I'm delighted to report that Wednesday was a very good day for environmentalists concerned about extracting nonrenewable carbon-emitting fossil fuels, with not one but two victories over those who would suck the marrow out of the bones of our planet to leave it dry for the next species to inhabit the earth.
Late April Fool's prank? No. A roadmap.
Overshadowed by offshore news, environmentalists won two victories Wednesday in the arid West.
- Rock Art of Nine Mile Canyon: Native American Culture Triumphs over Drill Here, Drill Now
Nine Mile Canyon, located in the eastern Utah counties of Carbon and Duchesne, is actually 78 miles long, and an archaeologist's dream. Its 1,000 rock art pictograph sites and aged structures chronicle the Fremont (950-1250 AD), ancestral Ute (1500-1800s), and American trapper (1800?-1871?) cultures. 63 different sites within the canyon are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
As you might expect from a place named Carbon County, it's also home to natural gas, oil, and people who wish to exploit same. The Bush Energy Policy Act of 2005 allowed "categorical exclusions," giving prospective energy businesses the ability to conduct one environmental review for multiple wells. And the Bush-era Bureau of Land Management trumped up charges against anyone who dared favor ancient art over exploitation.
The categorical exclusion loophole was used, not just in Nine Mile Canyon, but for thousands of other oil and gas wells throughout the Western United States to shortcut drilling approvals. Rock art fans joined with environmentalists. Wednesday, a settlement was announced, as part of the Interior Department's shift from "drill here, drill now" philosophy of letting oil and gas drillers treat public lands of the West like their own candy store. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an involved party, explains:
BLM will no longer rely on this shortcut to approve oil and gas development when such activities may have adverse effects on "such natural resources and unique geographic characteristics as historic or cultural resources, park, recreation or refuge lands . . . wetlands, floodplains or ecological significant or critical areas."
This settlement doesn't halt all drilling on public lands, only requires that certain sensitive lands be handled...well, sensitively.
- Whither the Sithe? Desert Rock Energy Project EPA Permits Denied
When planned in 2003, Desert Rock Energy Plant was to be a 1500 megawatt coal-fired power plant in the Four Corners region of New Mexico. It was to be a joint venture between the Navajo Nation and Sithe Global (a name crying out for Star Wars-related puns), and would have been the third large coal plant in the region spewing pollution from the Grand Canyon to the Rocky Mountains. The Bush-era EPA rubber-stamped its shoddy and inadequate environmental impact statement. However, in September 2009 a new EPA remanded (revoked) its permit. Then it suffered another crippling blow when its request to reinvent itself as a carbon capture & sequestration project with $450 million in taxpayer money was denied in December 2009. Now Sithe wants to go back to the drawing board, reports High Country News, and it doesn't plan to seek a new EPA permit:
The economy is flailing, and investors worry how future climate change legislation will affect energy development. Meanwhile, electricity demand in the Southwest is declining, and with public utilities scrambling to keep up with statewide mandates to generate more power from renewable energy sources, nobody is currently seeking new sources of coal power.
The Navajo Nation insists that it'll go ahead despite "the withdrawal of a key federal permit, no secured customer or transmission line, and uncertainty over the future of climate change." However, it's hard to see these daunting obstacles being overcome any time soon.
- Montana: People Powered Victory
This one happened a couple of weeks ago, not Wednesday, but it didn't receive enough attention at the time. As part of its midnight destruction regulations, the Bush administration opened up huge chunks of public lands to oil and gas leasing across the West. In Montana, environmentalists sued, arguing that the industry has allowed too much waste and uses inefficient technologies that could easily be updated. In a settlement heralded as first of its kind, the BLM agreed to suspend 61 leases scattered throughout the state on 40,000 acres to consider the impact of these leases on climate change.
The BLM hasn't yet considered how it would review these leases for climate change. Nor has it considered whether to do so nationwide. In the meantime, a similar lawsuit regarding 70,000 acres' worth of leases in New Mexico is still pending.
Oil and gas operations contribute about 23 percent of annual U.S. methane emissions and 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Do the EPA and BLM even talk to each other? EPA has identified over 120 technologies and practices to effectively reduce methane waste and make operations more efficient, but has not considered these proven technologies and practices in its planning documents and does not yet require them as a condition of owning a federal oil and natural gas lease. In other words, the government knows that there is a problem, knows how to mitigate the problem, but won't make people playing in its candy store abide by common sense rules to mitigate the problem. Wild Earth Guardians, one of the Montana plaintiffs, puts matters into perspective:
With Congress failing to exercise meaningful leadership on climate policy, it falls to citizens to step into the breach.
Taking these three stories together, the roadmap is clear. Ansel Adams once said:
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
Nevertheless, if fighting is what we have to do, then bring it on. If huge swaths of pristine lands and waters will be opened up for exploration and drilling, they need to be explored carefully after detailed environmental impact statements. Permits should be scrutinized and revoked if needed. It's only common sense that the impact of drilling on our sensitive climate be considered. And, rather than donating to Democratic candidates willing to drill until every last drop of oil is extracted, we may need to donate our time and money to the environmental groups willing to take them on.