Justice
The Obama Administration Halts New Coal Mining on Federal Lands
But it won’t affect the U.S. coal supply—or force more renewable energy sources—any time soon.
President Barack Obama wasn’t joking about coal.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama said he would “push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.” By the end of the week, that became reality, when the Department of the Interior announced Friday a freeze on new coal leasing on public lands. This is something environmentalists have been calling for as part of the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground. But in justifying the move, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell framed it as primarily an economic strategy to get a better deal for taxpayers.