With Democratic control of the Presidency and Congress, water programs could receive more attention. By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue President Joe Biden has made his priorities clear: subduing the pandemic, economic recovery, climate action, and racial equity. He reiterated those national challenges once again on Wednesday following his swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian
as part of their two-year series, This Land is Your Land, examining the threats facing America’s public lands, with support from the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is republished by permission.
Imagine the world without its most famous rivers: Egypt without the Nile, or London without the Thames. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, residents don’t have to envision the West without the Rio Grande – it runs dry in their city almost every single year.
But this isn’t its natural state.
Isaac Melendrez, who was born near Las Cruces in 1934 and contributed to an oral history of the Rio Grande, remembered swimming in the river with his family as a child, while throngs of birds soared overhead. During the rainy season, the river’s floodwaters sounded like trains. Now?
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It’s becoming a pattern: anti-energy activists and fringe politicians claim to support a “just transition” for oil and natural gas workers to as-yet-uncreated jobs in other sectors. But then they applaud when those workers lose their jobs and future opportunities in oil and natural gas, and struggle to find other jobs to replace them.
The latest example is the reaction to a
New York Times story reporting on college graduates who earned degrees to work in the energy industry, but who are now struggling to find jobs as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hammer the economy. Those who claim to support a “just transition” would be expected to sympathize with these young Americans.
Trump Administration Offers Drilling Leases in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, but No Major Oil Firms Bid
Future oil development will be hampered by the Biden administration’s commitment to protect the refuge and lawsuits from Indigenous and environmental groups.
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As election officials in Georgia tallied votes to determine the control of the Senate and the U.S. Capitol was rocked by violent protests Wednesday, the Trump administration quickly and quietly made good on its promise to sell oil leases in one of the nation’s last truly wild places.
The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been fought over for 40 years, as Republicans have sought to bring oil drilling to the home of polar bears and caribou, on land held sacred by the native Gwich’in people.