President Biden plans to sign an executive order later Wednesday to implement a pause on new oil and gas activity on federal lands as part of a series of actions to tackle climate change.
“For the president to attempt to use his authority as president to override provisions that are in federal law is inappropriate and certainly will be catastrophic,” Lummis said on a call with reporters Wednesday morning.
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The senator denounced the executive order as “pick[ing] on eight states that are producing energy” to satisfy Democrats’ “radical minority and elites on both coasts” and presented energy extraction versus conservation as a false choice.
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| Updated: 11:28 p.m.
In a sweeping move to confront the global climate crisis head on, President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed executive orders aimed at establishing American leadership in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Central to this campaign is a moratorium on federal oil and gas leasing, pending a review of the program, that is sure to spark a backlash from the fossil fuel industry and energy-producing states like Utah.
“In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer,” Biden said at the White House. “We see it with our own eyes. We feel it. We know it in our bones. And it’s time to act.”
“For four years, the Trump administration cut legal corners and rushed through massive drilling and mining projects at the behest of corporations. Now the Biden administration is rightfully attempting to take stock of the damage and make sure the agency is following the law, instead of rubber-stamping destructive projects that were in the pipeline, Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, a public lands watchdog group, said in a release. Once Deb Haaland is confirmed as Interior secretary, she’ll be able to take long-term actions to make sure the Interior department prioritizes communities and conservation, not extractive industry lobbyists.”