Third Actors Must Help Secure President Biden’s Monumental Public Lands Rule

To Help Solve the Climate Crisis, Third Actors Must Help Secure President Biden’s Monumental Public Lands Rule

Our seasoned generation holds unparalleled power to ensure a safe and stable planet for generations to come.To solve the climate crisis we need to stop digging up and burning dirty fossil fuels to produce energy, when our needs can be supplied by affordable, reliable, abundant solar and wind power and other clean energy alternatives. 

One third of the United States landmass is federal public lands that belong to all of us, and should be managed for the public good. These lands also contain huge deposits of coal, oil, gas, tar sands and oil shale. Extracting these dirty fossil fuels and lighting them on fire is what drives the climate crisis spinning out of control for life on earth as we know it.  But we have a choice: we can decide to leave most of this dirty energy in the ground and start restoring the earth and the stability of the climate now. 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oversees most of the public lands (245 million acres) that hold large reserves of dirty fossil fuels. Historically, nearly all of these BLM lands were open to top priority use by energy companies, loggers and miners. At long last, the Biden Administration has reformed this public land giveaway and issued a new Public Lands Rule, which provides tools for the BLM to improve the health and resilience of public lands in the face of a changing climate; conserve important wildlife habitat and intact landscapes; facilitate responsible development; and better recognize unique cultural and natural resources on public lands.

This new rule elevates managing public lands for conservation, wildlife protection, watershed protection, and climate restoration. 

Biden’s new, final Public Lands Rule will put conservation on equal footing with fossil fuel development for the first time. In parallel, other Biden initiatives encourage the deployment of clean renewable energy on our public lands, and reform antiquated oil and gas leasing rules. This is the proven and necessary path to solve our climate and biodiversity crisis.

Unfortunately, the Public Lands Rule is under attack by the dirty energy industries and their political allies. Already, a bill has passed in the MAGA Republican controlled House to overturn the rule. To make sure it withstands the assault and is fully implemented we need the public – that’s all of us – to voice our strong support for the Public Lands Rule.

Third Act members submitted hundreds of comments last year to the Biden Administration so that this new rule would be drafted. Our work continues.

To demonstrate strong public support, we ask that you sign on to an online letter of support to counter the pressure campaign of the coal, oil and gas companies.

Together we can secure a huge victory. President Biden has taken this bold step to put the public interest back in public lands and tackle the climate crisis. We need to have his back and help bring this monumental change across the finish line. 

Bruce Hamilton

Bruce is a wildlife biologist, husband, father, grandfather, and agitator for environmental protection and social justice.  He has spent over 40 years on National Sierra Club staff as a field organizer, National Policy Director, Conservation and Communications Director, and Deputy Executive Director. Still learning in his Third Act.