Congress wants polluters to dictate where drilling, mining happens
In a war on public lands, Congress launches a bill to help polluters call the shots.
Editor’s Note: Since the original version of this story, the House passed its version of this pro-pollution bill on Feb. 7. Now the only way to stop the surrender of our lands is the Senate vote in the coming weeks. Please call your senators and ask them to OPPOSE H.J. Res 44 today!
Wildlands supporters celebrated a major victory last week after public pressure forced Congress to withdraw a bill that would have sold more than 3 million acres of public lands.
After flooding Congressional offices with phone calls, Americans convinced Rep. Jason Chaffetz to withdraw his HR 621 land sell-off bill.
This was an amazing victory for wilderness supporters and proof positive that our voices count. But Congress is not done yet. A vocal group of representatives backed by the fossil fuel industry are continuing to wage a campaign to open our wildlands to unchecked drilling, logging and mining.
This week, they’ve come up with a bill to gut a Bureau of Land Management rule that ensures the public is involved in decisions about drilling, mining and logging on our public lands.
If passed, the effort could permanently harm nearly 250 million of acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Click here to call your senator or click here to find your senator and tell them to OPPOSE H.J. Res. 44.
In this latest move to surrender our lands to oil, gas and coal companies, Congress will soon vote to gut the BLM rule through H.J. Res. 44, a resolution sneakily introduced as part of the obscure Congressional Review Act.
Under the current BLM rule, Americans are allowed to weigh in by attending public meetings to voice their concerns in person or send comments in to the agency creating a land management plan. This keeps fossil fuel interests in check, allowing us to preserve some of the more sacred and wild places that we have deemed “too wild to drill.” The repealing of this rule would gift the fate of our public lands to corporate interests, forever.
Before this rule, oil, gas and coal companies were allowed to dominate the formal input process and many of our wildlands were hastily leased, often in the favor of resource extraction. Today, a staggering 90 percent of our public lands and minerals managed by the Bureau of Land Management are open to oil and gas leasing.
There’s no going back
The BLM rule took eight years to make, but in a move taken right from Trump’s fossil fuel playbook, Congress is moving to rewrite it and hand power to the fossil fuel industry once again.
What’s most terrifying about the demolition of many of these environmental rules is their finality. Once a rule is repealed under the Congressional Review Act, it is near impossible to reinstate, and federal agencies are prohibited from creating a similar rule.
Recent polls have shown that 68 percent of Americans prioritize preserving public lands over energy development, but none of those opinions will matter if Congress is able to pass this bill.
Gearing up for a long fight
This is only the latest in an onslaught of heinous attacks to our public lands that put fossil fuel interests above those of wildlands, climate and taxpayers. The pro-fossil fuel and anti-conservation Congress is wasting no time dismantling oil and gas reforms that help fight climate change, while Trump is eager to move forwarding with pipelines that threaten Native sovereignty and access to clean water.
We can’t fight Trump’s executive actions, but we can tell our Congress members we are watching their every move as they plot to drill on every available piece of publicly owned land.
Our outcry over selling off over 3 million acres was heard loud and clear. Now, speak up and tell your Congress member that you care about protecting special lands from drilling, mining and logging.
