The Biden administration is planning to sell oil and gas leases on huge tracts of public land in the U.S. West, despite the Interior Department’s conclusion that doing so could cost society billions of dollars in climate change impacts.
Administration officials announced last week that government regulators for the first time will analyze greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels extracted from government-owned lands across the U.S.
Burning those fuels accounts for about 20% of energy-related U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making them a prime target for climate activists who want to shut them down, and President Joe Biden campaigned on pledges to end new drilling on public land.
