Turning Pristine Public Lands Into Solar Farms

With most domestic issues, it’s hard for an administration to bypass Congress and still affect policy. Energy is different. George W. Bush’s 2001 energy task force was supposed to write policy recommendations but disbanded after environmentalists learned of the group’s secret meetings with the oil and gas industry and sued. Bush pressed ahead a different way, using his Department of the Interior secretary, a former lawyer for fossil fuel interests, to ramp up drilling on publicly owned lands.

For the last four years, President Obama has used the same executive powers to reverse Bush’s executive acts. Under outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Obama’s administration has on average sold 1,000 fewer leases annually for drilling on public lands than Bush’s, according to data compiled by the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington think tank. Revenues from U.S. offshore oil lease sales were $35 million in 2011, compared with $9.5 billion the year Bush left office, according to IER.