Fossil Fuel Extraction on Public Lands
Poster designed by Juan Reynoso
Despite being labeled as protected lands set aside for conservation, the vast majority of America’s public lands are ironically used for fossil fuel production. In fact, of the 245 million acres of surface land that are managed by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), about 90% of it is open for oil and gas leasing. In other words, 90% of public lands are leased to oil and gas developers, while only 10% are set aside for other uses such as national parks.
“If U.S. public lands were a country, then its emissions would rank 5th in the world”
As a result, this large fossil fuel industry presence on public lands has a major impact on the country’s carbon footprint. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, between 2005 and 2014, about one quarter of all American carbon dioxide emissions came from energy produced on public lands, including drilling, mining, transporting, and refining fuels before they are burned. Specifically, coal mined on public lands accounts for nearly 60% of these public land emissions or 13% of all U.S. emissions. Moreover, of the 28 states where energy is extracted from public lands, more than half of the carbon emissions come from the state of Wyoming alone. Furthermore, beyond simply carbon emissions, fossil fuel extraction on public lands results in the slow violence of many rural and indigenous communities, including trafficking and violence against indigenous women. Therefore, the BLM is intricately complicit in causing environmental injustices and the current climate crisis.
Although the U.S. has extracted fossil fuels from public lands for decades, over the past few years, the Trump administration has pushed to even further increase fossil fuel leases and roll back environmental regulations. In 2017 and 2018, the BLM rolled back protections on 153 million acres of previously conserved land and water, which is equivalent in size to the combined area of the entire states of California and Washington. Most well known of these recent public land battles are the Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah which are aggressively being pursued for fossil fuel extraction by the energy industry.
Moving forward, ending public land lending programs must be a core pillar of any serious climate plan. Public lands should be preserved for the entire nation, not just for the benefit of private fossil fuel companies.