The Center for Biological Diversity and Living Rivers on Monday filed a formal administrative protest challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to auction more than 45,000 acres of public land in Utah for fracking.
The sale, which was postponed in November due to impending protests, includes parcels in the BLM’s Moab, Price, Vernal and Fillmore field offices in central and eastern Utah and within the Fishlake National Forest in Sevier County.
“If President Obama wants to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as he agreed to do at the Paris climate talks, he needs to end the federal fossil fuel leasing program,” said the Center’s Taylor McKinnon. “Each new auction undermines that goal with more carbon pollution while destroying fragile Utah canyon country and harming air, water and habitat for imperiled species like endangered Colorado River fish, Mexican spotted owls and greater sage grouse.”
The filing calls on the BLM and the Obama administration to cancel the fossil fuel auction and “keep it in the ground.” A study commissioned by the Center and Friends of the Earth late last year projects that the potential greenhouse gas pollution from unleased federal fossil fuels is incompatible with any U.S. share of global carbon budgets to keep warming below 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal world leaders agreed to in the Paris climate pact. It also found that banning new fossil fuel leases on public lands and oceans would keep up to 450 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution out of the atmosphere.
“With oil companies in liquidation, a warming climate and dwindling Colorado River supplies, committing more Utah canyon country to fossil fuel industrialization makes no sense,” said John Weisheit, conservation director at Moab-based Living Rivers. “Now is the time to transition to clean, renewable energy, and to keep climate-destroying fossil fuels in the ground.”
Avoiding dangerous warming requires leaving the vast majority of already proved fossil fuels undeveloped. By opening new fossil fuel deposits, federal fossil fuel auctions perpetuate a stark conflict between the Obama administration’s climate goals and its “all of the above” energy policy.
Facing growing public support for the “Keep It in the Ground” movement to end new leases for federal oil, gas and coal extraction, federal officials halted oil and gas auctions slated for Utah and Washington, D.C. Hundreds of people turned out for similar protests last fall in Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado and Alaska.
More than 400 organizations and leaders working on the “Keep It in the Ground” campaign have called on Obama to end new federal fossil fuel leases following reports that doing so would keep up to 450 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution in the ground, and that the president has the legal authority to do so now, without Congress. Those emissions would be incompatible with any reasonable U.S. share of global carbon budgets to avoid catastrophic warming.
Press Release
Letter of Protest
EPA 2015 Impact Analysis
Knick, et al., 2013: Modeling Ecological Distribution of Greater Sage Grouse Leks
Incident Report: Vernal Field Office
