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      How a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action

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      Climate crimesOilHow a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action The American Petroleum Institute receives millions from oil companies – and works behinds the scenes to stall or weaken legislationSupported byAbout this contentChris McGrealMon 19 Jul 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 19 Jul 2021 06.38 EDTWhen Royal Dutch Shell published its annual environmental report in April, it boasted that it was investing heavily in renewable energy. The oil giant committed to installing hundreds of thousands of charging stations for electric vehicles around the world to help offset the harm caused by burning fossil fuels.On the same day, Shell issued a separate report revealing that its single largest donation to political lobby groups last year was made to the American Petroleum Institute, one of the US’s most powerful trade organizations, which drives the oil industry’s relationship with Congress.Contrary to Shell’s public statements in support of electric vehicles, API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, has pledged to resist a raft of Joe Biden’s environmental measures, including proposals to fund new charging points in the US. He claims a “rushed transition” to electric vehicles is part of “government action to limit Americans’ transportation choice”.Shell donated more than $10m to API last year alone.And it’s not just Shell. Most other oil conglomerates are also major funders, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, although they have not made their contributions public.The deep financial ties underscore API’s power and influence across the oil and gas industry, and what politicians describe as the trade group’s defining role in setting major obstacles to new climate policies and legislation.EmbedCritics accuse Shell and other major oil firms of using API as cover for the industry. While companies run publicity campaigns claiming to take the climate emergency seriously, the trade group works behind the scenes in Congress to stall or weaken environmental legislation.Earlier this year, an Exxon lobbyist in Washington was secretly recorded by Greenpeace describing API as the industry’s “whipping boy” to direct public and political criticism away from individual companies.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and strident critic of big oil’s public relations tactics, accused API of “lying on a massive industrial scale” about the climate crisis in order to stall legislation to combat global heating.“The major oil companies and API move very much together,” he said.Whitehouse said the oil and gas industry now recognizes it is no longer “socially acceptable” to outright deny climate change, and that companies are under pressure to claim they support new energy solutions that are less harmful to the environment. But that does not mean their claims should be taken at face value.“The question as to whether they’re even sincere about that, or whether this is just ‘Climate is a hoax 2.0’, is an unknown at this point,” he added.Shell has defended its funding by saying that while it is “misaligned” with some of API’s policies, the company continues to sit on the group’s board and executive committee in order to have “a greater positive impact” from within. The petroleum firm claims that its influence helped manoeuvre API, which represents about 600 drilling companies, refiners and other interests such as plastics makers, toward finally supporting a tax on carbon earlier this year.With Biden in the White House and growing public awareness of global heating, there are signs API’s influence may be weakening as its own members become divided on how to respond.The French oil company Total quit the group earlier this year over its climate policies. Shareholder rebellions are pressing Exxon and Chevron to move away from dependence on oil. Top clean energy executives at Shell quit in December over the pace of change by the company.API is also fighting a growing number of lawsuits, led by the state of Minnesota, alleging that the trade group was at the heart of a decades-long “disinformation campaign” on behalf of big oil to deny the threat from fossil fuels.But despite threats to API’s lasting influence, Whitehouse argues the trade organization represents the true face of the industry. Instead of using its considerable power to push for environmentally friendly energy laws, API is still lobbying to stall progress with the oil industry’s blessing.“Their political effort at this point is purely negative, purely against serious climate legislation. And many of them continue to fund the fraudulent climate denialists that have been their mouthpieces for a decade or more,” Whitehouse said.Since API was founded in 1919 out of an oil industry cooperation with the government during the first world war, it has evolved into a major political force with nearly $240m in annual revenue.Its board has been dominated by heavyweights from big oil, such as Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chief who went on to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and Tofiq Al Gabsani, the chief of Saudi Refining, a subsidiary of the giant state-owned Aramco oil giant. Al Gabsani was also registered as a lobbyist for the Saudi government.API also hired professional lobbyists, including Philip Cooney, who went on to serve under George W Bush as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality until he was forced to resign in 2005 after tampering with government climate assessments to downplay scientific evidence of global heating and to emphasise doubts. Shortly afterward, Cooney was hired by Exxon.API came into its own as the realities of the climate crisis crept into public and political discourse, and the industry found itself on the defensive. The trade group, which claimed to represent companies supporting 10m jobs and nearly 8% of the US economy, played a central role in efforts to combat new environmental regulations.In many cases, API was prepared to carry out the dirty work that individual companies did not want to be held responsible for. In 1998, after countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to help curb carbon emissions, API drew up a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-issue”. