As Clinton Moves on the Environment, Sanders Moves Further Left

Bernie Sanders is float­ing an ag­gress­ive plan aimed at thwart­ing ex­trac­tion of coal, oil, and nat­ur­al gas from vast swaths of gov­ern­ment-owned land and wa­ters in the name of fight­ing cli­mate change.

New le­gis­la­tion the Ver­mont sen­at­or rolled out Wed­nes­day un­der­scores the clear day­light between Sanders and Demo­crat­ic White House front-run­ner Hil­lary Clin­ton on the en­vir­on­ment, even though she moved left in re­cent weeks by op­pos­ing the Key­stone pipeline and drilling in Arc­tic wa­ters.

The “Keep It in the Ground Act” that Sanders and Demo­crat­ic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Ore­gon un­veiled Wed­nes­day would bar the sale of new leases for oil-and-gas drilling and coal ex­trac­tion on fed­er­al lands and wa­ters, and bar re­new­al or ex­ten­sion of ex­ist­ing leases that are not already pro­du­cing en­ergy. It also can­cels ex­ist­ing Arc­tic off­shore leases.

“I don’t want to speak for Hil­lary Clin­ton, but I would hope that Hil­lary Clin­ton will join Jeff Merkley and my­self on this is­sue,” Sanders told re­port­ers as he ex­ited a Cap­it­ol Hill press con­fer­ence on the bill Wed­nes­day. “If we are ser­i­ous about cli­mate change, we can’t just talk the talk, we have got to walk the walk; we have to be pre­pared to take on some very power­ful spe­cial in­terests—you know, the Koch Broth­ers and Ex­xon Mo­bil and the en­tire fossil-fuel in­dustry.

“We should not be, in the fu­ture, ex­tract­ing oil and coal and gas from that land at the same time that we are try­ing to com­bat cli­mate change. It just makes no sense at all,” he said.

Clin­ton’s cam­paign de­clined com­ment on the bill.

By im­me­di­ately ban­ning new leases on any fed­er­al lands or wa­ters, the plan goes bey­ond Clin­ton’s policy pro­pos­als to date, which in­clude “[u]sing ad­di­tion­al fees and roy­al­ties from fossil fuel ex­trac­tion to pro­tect the en­vir­on­ment.” But Clin­ton, in re­marks last sum­mer, voiced sup­port for cur­tail­ing fossil-fuel de­vel­op­ment on fed­er­al lands—at some point.

At a town hall event in New Hamp­shire, Clin­ton was asked wheth­er she would sup­port ban­ning ex­trac­tion (an idea that soun­ded more sweep­ing than what Sanders pro­posed, which would bar new and ex­ten­ded leases but not man­date the end of cur­rent pro­duc­tion).

“The an­swer is, not un­til we’ve got the al­tern­at­ives in place,” Clin­ton said. “And that may not be a sat­is­fact­ory an­swer to you, but I think I would have to take the re­spons­ible an­swer. I am 100 per­cent in fa­vor of ac­cel­er­at­ing the de­vel­op­ment of sol­ar, wind, ad­vanced bio­fuels, en­ergy ef­fi­ciency—everything we can do. And I would hope that we could get to the point that you made, which is look­ing at our pub­lic lands and cut­ting back over time, phas­ing out the ex­trac­tion of fossil fuels.” 

Clin­ton also spoke of phas­ing out de­vel­op­ment in as­pir­a­tion­al terms. “If we can get to the point where we end the ex­trac­tion on pub­lic lands and at least, un­til we phase it out, get more money to fight cli­mate change from those who are do­ing the ex­tract­ing, then I think we will be on the right track to get to where we need to be.” Her en­ergy pro­pos­als also call for “safe and re­spons­ible” pro­duc­tion on fed­er­al lands, tak­ing some areas off the table en­tirely.

Sanders’s meas­ure ar­rives as the en­vir­on­ment­al move­ment is in­creas­ingly fo­cus­ing its ef­forts on fight­ing emis­sions by try­ing to pre­vent the de­vel­op­ment of fossil fuels, rather than fo­cus­ing only on pro­grams to cut de­mand, boost re­new­able tech­no­lo­gies, and burn fuel more cleanly.

The idea of fight­ing to keep fossil fuels un­burned has been cent­ral to the battle over the Key­stone XL oil-sands pipeline, a pro­ject en­vir­on­ment­al­ists op­pose be­cause they fear that ex­pand­ing pipeline ac­cess to massive oil-sands de­pos­its in Al­berta will en­able a huge ex­pan­sion of de­vel­op­ment.

Back­ers of thwart­ing de­vel­op­ment point to ana­lyses show­ing that to pre­serve a de­cent chance of hold­ing the rise in glob­al tem­per­at­ures to 2 de­grees Celsi­us above pre-in­dus­tri­al levels, and thereby pre­vent­ing some of the most dan­ger­ous ef­fects of cli­mate change, most fossil-fuel re­serves world­wide must re­main un­burned.

“To lim­it our plan­et’s warm­ing to 2 de­grees Celsi­us, we must leave in the ground 80 per­cent of the world’s proven re­serves. So part of the an­swer lies be­neath our feet,” Merkley said at the press con­fer­ence out­side the Cap­it­ol. En­vir­on­ment­al­ists in­clud­ing Bill McK­ib­ben, a key lead­er of the anti-Key­stone move­ment, at­ten­ded the event.

“If you find your­self in a hole, quit dig­ging. This is the one place where we lit­er­ally have to quit dig­ging,” Merkley said.

Fed­er­al lands and wa­ters ac­count for roughly one-fourth of total U.S fossil-fuel pro­duc­tion, and the share of the total has been de­clin­ing for years, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures com­piled by the fed­er­al En­ergy In­form­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Merkley and Sanders ac­know­ledge that the bill won’t move in the cur­rent Con­gress, which they say is cap­tive to fossil-fuel in­terests, but held it up as a ral­ly­ing point for the cli­mate move­ment.

“Up here on Cap­it­ol Hill, Big Oil and Big Coal rule,” Merkley said.

“So if you are hold­ing your breath, or think­ing about hold­ing your breath, wait­ing for a com­mit­tee chair to hold a hear­ing on such an im­port­ant is­sue to Amer­ica and the world, don’t, be­cause it is not go­ing to hap­pen at this mo­ment in this build­ing. It is go­ing to de­pend on grass­roots ral­ly­ing across Amer­ica,” he said.

The Amer­ic­an Pet­ro­leum In­sti­tute, which is the oil and gas in­dustry’s main lob­by­ing group, called the meas­ure “ex­treme” and “anti-con­sumer.”

“It could sig­ni­fic­antly raise en­ergy costs, des­troy tens of thou­sands of well-pay­ing Amer­ic­an jobs, elim­in­ate bil­lions of dol­lars in fed­er­al rev­en­ue, and put a big dent in one of the few bright spots of our eco­nomy,” said ex­ec­ut­ive vice pres­id­ent Louis Finkel in a state­ment.