Remember, these leases are toxic fossil foolishness inherited from the Trump #Oiligarchy -— obligating the Biden Admin to go forward -— now running smack into this delicious & auspicious brick wall :)
Update from the comments, which I want to insert high up in the diary, because we Dkos folks have the tools & clout to pump out the truth about the Biden Admin in this regard:
what aggravates me about the Post’s headline is that it implies the Biden Admin actually wanted the sale to go through.
They did not—a judge overturned the first attempt to shitcan TFG’s terrible, no-good attempt to ruin the Gulf. Fortunately Ms Haaland is now protecting our lands.
And now back to the original diary flow:
From NYT article referenced by above tweet:
A judge ruled that the Interior Department must consider the climate impacts of oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico before awarding leases.
The decision by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia is a major victory for environmental groups that criticized the Biden administration for holding the sale after promising to move the country away from fossil fuels. It had been the largest lease sale in United States history.
Now the Interior Department must conduct a new environmental analysis that accounts for the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the eventual development and production of the leases. After that, the agency will have to decide whether it will hold a new auction.
“This is huge,” said Brettny Hardy, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups that brought the lawsuit.
“This requires the bureau to go back to the drawing board and actually consider the climate costs before it offers these leases for sale, and that’s really significant,” Ms. Hardy said, adding, “Once these leases are issued, there’s development that’s potentially locked in for decades to come that is going to hurt our global climate.”
A sampling of worthy retweetables — (and yes, consider it your duty to spread the word on this, as an early downpayment on 2022 & 2024 GOTV):
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>>>>>>>>>>>>Wow, check out the actual PDF!:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA -- MEMORANDUM OPINION
((Deb Haaland *is* playing 11-dimensional chess, and I mean that in good way!))
Lease Sale 257 made 80.8million acres
in the Gulf of Mexico
available for oil and gas leasing,
the largest offshore oil and
gas lease sale in U.S. history
Organizational Plaintiffs Friends of the Earth, Healthy Gulf, Sierra
Club, and Center for Biological Diversity brought suit against the Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, alleging that the federal defendants violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and
the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Compl. ¶¶ 1, 5–8, ECF No. 1
At the third stage, lessees must submit a more detailed exploration plan, which Interior may only approve if exploration “will not be unduly harmful to aquatic life in the area, result in pollution, create hazardous or unsafe conditions, unreasonably interfere with other uses of the area, or disturb any site, structure, or object of historical or archeological significance.”
OH. MY. GOD.
It’s a brilliant strategy: environmental activists sue fed gov to stop climate-destabilizing & eco-toxic & envir-destructive gov practices…. and the fed gov that you and I elected weakly defends past gov actions, loses the cases, and voila! Yielding: great legal precedents, torpedoed fossil boondoggles, and neither side having any interest in appealing to SCOTUS. (!!!)
Brilliant!!!
3. Interaction of OCSLA and NEPA
The statutory schemes of NEPA and OSCLA are not inconsistent. Interior must consider the environmental impacts of a decisions to open up federal lands for oil and gas leases in accordance with NEPA prior to holding a lease sale. See Sec’y of the Interior v. California, 464 U.S. 312, 338 (1984) (noting that the “[r]equirements of the National Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act must be met” before the lease sale stage). And although OCSLA’s primary purpose is development of the Outer Continental Shelf, “OCSLA does not mandate the approval of every proposed lease sale.” Gulf Restoration Network v. Bernhardt, 456 F. Supp. 3d 81, 97 (D.D.C. 2020); see also State of Cal. ex rel. Brown, 712 F.2d at 588 (“[W]hile an area excluded from the [Five-Year] leasing program cannot be leased, explored, or developed, an area included in the program may be excluded at a latter stage.”)
Nor does the multi-step framework of OCSLA purport to lessen the rigor of the “hard look” that NEPA requires. See 43 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1) (requiring environmental studies “of any area or region included in any oil and gas lease sale” under OCSLA); (Vill. of False Pass v. Clark, 733 F.2d 605, 609 (9th Cir. 1984) (interpreting § 1346 to mean that “[a]t the lease sale stage, OCSLA implies this review must meet NEPA standards.”). Although the D.C. Circuit has stated that OCSLA itself “concerns the local environmental impact of leasing activities” and therefore “does not authorize—much less require—Interior to consider the environmental impact of post-exploration activities such as consuming fossil fuels on either the world at large,”
Biological Diversity, 563 F.3d at 485, that opinion concerned only OCSLA itself and did not reach the NEPA challenges to the Five-Year Program on the merits. “In the context of NEPA, which requires government agencies to comply with its strictures ‘to the fullest extent possible,’ 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C), courts have been especially reluctant to hold that another statute overrules it.” Nat. Res. Def. Council v. Lujan, 768 F. Supp. 870, 880 (D.D.C. 1991). To the contrary, “NEPA may, within the boundaries set by Congress, authorize the agency to make decisions based on environmental factors not expressly identified in the agency’s underlying statute.” Vill. of Barrington,Ill.v. Surface Transp. Bd., 636 F.3d 650, 665 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (quotations omitted). In other words, NEPA sets a floor that agencies must comply with even if an agency’s underlying statute, such as OCSLA, could be construed to set a lower one.
The legal wizardry here is blowing me away… decades of setting the legal precedent building blocks… and it looks like key pieces come from situations when both sides are honest and care about climate & environment…. such as: “Nat. Res. Def. Council v. Lujan”…..
….. and today, in “Friends of the Earth v Haaland”
Bottom line:
The Court VACATES and REMANDS the Record of Decision for Lease Sale 257 to the Department of the Interior.
I’m liking this. A lot.
How are *you* liking this great news? Please let me know in the comments. Please include any legal commentary you may have, paste-in any tweets that you want me (& others) to like & retweet, and help strategize how we use this to fire up the #ClimateAction base…. and maybe even how we use this to bring home how each person’s VOTE is critical to enabling our govt to #ActOnClimate and to forcing our institutions to #StopFundingFossils & #StopSubsidizingFossils (!)
FDR once met with a group of activists who sought his support for bold legislation. He listened to their arguments for some time and then said, "You've convinced me. Now go out and make me do it."
"Go Out and Make Me Do It."