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.Much of this is the basis of several lawsuits against API. The first was filed last year by the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, who accuses the group of working alongside ExxonMobil and Koch Industries to lie about the scale of the climate crisis. The suit alleges that “previously unknown internal documents” show that API and the others well understood the dangers for decades but “engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective” to undermine climate science.The city of Hoboken in New Jersey is also suing API, claiming that it engaged in a conspiracy by joining and funding “front groups” that ran “deceptive advertising and communications campaigns that promote climate disinformation and denialism”.The lawsuits allege that API funded scientists known to deny or underplay climate changes, and gave millions of dollars to ostensibly independent organisations, such as the Cato Institute and the George C Marshall Institute, which denied or downplayed the growing environmental crisis.“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers,” Ellison alleges in Minnesota’s lawsuit. “These front groups were formed to provide climate disinformation and advocacy from a seemingly objective source, when, in fact, they were financed and controlled by ExxonMobil and other sellers of fossil-fuel products.”It wasn’t always this way.When Terry Yosie joined API in 1988 as vice-president for health and environment, the trade group had spent years funding scientists to research climate issues after hearing repeated warnings. In 1979, API and its members formed the Climate and Energy Task Force of oil and gas company scientists to share research.Yosie, who moved to API from the Environmental Protection Agency, controlled a $15m budget, part of which he used to give workshops on climate change by EPA officials and other specialists.“I brought them together in front of oil industry senior level executives for the sole purpose of making sure this industry had some understanding as to what other significant stakeholders thought about climate change, where they saw the issue evolving, what information they were relying on,” he said.When Yosie left API in 1992, he believed oil the lobby group was still serious about addressing the growing evidence of climate change. But a year later, it disbanded the task force at the same time that Exxon abandoned one of the industry’s biggest research programmes to measure climate change.Yosie believes that confronted with the true extent of the looming disaster, API and the oil companies ran scared, choosing instead to pursue an agenda informed by climate denialism.“As the climate issue began to move from the periphery to the centre stage, I think there was a collective loss of confidence in the entire industry, a fear that this was not a debate that was winnable,” he said.API and its financial backers founded a front organisation, the deceptively named Global Climate Coalition, to drum up purported evidence that the climate crisis was a hoax. In the late 1990s, the GCC’s chairman, William O’Keefe, was also API’s executive vice-president, a man who falsely claimed that “climate scientists don’t say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth”.API and the GCC led attacks on Bill Clinton’s support for the Kyoto protocol with a “global climate science communications plan” that misrepresented the facts about global heating.The relationship between API and big oil remained exceptionally close throughout. Exxon’s chief executive served on the lobby group’s executive committee for most of the past three decades, and the two worked together in promoting denialism over the climate crisis.The focus of API’s efforts were on Congress, where it led the industry’s opposition to policies, such as the 2009 cap-and-trade legislation to control carbon emissions.“Most of the funding for the Republican party, and probably a very considerable amount of the big dark money funding behind the Republican party, comes out of the fossil fuel industry,” said Whitehouse. Last year, API indirectly gave $5m to the conservative Senate Leadership Fund to back Republican election candidates (many of whom question climate science), and to the campaigns of members of the energy committees in both houses of Congress.The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long agoRead moreGrowing public disquiet, and the departure of oil-friendly Donald Trump from the White House, shifted the ground for API. In March it launched a Climate Action Framework, which for the first time endorsed policies such as carbon pricing. It also stated its support for the Paris climate agreement.API called the plan “robust” but others noted the lack of specifics and its sincerity was called into question when an Exxon lobbyist was caught on camera earlier this year saying that a carbon tax will never happen and that support for the measure was a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures.And between API’s lost support from Total, and the Shell executives who resigned in December over what they regarded as the company’s foot-dragging on greener fuels, there are signs of shifting attitudes within the industry itself.Shell and BP have said they will continue to review their support for API. Shell said that where it disagrees with API’s position, the company “will pursue advocacy separately”.However, Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is sceptical that there has been any significant change in direction.“I think it’s fair to say that API and its prominent member companies have have a broadly shared goal, which is to keep the social licence of the oil and gas industry operating, and therefore enabling them to continue to extract oil and gas for as long as possible, as profitably as possible,” he said.This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate storyTopicsOilClimate crimesFossil fuelsEnergyUS politicsRoyal Dutch ShellnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Biden suspends Trump-era oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge

