Citizens Caring for the Future v. Haaland

Four nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit in federal district court in New Mexico challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) authorization of 32 oil and gas leases covering more than 5,900 acres of land in New Mexico administered by BLM’s Carlsbad Field Office. The petitioners alleged that the Biden administration “rubber-stamped” the Trump administration’s decision to hold the January 2021 lease sale and that BLM failed to comply with NEPA, including by failing to take a hard look at cumulative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts when added to other greenhouse gas-emitting activities. The petitioners also asserted that BLM failed to evaluate the significance and severity of the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts and arbitrarily and capriciously decided not to use the social cost of carbon or carbon budgeting as tools to assess significance. The petition alleged that BLM could not simply quantify emissions that would result from the challenged action but must “actually analyze their significance in the context of the global climate crisis,” including by considering past, present, and reasonably foreseeable greenhouse gas emissions that would occur as a result of BLM’s fossil fuel program, not just the January 2021 lease sale and not just lease sales within BLM’s New Mexico State Office jurisdiction. The complaint also alleged a failure to take a hard look at impacts on air pollution, public health, and water resources. With respect to water resources, the complaint alleged that climate change made it “even more important to protect potentially usable sources of groundwater.”