The Plan To Beat Trump On Public Lands

Real, actionable, proven steps each of us can take to protect our land from being destroyed

Like you, I’m sick of hearing about about the short-sighted, destructive stuff the Trump administration is doing on and to our public lands and the healthy environment those support. I absolutely hate writing about things like their efforts to steal our land, give it away for oil and gas exploration, strip protections so it can be exploited beyond recognition, and to kill our wildlife. What I really want to do is stop all that. So I figured I’d create a plan for doing it.

The plan itself is nothing new. In broad strokes, it’s exactly how people have been fighting this stuff since the 1970s. That’s good, because we know it works, as I’ll describe. What’s new is the urgency and scale of the threat and the ease and speed with which information (and disinformation) can spread. Throwing a wildcard into all that is the administration’s incompetence. Let’s start by describing that, because it’s the very thing creating the opportunity for this plan to work.

Yesterday, the Department of the Interior (which is currently being run by a DOGE operative, in an illegal scheme to absolve the actual interior secretary of responsibility) issued an order to, “implement emergency permitting procedures,” for extraction activities across the 500 million acres of lands it manages.

“The United States cannot afford to wait,” states Doug Burgum, who last week ceded his secretarial authority to DOGE. “President Trump has made it clear that our energy security is national security, and these emergency procedures reflect our unwavering commitment to protecting both. We are cutting through unnecessary delays to fast-track the development of American energy and critical minerals—resources that are essential to our economy, our military readiness, and our global competitiveness. By reducing a multi-year permitting process down to just 28 days, the Department will lead with urgency, resolve, and a clear focus on strengthening the nation’s energy independence.”

To achieve that, DOI plans to permit through its own, legally dubious interpretations of expedited processes for the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Historic Preservation Act—some of the laws that govern how public lands are managed.

Elsewhere, the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite important definitions within laws like those, for instance trying to argue that harming an endangered species isn’t actually harming an endangered species.

DOI says these workarounds will apply to projects for: oil, gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal energy, hydropower, and minerals. Elsewhere, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which run the Forest Service, has announced similar plans to take legal shortcuts while permitting timber projects.

The thing is, you can’t just rewrite laws by executive order, that pesky Constitution thing establishes a process in which both houses of Congress must vote to do that, before legislation winds up on the President’s desk. And even though Republicans currently hold majorities in both the Senate and House, the party is so dysfunctional it’s not going to be able to pass a single piece of legislation this term, except through budget reconciliation. And while cutting taxes on billionaires can achieve an awful lot of harm for the rest of us, that process cannot rewrite unrelated legislation.

“But the United States does not face an energy emergency,” writes Lisa Friedman in The New York Times. She goes on to explain that after reaching record levels of energy production during the Biden administration, the U.S. is currently the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, and is, “…producing more oil than any other country, including Saudi Arabia.”

Which brings us to the other side of of the permitting equation: private companies. DOGE doesn’t build oil wells or dig mines, Exxon and Alcoa do. And companies like that aren’t in the business of destroying America, they’re in the business of making money.

And while Trump may want to “drill baby drill,” it turns out oil and gas companies aren’t exactly clamoring to invest in more drilling projects right now.

“We expect most oil and gas producers to remain disciplined with capital expenditures,” Rob Thummel, a senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital told Reuters. "However, less regulation will make it easier to increase drilling activity if commodity prices reach levels that are too high.”

Translation: Unless Trump’s moronic trade war spikes oil and gas prices, producers are looking to maintain current capital expenditure levels. Supply is currently well matched to demand, enabling them to profit without exposing themselves to risk.

And risk is exactly what the administration is baking into any new extraction project of any kind on public land. All these executive orders do is tell agencies to ignore or work around the laws that govern permitting, they do not make those laws go away.

What happens when extraction permits are written illegally? People sue.

“This is manifestly illegal if for no other reason than this is all a fake emergency,” Brett Hartl, the government affairs director for The Center for Biological Diversity told the Times. “We’ll be in court, and we will challenge it.”

“Attempting to repeal every environmental safeguard enacted over the past 50 years with an executive order is beyond delusional,” Hartl continued in an emailed statement. “Trump’s farcical directive aims to kill measures that protect endangered whales, prevent oil spills, and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident. This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court.”

What the administration is creating by trying to work around the existing permitting process is legal uncertainty. By skipping all the usual legal processes involved in permitting extraction processes, they’re baking drawn out, expensive, potentially embarrassing lawsuits into every one of these processes. Even in a best case (for the administration) circumstance, that increases costs for any private company involved, and pushes back the time in which a return on investment can be realized. In a worst case scenario, the legal jeopardy the administration is creating by permitting like this will simply create too much risk to justify private investment.

