BLM crafting guidance on social cost of carbon -- internal memo

The Bureau of Land Management is developing comprehensive guidance on calculating the climate change impacts of mining oil, gas and coal from public lands, according to an internal memo obtained by Greenwire. The memo, sent this month by Ed Roberson, BLM's assistant director of resources and planning, says the rapid warming of the planet is primarily caused by humans and that BLM should acknowledge this as it weighs the trade-offs of extracting more carbon-intensive minerals from the earth.
"Anthropogenic climate change is a reality," Roberson wrote in an email to BLM senior managers across the country. "Please ensure that all discussions of climate change in BLM's [National Environmental Policy Act] documents are consistent with this conclusion." Roberson's name does not appear in the document, but the agency confirmed he was the author and that it was sent earlier this month. The memo says BLM will be issuing "a comprehensive instruction memorandum" addressing climate change and the social cost of carbon in the next few months. While the impact of that guidance remains unclear, environmentalists said Roberson's memo is a sign that the agency intends to take better stock of how its land management decisions affect the climate...more