Earth_Island_Journal_-_Spring_2020

EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL • SPRING 2020 7

talking points

UPDATE

Keeping Up

Appearances

Remember the US Bureau of Land

Management’s big decision last year to shift

headquarters from Washington, DC to a

building in Grand Junction, CO that houses

offices of several oil and gas companies?

Well, it appears that while the move has

been confirmed, the bureau is struggling to

fill staff positions there.

According to E&E News, at least 14 senior

positions — more than half the estimated

27 positions BLM says will occupy the Grand

Junction headquarters — are technically

vacant and have not been permanently filled.

The bureau has been trying to fill these

positions over the past few months, formally

advertising them on USAJobs.

In the meantime, in order to give its new

headquarters the appearance of life, the

bureau has temporarily reassigned about a

dozen of its existing employees in Colorado

— including staffers from the Southwest

District Office and Colorado River Valley Field

Office in Silt — to the Grand Junction office.

Both the district office and the field office are

more than 60 miles from Grand Junction. The

employees were told they would be moved

back to their original offices when the new

headquarters is fully operational this spring.

“The temporary local staff move is a minor

misuse of tax dollars and probably also a

minor disruption to normal workflow, but

I think noteworthy for the deception,” a

BLM employee told E&E News. “It does,

however, allow BLM to truthfully say HQ staff

are already working in Grand Junction.”

The move to populate the empty head

office comes amid increased congressional

scrutiny over the merits of moving the BLM’s

headquarters, as well as another 220 or so

DC-based positions, to state offices across the

West. The Government Accountability Office,

at the request of House Natural Resources

Chairman Raúl Grijalva, is investigating the

relocation, focusing especially on the number

of staffers leaving the bureau.

BLM has defended the relocation as an

opportunity to put bureau officials closer to

the land they are responsible for, and —

ironically, given the new office space is in the

same building as oil companies like Chevron

and Laramie Energy — farther from special

interests. It now says it moved field staff into

the Grand Junction office to “help identify

any needs we may have to make this facility

a well-functioning, efficient headquarters.”

The anonymous employee told E&E News:

“It is unclear to me who this charade is sup-

posed to impress.” It’s unclear to us as well.

TEMPERATURE GAUGE

Stable State

Need an upbeat spin about our massive

carbon emissions? Apparently, the world’s

energy-related CO 2 emissions held steady at

33 metric gigatons (Gt) in 2019 despite the

global economy growing by 2.9 percent, the

International Energy Agency (IEA) reported

in February.

The agency cited several factors for

this, including “a sharp decline in CO 2

emissions from the power sector in advanced

economies, thanks to the expanding role of

renewable energy sources (mainly wind and

solar PV), fuel switching from coal to natural

gas, and higher nuclear power output.”

Milder weather and slower economic growth

in several emerging markets also played a

part, it said.

“We now need to work hard to make sure

that 2019 is remembered as a definitive peak

in global emissions, not just another pause

in growth,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol

said in a statement. “We have the energy

technologies to do this, and we have to make

use of them all.”

The largest declines in emissions were

seen in the developed world, the report

says, with the US having cut the most CO 2

on a per-country basis, “down almost 1 Gt

from their peak in the year 2000, the largest

absolute decline by any country over that

period.” Much of this decline was due to a 15

percent reduction in the use of coal.

In the European Union, Germany reported

the most significant drop in emissions, “by 8

percent to 620 Mt [megatons] of CO 2 , a level

not seen since the 1950s, when the German

economy was around 10 times smaller.” This

again, was due to drop in the use of coal for

power generation. The developing world, by

contrast, saw an increase in CO 2 emissions of

400 metric Mt, of which 80 percent occurred

in Asia.

On the flip side — this isn’t the first

time the IEA has made such claims about

global emissions flatlining. It made a similar

statement about emissions holding steady

from 2014 to 2015. As Forbes reports, the

Paris-based agency that gathers statistics on

the global oil and energy industries has been

criticized in the past for producing optimistic

reports that favor the oil and gas industry.

It’s not clear whether the figures the IEA is

citing indicate an actual drop in greenhouse

gas emissions in the real world. Research

by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration has so far shown no easing

of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. In fact,

a day before the IEA report was released,

global carbon dioxide levels hit a new daily

high of 416.08 parts per million (ppm), up

from 411.97 ppm a year ago, according

to data collected by NOAA’s Mauna Loa

Observatory in Hawai'i.

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