COALITION TO PROTECT AMERICA’S NATIONAL PARKS * CONSERVATION COLORADO * EARTHJUSTICE * ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND * FRIENDS OF THE EARTH * LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS * MONTANA WILDLIFE FEDERATION * NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION * NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL * PUBLIC CITIZEN *
* ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD*
* SIERRA CLUB * WILD MONTANA * THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY *
WILDERNESS WORKSHOP
April 12, 2022
Tracy Stone-Manning
Director
U.S. Bureau of Land Management
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240
RE: Request for Supplemental National Environmental Policy Act Analyses for the Proposed Quarter One 2022 Lease Sales.
Dear Director Stone-Manning:
Our organizations recently recommended that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reconsider its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews of the onshore quarter one 2022 lease sales in light of two recent developments, one of which was the release by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of its second report on the escalating climate crisis. On April 4, 2022, the IPCC finalized and released its third and final sixth assessment report.1Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers, Working Group III Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change SPM (2022) [hereinafter IPCC 2022 Mitigation Report], https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/. This report is attached as an appendix. We request that BLM add the report to the administrative record for each of the quarter one 2022 lease sales. We therefore strongly urge BLM also to analyze this report in reconsideration of the NEPA reviews for all quarter one lease sales.
This Mitigation Report not only underscores the immediate need to ramp down greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel infrastructure, but also provides significant new information under NEPA that BLM should analyze in its environmental reviews of the lease sales.2See Tri-Valley CAREs v. United States DOE, 671 F.3d 1113, 1130 (9th Cir. 2012) (explaining, in the context of new information bearing on an Environmental Assessment, that NEPA “requires supplementation of any NEPA analysis” in response to significant new information (emphasis added)); Indigenous Envtl. Network v. United States Dep’t of State, 317 F. The report’s findings require BLM to update its analyses, including the environmental baseline for climate change, in the draft environmental documents.
The report includes critical findings on the substantial GHG emissions reductions from fossil fuel use that is required to meet climate targets and to have any chance of limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.3IPCC 2022 Mitigation Report at SPM-36. Otherwise, the “continued installation of unabated fossil fuel . . . infrastructure will ‘lock-in’ GHG emissions.”4Id. The stark bottom line laid out in painstaking detail in the report is that “without urgent, effective and equitable mitigation actions, climate change increasingly threatens the health and livelihoods of people around the globe, ecosystem health and biodiversity.”5 Id. at SPM-52. Supp. 3d 1118, 1123 (D. Mont. 2018) (“Federal Defendants possess the obligation to analyze new information relevant to the environmental impacts of its decision.”); see also Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council, 490 U.S. 360, 372 (1989) (requiring supplementation when there is new information relevant to environmental concerns for the proposed action); 40 C.F.R. § 1502.9 (2020) (explaining that an agency “[m]ay also prepare supplements when the agency determines that the purposes of [NEPA] will be furthered by doing so”).
Consideration of the information and analysis in the report is crucial for properly assessing the environmental impacts of the lease sales.
Because of the significant new information presented in this third and final IPCC climate report, we request that BLM issue draft supplemental NEPA documents on climate impacts for each lease sale, with a subsequent 60-day or, at the least, 30-day comment period. We believe analysis that adequately considers climate impacts will demonstrate that moving forward with onshore sales is incompatible with BLM’s legal obligations under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and NEPA, climate science, and the Administration’s climate priorities and commitments.
Respectfully,
| Ben Tettlebaum Senior Staff Attorney The Wilderness Society ben_tettlebaum@tws.org Luke Schafer West Slope Director Conservation Colorado luke@conservationco.org Nicole Ghio Senior Fossil Fuels Program Manager Friends of the Earth nghio@foe.org Ben Alexandro Senior Government Affairs Advocate League of Conservation Voters balexandro@lcv.org Josh Axelrod Senior Advocate Natural Resources Defense Council jaxelrod@nrdc.org Alison Gallensky Principal Conservation Geographer Rocky Mountain Wild alison@rockymountainwild.org Aubrey Bertram Staff Attorney Wild Montana abertram@wildmontana.org Juli Slivka Policy Director Wilderness Workshop juli@wildernessworkshop.org cc: Steve Feldgus Deputy Assistant Secretary Land and Minerals Management U.S. Department of the Interior Nada Wolff Culver Deputy Director of Policy and Programs U.S. Bureau of Land Management Kim Liebhauser Acting State Director Wyoming Bureau of Land Management Jamie Connell State Director Colorado Bureau of Land Management John Mehlhoff State Director Montana/Dakotas Bureau of Land Management Melanie Barnes Acting State Director New Mexico Bureau of Land Management Jon Raby State Director Nevada Bureau of Land Management Greg Sheehan State Director Utah Bureau of Land Management Mitchell Leverette Director Eastern States Bureau of Land Management | Alec Underwood Senior Policy and Development Director Montana Wildlife Federation alec@mtwf.org America Fitzpatrick Senior Program Manager for Energy & Landscape Conservation National Parks Conservation Association afitzpatrick@npca.org Amit Narang Regulatory Policy Advocate Public Citizen anarang@citizen.org Dan Ritzman Director, Lands, Water, Wildlife Campaign Sierra Club dan.ritzman@sierraclub.org State Director Montana/Dakotas Bureau of Land Management |
Read the Mitigation of Climate Change Summary for Policymakers