A Message from the Executive Director

BY BILL HEDDEN

These are chaotic days in the development of a response to global warming. At the start of 2016, the Obama administration placed a moratorium on federal coal leasing, keeping more than 200 billion tons of greenhouse gases in the ground while the government tries to analyze the climate impacts of digging up all that carbon and burning it.

Running counter to this prudent step are ongoing Bureau of Land Management auctions at which leases to drill for oil and gas on our public lands are sold to the highest bidders. The fossil fuel industry already holds a glut of unused leases in the West and low oil prices have idled drill rigs everywhere, so the uncontested bidders at these inexplicable auctions pay virtually nothing for the right to drill. Motivated by climate science and economics, activists have already blocked these so-called “climate auctions” in Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C.

Also in Washington, mere days before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death threw the future temper of the Supreme Court into doubt, the high court stayed implementation of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan while its merits are litigated in the lower courts. Since the plan would have reduced carbon emissions from our coal-fired power plants for the first time in history, and is key to making America’s promises in the Paris accord real, the Supreme Court’s unprecedented action could affect the global response to the climate crisis.

The Trust, of course, does not carry much weight in international affairs, but here we offer what we do best: a series of on-the-ground, scientific, and strategic responses to a changing climate on the Colorado Plateau. It feels like the right scale for making a difference.

Sincerely,

Bill Hedden