The U.S. Department of the Interior oversees public lands, national parks and wildlife refuges, and has a major impact on the nation's environmental direction.
Here's a look at four previous men who led the department in less-than-admirable ways. They offer lessons as we choose our political leaders.
Columbus Delano
Columbus Delano was the poster child for American genocide as President Ulysses S. Grant’s Interior Secretary from 1871 to 1875. Prior to that, he was an anti-slavery Congressman. At the Interior, he helped pioneer what later became the National Park System by setting aside Yellowstone.
But along with Civil War hero Phil Sheridan, he championed the kill-and-conquer policy of the Plains Indians by wiping out bison. Tens of millions of the food, cultural and spiritual staples of the tribes were wiped out to clear the way for white westward expansion.
Delano made the bison’s extinction a de facto federal policy. It expedited the enthusiastic, then 250-year-old effort to wipe out the American Indian.
Columbus Delano was hardly the only high government official promoting both genocide and Athabascocide (sorry, but I think I just made up that word). But he gets special bonus points for being named after the founding father of American genocide, Christopher Columbus.
Albert B. Fall
Did you ever wonder how the term “fall guy” got its start? Some say it honors, or dishonors, Albert B. Fall, a centerpiece in the monumentally corrupt administration of President Warren G. Harding.
An Army vet and career politician, Fall became one of the first two New Mexico Senators upon its 1912 statehood. He fell in with “The Ohio Gang” that carried Harding to the presidency in the 1920 election. President Harding transferred Naval Petroleum Reserve sites in California and Wyoming from the Navy to Fall’s Interior Department.
Two California oil tycoons won no-bid contracts to the oil released from the government sites.
In April 1922, The Wall Street Journal (bloody journalists!) uncovered evidence of bribes from one of them, Edward Doheny. The “Teapot Dome Scandal,” so named for the Wyoming oil site, took hold.
Fall was indicted and convicted of conspiracy and served one year. But while the “fall guy” wasn’t the only one implicated, others, including Harding and Attorney General Harry Daugherty, skated.
James G. Watt
While James G. Watt’s Interior reign took a sharp pro-industry turn, his actual downfall came from a few ill-turned remarks and truly bad jokes.
Watt was a deeply religious attorney and all for conservative causes. Upon entering Ronald Reagan’s inaugural cabinet in 1981, he alarmed some moderate Republicans in California and Florida by advocating offshore oil and gas drilling. And he infuriated most Democrats by pushing to relax endangered species protections and expand coal mining.
But what drove him from office was his penchant for saying dumb things. Watt presaged the Jan. 6 horde when he said, “If the trouble from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”
When asked about his obligation to protect nature for future generations he said, “My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures, which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns.”
Watt cancelled a July 4 concert on the National Mall because he said the headlining Beach Boys would draw “the wrong element.” First Lady Nancy Reagan, a big Beach Boys fan, begged to differ. The concert was back on.
It all ended after a decidedly unfunny attempt to mock affirmative action laws by describing the diversity among the members of a low-ranking Interior panel: “I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent."
Watt’s career as a public servant was over. But in 1996, he pled guilty to misdemeanor obstruction of justice in a case involving his lobbying the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He paid a $5,000 fine, performed 500 hours of community service, and completed five years of probation.
Zinke hardly stood alone as a dubious cabinet choice for the Trump administration, but his appearance at a Boy Scout Jamboree in an outsized Eagle Scout outfit said it all for me.
His résumé also includes college football, the Navy Seals, a state legislator and one term as Montana’s sole member of Congress from 2015 to 2017. President Trump appointed him as his first Interior Secretary. Like Watt, he antagonized Democrats and environmentalists while pleasing fossil fuel interests. The day after his swearing-in, he rode a National Park Service horse to work.
During his time in the state House, he signed on to statements of concern about the potential for global damage from climate change. But in a 2014 debate for his Congressional seat, he said "climate change (is) not a hoax, but it's not proven science either.”
Dismounting the horse-he-rode-in-on, Zinke set to work revoking a last-minute Obama ban on lead hunting ammo; undermining endangered species law and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and more.
He ran into a spot or two of trouble on alleged misappropriation of department funds, but the Interior Inspector General ultimately found no serious wrongdoing.
After Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, a two-person firm from Zinke’s hometown, Whitefish, Montana, won a $300 million contract despite never having done a job bigger than $1.5 million. The stink from Whitefish Energy was so strong that Puerto Rico canceled the deal. Zinke denied any involvement, but even loyal Republicans held him at arm’s length thereafter.
Here comes the cherry on the sundae: He said climate change had no role in California’s horrific 2018 wildfires, but “environmental terrorist groups” did.
Trump announced that Zinke would leave Interior at the end of 2018. In 2019, he launched a new venture in – wait for it – crypto.
Last month, Montana voters returned Zinke to his old Congressional seat. Go figure.
