![]() "Following months of consecutive climate disasters, the Bureau of Land Management's determination to rearrange deck chairs instead of deploying lifeboats is deeply disturbing," said WELC's Melissa Hornbein. One critic said that "greenlighting more fossil fuel extraction, then pretending it's OK by nudging up royalty rates, is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," a sentiment that was echoed by a WELC senior attorney on Thursday. Several campaigners sounded the alarm over that report, which was produced in response to a Biden executive order. Turning a blind eye to his broken leasing program proves once again that Biden is content to fiddle away while the world burns."Īs the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) highlighted Thursday, the BLM "telegraphed its modest intentions for the proposed rule in its November 2021 Report on the Federal Oil and Gas Program, which we noted at the time failed to live up to its billing as a 'comprehensive review' responding to the climate crisis." "President Biden can't be a climate leader unless he addresses the root cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. "Even as record heatwaves bake the country and floods ravage eastern states, the Biden administration continues to cozy up to Big Oil," said Nicole Ghio at Friends of the Earth. The BLM's new proposal comes as both Biden and Trump are running in the 2024 presidential contest and as much of the Northern Hemisphere is dealing with extreme heat intensified by global warming that has been largely driven by fossil fuels. ![]() ![]() While the Democrat has certainly made some progress, particularly compared with his predecessor, he has also come under fire for failing to live up to what he promised as a candidate. ![]() successfully challenged former President Donald Trump three years ago in part by pledging to take the climate emergency seriously and reverse the Republican's attacks on the planet. "It will be another shameful addition to Biden's record alongside the Willow project, his thousands of new drilling permits, and his rollback of environmental laws to enable illegal fossil fuel pipelines." "Any rule that fails to phase out oil and gas production on public lands will sacrifice human lives, ecosystems, and entire species at the altar of fossil fuel corporations and their insatiable quest for profit," McKinnon warned. The center is among more than 500 groups that responded to the rule with a letter urging Biden to "rapidly phase down federal fossil fuel extraction and production on public lands" to near-zero by 2030, as part of the global effort to meet the 2015 Paris climate agreement's 1.5☌ goal. This dangerous plan would ravage more of the landscape with fracking while sealing our fate of increasing megafires, more preventable heat deaths, a shrinking Colorado River, and runaway wildlife extinctions." "President Biden is blowing an opportunity to end oil and gas extraction on public land as the world reels from one climate catastrophe to the next. "This is a cowardly proposal that fails the basic climate imperative of ending fossil fuel expansion and phasing out production," said Taylor McKinnon, the center's Southwest director. However, advocacy organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity slammed the rule as a "massive climate failure." Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Tracy Stone-Manning said it "aims to ensure fairness to the taxpayer and balanced, responsible development as we continue to transition to a clean energy economy." Department of the Interior unveiled a proposed rule for the outdated fiscal terms of the onshore oil and gas leasing program. President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to ban new oil and gas leases on public lands, his administration earned fresh criticism from green groups on Thursday with a proposal to update regulations for the federal fossil fuel leasing program.
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