Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major chapter in its sixth assessment report (AR6), the first significant update since 2014. IPCC is the “gold standard” of climate science, based on thousands of published studies.
  
But science is not a golden oracle that dictates what policies follow. It’s up to policymakers to take the science and translate it into realistic, actionable policy. The IPCC doesn’t provide solutions on how to reduce carbon emissions while still meeting the needs of humanity for food, shelter, mobility, home heating and cooling, medicines, water, and other life-sustaining products and services.

There is rarely a clearer illustration of this reality than the actions from the White House just two days after the IPCC report was released​. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued a statement about the effects of high gasoline prices on the global economy. This follows efforts over the summer to encourage OPEC and Russia to increase production. The White House also directed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate oil companies for potential market manipulation.

Days before President Joe Biden meets one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, imports of Russian crude oil to the United States reached a record high and are expected to increase this summer. The president, however, is not expected to address the increased cross-Atlantic oil trading when the two leaders meet on Wednesday.
 
“Last month we saw a record 5.75 million barrels of Russian #crude discharged in the US, and we’re projecting a further record this month of 7.5mn bbls,” according to commodity trading analysts at ClipperData who monitor cargo shipments worldwide.

Western Energy Alliance hosted a livestream discussion with former United States Senator Cory Gardner to talk about the impacts President Biden’s ban on oil and natural gas leasing will have on public lands conservation funding.
 
Last year, Sen. Gardner co-authored and helped pass the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), which relies almost exclusively on royalties paid from oil and natural gas production on public lands and waters to fund $2.8 billion in conservation. The money reduces the National Park Service’s maintenance backlog, permanently funds the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), and repairs infrastructure on other public lands. Because of a compromise forged by Sen. Gardner on competing public lands bills, GAOA was signed into law by President Trump last August.
 
The following are excerpts from the conversation with Sen. Gardner. 

I never took a pure philosophy class in college, and I’ve always felt that to be a failing in the well-roundedness of my education. To compensate, I’ve done my own reading into some of the classics of philosophy, but feel that lack of training as my eyes glaze over a particularly dense metaphysical passage.
 
However, as a political science major, I’m right at home with political philosophy. It just seems more concrete and practical to me. When I see a particular concept become prominent in the political sphere, I’m curious about its origins and development. Such is the case with environmental justice, which is rooted firmly in the post-modernism in which philosophy is currently mired. There may be a masters thesis to be written about its philosophical origins, but I won’t be the one to do so. That doesn’t stop me from opining about it for a few paragraphs today.

Myth Number One: “Over the last few years the oil and gas industry has stockpiled millions of acres of leases on public lands and waters.”
 
Leased acreage is at a historic low while production has hit historic levels. From a high of over 120 million acres in 1985, leased acreage is down 78% to 26.6 million, up slightly from the all-time historic low during the Trump Administration of 25.5 million acres. By the end of the Trump Administration, leased acreage was down 41% from the Obama Administration’s high of 45.4 million. In fact, industry is more efficient, producing greater quantities of oil and natural gas from an ever-smaller portion of public lands. 

​The Interior Department will be holding a forum on March 25th to “highlight perspectives” from various stakeholders on the president’s ban on oil and natural gas leasing. Hopefully the forum will shed light on what form the “comprehensive review” of the federal oil and natural gas program will entail. I anticipate it will be a multi-year environmental impact statement process that means that it is effectively a Biden leasing ban for most if not all of the first term.
 
I was struck that the new administration is parroting the talking points we’ve hear for a few years now from the environmental lobby about federal oil and natural gas greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. I figured it was past time to look into the main talking points.

​Over the past month, multiple investigative reports and news stories have attacked Western Energy Alliance after we filed a lawsuit challenging President Biden’s ban on new oil and natural gas leases on public lands. The flurry of reports coming out and targeting us is no coincidence. Despite our high profile over several years, we’ve never seen this level of coordination to try to discredit our work in such a short time. These recent stories reveal the climate power players behind the attacks, the playbook of the environmental movement and media, and the billion-dollar philanthropies that finance it all.
 
Playbook in Action
 
The most recent news comes from The Guardian and Wyoming Public Media in a pair of news stories over the past week attacking the Alliance for promoting an academic study on the economic harm from Biden’s ban. Publicly available information reveals sources quoted in the stories are anti-oil and natural gas advocates and research cited in the articles was conducted by front groups that are funded by philanthropic foundations committed to advancing President Biden’s climate agenda.

Why is it that “balance” is one of those words that people use when they’re doing something undecidedly unbalanced? Such is the case with the president’s executive order banning oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands.
 
The fact sheet put out by the new administration led with it. President Biden is “upholding the commitment” to “restore balance”. But there’s been a balance on federal lands at least since the 1970s when Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). The balance involves the multiple use of federal lands, which includes conservation as well as oil and natural gas and other productive uses. By banning leasing, President Biden has decidedly tipped the balance.

​In the West, oil and natural gas resources are inextricably bound to federal public lands, and therefore, to the men and women of the industry who work there. Likewise, we are inextricably bound to the Department of the Interior, which oversees those public lands.
 
As such, we wish to work constructively with the department, and seek to find common ground whenever possible. But when the first action of the political staff of a new administration is to ban the very activity that we do, even temporarily, we cannot just sit idly by.

We know that the 60-day temporary ban announced by Acting Interior Secretary Scott de la Vega was just an initial step to a more permanent ban. And indeed, just one week later the president himself signed a ban on all new leasing into the indefinite future. Because we know that a “pause” on new leases to “launch a rigorous review of all leasing and permitting” (emphasis added) means a years-long ban on leasing that will last at least Biden’s entire term.