New Congress: As you tackle climate change, keep public lands in mind
Ecoflight
Speaker Pelosi calls climate change "the existential threat of our time"
A new Congress has come into town and made climate change one of their top priorities, led by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and echoed by a bevy of new legislators both on the Hill and across the country.
In her opening speech to the 116th Congress, Speaker Pelosi described climate change as “the existential threat of our time…a crisis manifested in natural disasters of epic proportions.” Pelosi then went on to announce a new committee – the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis – to further climate policy recommendations across other congressional committees.
The Wilderness Society believes that our federal government needs to start taking climate change seriously and an immediate place they can start doing so is with America’s public lands.
While America’s public lands are known for their majestic wilderness and wide-open landscapes, lesser known truth is that public lands are also home to a significant portion of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
A recent report from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) showed that emissions from oil and gas and coal produced on public lands and waters makes up nearly a quarter of all national emissions. Between 2005 and 2014, approximately 40% of coal, 26% of oil and 23% of natural gas developed in the U.S. in the past decade came from public lands, according to the report.
“Our country needs to start taking climate change seriously, and a key element of that is drastically and immediately reducing unchecked emissions that come from public lands,” said Chase Huntley, Senior Director for the Energy and Climate Program at The Wilderness Society. “The U.S. government has kept the American public in the dark for far too long on the climate impact of subsidized oil and gas drilling and coal mining on our public lands.”
If our public lands are not included in efforts to address climate change, it will be nearly impossible for the U.S. to meet the 80% emissions reduction goal by 2030.
The Wilderness Society agrees with Speaker Pelosi that it is time to act to “put an end to the inaction and denial of science.” We are going to fight to tackle climate change.