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      The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by Donald Trump and reviving a political fight over a remote region that is home to polar bears and other wildlife – and a rich reserve of oil.The interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in office. Biden’s 20 January executive order suggested a new environmental review was needed to address possible legal flaws in a drilling program approved by the Trump administration under a 2017 law enacted by Congress.After conducting a required review, interior said it “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives” required under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.The remote, 19.6m-acre refuge is home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities, for drilling. Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican plan to allow drilling in the refuge in 1995, when he was president, and the two parties have been fighting over the region ever since.The US bureau of land management, an interior department agency, held a lease sale for the refuge’s coastal plain on 6 January, two weeks before Biden took office.Eight days later the agency signed leases for nine tracts totaling nearly 685 sq miles. However, the issuance of the leases was not announced publicly until 19 January, former president Donald Trump’s last full day in office.Biden has opposed drilling in the region, and environmental groups have been pushing for permanent protections, which Biden demanded during the 2020 presidential campaign.The administration’s action to suspend the leases comes after officials disappointed environmental groups last week by defending a Trump administration decision to approve a major oil project on Alaska’s north slope. Critics say the action flies in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change.The justice department said in a court filing that opponents of the Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations. The filing defends the reviews underpinning last fall’s decision approving project plans.Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, hailed suspension of the Arctic leasing program, which she said was the result of a flawed legal process under Trump.“Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction, and we commend the Biden administration for committing to a new program analysis that prioritizes sound science and adequate tribal consultation,” she said.More action is needed, Miller said, calling for a permanent cancellation of the leases and repeal of the 2017 law mandating drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain.The drilling mandate was included in a massive tax cut approved by congressional Republicans during Trump’s first year in office. Republicans said it could generate an estimated $1bn over 10 years, a figure Democrats call preposterously overstated.Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Nation steering committee, thanked the president and interior secretary Deb Haaland and said that tribal leaders are heartened by the Biden administration’s “commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life”. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden officials condemned for backing Trump-era Alaska drilling project

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      Joe Biden’s administration is facing an onslaught of criticism from environmentalists after opting to defend the approval of a massive oil and gas drilling project in the frigid northern reaches of Alaska.In a briefing filed in federal court on Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said the Trump-era decision to allow the project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s north slope was “reasonable and consistent” with the law and should be allowed to go ahead.This stance means the Biden administration is contesting a lawsuit brought by environmental groups aimed at halting the drilling due to concerns over the impact upon wildlife and planet-heating emissions. The US president has paused all new drilling leases on public land but is allowing this Alaska lease, approved under Trump, to go ahead.The project, known as Willow, is being overseen by the oil company ConocoPhillips and is designed to extract more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years. Environmentalists say allowing the project is at odds with Biden’s vow to combat the climate crisis and drastically reduce US emissions.“It’s incredibly disappointing to see the Biden administration defending this environmentally disastrous project,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that have sued to stop the drilling. “President Biden promised climate action and our climate can’t afford more huge new oil-drilling projects.”The Arctic is heating up at three times the rate of the rest of the planet and ConocoPhillips will have to resort to Kafkaesque interventions to be able to drill for oil in an environment being destroyed by the burning of that fuel. The company plans to install “chillers’ into the Alaskan permafrost, which is rapidly melting due to global heating, to ensure it is stable enough to host drilling equipment.Monsell said the attempts to refreeze the thawing permafrost in order to extract more fossil fuel “highlights the ridiculousness of drilling in the Arctic”. Kirsten Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said Willow “is the poster child for the type of massive fossil fuel development that must be avoided today if we’re to avoid the worst climate impacts down the road”.The Willow project will involve drilling up to 250 wells and associated infrastructure, such as a processing facility, hundreds of miles of new pipelines and roads and an airstrip, in the north-eastern corner of the petroleum reserve, which is a federally owned tract of land roughly the size of Indiana.Trump’s administration approved the drilling late in the former president’s term and activists hoped Biden would reverse this decision to meet his climate goals. A recent landmark report by the International Energy Agency found that there can be no new fossil fuel projects anywhere if the world is to avoid dangerous global heating.Native Alaskan groups have also opposed the project over fears it will adversely impact the abundant local wildlife, such as polar bears, fish and migrating caribou.“This project is in the important fall migration for Nuiqsut,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a resident of Nuiqsut, a community in the north slope. “It should not happen. The village spoke in opposition and the greed for profit should not be allowed over our village.” More

