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The West loves its wide open spaces. Utah, though, is something else.
Every state would like to think itself singular but, truly, there is no place like Utah. The Beehive State has long fascinated outsiders; today, that attention is largely trained on Netflix exposés about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ballerina farmers, and Crumbl cookies, but historically, the obsession has been with its land. Utah has the nation’s highest density of National Parks; its rivers, canyons, mountains, and deserts have stirred Mark Twain, John Wesley Powell, John Muir, and Edward Abbey. To quote a more contemporary literary conduit, Post Malone: “It’s a free country out there. You can buy suppressors in Utah. You can … walk into the grocery store with a handgun on your hip. Cowboy shit.”
More recently, Utah has sought out a different source of outsider attention — that of the United States Supreme Court. Two lawsuits that originated in the state are currently under consideration by the justices. The first, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, concerns the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act with regard to the construction of a railroad spur that would link Utah’s oil fields to the national rail lines. (Though the tracks would be in Utah, the connection would ultimately increase hazardous waxy crude oil shipments through the Colorado county in the case citation.) The second lawsuit, Utah v. the United States — which the court has yet to decide whether or not it will hear — involves the state suing the federal government over its allegedly unconstitutional control of “unused” lands by the Bureau of Land Management. If Utah prevails in the case, it could mean the vast reshaping of the American West, about 47% of which is federal land.
“Utah is all crazy, all the time right now,” Stephen Bloch, the legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservation nonprofit opposing Utah v. the U.S., told me.
While not immediately apparent, there is nevertheless a strange logic to the two lawsuits that otherwise appear to have little to do with one another beyond the fact of their geography. At their core, both cases are ultimately about who gets to decide to do what with Utah’s land.
To anyone familiar with land use issues in the Mountain West, all of this is fairly routine. A strain of libertarianism and anti-government individualism runs through the more conservative inland Western states, coloring everything from the gun ownership policies so colorfully observed by Post Malone to whom the states back for president. Yet in the extent to which it is willing to pursue this common ideal, Utah is still an outlier.
“Westerners revere their public lands,” Betsy Gaines Quammen, a historian and author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God & Public Lands in the West, told me. “This is what makes the West the West — that you can come out and just go hiking, and you’re not trespassing.” Take the recent Montana Senate race, in which incumbent Democrat Jon Tester wielded his opponent Tim Sheehy’s comparatively mild comments about privatizing public lands as a cudgel in a deep red state. (Tester, it must be added, lost his reelection bid.) But in Utah, instead of celebrating federal land as the embodiment of this Western inheritance, its politicians are trying to eliminate them.
In the case of Utah, this goal is immediate and obvious. State officials claim that the 18.5 million acres of “unappropriated” BLM land in the state — that is, public lands not already designated as national parks, monuments, wilderness areas, national forests and conservation areas, or Tribal lands — are held in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which doesn’t explicitly authorize the federal government to hold land indefinitely. “Utah deserves priority when it comes to managing this land,” the state’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox said at a news conference in August, adding, “Utah is in the best position to understand and respond to the unique needs of our environment and communities.”
While Utah’s crown jewel, its “Mighty Five” National Parks, would remain under federal management, the state of Wyoming — which has backed Utah’s lawsuit in an amicus brief along with Idaho, Alaska, and the Arizona legislature — wants even more. “In Wyoming’s filing, they’re like, ‘Oh no, we’re in for everything,” Bloch said. “‘There shouldn’t be any federal land in Wyoming’ — including national parks.” More than 95% of Yellowstone National Park — the nation’s first national park, designated in 1872 — sits within Wyoming’s borders.
It seems doubtful that the Supreme Court will take up this case. For one thing, Utah is attempting to leapfrog the lower courts by taking its complaints directly to SCOTUS, a shortcut it says is justified by its concerns being “of profound importance not just to Utah, but to all the States in the Nation.” For another, President Biden’s Department of Justice has pointed out that what Utah seeks is outside the powers vested in the judicial branch; only Congress has decision-making authority over public lands. On the other hand, “Anyone right now, I think, would hesitate to say definitively, ‘Here’s what the Supreme Court will do,’” Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation advocacy group, told me.
