There’s a climate problem that no one is talking about. And worse, the government is ignoring it.
A new analysis from the Wilderness Society finds that greenhouse gas emissions associated with oil, gas, and coal from public lands are equivalent to about one-fifth of total U.S. emissions. This is significant — if public lands were a country, it would rank 5th in the world in total emissions behind China, India, the United States and Russia.
Many Americans are unfamiliar with the amount of coal, oil and natural gas resources that come from public lands every year. According to the most recent data available, 42% of our nation’s coal, 22% of our oil, and 15% of our natural gas was produced on public lands. And where there is production of fossil fuel resources, there are emissions that follow, whether it be from where the resources are extracted or where they are ultimately burned.
Unfortunately, the federal government does not measure or track these emissions — let alone have a plan to reduce them. This means the American people are left in the dark and lack the information they need to effectively participate in decisions about managing our shared resources.
And the Interior Department appears to be working intently to avoid reporting useful information about production and emissions in the future. In January of 2015, former Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, directed the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to develop a central data base to measure and track emissions from public lands. At this time, the Department of the Interior announced they would hold a briefing a year later, in December 2016, to provide information on the basic methods, data sources, and likely format and content of the public database. They would then plan to follow up with results and data sometime in 2017. In short, while the briefing took place, the data and platform were never released, and from the limited information the Department has made available, there is no funding available to keep the USGS project moving forward.
Furthermore, on Nov. 2, 2017 the U.S. withdrew from the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), a voluntary, international standard that promotes open and accountable management of natural resources. The U.S. EITI site provides the most comprehensive set of production data available for federally produced energy. It has not been updated since Trump took office, and it is unclear whether that site will continue to be available at all.
In the absence of a public database to access current production and projected emissions, The Wilderness Society decided to create and track the available data in our Federal Lands Emissions Accountability Tool (FLEAT).
The visualizations from this tool released today provide detailed information about the amount of emissions that originate from federal lands. To help put the magnitude of these emissions in perspective, FLEAT compares estimated federal emissions to total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by state and by country. Users can also explore federal fossil fuel production data. The Wilderness Society will continue to update the tool as we conduct new analysis, and when (or if) the federal government makes new data available.
Without the careful measurement of emissions that originate from fossil fuel development on public lands, it is impossible to understand — let alone address — the potential financial and climate risks they may present. Publicly traded companies are responsible for disclosing financial risk to their shareholders, and so should the government provide timely and accurate accounting of the climate risks of developing public coal, oil and gas resources to the American taxpayer.
Management of energy development on our public lands can and must be a critical component of any national emissions reduction strategy. And just like the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. The only way to ensure effective management is through reliable tracking of emissions originating from fossil fuel development on federal lands.