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      in Elections

      Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline. Good, but he doesn't get a climate pass just yet | Nick Estes

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      Joe Biden scrapping the Keystone XL permit is a huge win for the Indigenous-led climate movement. It not only overturns Trump’s reversal of Obama’s 2015 rejection of the pipeline but is also a major blow to the US fossil fuel industry and the world’s largest energy economy and per-capita carbon polluter.There is every reason to celebrate the end of a decade-long fight against Keystone XL. Tribal nations and Indigenous movements hope it will be a watershed moment for bolder actions, demanding the same fates for contentious pipeline projects such as Line 3 and the Dakota Access pipeline.Biden has also vowed to review more than 100 environmental rules and regulations that were weakened or reversed by Trump and to restore Obama-era protections to two Indigenous sacred sites, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which are also national monuments in Utah. And he issued a “temporary moratorium” on all oil and gas leases in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, sacred territory to many Alaskan Natives.None of these victories would have been possible without sustained Indigenous resistance and tireless advocacy.But there is also good reason to be wary of the Biden administration and its parallels with the Obama administration. The overwhelming majority of people appointed to Biden’s climate team come from Obama’s old team. And their current climate actions are focused almost entirely on restoring Obama-era policies.Biden’s policy catchphrases of “America is back” and “build back better” and his assurance to rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” should also be cause for concern. A return to imagined halcyon days of an Obama presidency or to “normalcy”– which for Indigenous peoples in the United States is everyday colonialism – isn’t justice, nor is it the radical departure from the status quo we need to bolster Indigenous rights and combat the climate crisis.Obama’s record is mixed. While opposing the northern leg of Keystone XL in 2015, Obama had already fast-tracked the construction of the pipeline’s southern leg in 2012, despite massive opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups.His “all-of-the-above energy strategy” committed to curbing emissions while also promoting US “energy independence” by embracing domestic oil production. Thanks to this policy, the lifting of a four-decade limit on exporting crude oil from the United States, and the fracking revolution, US domestic crude oil production increased by 88% from 2008 to 2016.Domestic oil pipeline construction also increased – and so, too, did resistance to it. During the protests against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, Obama’s FBI infiltrated the Standing Rock camps. “There’s an obligation for protesters to be peaceful,” he admonished the unarmed Water Protectors at the prayer camps who faced down water cannons in freezing weather, attack dogs, mass arrests and the ritualistic brutality of a heavily-militarized small army of police.In 2018, Obama claimed credit for the United States becoming the world’s largest oil producer, urging industry elites in Texas to “thank” him for making them rich. Trump’s subsequent, and more aggressive, policy of “unleashing American energy dominance” built on Obama’s gains.Undoing four years of Trump – and the lasting damage it brought – can’t be the only barometer of climate justice. Nor should we lower our expectations of what is possible and necessary for Native sovereignty and treaty rights.Biden partly owes his election victory to Native voters. Arizona voting districts with large Native populations helped flipped the traditionally Republican state last November to his and Democrats’ favor. Native aspirations, however, don’t entirely align with Biden’s climate agenda, the Democratic party, or electoral politics.In Arizona, where Biden won the Native vote, the Forest Service could, in the coming months, hand over 2,400 acres of Chi’chil Bildagoteel, an Apache sacred site, to the Australian mining company Rio Tinto. In 2014, the Arizona Republican senator John McCain attached a rider to a defense authorization bill to allow the transfer of land to make way for a copper mine, which would create a nearly two-mile wide open-pit crater destroying numerous Native burial sites, ceremonial areas and cultural items in the process. (Last year, Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge Cave, a 46,000-year-old Indigenous sacred site, to expand an iron ore mine in Australia.)A Democratic Senate passed Resolution Copper; Obama signed it into law; and Trump fast-tracked the environmental review during his last days in office. Resource colonialism is a bipartisan affair.Much like the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s dilemma with the Dakota Access pipeline, the Apache Stronghold, made up of members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe opposing the copper mine at Oak Flat, has little recourse. No law exists giving Native people control of their lands outside government-defined reservation boundaries.We must ask ourselves why Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialismRio Tinto’s copper mine aims to meet at least a quarter of the United States’ annual copper needs, an essential metal that will be in high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. According to the World Bank, three billions of tons of metals and minerals like copper and lithium will be required by 2050 for wind, solar and geothermal power to meet the base target of the Paris agreement, which Biden has committed the US to rejoining.And before Trump left office, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final permit to the Canadian mining company Lithium Americas to create an open-pit lithium mine at Thacker Pass on traditional Paiute land in Nevada. The mine could bolster Biden’s $2tn “green energy” transition plan. Lithium is a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries, and it’s what attracted Elon Musk’s Tesla battery factory to Nevada. Last October, Biden reportedly told a group of miners that he planned to increase domestic lithium production to wean the country from foreign sources like China.These “green” techno fixes and consumer-based solutions might provide short-term answers, but they don’t stop the plunder of Native lands. Even the addition of Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, to the Biden cabinet won’t fundamentally change the colonial nature of the United States. We must ask ourselves why Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialism.But no matter who is US president, Indigenous people will continue fighting for the land and the future of the planet. For us, it has always been decolonization or extinction. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden must be our 'climate president'. He can start by ending pipeline projects | Faith Spotted Eagle and Kendall Mackey