Seven County Infrastructure Coalition is a different story. Opponents of the railway claim that the government’s environmental review took into account the remote economic benefits of the railway — including induced employment, a notoriously inexact projection — while not equally weighing the indirect health impacts of the rail line, such as the pollution of additional fracking wells in the Uinta Basin or frontline communities near the refineries on the Gulf, where the crude oil is ultimately headed. The Supreme Court (minus Neil Gorsuch, who recused himself at the 11th hour) heard oral arguments in the case this week, however, and appears on track to rule that the government’s NEPA review for the railroad was sufficient. That would ultimately be a win for the Uinta Basin Railway and the business coalition that brought the suit after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled there were flaws in the upstream and downstream analyses.
“I’m really worried that the court could end up inadvertently blessing this fundamentally arbitrary, imbalanced result, where an agency is allowed to talk about all the indirect benefits that they want — to go as far down the line, as far upstream, to the ends of the Earth chasing these indirect benefits — but not bother talking about the corresponding costs,” Jason Schwartz, the legal director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law, told me. “That undermines the very purpose of NEPA, which was to present the public and decision-makers with a full and balanced view of both the economic and environmental perspectives.” (Schwartz authored an amicus brief for the Institute of Policy Integrity against the government’s NEPA review.)
A ruling that reaffirms the current scope of NEPA wouldn’t be a shock — the court has always sided with the government in such cases, E&E News notes. What’s different this time is that the plaintiffs presented the court with a third option, an avenue that would severely limit the scope of the NEPA’s environmental review process going forward by restraining agency considerations only to what falls under their immediate purview. Chief Justice John Roberts has sounded skeptical of this pitch so far; it’s this third path, however, that the oil and gas producer Anschutz submitted an amicus brief to the court to support, drawing attention to the fact that “far more is at stake … than the 88-mile rail line in rural Utah.” (The company’s owner, Philip Anchutz, has close ties to Gorsuch.)
“There are so many ways to make NEPA more efficient without arbitrarily decreasing the sometimes crucial information related to indirect effects that NEPA currently provides,” Schwartz told me. Sam Sankar, the senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice, which is supporting the defense, added to me that his read on Seven County Infrastructure Coalition case is that it proves how this Supreme Court has “a pretty aggressive deregulatory, anti-environmental agenda.” The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition told Heatmap in a statement that with regards to the railroad, “we remain committed to advancing this critical infrastructure, which aims to unlock economic opportunities and support the region’s long-term development,” but that it could not comment further as the case remains under deliberation.
A threat to NEPA is also a challenge to who gets a say in what Utah does with its land, of course. Like Utah v. the U.S., the filing for Seven County Infrastructure Coalition bristles with indignation over the government’s determinations about how things should be done or what impacts should be considered, even if the Surface Transportation Board ultimately gave the railroad the green light. Utah, meanwhile, originated as a reaction to the BLM’s Public Lands Rule, in which the agency considers conservation as a land use on equal footing with those of energy development, mining, or grazing. (Specifically, Utah lawmakers were furious about the BLM closing some roads to motorized vehicles. “That’s something that Utah gets very worked up about,” Bloch, the legal director at SUWA, told me.)
There is always a risk of overascribing the state of Utah’s otherwise seemingly inexplicable actions to Mormonism — a religion that is far from monolithic and is often the subject of derision from outsiders. But Quammen, the historian, told me that you can’t separate today’s public land policies from the cultural and theological inheritances and beliefs reinforced over generations of Mormon tradition. “A lot of the people taking these stands [over public lands] come from families that have been in that area for generations, so they have stories and ideologies that have been passed down — as has their relationship with the land,” Quammen explained.
Weiss, of Western Priorities, concurred. “There are some folks in Utah who truly believe that this land belongs to them,” he said.
