Drilling adds to climate change

Gov’t report: Fossil fuels from fed lands make up quarter of U.S. carbon emissions

WASHINGTON» The Trump administration issued a scientific report that found oil drilling and coal mining on federally owned lands has a significant impact on the changing climate globally.

A new report from the U.S. Geological Survey found that the extracting and burning of fossil fuels from federal lands made up nearly a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions in the United States between 2005 and 2014.

That USGS report was published the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, when Americans typically don’t follow the news.

It was released on the same Friday the Trump administration published an even larger interagency report outlining the severe economic toll climate change is projected to exact on the nation as the threats of coastal flooding and forest fires rise.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump said during a freewheeling, 20-minute Oval Office interview with The Washington Post in which he was asked why he was skeptical of the dire National Climate Assessment his administration released Friday.

“As to whether or not it’s manmade and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it,” he added.

Trump administration critics accused political appointees of trying to bury that report on Black

Friday.

“The Trump administration would rather not focus on climate change,” said David Hayes, a former deputy interior secretary under President Barack Obama. “The USGS report is particularly unwelcome, because it acknowledges, and quantifies, the direct role that the federal government has in accelerating climate change.”

At the beginning of 2016, Obama Interior Secretary Sally Jewell ordered the USGS, a research agency within the Interior Department, to tabulate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the extraction and use of fossil fuels from public lands.

In a first-of-its-kind report, the agency found that the consumption of coal, oil and gas from federal onshore and offshore holdings represented 23.7 percent of carbon dioxide emissions nationwide on average over the 10-year period studied. Fossil fuels from federally controlled areas account for much smaller portions — 7.3 percent and 1.5 percent — of methane and nitrous oxide emissions, respectively.

Agency researchers looked at fuel sources across the country, from coal extraction in Wyoming and other western states to oil operations off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

The USGS also assessed emissions from the beginning to the end of the supply chain, estimating the amount of methane that seeped into the air from natural gas pipelines and from abandoned coal mines in addition to emissions that came directly from burning fossil fuels. The report separately tabulated the amount of carbon released into the air as a result of the loss of trees in federal forests because of wildfires and timber harvests.

The findings suggest the U.S. government has the potential to curb the nation’s contribution to the buildup of atmospherewarming gases by resetting public-land policy. Some environmental groups renewed calls to stop oil drilling and coal mining on public lands.

“One of the first and best ways to respond is to end new fossil-fuel leasing on public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Trump administration, however, has done just the opposite in an effort to turn the United States into an energy-exporting powerhouse. The president’s team has pursued a policy of leasing out more federal acreage to oil and gas drillers than its predecessor, in addition to rolling back Obama-era rules meant to curb the accidental release of methane during drilling operations.

The report concluded with a sentence saying: “This information may provide context for future energy decisions.”

The Interior Department and USGS did not reply to requests for comment about how they might use the findings.