President Obama gets deservedly high marks for his efforts to confront climate change. The Clean Power Plan, path-breaking fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, and his decision to lead the delegation to the Paris climate talks demonstrate what at first blush seems like an unwavering commitment to tackling the issue, even in the face of some withering political headwinds.
But the one glaring inconsistency in the president’s climate policy involves his management of federal minerals. The federal government owns vast fossil fuel resources, primarily on the public lands in the western U.S. The Obama administration has often bragged about its aggressive program to promote federal oil and gas leasing and development on public lands. Even more surprising has been the Interior Department’s willingness to give the coal industry virtually all of the federal coal it wants, despite growing evidence that the American public is not receiving a fair return for these public resources.
Many in the environmental community have become increasingly vocal about the imperative to “keep fossil fuels in the ground.” While it is easy to see the appeal of this campaign, it seems unrealistic — at least in the short term.
We all drive cars, fly in airplanes, heat our homes and turn on lights, and most of these activities use some form of fossil fuels. While we can and should reduce our consumption of these fuels and aggressively pursue alternatives, the reality is that we will continue to consume them for the foreseeable future, and some of those minerals inevitably will come from our public lands.
That does not mean, of course, that the federal government should simply ignore the carbon footprint of the minerals sold and produced on our public lands. On the contrary, we must, at a minimum, account for these costs in the decision-making process.
The federal government has been slow to accept this responsibility, but it will soon have a fresh chance to align federal mineral policy with its broader climate initiatives.
Last year, a federal judge in Colorado struck down a Forest Service decision that would have opened the door to the destruction of national forest roadless areas near Paonia to give coal companies access to hundreds of millions of tons of federal coal. The court ruled that the Forest Service had unlawfully failed to disclose the climate pollution that would result from mining and burning that coal.
Late last month, the Forest Service responded with a draft analysis. Its conclusion is striking. The coal from this single decision could emit an additional 130 million tons of carbon over several decades. That’s as much carbon as people produced in the entire state of Colorado in 2010.
By the government’s own estimates and even after accounting for the economic value of the coal, the loss to the global economy and environment from just the carbon emissions that will result from burning it — the “social cost of carbon” — will be in the billions, perhaps more than $12 billion. It’s hard to see how a government that claims to be concerned about climate change can justify selling this coal in the face of such huge costs.
One way to test the market for this coal would be to demand royalties and fees at least equal to the costs that its development will impose on society. That would at least ensure a level playing field. But the government shows no signs that it is willing to impose such fees.
Proponents of this coal development, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, are pressuring the Obama administration to approve it to protect mining community jobs. But the mining company that wants the coal already has enough under lease to keep mining for nearly a decade. That’s plenty of time to transition to cleaner and more sustainable jobs for mine workers. Indeed, a single wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas, employs twice as many Coloradoans as work in all of the state’s coal mines.
President Obama has warned us that without a genuine shared commitment to meaningful action on climate change, our future will be one of “submerged countries, abandoned cities, fields that no longer grow, political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples seeking sanctuary in nations not their own.”
He should heed his own warning by managing the federal mineral estate as if carbon emissions mattered and keeping Colorado’s wild forest lands closed to coal mining.
Mark Squillace is a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School.