Quammen noted by way of example that Cliven Bundy, who led a standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 over the demand that the BLM cede its land to the states, told her his legal right to the public lands where he grazes his cattle in Nevada started when his ancestor’s horse drank from its Virgin River — although in fact it was a Southern Paiute river before that. (That’s not the only historically inaccurate ownership claim that might be at play in Utah; Bloch of SUWA noted that the lands within the exterior boundaries of the state were ceded to the federal government in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the U.S.-Mexico War, and in that sense, “they’ve never been ‘Utah lands’ so there’s nothing to ‘give back’ to Utah.”)
Preservationists and conservationists during the settlement era saw Utah’s landscape as untrammeled (“also not true, because it was Indigenous land,” Quammen added) and in need of protection, but early church belief viewed it differently. “They thought that the land being utilized, built, and made productive was pleasing to the eye of God,” Quammen said. Finally, Joseph Smith, the founder of LDS, emphasized the importance of his adherents understanding the U.S. Constitution inside and out. In the case of public lands disputes, this resurfaces in the claim that the federal government can’t own land indefinitely, Quammen told me. “That’s the piece about understanding the Constitution better than constitutional scholars.” Ironically, it disregards the state’s constitution, in which Utah explicitly agreed in 1894 to “forever disclaim[s] all right and title to the unappropriated public lands” in order to be granted statehood.
There is, of course, a significant small-government push in the Republican Party, too; privatizing land was part of the party’s presidential platform this year. It can be hard to tell, however, where one influence ends and another begins: William Perry Pendley, a key figure in the Reagan administration during the Sagebrush Rebellion fight over public lands in the 1970s and 1980s, authored the Project 2025 chapter on the Department of the Interior. Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee for the head of the department, recently met with Utah’s Republican Senator Mike Lee, a devout Latter-Day Saint, who afterward posted, “Great meeting with @dougburgum and planning the return of American lands to the American people.” And if Trump attempts to walk back protections of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments again, that land would be added to the pot of what Utah is seeking to acquire.
Utah’s organizers seem prepared to make an appeal to Congress or the Trump administration if the Supreme Court doesn’t make a move in their favor; funding for the messaging for Stand for Our Land, the publicity arm of the lawsuit, has reportedly outpaced the spending on lawyers. (A request for comment to the Utah Attorney General’s Office and Gov. Spencer J. Cox went unanswered.)
The implications of the Supreme Court’s decisions on limiting the scope of NEPA or hearing the public lands lawsuit are vast in both cases. The former could ease the way for expansive oil and gas development in Utah, which would be “a bona fide public health nightmare,” according to Brian Moench, an anesthesiologist on the board of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, which is opposing the railroad, due to all the additional pollution. “If they’re allowed to do this and increase the oil and gas drilling production by 500% — I don't know what you would call the end result. Unlivable, as far as I’m concerned.”
In the case of the public lands, meanwhile, “I think [Utah is] trying to give the impression that these are scrubby lands that nobody cares about when, in fact, it concerns landscapes like Labyrinth Canyon or the Dirty Devil or the Fisher Towers — these very iconic red rock landscapes that Americans think about when they think about visiting the state,” Bloch told me. “Those are the types of places in the crosshairs with this lawsuit.”
Ironically, it’s doubtful that a transfer of public lands would even benefit most Utahns. Because states can’t run deficits, a disaster like a bad wildfire would drain the Utah budget. Additionally, ranchers would pay far more for grazing their cattle on state lands (as high as $19.50 per animal unit per month, per the BLM) than on federal lands, where the fee is a dirt-cheap $1.35. Ultimately, the state likely wouldn’t even possess much of the land it claims to want so badly.
Utah’s politicians “would much prefer to be able to sell off any lands that they want — whether it’s for oil and gas leasing, whether it’s for mansions near national parks. This is very valuable land and a very valuable resource that belongs to all Americans,” Weiss of Western Priorities said. “And Utah would prefer if it belonged to them.”
Public lands and pride in the natural environment are fundamental to many Westerners’ beliefs and identities. By that token, it would seem Utah has made a miscalculation that only an insider could truly appreciate the cost of; by taking over control of portions of its territory from the federal government, it would be, in effect, boxing Utahns out of their own lands —a craven, modern twist if ever there was one.
