In early September 2019 the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) quietly released its final environmental impact statement for the upcoming sale of drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain. The report dismissed concerns about climate change and instead stated:
The BLM does not agree that the proposed development is inconsistent with maintaining a livable planet (i.e., there is not a climate crisis). The planet was much warmer within the past 1,000 years, prior to the Little Ice Age, based on extensive archaeological evidence (such as farming in Greenland and vineyards in England). This warmth did not make the planet unlivable; rather, it was a time when societies prospered.
This idea that the world is warming naturally as part of an emergence from a “little ice age” is a talking point of climate change “skeptics” and is not supported by climate scientists. This statement appeared in five different places in the report and was discovered by attorneys for the Sierra Club who were tasked with reviewing thousands of pages of the statement. A spokesperson for the Sierra Club told Earther that “The entire document is one more instance of this administration cutting corners, suppressing science, downplaying the very real impacts of their actions, and they have been so sloppy about it.” The BLM has so far declined to comment on the matter.