WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has been amping up his rhetoric about addressing climate change, but a coalition of environmental organizations released a letter on Monday pushing his administration to do more.
Not content with recently announced curbs on emissions from fossil-fuel-fired power plants, the groups want the president to stop new leases for the development of fossil fuels in public lands and waters.
Such a dramatic change in policy would affect not only major companies but could also decrease future federal revenue collected from such leases.
"Here at home, the longstanding U.S. policy of leasing federal public lands and oceans to corporations for coal, oil and gas extraction must end," the letter reads. "As the world focuses on climate change in advance of negotiations in Paris this winter, we urge you to demonstrate strong climate leadership by stopping new leasing of our publicly owned fossil fuels."
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, sales of fossil fuels produced on U.S. public land last year included 651 million barrels of crude oil, 3.55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 402 million short tons of coal.
The statement is signed by a coalition of green groups, including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Rainforest Action Network and the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as numerous individuals.
Notably, some other leading green groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, are not signatories, suggesting that not all environmental organizations are ready to push the president this far, especially in light of his recent focus on climate change.
Nonetheless, the statement is significant because it represents the latest stage in the development of a grass-roots climate movement that has stirred up a battle over the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
"I think that this is the next frontier of climate advocacy," said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. "We know that we have made genuine progress in cutting carbon from cars and trucks and increasingly from the electric sector. And all of that is important, it's necessary -- and it won't get the job done unless we begin to curtail development of fossil fuels, particularly in sensitive areas."
The letter highlights that even as the Obama administration has focused on reducing warming-causing emissions through traditional regulatory means -- most centrally, the Environmental Protection Agency's newly released Clean Power Plan -- many environmental activists have pushed a bolder strategy, one that clashes with industry far more directly. They have been seeking to block fossil fuel projects or infrastructure, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, as well as calling for universities and other major institutions to divest stock holdings in major companies operating in that industry.
Hints of the effort were apparent when, during Obama's recent Alaska trip to highlight climate change, many environmentalists criticized the president for the administration's approval of Shell's drilling plans in the Arctic. "His recent trip to Alaska, he didn't even mention Arctic drilling," said Ruth Breech, a campaigner with the Rainforest Action Network who helped organize the new statement. "This omission is just amazing. He's up there talking about the climate crisis, but he's not talking about how he just approved and opened up a new carbon reserve."
The groups argue that the president could, "with a stroke of a pen," prevent as much as 450 billion tons of "potential" greenhouse gas emissions from the leasing of public land for fossil fuel development. The source of the figure is a recent report prepared for Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity that found that coal was the largest source of potential emissions, followed by oil shale.
Environmental groups often cite research suggesting that a large proportion of current fossil fuel reserves would have to remain unburned if the world is to have a serious chance of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a widely agreed-upon international target.
A study published this month found that if humans burn all available fossil fuel reserves, the emissions would be sufficient to entirely melt the gigantic ice-covered continent of Antarctica, triggering over 100 feet of sea level rise.
How the Obama administration will respond to the increasingly loud demands from environmental activists remains to be seen, but the push may influence Democratic presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a contrast to Obama, recently came out in opposition to Arctic drilling.
The Sierra Club's Brune said the "supply side" approach is only beginning to build momentum. "Give it time," he said. "I guarantee our conversation in a year is going to be different than it is now."