High Country Conservation Advocates v. United States Forest Service

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managed coal leases underlying Forest Service land according to the Mineral Leasing Act. The BLM and Forest Service (agencies) authorized on-the-ground mining exploration activities in a part of the North Fork Valley in western Colorado. The agencies issued three decisions approving lease modifications as part of a larger compromise agreement to permit coal mining in the Sunset Roadless area of the North Fork Valley. The agencies prepared a draft environmental-impact statement (EIS) and issued a final EIS (FEIS) to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The lease modifications were likely to cause a release of methane gas from the expanded mining operations. The agencies acknowledged that there might be impacts from greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the form of methane emitted from mine operations and from carbon dioxide resulting from coal production required to be discussed in an EIS. In the FEIS, the agencies quantified the amount of emissions relative to state and national emissions and provided a general discussion of the effects of global climate change. The agencies did not discuss the impacts caused by the emissions and stated that it was impossible to predict the degree of impact of a single emitter of GHGs on climate change and that changes to natural systems could not be predicted or quantified. High County Conservation Advocates (Advocates) alleged that the agencies violated NEPA by failing to disclose the impacts of GHG emissions resulting from the lease modifications. Advocates argued that the agencies were able to use the social cost of carbon protocol (the protocol) to quantify the lease modifications’ contribution to costs associated with global climate change. The protocol was expressly designed to assist agencies in cost-benefit analyses. The agencies included the protocol in the draft EIS to weigh economic benefits against the costs of disturbing forests and the cost of methane emissions. The protocol was not included in the FEIS. The agencies only included quantified anticipated economic benefits of the project, not costs.