But to be able to hike or hunt, to pitch a tent, to fish, to stargaze, to graze one’s cattle on nearly 70% of the land in Utah, because it belongs to us, the public?
Now that’s cowboy shit.
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On the IEA’s latest report, flooding in LA, and Bill Gates’ bad news
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms tomorrow could spawn tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama • A massive wildfire on a biodiverse island in the Indian Ocean has been burning for nearly a month, threatening wildlife • Tropical Cyclone Zelia has made landfall in Western Australia with winds up to 180mph.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has learned. Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide,” Brigham writes. “But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.”
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“This letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind,” Holzman writes. “Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president's executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine. If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.”
Heavy downpours triggered flooding and debris flows across Los Angeles County yesterday. A portion of the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most iconic roadways in America, is closed indefinitely due to mudslides near Malibu, an area devastated in last month’s fires. Duke’s Malibu, a famous oceanfront restaurant along the PCH, was inundated. The worst of the rain has passed now and many flood alerts have been canceled, but the cleanup has just begun.
Rain flows down a street outside a burned home.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Global electricity use is set to rise by 4% annually through 2027, “the equivalent of adding an amount greater than Japan’s annual electricity consumption every year,” according to the International Energy Agency’s new Electricity 2025 report. Here are some key points:
IEA
JPMorgan Chase clients have apparently been demanding more guidance about the climate crisis. As a result, the bank launched a new climate report authored by its global head of climate advisory, Sarah Kapnick, an atmospheric and oceanic scientist who was previously chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report seeks to build what Kapnick is calling “climate intuition” – the ability to use science to assess and make strategic investment decisions about the shifting climate. “Success in the New Climate Era hinges on our ability to integrate climate considerations into daily decision-making,” Kapnick writes. “Those who adapt will lead, while others risk falling behind.” Here’s a snippet from the report, to give you a sense of the tone and takeaways:
“Adhering to temperatures below 1.5C will require emissions reductions. Depending on your definition of 1.5C, they may require historic annual reductions and potentially carbon removal. Conversely, if you have a technical or financial view that carbon dioxide removal will not scale, you should assume there is a difficult path to 1.5C (i.e. emissions reductions to zero depending on your definition in 6, 15, or 30+ years). If that is the case, you need to plan for the physical manifestations of climate change and social responses that will ensue if your investment horizons are longer.”
Greenhouse gas leaks from supermarket refrigerators are estimated to create as much pollution each year as burning more than 30 million tons of coal.
Grantees told Heatmap they were informed that Bill Gates’ climate funding organization would not renew its support.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap has learned.
Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Bill Gates and Breakthrough Energy remain as committed as ever to using our voice and resources to advocate for the energy innovations needed to address climate change,” the Breakthrough spokesperson told me in a written statement. “We continue to believe that innovation in energy is essential for achieving global climate goals and securing a prosperous, sustainable world for future generations.”
Gates founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to help develop and deploy technologies that would help the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The organization made more than $96 million in grants in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
Among its beneficiaries was the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based think tank that promotes technological solutions to climate change. (Despite having a similar name, it is not affiliatedwith Breakthrough Energy.) Last week, a representative from Breakthrough Energy told the institute’s executive director, Ted Nordhaus, that its funding would not be renewed. The Breakthrough Institute had previously received a two-year grant of about $1.2 million per year, which wrapped up this month.
“What we were told is that they are ceasing all of their climate grantmaking — zeroed out immediately after the USAID shutdown because Bill wants to refocus all of his grantmaking efforts on global health,” Nordhaus told me on Monday, referring to the Trump administration’s efforts to defund the United States Agency for International Development. “But it’s very clear that this wasn’t brought on solely by USAID. I had heard from several people that there was a big reassessment going on for a couple of months.”
The Breakthrough spokesperson disputed this characterization, and denied that cutbacks were due to the USAID shutdown or a shift in funding from climate to global health initiatives. The spokesperson also told me that some grantmaking budget remains, though they would not reveal how much.
