Reposted by Western Environmental Law Center
The Green NGO movement is not a monolith. But my informed sense is that most folks are alarmed by the permitting deal.
So let me say this respectfully, gently, but firmly to my beloved comrades: political access is not political power.
![Congress does not pass laws in a vacuum. Different political branches, in the exercise of their powers, often take wildly divergent and conflicting actions. Moreover, public and private stakeholders actively work across all three branches of government to shape — and sometimes block or undermine — the actions of other branches through their particular ideological lens.
In this context, the Supreme Court of the U.S. is keen on engineering far-right outcomes, usurping power from the legislative and executive branches, and undermining U.S. climate and conservation action. The far right 6–3 majority is not, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts for which he is rightly scorned, just “call[ing] balls and strikes.” In just the past three terms, the Supreme Court has, among other things:
Engineered into existence the “major questions doctrine,” a tool that is negatively reshaping and reinterpreting bedrock environmental and administrative laws in the image of far-right political ideology;
Elevated property interests over the country’s national interest in clean water, a decision that exposes 95% of New Mexico’s rivers and streams and 88% of the state’s wetlands to the risk of losing water quality protections; and
Overturned 40-year-old precedent providing that courts should defer to expert agency implementation of law, undermining public rulemaking processes and agency scientific and technical experts.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xakx7a3ew2xs2xcoeh5yagh7/bafkreihgipfiq6uw7r4ji554wn4xbqvxllhs77iwcadyoj7zsm7o7oajwe)
![This is a function of sustained dependency on fossil fuel production. As the U.N. Environment Programme found in its 2023 Production Gap Report, “[G]overnments are planning on producing around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5° C, and 69% more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 2.0° C.” This led the U.N. Environment Programme to warn that:
The current misalignment of climate ambitions and fossil fuel production plans undermines efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and emissions by sending mixed signals about countries’ intentions and priorities and by locking in new fossil fuel production infrastructure that will make the energy transition more costly, difficult, and disruptive.
In other words, we suffer from not only an “emissions gap,” but a “production gap”— i.e., “the difference between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and production levels consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5° C or 2.0° C.” The U.S. itself is expected to increase oil and gas production, creating “a real risk that current production plans are undermining the energy transition by exacerbating ‘carbon lock-in’ and entrenching fossil fuel dependence.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xakx7a3ew2xs2xcoeh5yagh7/bafkreihjw6d6ihp2wvwhgkynnnvayjlaebxgt2jsqvavvvfvygyrwabt3a)
![To limit warming to 1.5° C, “there is strong consensus that global coal, oil, and gas production decline rapidly and substantially between now and mid-century,” with “an almost total phase-out of coal and deep reductions in oil and gas production in this period” (emphasis added). The 2023 Production Gap Report’s finding on this front is echoed by the International Energy Agency’s finding that “[t]he path to net zero emissions [by 2050] is narrow” and required that the world stop approving new oil and gas fields beginning in 2021. Alas, we did not.
In addition to EPRA’s fossil fuel concessions, the International Monetary Found determined that the world still provides the fossil fuel industry with $7 trillion in annual direct and indirect subsidies. Further, the U.S. Department of the Interior has steadily approved new, large-scale domestic U.S. oil and gas projects in recent years, such as the $8 billion Willow Project on the North Slope of Alaska’s Brook Range, and, since 2020, nearly 12,000 new drilling permits. Notably, the U.S. is producing more crude oil than any country worldwide — ever.
When it comes to fossil fuels, we’re moving at a dangerous pace in a very dangerous direction.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xakx7a3ew2xs2xcoeh5yagh7/bafkreidtyd6vzwtx4uqk4i4iucarmlhwzlenlszyktiq55kxnqcaqnwz74)
