Why Haaland Matters
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Many of us are really excited about Deb Haaland at Interior. Having a Native woman there is just a huge shift in an agency that traditionally has been at the forefront of the American genocidal project. So what is she focusing on early in her tenure?
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland issued two secretarial orders Friday aimed at making good on her pledge to fight climate change and prioritize environmental justice.
Order No. 3399 creates a Climate Task Force within the Interior Department that’s tasked with prioritizing climate change in policy making and budgeting, addressing environmental injustices and finding ways to “foster economic revitalization” of energy-producing communities. The task force will also participate in a review of the federal oil and gas leasing program and ensure that environmental reviews associated with renewable energy projects are expedited.
In the order, the Interior Department affirms its commitment to making science-based decisions as it assesses the impacts of climate change on public land and its uses, and explores opportunities to slow climate change through the use of methods like carbon sequestration.
The order also rolls back some changes to the National Environmental Policy Act that went into effect last September under the Trump administration,and prioritizes study of the social costs of greenhouse gases, or “estimates in dollars of the long-term damages done by [greenhouse gases] in a given year.”
Order No. 3398 is more technical. It negates a number of “energy dominance” actions taken under the Trump administration that expanded oil and gas development on public lands.
Haaland’s order reinstates a moratorium on federal coal reserve sales that was implemented under the Obama administration. Trump struck that policy down, and Haaland’s order puts it back into play, although perhaps not immediately. An Interior Department agency spokesperson told MarketWatch that it “does not automatically resurrect the coal moratorium” and that the agency is “continuing to review an appropriate path going forward.”
“Those previous orders unfairly tilted the balance of public land and ocean management toward extractive uses without regard for climate change, equity or community engagement,” Haaland said in a video about the orders posted to her Twitter account.
In part because the standards are pretty low, Haaland easily could become one of the very best people to ever hold the job of Secretary of Interior. This is a great start and I hope she is quite aggressive at resetting America’s use of its public lands and that Biden has her back.