WildEarth Guardians v. Bernhardt

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) (defendant) was responsible for leasing federal lands for oil-and-gas development. The BLM was required to analyze leasing decisions’ environmental consequences pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA required the preparation of a thorough environmental-impact statement (EIS) for every major federal action that significantly affected the quality of the human environment. To determine whether a particular proposed action required an EIS, the BLM prepared a concise environmental assessment (EA) of the action’s direct, indirect, and cumulative effects. If the BLM determined that no EIS was necessary after the EA, the BLM had to issue a finding of no significant impact (FONSI) explaining its decision. In 2015 and 2016, the BLM issued 282 leases covering roughly 304,000 acres of land in Wyoming. The BLM prepared nine brief EAs concerning the leases but concluded that preparing more detailed EISs was not necessary and issued FONSIs. Entities including WildEarth Guardians (WildEarth) (plaintiff) challenged the BLM’s leasing decisions, asserting that the BLM had failed to consider the leases’ climate-change impacts, including future greenhouse-gas emissions by oil-and-gas development on the leased parcels. The district court found that the BLM had failed to take a hard look at greenhouse-gas emissions from the leases as required by NEPA and ordered the BLM to supplement its EAs and FONSIs. The BLM prepared a supplemental EA that estimated annual per-acre rates of direct and indirect emissions. The BLM also purportedly analyzed the leases’ cumulative impacts but did not consider emissions from any specific foreseeable regional or national BLM lease sales in that analysis. Instead, the BLM relied on average regional- and national-emissions estimates based on data from 2014 and 2017. The BLM’s cumulative-impact analysis relied on a different formula for calculating regional per-acre emissions rates than what the BLM had used for calculating the leases’ per-acre direct and indirect emission rates. Although some portions of the EA mentioned considering global carbon budget, other portions suggested that the BLM had not conducted a carbon-budget analysis. Based on the EA, the BLM again concluded that no EIS was required and issued a FONSI. WildEarth again criticized the BLM’s EA as insufficient, asserting that the BLM had arbitrarily ignored reasonably foreseeable regional or national oil-and-gas lease sales in its cumulative-impact analysis, had made arbitrary assumptions and mathematical errors in its per-acre emissions calculations, and was inconsistent about whether the BLM had conducted a carbon-budget analysis. The parties cross-moved for summary judgment.