Latest news with #SenateEnergyandNaturalResources
E&E News
4 days ago
- Business
- E&E News
‘Narrow in scope': Daines clarifies land sale talks
Montana Sen. Steve Daines on Thursday insisted his public lands talks with Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee of Utah are to minimize any potential broad sales in the GOP's megabill — not greenlight them. Daines' comments came one day after he told reporters he was working on language with Lee, who is trying to reinsert land sales into the Senate's version of the bill to advance President Donald Trump's domestic agenda. Roughly 500,000 acres of proposed land sales in Nevada and Utah were stripped from the House's version. Daines said on Thursday that his talks with Lee do not mean he is supporting public lands sales. Even so, he did not explicitly rule out that some select lands provisions could end up in the Senate bill. Advertisement 'I oppose the sale of public lands,' Daines said. 'Senator Lee has a provision that he wants to put in the bill, I'm trying to work with him [to get] something in there that's … narrow in scope.'
Axios
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
White House axes land bureau pick after past Jan. 6 criticism
The Trump administration has withdrawn the nomination of Kathleen Sgamma to be director of the Bureau of Land Management, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee said Thursday. Why it matters: The withdrawal of Sgamma, longtime president of the Western Energy Alliance, is a sudden setback for the White House hoping to lean on the land bureau to expand fossil fuel and mining leases. Driving the news: Sgamma was scheduled to testify before Energy and Natural Resources on Thursday alongside two Energy Department nominees. Lee said he was informed just this morning that Sgamma's nomination had been withdrawn. "We accept her withdrawal and look forward to putting forth another nominee," said White House spokesperson Liz Huston. Between the lines: The withdrawal comes two days after Sgamma's private comments from 2021 surfaced on X that she was "disgusted" by Trump "spreading misinformation" on the Jan. 6 attacks and "dishonoring the vote of the People." Sgamma didn't immediately return a call seeking comment. Sgamma contributed to the Interior chapter of Project 2025. Environmental groups vigorously opposed her nomination while industry associates avidly supported it. What they're saying:"I am disappointed that we're not going have the opportunity to advance Kathleen Sgamma," Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. "Looking at her background and working with her over the years on the committee, she is, I think, very well qualified, and we were really counting on her to unlock some of the things that had been stalled out in the previous administration." But Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity said: "There's no doubt that Trump's next nominee will also be a poisonous threat to our wildlife and wild places, but this speed bump gives senators a chance to ponder whether they really want to feed America's public lands and monuments into the snapping jaws of the fracking and mining industries."
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chris Wright is not a ‘climate realist.' He's a climate arsonist.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright testifies during his Senate Energy and Natural Resources confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 15 in Washington, D.C. () An address earlier this month by Energy Secretary Chris Wright at a gathering of fossil fuel industry heavyweights offered a detailed view of this key Trump administration official's position on the climate crisis. It was bleak. Anyone who cares about maintaining a habitable planet for humanity must conclude after Wright's remarks that administration policies jeopardize the well-being of future generations throughout the world. Officials like Wright, a Denver oil and gas business magnate, aren't just hostile to climate solutions, they're positively in favor of accelerating polluting activities. And they're wrong on the facts. The address, as well as previous statements by Wright, reveals the Cabinet member to be a source of misinformation at the highest levels of government. He calls himself a 'climate realist.' But, given that his version of reality could only lead to a scorched environment, he's better described as a climate arsonist. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Wright has been a fossil fuel entrepreneur since the early 1990s. He founded the Denver-based fracking company Liberty Energy, which Forbes recently reported makes $4 billion a year in revenues. When he delivered keynote remarks March 10 during CERAWeek, an annual conference of corporate leaders, he stood before an audience of colleagues and friends. 'The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world,' Wright said. 'We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50% in the process of more than doubling human life expectancy … lifting almost all of the world's citizens out of grinding poverty, launching modern medicine, telecommunications, planes, trains and automobiles too. Everything in life involves trade-offs.' That was his main point: Yes, there's climate change, and, yes, humans are causing it. But it's totally worth it. He pointed to the billions of people throughout the world, particularly in Africa, who lack the energy-dependent advantages that Americans enjoy, and, cloaking profit-making interests in a moral defense of air pollution, asserted that 'they want what we have.' But the glaring flaw in Wright's reasoning is that his calculation of trade-offs omits the most consequential factor, as would be obvious to anyone who takes the scientific consensus on climate change seriously. Sure, carbon-based energy sources have made the modern world so far, but they also threaten to undo it. Less affluent nations might want inexpensive and reliable heating and cooling for their homes, but they don't want extinction. Wright's whole pitch withers before the science. The latest comprehensive report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlights the urgency of immediate climate action. 'Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,' the report says. 'There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.' A 2023 State of the Climate report, authored by scientists from around the world and published in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience, said climate change is putting whole regions of Earth at risk of being uninhabitable. 