So let’s put the best face on this: We haven’t had a genocidal murderer running the Interior Department for 150 years.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe and the city of Cheyenne are applying for federal grants to fund clean energy projects, despite Wyoming's governor declining to participate.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe and City of Cheyenne are pursuing millions in federal funds for solar power and other green initiatives.
Cheyenne aims to build solar farms and upgrade wastewater plants, while the Northern Arapaho focus on a solar micro-grid, energy-efficient housing and change the tribe's fleet to electric and hybrid vehicles.
Both see these projects as key to creating jobs and reducing utility costs in Wyoming's challenging economic and environmental landscape.
Key quote:
“There’s a lot of interest in solar here. People are pretty interested in being more self-sufficient with the utilities.”
— Steve Babits, environmental scientist with the Northern Arapaho Natural Resource Office.
Why this matters:
Many indigenous communities face disproportionate energy challenges, including reliance on fossil fuels, lack of access to reliable electricity and environmental degradation due to extractive industries. By investing in clean energy initiatives such as solar, wind, or hydroelectric power, tribes aim to reduce their dependence on non-renewable resources, lower energy costs, and mitigate environmental impacts on their lands.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
North Dakota, the nation's third largest oil producer launched a preliminary climate plan.
The plan prioritizes tree planting, agricultural improvements and energy efficiency enhancements.
Critics argue the plan avoids addressing significant emissions from the oil, gas, and coal industries.
Future phases promise to tackle more challenging projects.
Key quote:
"There’s a big blind spot in that plan. They’re ignoring the fact that they have a highly emitting oil and gas and coal industry."
— Scott Skokos, Dakota Resource Council.
Why this matters:
Transitioning away from fossil fuels can pose economic challenges for regions like North Dakota that are heavily reliant on industries like coal mining or oil extraction.
Europe's average temperatures have risen to 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, almost double the global increase.
Extreme weather, including heatwaves and floods, caused significant economic losses and human fatalities across Europe last year.
The economic losses of weather and climate events were estimated at more than 13.4 billion euros (about $14.3 billion) in 2023.
Key quote:
"Europe saw yet another year of increasing temperatures and intensifying climate extremes — including heat stress with record temperatures, wildfires, heat waves, glacier ice loss and lack of snowfall."
— Elisabeth Hamdouch, deputy head of unit for Copernicus at the EU’s Executive Commission.
Why this matters:
Scientists predict that if global temperatures continue to rise, Europe will see and increase in climate-related economic loss and negative health outcomes, like deaths linked to extreme heat and wildfires, droughts and flooding.
Last yearEHN spoke with heat equity experts about how young people can work toward protecting the most vulnerable from extreme heat and advancing climate justice.
Robert Kennedy Jr., historically an environmental advocate, shifts gears in his presidential campaign, blending environmental concerns with anti-establishment rhetoric.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launches a presidential campaign that deviates from his environmentalist roots, challenging both Biden and Trump supporters.
Kennedy's platform includes a ban on natural gas exports and criticism of Biden's green energy subsidies, but lacks detailed policies on reducing greenhouse emissions.
His rhetoric mirrors populist themes from the pandemic, as he appeals to a broad electorate, including "hook and bullet" Republicans and disillusioned Democrats.
Key quote:
“RFK Jr. has changed his tune from being an environmental lawyer to peddling conspiracy theories about the science of climate change. It’s clear RFK Jr. can’t be trusted when it comes to climate action — he’s more interested in parroting MAGA talking points.”
— Matt Corridoni, Democratic National Committee spokesperson.
Why this matters:
Climate change is becoming a central concern for a growing segment of the electorate, particularly among younger voters, who are likely to prioritize candidates based on their environmental policies. The election results could determine the feasibility of passing significant climate legislation.
Workers in the disaster restoration industry are reporting significant health issues from exposure to dangerous substances while cleaning up after natural disasters.
Disaster restoration workers, primarily Latino immigrants, face severe health risks from toxins like asbestos, lead and mold in poorly regulated conditions.
Incidents include a worker being temporarily blinded and another left in a coma due to job site accidents; long-term effects include respiratory issues and headaches.
A joint investigation highlights systemic issues in safety regulations and the industry's response to protecting its workers.
Why this matters:
Without strict safety protocols and proper protective equipment, disaster responders may unknowingly be exposed to these substances, jeopardizing their health in both the short and long term. This risk is compounded by the urgent nature of their work, which can sometimes lead to corners being cut on safety measures.
Terri Sabo, a local resident since 1983, expresses concern over the transformation of Guernsey County, Ohio, due to fracking-related industrialization.
Recent state laws have expedited the leasing process for fracking in state parks, with multiple parcels near Salt Fork now contracted to energy companies.
FracTracker Alliance reports over 1,400 fracking incidents in Ohio, with significant local opposition to increased industrial activity.
Key quote:
"I'm past the sadness. I'm into acceptance now. And it's gonna happen."
— Terri Sabo, local resident and activist.
Why this matters:
The alteration of landscapes and potential for spills and leaks of fracking fluids can disrupt local ecosystems, harm wildlife and endanger species dependent on pristine environments.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
