Interior Dept. agency changes website from family visiting park to a giant pile of coal
Even the smallest of symbolic details can't escape the changes of life in Trump's America. The government agency responsible for overseeing a staggering 258 million acres of land, including ecologically vital conservation areas, has changed the image on its homepage from a scenic park vista to a massive, tall pile of coal.
The website change, which happened in the past 24 hours, is in keeping with the Trump administration's push to drill for oil, natural gas, and minerals on public lands.
The new picture at the top of the site appears to be from Peabody Energy, via Wikimedia Commons. This page identifies it as "an 80 foot coal seam at the North Antelope Rochelle open cut coal mine," and was taken in 2004.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is part of the Interior Department, is the lesser-known conservation agency whose vast land holdings take up about one-eighth of the United States, particularly across the West. When most people think about conservation areas, they think of national parks, which are also housed within the same cabinet agency.
But BLM oversees national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas, and 5,761 miles of national scenic and historic trails, in addition to 2,400 miles of wild and scenic rivers, among other areas.
The bureau also manages about 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, which account for about 40 percent of U.S. coal production.
By putting up a coal photo, the BLM is simply showcasing another aspect of its wide-ranging mission, Paul Ross, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said in an email. He clarified that Interior Department bureaus and agencies manage their content separately from the main department's accounts.
"We applaud their creativity in getting their message out," Ross said. He added that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke "has made it clear that he will manage our public lands in accordance with President Teddy Roosevelt's mixed use philosophy, where development of our natural resources is done in a way that balances conservation and public access."
Travis Nichols, a spokesman for environmental group Greenpeace, said the photo-swap still can't erase the fact that U.S. states and other countries are steadily ditching coal-fired power plants in favor of cheaper natural gas and increasingly affordable renewable energy.
"Putting a giant pile of coal on the BLM page won't bring back coal jobs ... or make our necessary transition to a clean energy economy any quicker," he said in an email. "Empty promises and PR won't change the fact that the world has moved on from dirty polluting coal power."
The website change is a temporary move, with other banner images to come during the course of the administration, but it's noteworthy, if only because it throws the Trump administration's staunchly pro-fossil fuels energy policy into stark relief.
"As part of the BLM's transition to a new website design, we will be regularly rotating the banner with photos that reflect the many uses our public lands have to offer," a BLM spokesperson said. "Tomorrow [April 7], the second photo in our rotation will be posted, reflecting recreation on public lands."
Secretary Zinke, who hails from Montana, a coal-producing state, has moved to cancel a moratorium of leasing oil and coal drilling rights on public lands, as well as a review of the leasing program. Environmentalists are challenging these policy decisions on procedural and other grounds, with the matter likely to be settled in courts.
Under the Obama administration, the Interior Department put in place a moratorium on new coal leases on public lands in 2016. More importantly, it also launched an environmental review of the entire leasing program, partly to determine if it made economic sense for taxpayers (but also, if it was in line with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to combat global warming). That review was slated to be completed in 2019 or later.
"American energy powers our national and local economies. But for too many local communities, energy on public lands has been more of a missed opportunity and has failed to include local consultation and partnership," Zinke said at the ceremony marking the move to overturn the Obama administration's policy.
The BLM also leases lands for renewable energy installations, such as wind and solar power, but the size of these operations pale in comparison to the fossil fuel footprint on public lands.
This story was updated April 6, 2017, at 1:25 p.m. EDT to include comments from Greenpeace. It was updated at 3 p.m. EDT to include a response from the Interior Department.
Editor's Note: The headline of this story was altered at 5 p.m. EDT to clarify an "Interior Dept. agency" changed its website, not the "Interior Dept."
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