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      As we prepare to turn the page on 2020, and inaugurate Joe Biden as president on 20 January 2021, the incoming administration has a climate mandate to listen to people across America – and keep fossil fuels in the ground. This means stopping the Keystone XL, Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines on day one.While Trump props up failing fossil fuel companies, including through government handouts from Covid-19 stimulus packages to the tune of $15bn, Biden has already committed to transitioning the United States off oil, holding polluters accountable, honoring treaty rights and stopping the Keystone XL pipeline.In August, Joe Biden laid out his $2tn climate plan, which has the support of Indigenous peoples and their allies, Black communities and environmental voters. Biden’s climate plan is the most ambitious plan of a major party presidential nominee ever. To be the most ambitious climate president ever, Biden must implement a climate test on all federal permitting and projects, to ensure any project not aligned with tackling the climate crisis and keeping warming under 1.5 degrees does not move forward. A meaningful climate test must keep fossil fuels in the ground.Just last week, Biden announced the New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland as his nominee for US secretary of the interior. Haaland is a member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe; if confirmed she will be the first Native person to serve in the role. We hope her leadership will help protect our public lands and Indigenous sovereignty as we phase out fossil fuels.As we write, communities across Minnesota are rising up to protect land, water and treaty rights as Line 3 pipeline construction begins and lawsuits are filed in opposition. Meanwhile, communities in South Dakota are mobilizing to pressure Biden to rescind the permit for Keystone XL and end the project once and for all.If built, Line 3 would release as much greenhouse gas pollution as 50 new coal-fired power plants, violate Ojibwe treaty rights, and put Minnesota’s water, ecosystems and communities in harm’s way. Keystone XL would have a similarly devastating impact on water, land, people and the Oceti Sakowin tribes’ treaty and inherent rights.Both pipeline projects have blatantly refused meaningful consultation with the tribes impacted. This is glaringly disrespectful to grassroots dedication in territories that have stood up to this invasion for years, as well as a denial of the irreversible impact these pipelines will have on cultural and spiritual sites.Projects like Line 3 and Keystone XL are also directly linked to violence against and trafficking of Native women and girls, due to the installation of temporary housing for mostly male pipeline workers, known as “man camps”. These man camps are also a hotbed for Covid-19, drawing thousands of out-of-state workers. South Dakota is at a crisis point with Covid-19 cases, yet the threat of Keystone XL construction looms.There is increasing anticipation of violence from militarized police partnered with Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline company backing Line 3, triggering memories of violence against water protectors and allies in the fight to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).In the shadow of centuries of genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, Barack Obama halted DAPL and rejected Keystone XL. Now, Biden has a chance to build upon this legacy and stop Line 3, Keystone XL and DAPL.Stopping these pipelines is completely within Joe Biden’s purview and responsibility. Through executive action, Biden can order an immediate pause on oil pipeline construction, and a moratorium on any new projects or expansions, as he reviews Trump-era approvals for conflict or undue influence from the fossil fuel industry. Biden must also reverse over 100 environmental and climate protection rollbacks brought on by the Trump administration.But to be a true climate president, Biden must go further. Just as pipelines will inevitably spill, any new or existing fossil fuel project would inevitably fail a climate test. There is no safe or clean way to extract, transport, or refine coal, oil or gas without poisoning our communities and driving us past 1.5C of warming. In addition, the construction, transport and burning of fossil fuels have grave impacts on public health and safety, including premature death, lung cancer and increased rates of Covid-19.From the Keystone XL Promise to Protect to the Line 3 Pledge of Resistance, tens of thousands of people are prepared to wield our sacred and patriotic duty to stop these toxic and unnecessary fossil fuel projects. In addition, thousands of people have already sent petitions to Joe Biden urging him to halt these projects.It’s time to make polluters pay for the damages done to our communities’ health, land and wellbeing. This starts with stopping fossil fuel projects and returning land to Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, we must dismantle existing projects and fund a just and equitable transition to a regenerative 100% renewable economy.The stakes are higher than ever – economically, socially and politically. Biden must show guts in holding coal, oil and gas executives accountable for knowingly bringing climate disasters, pollution, sickness and death to our doorsteps.It’s our time to leap toward a renewable energy revolution that centers Indigenous sovereignty, community health, and a safe, livable future for all.Faith Spotted Eagle is a Yankton Sioux Tribe member, an opponent of pipeline projects including Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the first Indigenous person to win an electoral vote for president
      Kendall Mackey is 350.org regional campaign manager More

