MEMO: Public lands and waters are a roadmap for achievable and creative climate solutions

Public lands and waters are necessary mitigation and adaptation tools to a changing climate. They sustain biodiversity and provide unique habitats for species forced to move due to climate impacts. They house massive potential for responsible renewable energy development and if managed properly, can drastically cut down on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  

But right now, public lands are part of the climate problem. A full 90 percent of lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are currently open for oil and gas leasing, able to be auctioned off to the fossil fuel industry. The emissions from current and proposed oil and gas drilling on U.S. public lands – like the climate change they fuel – do not adhere to national borders, impacting communities across the world especially in the Global South, which already bear the brunt of climate-fueled disasters and yet emit the least emissions. Climate-induced disasters, fueled by burning fossil fuels, are also making it harder for species to thrive and pushing ecosystems to their breaking points. 

Right now, communities living near and depending on these places for clean air and water are implementing local solutions to these environmental crises. But they shouldn’t be the only ones fighting. When the world’s biggest fossil fuel polluters are put under the spotlight during COP 28, the United States can and should step up to play a global role in leading the energy revolution and ensuring the full value of resilient landscapes. And the Biden administration should start with the places it has the authority to manage – public lands.  

Public lands play a critical role in reducing and preventing climate emissions 

Right now, the Biden administration is taking some important steps to ensure public lands and waters are part of the climate solution, not playgrounds and cash-cows for polluters. This includes elevating its focus on conservation on public lands; putting guardrails on what lands are offered for oil and gas leasing; incentivizing and deploying responsible renewable energy; as well as rules to boost climate resilience across the nation’s forest lands. 

Early Saturday morning, the EPA put out a sweeping set of new rules to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations. This is a significant step by the Biden administration to curb emissions and drastically limit oil and gas companies from offloading their pollution onto communities that live next door to oil and gas infrastructure. The EPA Methane Rule news is a strong step forward, but the administration shouldn't stop there.  

BLM Oil and Gas Rule 

Underneath the massive amounts of fossil fuel emissions emitted each year from public lands, are oil and gas CEOs reaping record profits and offloading the costs of pollution and ecosystem destruction from their operations onto communities and public lands themselves. This is because the federal oil and gas program is woefully outdated and riddled with de facto subsidies for fossil fuel companies.  

Through several critical updates to this system, the BLM is using its existing legal authority to make fossil fuel companies pay a fairer share for extracting public resources, cover the cost of clean-up and restoration after drilling is finished, limit participation of bad actors and putting guardrails on what lands are offered for oil and gas leasing. The BLM Oil and Gas Rule received widespread support, collecting over 260,000 public comments over the course of its 60-day public comment period – 99 percent of which encouraged the Interior Department to adopt the Oil and Gas Rule largely as written. 

BLM’s Renewable Energy Rule and Western Solar Plan 

Our public lands and waters have some of our nation’s best solar, wind and geothermal resources, but they currently account for less than five percent of clean energy capacity in the U.S. There’s tremendous opportunity for responsible, smart from the start growth and it’s time to tap into that potential. 

The BLM’s proposed Renewable Energy Rule and forthcoming updates to the Western Solar Plan – if implemented together thoughtfully – can incentivize responsible renewable energy development on public lands and help accelerate and continue momentum for the clean energy economy. 

• For the Renewable Energy Rule to effectively incentivize responsible renewable energy development on public lands, it requires a robust and well-designed revision to the Western Solar Plan that includes substantial community involvement, Tribal consultation, sound science and balancing deployment with minimized impacts on ecosystems and communities.  

• As part of this solar programmatic update, the BLM is considering adding more states, reviewing the process for new Designated Leasing Areas, variance areas and exclusion areas, adjusting exclusion criteria and seeking to identify new or expanded areas to prioritize solar deployment. 

Public lands help us, and wildlife, adjust and adapt to climate change 

Public lands have many roles to play in the U.S. energy transition, but their role in the climate fight goes beyond just their renewable energy potential, or reducing the oil, gas and coal emissions that stem from them. Federal policymakers must take a holistic approach to managing public lands – simultaneously weighing all the public land values within a landscape – to ensure these lands play their best role in addressing and adapting to the climate crisis. 

BLM Public Lands Rule 

BLM’s Public Lands Rule elevates the Bureau’s focus on conservation for public lands, for the first time placing land health and resilience of whole ecosystems on equal footing with other uses, like fossil fuel extraction. The Public Lands Rule does this through the use of additional tools (e.g., designations like Areas of Critical Environmental Concern) and priorities (e.g., managing for intact landscapes and land health standards) that allow local land managers to make decisions to best manage the areas under their care, with strong public and Tribal nations input. At the same time, the rule also creates an additional tool called conservation leasing, which can be a win-win for both responsible renewable energy deployment on public lands and protecting wildlife by enabling mitigation opportunities to offset development impacts on habitat or other values of public lands.  

During the rule’s comment period this summer, BLM was flooded with more than 150,000 public comments from across the country supporting their Public Lands Rule, 92 percent of which call for putting conservation on equal footing with energy development and other uses of approximately 245 million acres of public lands in the West. 

Climate Resilience Policy/Regulations for National Forests 

In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture previewed an upcoming Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, intending to boost climate resilience across the nation’s forest lands. The agency invited the public to participate in shaping how the Forest Service should manage our forests – especially older forests – to ensure they are part of the solution to address the biodiversity crisis, capture and store carbon, ensure clean drinking water, survive stressors from climate change like uncharacteristically severe wildfire and drought, and bolster Indigenous co-management of forests. This type of comprehensive rulemaking for forest and climate resilience would be an opportunity for the Biden administration to make concerted progress towards mitigating the worst effects of the climate crisis, but must include protections for mature and old growth forests from threats posed by logging, wildfire, drought and other climate stressors. 

Implementing this suite of plans collectively can establish a more holistic vision for public lands management. But public land agencies can’t tackle any of these policies in isolation. To mitigate climate change and support local communities, we need the Biden administration to take the strong actions that it can right now, and that must include creating and following a comprehensive climate plan for our public lands and waters. 

Learn more about other Biden administration efforts and policies to modernize public lands policy for the 21st century, including modernizing a bedrock environmental law, and taking initial steps to update hard rock mining laws and regulations. 

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The Wilderness Society is here as a resource if you have questions or need assistance in reporting. We can connect you with community advocates, energy policy experts and scientists. For more information, contact Emily Denny at The Wilderness Society; edenny@tws.org or 202-240-1788