'The effects of global warming are progressively more severe, and possibilities such as a worldwide societal breakdown are feasible and dangerously underexplored,' the report says. By the end of the century up to half the global population 'might find themselves confined beyond the livable region.' Some trade-off. In his attempt to promote the virtues of fossil fuels, Wright is forced to downplay the promise of renewable energy. But his disdain for wind and solar sources is misleading. For example, in his CERAWeek remarks, he claimed that wind and solar supply only 3% of global energy. That's much lower than figures cited in other sources. The climate think tank Ember estimated that wind and solar accounted for more than 13% of global electricity generation in 2023. Scientific reports adhere to principles of transparency, verifiability and disinterest, but Wright's perspective on its face lacks credibility, because his career in the fossil fuel industry is impossible to detangle from his advocacy for it. His net worth is estimated at $171 million. Might that fortune influence his judgment? Wright has leveraged his wealth to influence environmental policy in Colorado. State records indicate that he has regularly donated money to Colorado Concern, a conservative alliance of business executives that has opposed state climate solution policies. In 2020, he gave $25,000 to the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers-founded free-market advocacy group that fuels climate change denial. 2024 was the warmest year on record. The previous warmest year was 2023. In Colorado, 8 of the 10 warmest years in state history have occurred since 2012. A hotter, drier climate in Colorado has already contributed to crippling drought, stressed water resources and ferocious wildfires. This is what Wright calls 'a side effect,' and he is eager to promote policies that would cause more such devastation across the globe. His efforts to accelerate fossil fuel consumption is akin to setting the world on fire. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Deb Haaland ‘preparing' to run for New Mexico governor
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland testifies during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing on May 02, 2023 in Washington, DC. The committee held the hearing to examine President Biden's budget request for the U.S. Department of the Interior for fiscal year 2024. (Photo by) Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is 'preparing' to run for governor of New Mexico in 2026, a campaign spokesperson confirmed to Source NM on Tuesday. If elected, Haaland would be the first Native American person to head the state government in its 113-year history. President Joe Biden in December 2020 tapped Haaland to become the first Native American ever to be a cabinet secretary. She previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives for the state's 1st Congressional District. 'Deb Haaland is of and for New Mexico,' the spokesperson said in a statement. 'She's a proven leader; she's created New Mexico jobs, brings people together, and is getting ready to run to be New Mexico's next governor. She and her team will be focused on listening and solutions that fit the needs of our communities.' Haaland, 64, is a member of Laguna Pueblo, one of the 23 tribes located in what is now called New Mexico, which became a state millenia after Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and Ute peoples started living here. During her time in the Interior, she played a role in elevating Indian Country onto the national stage in U.S. politics, including commissioning the federal government's first-ever accounting for its role in operating boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. She appeared recently at The People's March in Albuquerque, where she lambasted President Donald Trump and said, 'Our fight is not over. We will need to do the hard work of getting important things done and pushing back against an administration who couldn't care less about regular people, about people like us. We will need to unapologetically stand up to make change to ensure that your voices are heard. We need more people with real lived experiences elected to office and serving our communities as doctors, scientists, CEOs, so that solutions reflect who we are.' U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) had also been a rumored contender to succeed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, but announced last week he will not seek the office, saying the 'stakes are simply too high' for him to leave his post in Washington, D.C. Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Deb Haaland ‘preparing' to run for New Mexico governor
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland testifies during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing on May 02, 2023 in Washington, DC. The committee held the hearing to examine President Biden's budget request for the U.S. Department of the Interior for fiscal year 2024. (Photo by) Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is 'preparing' to run for governor of New Mexico in 2026, a campaign spokesperson confirmed to Source NM on Tuesday. If elected, Haaland would be the first Native American person to head the state government in its 113-year history. President Joe Biden in December 2020 tapped Haaland to become the first Native American ever to be a cabinet secretary. She previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives for the state's 1st Congressional District. 'Deb Haaland is of and for New Mexico,' the spokesperson said in a statement. 'She's a proven leader; she's created New Mexico jobs, brings people together, and is getting ready to run to be New Mexico's next governor. She and her team will be focused on listening and solutions that fit the needs of our communities.' Haaland, 64, is a member of Laguna Pueblo, one of the 23 tribes located in what is now called New Mexico, which became a state millenia after Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and Ute peoples started living here. During her time in the Interior, she played a role in elevating Indian Country onto the national stage in U.S. politics, including commissioning the federal government's first-ever accounting for its role in operating boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. She appeared recently at The People's March in Albuquerque, where she lambasted President Donald Trump and said, 'Our fight is not over. We will need to do the hard work of getting important things done and pushing back against an administration who couldn't care less about regular people, about people like us. We will need to unapologetically stand up to make change to ensure that your voices are heard. We need more people with real lived experiences elected to office and serving our communities as doctors, scientists, CEOs, so that solutions reflect who we are.' U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) had also been a rumored contender to succeed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, but announced last week he will not seek the office, saying the 'stakes are simply too high' for him to leave his post in Washington, D.C. Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@