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      in US Politics

      Trump officials rush plans to drill in Arctic refuge before Biden inauguration

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      In a last-ditch attempt to make good on promises to the oil and gas industry, the Trump administration is rushing to formalize plans to drill for oil in the Arctic national wildlife refuge before Joe Biden takes office. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Land Management initiated the process with a formal “call for nominations”, inviting input on which land tracts should be auctioned off in the refuge’s 1.5m-acre coastal plain region.The call for nominations “brings us one step closer to […] advancing this administration’s policy of energy independence”, said Chad Padgett, the BLM Alaska state director, in a statement.The call for nominations lasts 30 days, which would allow the bureau to begin auctioning leases for land tracts to oil and gas companies just days before Biden’s inauguration on 20 January. The coastal plain region, where land could be auctioned, is considered some of the country’s last pristine wilderness, containing dozens of polar bear dens, essential migratory bird habitat, and caribou calving grounds held sacred to the Gwich’in people.“Oil and gas drilling could wipe out polar bears on the coastal plain of the Arctic national wildlife refuge in our lifetimes,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and chief executive of Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement.Native communities in the region say they will also be disproportionately affected by the leasing of Arctic lands to oil and gas companies.“The adverse impacts of oil development in these sacred and critical caribou calving grounds will be heavily felt by Gwich’in and Inupiat villages,” said Jody Potts, Native Movement regional director, in a statement. “As a Gwich’in person, I know my family’s food security, culture, spirituality and ways of life are at stake.”The rush to sell leases appears to be spurred by Biden’s very different approach to public land management. He has promised to “permanently protect” the refuge and ban all new oil and gas leasing on public lands, making it unlikely that leases will be sold once Biden takes office.Even if the BLM holds an auction as early as 17 January, it’s unclear how much bidding will take place. The oil industry is also having a particularly bad year; two dozen banks have announced that they would not fund fossil fuel extraction in the Arctic refuge. And either way, it could be years before any drilling might take place, given the environmental reviews required to do so.“If BLM holds an auction, but doesn’t get as far as issuing leases, the new administration may be able to avoid issuing them, particularly if it concludes the program or lease sale was unlawfully adopted,” said Erik Grafe, an attorney with the environmental law non-profit Earthjustice.Drilling in the refuge has been fiercely opposed for decades and remains extremely unpopular; the Yukon government in Canada has recently voiced opposition to oil exploration in the region due to the harm it could cause to the 200,000 Porcupine caribou who use the coastal plain as calving grounds.In August, more than a dozen environmental organizations sued the Trump administration to block drilling in the refuge, citing “irreparable damage to one of the world’s most important wild places”.If sales do occur before Biden takes office, it would be challenging – but not impossible – for Biden to walk back leases issued.“Even if leases are issued by the Trump administration, the Biden administration could seek to withdraw the leases if it concludes they were unlawfully issued or pose too great a threat to the environment,” Grafe said.In addition to rushing lease sales in the refuge, the Trump administration has fast-tracked seismic testing for oil on the coastal plain, trimming a permitting process that would normally take up to a year down to a few months. The testing, proposed by Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, could begin as soon as December and run until May. Environmentalists oppose testing, which involves 90,000lb (41,000kg) “thumper” trucks that could leave permanent scars on the landscape and disturb denning polar bear mothers.The Arctic refuge’s coastal plain has been at the center of a fierce battle over oil extraction on public lands for decades. It was earmarked for potential development in 1980 but remained protected until a Republican-controlled Congress added a provision to a tax bill in 2017 that finally opened the area to oil development.The Gwich’in people, who have lived in the area for thousands of years, have consistently opposed drilling in a land they call iizhik gwats’an gwandaii goodlit, or “the sacred place where life begins”. Their opposition has remained strong as they have borne the brunt of the climate crisis’s impacts. The call for nominations comes during a month when Arctic sea ice is at a record low and temperatures are at a record high for this time of year.“The Trump administration opening up oil lease sales is devastating to our way of life as Gwich’in people,” said Quannah ChasingHorse Potts, a member of the Gwich’in Youth Council. “The Gwich’in people’s identity is connected to the land and animals. We have lost so much [that] we can’t afford to lose more.” More

