There are no words. Obama opens thousands more acres of public land to coal mining.
This is your land. It has been put in trust for protection so that there will (always?) be a pristine environment for all generations to escape to when we need to replenish our connection to nature.
There seems to be a cognitive dissonance in this administrations approach to climate change. What about the Earth is burning up due to fossil fuels do they not understand? It's a simple concept: When you realize that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for making our planet unlivable for our species, you stop.
Especially, the American people don't deserve having to subsidize an industry that is clearly contributing to its ability to have a habitable planet.
David Roberts writing at Vox describes the frustration of the Obama Administration's 'all of the above' climate policy.
Yesterday, the US Bureau of Land Management released its regional management plan for the Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming, which oversees most of the Powder River Basin, where the bulk of Western coal is located.
Long story short: the government is going to lease lots more coal. Specifically, BLM "has estimated that it would issue 28 coal leases encompassing 106,400 acres with approximately 10.2 billion tons of coal."
According to a Greenpeace Report, burning those 10.2 billion tons of coal would produce 16.9 billion metric tons of CO2. Here's a graphic from that report, comparing the emissions represented by coal leases to the emissions reduced by Obama's Clean Power Plan:
The graph above shows clearly how nonsensical the move to open up for more coal drilling really is.
2016 is make or break for climate change. Our survival on a livable planet depends on realistic policy and actions to mitigate climate change. There is no other issue as crucial. We must choose climate champions in 2016 to lead us out of this death sentence for our planet.