By Brett Wilkins
Climate and Indigenous activists on Friday applauded the reinstatement of an Obama-era moratorium prohibiting new coal leases on all public lands until after the completion of a thorough environmental review.
“The coal leasing program on public lands is harmful to wildlife, waterways, our fragile climate, and taxpayers’ pocketbooks.”
Brian Morris, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Montana, issued an order reinstating the 2016 moratorium, which Ryan Zinke, former President Donald Trump’s disgraced interior secretary, reversed the following year.
“It’s past time that this misguided action by the Trump administration is overturned,” Anne Hedges of the Montana Environmental Information Center said in a statement.
“The coal leasing program on public lands is harmful to wildlife, waterways, our fragile climate, and taxpayers’ pocketbooks,” she continued, also urging action by the Biden administration.
