The report found that the average price per ton for those coal leases was only $1.03, while each ton will cause damages estimated at between $22 and $237, using the federal government’s social cost of carbon estimates. A new report today from the Center for American Progress and the Wilderness Society provides new data, including that, “Federal lands and waters could have accounted for 24 percent of all energy-related GHG emissions in the United States in 2012.”
A study published in Nature in January found that in order to have a good chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, more than 90 percent of US coal reserves and all Arctic oil and gas must remain unburned.
Yesterday, Greenpeace called on the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to upgrade BOEM’s environmental impact analysis of Shell’s Arctic leases by making the basic analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the burning of the oil produced at the lease sites.
Contact: Joe Smyth, Greenpeace Communications, 831-566-5647, [email protected]
