Last week, Guardians submitted comments on Interior Secretary Zinke’s and the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management’s proposal to hold two oil and gas lease sales in March of next year.
Instead of turning over a new leaf in 2018, the Wyoming BLM is planning to giveaway 125,000+ acres of public land for fracking in the Wind River/Bighorn Basin District (northwestern Wyoming) and 48,000+ acres in the High Plains District (eastern Wyoming). Not surprisingly, based on the draft environmental analysis, Wyoming fails again to fully analyze the climate change impacts from the lease sales.
The Wyoming BLM continues to refuse to analyze the cumulative climate impacts even when the lease sales are occurring at the same time and in the same state (not to mention the 1 million plus acres leased in the West 2017). And, Wyoming continually touts the benefits of oil and gas while failing to even attempt to look at the social costs of releasing more carbon into our atmosphere (a requirement that two courts recently re-affirmed).
The Wyoming BLM’s response to Guardians’ protest of a February 2017 lease sale in Wyoming.
In the past, the Wyoming BLM has expressed frustration with Guardians for continually hammering this issue, as shown by the above statement. But, guess what Wyoming? We will keep bringing up the impacts of climate change until you do your job and look at the cumulative impacts and social costs from giving away millions of public lands in the West to dirty oil and gas, even if it means reminding you, yet again, that we’re paying attention.
