Is The Honeymoon Over Yet?
The following is the Biden Administration’s official scientific, legal, and regulatory assessment of the recent IPCC Report:
On August 9, 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new report detailing observations of a rapidly changing climate in every region globally. This report does not present sufficient cause to supplement the EIS, at this time. See Stand Up for California! v. United States Dep’t of the Interior, 994 F.3d 616, 628 (D.C. Cir. 2021). The report as well as additional analysis of climate change may be a significant consideration in the Department’s decisions regarding oil and gas leasing programs in the future.
Those astonishing findings are found on page 7 of the Record of Decision for Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Lease Sale 257, approving federal leasing of over 78 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for fossil fuel exploration.
If the IPCC Report – which essentially projects the end of human civilization – does not provide “sufficient cause” to stop the expansion of fossil extraction, what would it take?
Exactly what “cause” would be “sufficient”? How much science and data does it take? (and keep in mind that, in this case, the Biden administration is not talking about “sufficient cause” to justify the phase out of fossil, just stopping the expansion.)
And the regulatory application of this finding was merely for the NEPA basis for updating an EIS – not to support a permit or lease denial or revocation, which would require an even higher regulatory and scientific burden of proof to be “sufficient cause”!
In addition to finding the IPCC Report insufficient and neglecting to enforce the Biden Executive Order 1408, the Biden Administration effectively ignored the massive wildfires in the west and hurricanes and floods in the east. The Biden Administration found:
There are no new circumstances, information, or changes in the proposed action or its impacts that require supplementation of the 2018 GOM Supplemental EIS.
No new circumstances! No new information! No changes in impacts! Imagine that!
And the Biden administration did not even unequivocally commit to relying on the IPCC Report in future decisions regarding oil and gas leasing, noting that the Report merely “may be” relied on instead of “will be”, with a date certain commitment, not some vague “future” time:
may be a significant consideration … in the future.
I am indebted to an article in Jacobin for learning of these findings, which should be page 1 news in every main stream media outlet in the country, because they expose the Biden climate policy as pure rhetoric – at best, totally inadequate, or, more critically, as I’ve written, a fraud.
Why are the beltway environmental groups still praising Biden? Why aren’t they organizing massive protests?
Thankfully, some environmental groups are at least challenging this legally: (from the brief)
Lease Sale 257 will result in the production of up to 1.12 billion barrels and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of fossil fuels over the next 50 years. The combustion of these fossil fuels for energy and transportation is the main human activity that emits carbon dioxide and contributes to a warming climate. The lease sale will thus contribute substantially to greenhouse gas pollution that, if not curbed, will exacerbate the climate crisis and burdens on communities in the Gulf of Mexico, which are already suffering from climate warming impacts like rising seas and worsening storms.
Here’s the larger story: (Jacobin):
With the help of the nonprofit public interest organization Earthjustice, several environmental and Gulf groups have now launched a lawsuit against the administration to stop the Gulf lease sale. The complaint argues that the environmental analysis behind the lease sale is based on outdated and arbitrary science, in violation of federal law.
“We’ve been very patient with his administration,” says Hallie Templeton, deputy legal director for Friends of the Earth, one of the environmental groups involved in the litigation. “The honeymoon’s over. It’s now September, they’ve been in office for eight months. It’s time for them to show that they have priorities and are meaningfully going to move in the right direction.”
By way of comparison with the “Honeymoon” metaphor, the Murphy Administration has been in office for 4 YEARS – a lot more than Biden’s 8 months – and done nothing to regulate or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet NJ’s Green Mafia and media continue to cheerlead.
When will mainstream media reporters get into the regulatory weeds and report this story?
It should be a prominent part of every story on climate and every story on Biden climate, energy and infrastructure plans.
Diamond Creek fire ( 7/27/17) on the border of the Pasayten Wilderness, from Hart’s Pass in Okanogan National Forest
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