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      in US Politics

      Revealed: the full extent of Trump’s ‘meat cleaver’ assault on US wilderness

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      For thousands of years, Native nations of the US south-west lived in the majestic canyons of Bears Ears.

      But it was land that conservative politicians and corporate interests also sought to control.

      So in late 2016, the Hopi celebrated when the Obama administration protected Bears Ears by declaring it a national monument, sheltering it from development and extraction.

      Just one year later, after Donald Trump took office, he drastically reduced the size of the monument by 85%.

      The administration justified the rollback by pointing to some local residents who opposed the monument. In truth it was also responding to a push by groups with deep ties to major GOP donors and the extractive industries.

      As the industry grew, the breaking point for Rogers was when a drilling pad was installed across the street from the home of a church family. Noxious fumes, nonstop industrial noise and dead birds followed, as Rogers tells it.

      The family reported headaches, nosebleeds and respiratory problems. Earlier this year, a pipe broke in the middle of the night and spewed a fluid drilling byproduct over the family’s home and livestock.

      The town is located in the middle of vast oil and gas fields, much of which are public lands.

      The Trump administration has opened up significant swaths of land around Carlsbad for oil and gas drilling.

      Scientists at the University of Wyoming discovered the Red Desert was the starting point of a wondrous large-mammal migration.

      Each year, hundreds of mule deer – a struggling species unique to the west – travel a 300-mile round trip from the Red Desert to forests south of Jackson Hole and back to feast on fresh greenery and bulk up in anticipation of winter.

      “It is the longest migration so far recorded for the species,” says Dr Matt Kauffman, a scientist with the US Geological Survey and the leader of the Wyoming Migration Initiative that maps migration corridors across Wyoming and the west. Each animal learns the route from its herd and follows the path “for the rest of its life”, he said.

      But around and within the corridor, land being leased for oil and gas drilling is on the rise. This magnificent migration depends on the region’s relatively undisturbed landscape, which includes private land as well as vast tracts of public land. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden’s pledge to ‘transition’ from oil draws praise – and Republicans’ anger

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      Conservatives say Biden’s comments likely to lose support from Democratic supporters in oil-producing areasJoe Biden’s promise to “transition” away from the oil industry during Thursday’s presidential debate has caused uproar among conservatives while being praised by environmentalists as being a candid acknowledgment of the scale of the climate crisis. Related: Mitch McConnell says he has no health concerns after photos show bruising Continue reading… More