As for Breakthrough Institute, the funding cut will primarily impact its agricultural program, which received about 90% of its budget from Breakthrough Energy. Nordhaus is trying to figure out how to keep that program afloat, while the institute’s other three areas of policy focus — energy and climate, nuclear innovation, and energy and development — remain largely unaffected.
Multiple other organizations confirmed to Heatmap that they also will not receive future grants from Breakthrough Energy. A representative for the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment, a trade organization for sustainability professionals, told me that Breakthrough had recently informed the group that it would not renew a $400,000 grant, which is set to wrap up this May. (ACLCA’s spokesperson also noted that the grant had not come with any indication that it would be renewed.) Another former grantee told me that while their organization is currently wrapping up a grant with Breakthrough and does not have anything in the works with them for this year, they expected that future funding would be impacted, though they did not explain why.
Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide. Foundations and individuals around the world gave a total of $9 billion to $15 billion to climate causes in 2023, according to an analysis from the Climateworks Foundation.
But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.
“Their presence will be missed,” said the CEO of another climate nonprofit who was notified by Breakthrough that its funding would not be renewed. Breakthrough Energy “was one of the few funders supporting pragmatic research and advocacy work that pushed at neglected areas such as the need for zero-carbon firm power and accelerated energy innovation,” they added.
"Even if it’s a drop in the bucket, it still makes a difference,” another former grantee with a particularly large budget told me. This organization recently sent Breakthrough an inquiry about partnering up again and is waiting to hear back. “But for small organizations, it’s make it or break it.”
Speculation abounds as to the rationale behind Breakthrough’s funding cuts. “I have heard that one of the reasons that Bill decided to stop funding climate was that he concluded that there was so much money in climate that his money really wasn’t that important,” Nordhaus told me. But that is not true when it comes to agriculture, he said, which comprises about 12% of global emissions. ”There’s very little money for advocating for agriculture innovation to address the climate impacts of the ag sector,” Nordhaus told me.
Gates, who privately donated to a nonprofit affiliated with the Harris campaign in 2024 but did not endorse the Democrat, dined with Trump and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, for more than three hours at Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Day, he told Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker. He said that Trump was interested in the possibility of eradicating polio or developing an HIV vaccine. “I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation,” he told her, days before the inauguration.
Since then, Trump’s war on USAID has frozen funding to a polio eradication program and shut down the phase 1 clinical trial of an HIV vaccine in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda.
The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.
Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.
The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“It is with a sense of real urgency we write you today,” the letter states, referencing Trump’s executive order targeting the offshore wind industry to ask that he go further. “[E]leven projects have already received approvals with four of those under construction. Leasing and permitting will be reviewed for these approved projects but may take time.”
I obtained the letter from Paul Kamenar, a longtime attorney in conservative legal circles currently with the D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, who told me the letter had been sent to the department this week. Kamenar is one of multiple attorneys involved in a lawsuit filed last year by Heartland and CFACT challenging permits for Dominion’s Coastal Virginia project over alleged potential impacts to the endangered North Atlantic right whale. We reported earlier this week that the government signaled in proceedings for that case it will review approvals for Coastal Virginia, the first indication that previous permits issued for offshore wind could be vulnerable to the Trump effect.
Kamenar described the request to Burgum as “a coalition letter,” and told me that “the new secretary there is sympathetic” to their complaints about offshore wind permits. “We’re hoping that this letter will basically reverse the letter[s] of authorizations, or have the agency go back,” Kamenar said, adding a message for Dominion and other developers implicated by the letter: “Just because the company has the approval doesn’t mean it’s all systems go.”
The Interior Department does not directly oversee NOAA – that’s the Commerce Department. But it does control the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which ultimately regulates all offshore wind development and issues final approvals.
Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Some signees of the document are part of a constellation of influential figures in the anti-renewables movement whose voices have been magnified in the new administration.
