Judge finds that Bureau of Land Management acted within its legal authority when it postponed lease sales to consider environmental harms

Michael Freeman, Senior Attorney, Rocky Mountain Office, Earthjustice: “Why are they having these lease sales given the climate impacts that the Biden administration itself recognizes? There’s a clear contradiction between what the Biden administration says it wants to do on climate and what it’s doing with these lease sales.”

How President Biden can align the federal fossil fuel program to deliver on climate and put people over profits

Jenny Harbine, Managing Attorney, Northern Rockies Office, Earthjustice: “The opportunity costs of not doing something will be felt generations into the future if this administration doesn’t reverse course quickly and begin to align its actions with its words.”

Report shows how little return taxpayers get for leasing public lands and waters to oil and gas companies, but fails to address climate

Jenny Harbine, Attorney, Northern Rockies Office, Earthjustice: “We’re sitting here in record heat and choking wildfires. There couldn’t be a more important time of the administration to take action to end fossil fuel production from our federal lands.”

Feds to follow legally wrong opinion and will proceed with new federal oil and gas leasing pending appeal

Drew Caputo, VP of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife, Oceans, Earthjustice: “It’s legally wrong. Every presidential administration has delayed or cancelled lease sales. The Trump administration last year delayed offshore oil leases because of the pandemic and changes in the market. There were no complaints, literally, and it was an unremarkable thing because that kind of…

The law does not require the government to run public lands and waters for the sole benefit of the oil and gas industry

Earthjustice, Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Cook Inletkeeper, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, Oceana, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed the motion in response to a lawsuit in Louisiana by 14 states that seeks to end the pause and force the government to immediately offer federal lands and waters for lease.

Motion responds to 14 states challenging the leasing pause

In recent years, the federal government has handed over vast swathes of public lands and waters to private corporations to drill for oil, mine for coal, and otherwise exploit. During his first week in office, President Biden directed the Department of Interior to pause new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters while…

Motion backs the Biden administration’s legality in pausing federal onshore, offshore leasing

Motion backs the Biden administration’s legality in pausing federal onshore, offshore leasing

Instead of fueling the climate crisis and the extinction boom, public lands and waters can be part of the solution.