Environews

EnviroNews: Lawsuit targets federal lands leasing

By Amy Brunvand

WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility filed a lawsuit in January to challenge 2,067 oil and gas leases on 2 million acres of federal land in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The lawsuit says that the BLM approved the leases without analyzing the cumulative impacts of oil and gas leasing on global climate change.

Fossil fuel extraction from federal public lands contributes 24% of the U.S.’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

The lawsuit says that “if federal lands were their own country, their GHG emissions would be ranked fifth globally,” and that “unleased federal minerals represent a “carbon bomb” that would likely push global climate change to catastrophic levels.”

WildEarth Guardians: bit.ly/36cFD8L

————

This is an excerpt from our February EnviroNews column. View the full article here.

This article was originally published on February 3, 2020.