One of the letter’s two lead signatories is David Stevenson, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the Caesar Rodney Institute, an organization involved in legal battles against offshore wind projects under development in the Mid-Atlantic. The Institute says on its website it is a member of the State Policy Network, a broad constellation of think tanks, legal advocacy groups, and nonprofits.
Multiple activists who signed onto the letter work with the Save Right Whales Coalition, a network of local organizations and activists. Coalition members have appeared with Republican lawmakers at field hearings and rallies over the past few years attacking offshore wind. They became especially influential in GOP politics after being featured in a film by outspoken renewables critic and famous liberal-turned-conservative Michael Shellenberger, who is himself involved in the Coalition. His film, Thrown to the Wind, blew up in right-wing media circles because it claimed to correlate whale deaths with offshore wind development.
When asked if the Coalition was formally involved in this request of the administration, Lisa Linowes, a co-founder of the Coalition, replied in an email: “The Coalition was not a signer of the request.”
One cosigner sure to turn heads: John Droz, a pioneer in the anti-wind activist movement who for years has given talks and offered roadmaps on how best to stop renewables projects.
The letter also includes an endorsement from Mandy Davis, who was involved with the draft anti-wind executive order we told you was sent to the Trump transition team before inauguration. CFACT also co-signed that draft order when it was transmitted to the transition team, according to correspondence reviewed by Heatmap.
Most of the signatories to the letter list their locations. Many of the individuals unrelated to bigger organizations list their locations as in Delaware or Maryland. Only a few signatories on the letter have locations in other states dealing with offshore wind projects.
On its face, this letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind.
Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president’s executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine.
If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.
Beyond that, reversing these authorizations could represent a scandal for scientific integrity at NOAA – or at least NOAA’s Fisheries division, the National Marine Fisheries Service. Heeding the letter’s requests would mean revisiting the findings of career scientists for what developers may argue are purely political reasons, or at minimum arbitrary ones.
This wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened under Trump. In 2020, I used public records to prove that plans by career NOAA Fisheries employees to protect endangered whales from oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic were watered down after a political review. At the time, Democratic Representative Jared Huffman — now the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee — told me that my reporting was evidence of potential scientific integrity issues at NOAA and represented “blatant scientific and environmental malpractice at the highest order.”
It’s worth emphasizing how much this mattered, not just for science but literally in court, as the decision to allow more seismic testing for oil under Trump was challenged at the time on the grounds that it was made arbitrarily.
Peter Corkeron, a former NOAA scientist with expertise researching the North Atlantic right whale, reviewed the letter to Burgum and told me in an email that essentially, the anti-offshore wind movement is exploiting similar arguments made by conservationists about issues with the federal government’s protection of the species to target this sector. The federal regulator has for many years faced the ire of conservation activists, who’ve said it does not go far enough to protect endangered species from more longstanding threats like fishing and vessel strikes.
If NOAA were to bow to this request, Corkeron wrote, he would interpret that as the agency’s failure to fully protect the species in good faith instead becoming “suborned by the hydrocarbon exploitation industry as a way of eliminating a competing form of energy production that should, in time, prove more beneficial for whales than what we’re currently doing.”
“The point on cumulative impacts is, on face value, fair,” he said. “The problem is its lack of context. Cumulative impacts on North Atlantic right whales from offshore wind are possible. However, in the context of the cumulative impacts of the shipping (vessel strike kills, noise pollution), and fishing (death, maiming, failure to breed) industries, they’ll be insignificant. Because NOAA has never clearly set out to address ways to offset other impacts while developing the offshore wind industry, these additive impacts place a burden on this new industry in ways that existing, and more damaging, industries don’t have to address.”
CFACT responded to a request for comment by sending me a press release with the letter attached that was not publicly available, and did not respond to the climate criticisms by press time. David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute sent me a statement criticizing offshore wind energy and questioning its ability to “lower global emissions.”
“The goal is to pause construction until everything is reviewed,” Stevenson said. When asked if there was an outcome where a review led to projects being built, he said no, calling offshore wind an “environmental wrecking ball.”
Well, we’ll soon find out what the real wrecking ball is.