Interior Secretary David Bernhardt rejected calls from House Democrats on Tuesday to reconsider the agency’s efforts to expand oil and gas drilling in light of recent reports about the damaging effects of human activity on the climate and biodiversity.
Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., who chaired an Appropriations Committee subcommittee hearing on Interior’s fiscal 2020 budget request, challenged Bernhardt to stop oil and gas drilling on federal lands because of a report by the United Nations released Monday finding that human activities are having an “unprecedented” damaging effect on global biodiversity.
“You are the steward of our cultural and natural resources,” McCollum said to Bernhardt, who was making his first appearance before Congress since being confirmed April 11 as secretary. “The nation is counting on you. Yes, that does mean factoring in climate change into [land] management decisions.”
The U.N. report projected that 1 million plant and animal species around the world face possible extinction, which threatens the stability of ecosystems around the world.
The report listed climate change as one of the threats to biodiversity.
Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist, said the Interior Department would not stop oil and gas leasing on federal lands on the grounds that Congress has not passed a law explicitly ordering his agency to address climate change.
“Are we going to stop oil and gas development because of this report? The answer to that is no. You all have the ability to decide if we do anything on public lands,” Bernhardt said.
The interior secretary later added he believes the scientific consensus that the climate is changing because of human activity. But, he said, there is not anything in the law that says “‘I shall manage the land to stop climate change.’ You guys [Congress] come up with the ‘shalls.'”
Nearly a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from energy production on public lands, the United States Geological Survey found last year.
Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla, the chairwoman of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, recently said her panel is exploring banning new fossil fuel extraction on federal land. At least two presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, have pledged to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
Bernhardt also faced tough questioning about his ethics Tuesday. McCollum was among the lawmakers who requested an Interior Department inspector general investigation into whether Bernhardt has violated ethics regulations by taking actions to benefit former clients. The inspector general opened an investigation just four days into Bernhardt’s tenure as secretary.
When Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., asked Bernhardt if he’s profited from decisions benefiting the industry, the Interior secretary said he took “offense” to the question.
“I came here just like you to do the work of the public,” Bernhardt said. “I know that I followed the law.”
Bernhardt, in another testy exchange with Quigley at the close of the hearing, vowed, “I am for making the people of America better off and safer.”
Quigley replied: “starting with your former clients.”