And it’s not just the potential for lawsuits that companies will have to bake into their risk analysis when deciding whether or not to invest in the projects the administration is trying to permit through this illegal process. In addition to legal certainty, any big investment also requires regulatory certainty, and social certainty.

We saw all three of those indicators turn uncertain when the first Trump administration tried to hold a lease sale for drilling permits in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve. There, $627 billion in oil lies on a remote coastal plain. The area is difficult enough to develop that extracting that oil would require an investment of $208 billion from private companies. When the lease sale was held in 2021, no major oil companies showed up.

Why? The project lacked the legal, regulatory, and social certainty to justify that investment.

As they’re now trying to make normal practice, the first Trump administration ignored NEPA, and tried to speed forward to writing permits. But in so doing, they created a situation that oil companies rightly identified as something any future President less hellbent on destroying America would immediately reverse. Biden did just that in 2023.

In ignoring an environmental impact statement that determined oil exploration on ANWR’s coastal plane would imperil America’s most important population of polar bears, that administration also made lawsuits inevitable. In 2020, The Audubon Society, Center for Biological Diversity, The Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and Earthjustice all got together and sued. Had Biden not cancelled the project, that could have tied the whole thing up in court for years.

And while all of that was going on, activists led by Indigenous people put pressure on the boards of any company considering participation in the lease sale. Chevron, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips all issued public statements, promising not to pursue drilling in ANWR. Every major bank in the country came out and stated they wouldn’t finance any projects in ANWR. 20 insurance companies signed onto an agreement to not insure any projects in ANWR.

By denying ANWR drilling the regulatory, legal, and social certainty necessary to justify investment, drilling there was defeated. And that creates a model we can use elsewhere.

The Plan

Deny Legal Certainty

• Everyone can and should participate in the public comment process around any extraction projects on public lands, or around federal decision making processes, as those remain available. Yes, the administration will simply ignore your comment. But in so doing, they will be handing environmental lawyers ammo to use in their lawsuits.

• If you are able, donate to, join, or volunteer with the environmental non-profits of your choice. The Center for Biological Diversity, Southern Environmental Law Center, and the other organizations mentioned above are great places to start.

Deny Regulatory Certainty

• Support candidates running in upcoming election cycles who speak out against the pillage of public lands. Amplify their messages.

• Run for local office, campaign on these issues.

• Write to federal, state, and local representatives to encourage them to vote and work against illegal permitting on public lands. Show up at town halls, participate in committees. Make them hear your voice.

Deny Social Certainty

• Divest from, boycott, and protest companies who buy permits from the administration through these illegal practices. If you are a current shareholder, speak out against illegal permitting. Run for boards.

• Support companies who pledge to work only through the legal permitting process. We need to create an awareness campaign around this, and encourage companies large and small to sign onto it.

• Build awareness in your local community, nationally, and within corporate structures.

• Use public lands, and talk about it. Visit and recreate in threatened places this summer. Talk to other users, and your community about what they stand to lose.

Can This Plan Work?

Remember, the target here is not the administration, it is the private companies who do business on public lands, or who finance, insure, promote, sell or transport their goods.

Lawsuits do not need to be successful, they need to be expensive and time consuming. Regulations do not need to change, there needs to be a risk of them changing. Every successful grassroots pressure campaign started with one pissed off person. The goal is to reduce confidence to the point where simply investing elsewhere becomes the better decision.

But the best possible encouragement here is that the Trump administration already knows about this plan, and is scared enough by it that they’re working to undermine us.

The haste and breadth of their efforts to get permits written feels overwhelming, until you remember that those things acknowledge the power of this plan. They know they need to finish their work before we can coordinate our opposition to it.

Just this week, USDA and DOI announced plans to illegally limit public comments on “emergency” projects. That not only validates the importance of public participation, but it creates another avenue for legal challenges.

Striking those comment periods also makes the work of journalists who cover these issues even more important. News reports and analysis don’t just work to inform you, they created a documented public record of potential and actual harms, and the public’s opinion.

This administration may believe that it has the right to govern without our consent. But private companies cannot make money unless we give it to them. An illegal permit is just a piece of paper if no one buys it.

Top photo: National Park Service

Wes Siler is your guide to leading a more exciting life outdoors. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports independent journalism and gives you personal access to his expertise and network, which he’ll use to help you plan trips, purchase gear, and solve problems. You can read more about what he’s doing on Substack through this link.