Comprising more than one-fifth of the country’s landmass and 1.7 billion offshore acres, U.S. federal lands and waters are the source for almost 30 percent of annual domestic energy production—primarily from fossil fuels. However, the Department of the Interior has yet to develop a comprehensive plan to accurately account for, manage, and mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions that result from the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels from public lands and waters. This document describes immediate and longer-term actions that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management should take to reform public lands management consistent with climate change, conservation, and fiscal reform priorities.
