It’s summer, and the Sierra Club says: “This is climate change in action. We are living it.”
The United Nations’ secretary-general declares that “a fossil fuel phaseout is inevitable.” And The Lancet, a respected medical journal, insists that nations must swiftly transition away from hydrocarbons.
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been chipping away at the oil, gas and coal industries ever since President Joe Biden took office. Wyoming is an energy state that produces half the nation’s coal, as well as part of its oil and gas output. Since the federal government owns nearly half the state’s land, virtually all oil, gas and coal operations in the Cowboy State are heavily impacted by every rule the BLM throws at fossil fuels.
Although the Biden administration is waging war on fossil fuels, Wyoming is fighting back. The state, along with Utah, filed a lawsuit against the agency last Tuesday over its restoration lease program, and Rep. Harriett Hageman, R-Wyo., is rolling out legislation to fight back against the BLM’s proposed ban on federal coal leases.
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In June 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed a rule that would require stricter financial assurance standards for oil companies operating in the Outer Continental Shelf. This costly rule became final on April 15, 2024, but in the 10 months since its initial proposal, BOEM did nothing to alleviate concerns for smaller companies that comprise of 76 percent of oil and gas operators in the Gulf. As a result, many of these companies could be forced out of business by extreme and unnecessary costs from this rule. The situation threatens an estimated 36,000 jobs, more than $570 million in federal government royalties, and $9.9 billion from our GDP.
Records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act show private meetings between Interior officials and representatives of the major oil companies as they cooperated on this rule. If you think that’s strange, you’re not alone. President Biden made clear in his campaign that he wanted to end oil and gas production on public lands. It’s baffling that Big Oil – among the administration’s most, if not the most, maligned businesses – would stand on the same side with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club who praised the rule. But needless government intervention makes strange bedfellows. Big Oil must think it won’t miss the small competitors the rule will drive from the market.
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The Sierra Club has experienced major infighting recently after major layoffs and changes left minority staffers feeling snubbed, The Washington Post reported.
Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club since November 2022, let go more than two dozen workers, many of whom were people of color, in April and May of 2023 as part of a “reconstruction” effort and relabeled the nonprofit’s “People, Culture, and Equity Department” to just be the “People Department,” according to the Post. Employees at the Sierra Club protested these changes and wrote a letter on Thursday through the Progressive Workers Union, the union for the nonprofit, alleging that the organization’s moves were contrary to its stated goal of diversity.
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by Daniel Turner Although America’s energy producers are already under daily attack from the Biden administration, the eco-left is not content to limit their crusade to Washington DC. They are funding local groups in energy producing states to put in place endless hurdles to responsibly extracting energy. While the…
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Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change. But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.
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Environmental group. The Sierra Club, pledged to examine its “substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy” and to remove or rename monuments of founder John Muir, Fox News reports.
According to the organization’s website they plan future blog posts to talk more about the struggles Indigenous people, people of color, and their white allies went through to get this organization to evolve on issues like immigration and environmental justice. The posts will also include the viewpoints of its founder, famed conservationist John Muir. In an open letter entitled “Pulling Down Our Monuments,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said it was time for the Sierra Club to reckon with the words of Muir and other early members.
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