Deb Haaland Attacked by Fossil Fuel Industry
The freakout by the oil and gas industry and their allies in Congress over Rep. Deb Haaland’s nomination for Secretary of the Interior has begun in earnest. When Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn tweeted “Interior secretary nominee has joined pipeline protests and opposed fracking,” he certainly didn’t mean it as a compliment. Haaland’s historic nomination is already being opposed by Republican Senators Steve Daines and John Barrasso on similar grounds.
But these critiques should be worn as a badge of honor. If Haaland follows through on the actions these Senators are worried about, she will be the most effective Interior Secretary in recent memory.
The mission of the Department of the Interior is to “conserve and manage the Nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage.” Unfortunately, past Interior department heads have viewed it as their mission to open up those natural resources to the oil and gas industry. Under both Obama and Trump, the department promoted the interests of the fossil fuel industry, auctioning off millions of acres of public land for oil and gas development. In four years, Trump auctioned off 5.4 million acres only slightly more than the nearly 5 million that were auctioned off under the second term of Obama-Biden.
While Obama moved to stop the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines near the end of his second term, those moves came too late and only after years of indigenous-led organizing and a sustained outcry from the environmental community.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/22/deb-haaland-attacked-fossil-fuel-industry?cd-origin=rss
