Hi everyone:
Passing along
this piece running in High Country News today on the significant role public lands can play in finding solutions to climate change.
Thanks for sharing and amplifying when you are able!
Kate
#Climate change is an unprecedented global crisis, and it demands a far-reaching set of solutions—one that includes our cherished #publiclands [LINK] by @JWilliamsTWS
It took visionary thinking to create America’s system of public lands. We need to tap a similar innovative spirit in our work to address #climate change: [LINK]
Our president @JWilliamsTWS on why he wants American leaders to “reimagine the role we want our public lands to play at this pivotal time in history": [LINK] #climate #GreenNewDeal
If our public lands were their own country, its emissions would rank 5th in the world. That’s why any national climate plan needs to consider
the role of these places in kicking America’s fossil fuel addiction: [LINK]
We look forward to working with Congress on a climate plan that prominently features public lands and an accounting of how they play into #climate change [LINK] #GreenNewDeal
We all have a say in how our greatest natural legacy--#OurWild public lands--is handed down to the next generation. Let’s make sure plans to address #climate change keep that legacy in mind. [LINK]
A critical solution to climate change is right here in the West
Jamie Williams
6-7 minutes
In pursuit of a ‘Green New Deal,’ don’t forget public lands.
Visitors view Margerie Glacier in Glacier National Park where climate change is having a striking effect. In 1850, the park had approximately 50 glaciers. In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey listed 26 remaining glaciers.
Despite the willful denunciation of proven climate science by the White House and some members of Congress, there is a hopeful awakening in the United States: Young activists are stepping forward to demand a Green New Deal that guarantees climate action,
justice and economic security for all.
It is not a single law, but rather a collection of policies that embody many of the actions needed to expand clean energy, grow job opportunities, reduce climate pollution, improve air and water quality, and enhance the resilience of communities
In any plan to help us transition from an economy built on fossil fuels to one driven by clean energy, our public lands should feature prominently.
We need a climate plan for public lands that will manage a phase-down of fossil fuel leasing and production in line with current climate science. At the same time, we must support those communities most affected by pollution and boom-and-bust energy cycles
as they transition to the energy of the future.
Climate change is the largest and most misunderstood problem humanity will ever face. There is no previous situation to compare it to, no successful historical model to reference — and that just makes the issue even riper for the critics who claim it simply
doesn’t exist.
During the 24th international climate conference, newly released information confirmed that we are facing a slow-motion global catastrophe. According to a battery of scientific reports from thousands of the world’s foremost experts, we are closer than expected
to warming levels that would result in severe, perhaps irrevocable, changes in natural systems.
Winters are shorter, summers hotter and drier; our fishing streams run warmer and ski slopes stay bare. Coral reefs are dying, and glaciers are disappearing from Glacier National Park. Life forms on this planet — from pollinators to polar bears — are struggling
to create another generation. Closer to home, some human communities are burning to the ground while others are deluged in floods.
We already have the knowledge to avert the worst of these effects, but we lack the collective will to do so. Politicians in the Trump era are normalizing negligence every time they dismiss scientific consensus by uttering, “I don’t believe it.”
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s tenure is a microcosm of this denial: He spent 21 months in blind pursuit of “energy dominance,” a doctrine that enshrines oil, gas and coal production as the highest use of America’s public lands, regardless of the climate
pollution they cause.
Fossil energy extraction is the preferred tenant on America’s public lands. For less than the price of a cup of coffee, developers can purchase and lock up America’s favorite outdoor recreation areas and wildlife habitat for years so that oil developers
and mining companies have sole access.
That dirty secret means that public lands are a major source of the nation’s climate emissions problem. In fact, if our public lands were their own country, its emissions would rank fifth in the world, according to data released from the Trump administration
last month.
We should utilize our already-degraded lands to drive geothermal, wind and solar energy, working in cooperation with local communities while safeguarding our wildlife and wilderness-quality lands. Our elected leaders must eliminate the subsidies and regulatory
loopholes that prop up ailing coal, oil and gas producers and permit needless methane waste and other pollution.
We must protect our public lands in large, connected blocks that span the continent to help wildlife species and entire ecosystems adapt to a warming world.
And we should support a just transition to a clean, sustainable economy that puts people to work in jobs that conserve and restore our public lands, including building trails, restoring wetlands and other wildlife habitat and improving facilities at our
parks and monuments.
Let’s reimagine the role we want our public lands to play at this pivotal time in history. We all have a say in how our greatest natural legacy is handed down to the next generation.
Over a century ago, early visionaries had the forethought to create America’s vast system of public lands. Now, more than ever, we need the same courageous thinking to address the most pressing challenge of our time.
Jamie Williams is president of The Wilderness Society, which was founded in 1935 and now has more than 1 million members and supporters.
****
Kate Mackay
Senior Director, Communications Strategy
Cell: 602-571-2603
The Wilderness Society | The Wilderness Society Action Fund
950 W. Bannock Street, Suite 605
Boise, Idaho 83702