“Today Hillary Clinton unveiled a broad vision for the protection of America’s public lands, one that promises to build upon President Obama’s legacy of incremental change. However, the crisis of climate change is looming, and requires a scale of ambition not yet seen from the White House. Secretary Clinton’s plan fails to put an end to the legacy of giving away public lands and waters to coal, oil, and gas companies.
“U.S. public lands are the site of a significant portion of America’s fossil fuel extraction. Maintaining President Obama’s moratorium on federal coal leasing is a vital first step to righting a century of wrongs, but that’s not enough. Currently, Secretary Clinton’s proposals don’t differ much from the status quo–the Atlantic and Arctic are not currently being drilled, for instance, and true leadership would take them off the table completely. If the plan were to be proactive, it would also end new leases in the Gulf of Mexico, where communities have suffered the harms of offshore drilling for too long. And although raising the criminally-low royalty rates American taxpayers receive from the oil and gas industry is a quaint suggestion, we will surely pay far greater costs if we keep playing around with our climate. It’s not worth it.
Giving away new lands and waters to the oil and gas industry, whether in the Arctic, the wildernesses of the West, or the Gulf of Mexico, will always be an atrocious deal, especially now, when we need to take a hard turn toward keeping all fossil fuels in the ground.”
Ends
For more information, as well as interview requests for Greenpeace, please contact:
Jason Schwartz Media Officer Greenpeace USA, [email protected]
