Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been appointed chair of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s transition team, much to the chagrin of the nation’s environmentalists. Salazar’s track record when it comes to fossil fuels is not exactly what green groups had hoped for.
In 2011, right in the middle of Salazar’s term in the Interior Department, he approved the leasing of almost 7,500 acres of federal land in Wyoming for coal production. The four tracts in the Powder River Basin contained an estimated 758 million tons of low-sulfur coal.
“Coal is a critical component of America’s comprehensive energy portfolio as well as Wyoming’s economy,” Salazar said in a March 22, 2011, Interior Department press release. “As the number one coal producer from public lands, Wyoming provided nearly 40 percent of the domestic coal used to generate electricity last year and it’s important that we continue to encourage safe production of this important resource.”
The announcement was not well received by environmental groups at the time, and they have not forgotten. “It is particularly troubling that Secretary Clinton would align herself with Salazar who approved thousands of public lands acres in coal leases while Interior Secretary,” Cassady Craighill, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace USA, told GHG Daily on Wednesday.
Craighill added that Clinton has voiced support for ending fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, referencing a video released by the green group 350 Action after the Feb. 4 Democratic debate. In the video, the former secretary of state and senator says ending fossil fuel extraction on public lands is a “done deal.”
“Secretary Clinton needs to demonstrate better judgment than relying on Ken Salazar whose history proves he works for the fossil fuel industry, not the people of this country already dealing with the devastating impacts of climate change,” Craighill said by email.
The former Colorado senator’s stance on fracking is also not sitting well with the greens. “[Salazar’s] most recent opposition to the anti-fracking initiatives in his home state of Colorado directly undermines Clinton’s alleged support of local control over fracking,” Greenpeace USA Democracy Campaign Director Molly Dorozenski said in a released statement.
Since leaving his position as Interior Secretary, Salazar has become a partner at the law firm of WilmerHale.
Also on the transition team is former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who has served as an adviser to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Clean Energy Program and now holds several titles at the University of California Berkeley, including senior research fellow at the institution’s Energy and Climate Institute.
