BY JULIET EILPERIN AND CHRIS MOONEY
With just days until President-elect Trump’s inauguration, the Department of the Interior finalized a report Wednesday calling for major changes to the federal coal program, by which the U.S. manages the leasing of land to companies for coal exploration and production across 570 million publicly owned acres. A year ago, new leases were placed on hold pending this report — Trump, who campaigned as an ally of the coal industry, has pledged to reverse that controversial moratorium.
Interior Department lands, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are estimated to contain 7.4 billion tons of coal that could be mined and sold. Environmental groups have charged that if these fossil fuel resources are actually dug up and burned the consequences could be severe for the planet’s climate, and continual domestic coal leasing had also come into increasing tension with President Obama’s ambitious climate change policies...