When the Endangered Species Committee voted last week to make oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of America exempt from the Endangered Species Act, a swift filing from environmental groups was expected. 

The U.S. Department of Interior describes the committee as "a high-level federal committee established in 1978 under the Endangered Species Act. It was created to address extremely rare situations in which proposed federal action conflicts with the protection of an endangered or threatened species and no workable alternatives appear to exist." 

The Endangered Species Act has long provided a legal basis for anti-fossil fuel groups to litigate against drilling projects — what is often referred to as “lawfare” — but as the need for a secure supply of energy grows, this lawfare, according to the committee, is becoming a threat to national security. 

A couple days after the vote, several anti-fossil fuel groups represented by Earthjustice, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

Biden's cozy relationship with anti-fossil fuel activists

Unlike the Trump administration, which makes unleashing American energy a policy priority, the Biden administration, which prioritized a climate agenda, had a cozier relationship with anti-fossil fuel activists. 

Government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust recently obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that show two special interest groups pushed the Biden administration’s Department of Interior to make progressive climate change a key factor in the implementation of the Endangered Species Act. 

“We certainly suspected the Biden administration officials were working with some of the environmental and other and other activist organizations. We've seen that throughout the course of the administration. And so that was definitely something that we had expected to find,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told Just the News. 

The emails also show that the groups wanted to meet with political appointees and not career officials because they didn’t trust the employees to be as committed to the cause. 

Activists sought "climate consultation" with political appointees

In July 2021, Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, emailed several political appointees at the Department of Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Hartl requested a meeting with them to “discuss completing climate consultation under the Endangered Species Act.” 

“A few months back we sent the attached letter about the legal framework of completing these types of consultations to some of you that were already onboarded with the Biden administration. Today, we are also including an informal white paper which complements that letter and sets forth a reasonable and practical approach to such consultations so that they are achievable and impactful,” Hartl said in his email. 

These “climate consultations,” Hartl said, were well aligned with then-President Joe Biden’s “whole of government” approach to address the “climate crisis.” 

Hartl’s letter states that this meeting should occur at the political level because the Center for Biological Diversity didn’t believe those employees would have the commitment needed for the actions the group was seeking. “Frankly, we do not have confidence that upper-level management within the career staff at the Fish and Wildlife Service believe that the Endangered Species Act can be useful in the fight against climate change,” Hartl said. 

Hartle included a white paper that explains how the Endangered Species Act provides the legal framework to ensure that “federal agencies make the correct decisions relating to greenhouse gas emissions.” 

It doesn’t appear that the appointees ever responded to Hartl’s request for a meeting. In 2024, the Biden administration finalized revisions to the Endangered Species Act, and the Center for Biological Diversity was quite upset that the rules were largely unchanged from the first Trump administration. 

Harvard law activists claim climate change is driving a “mass extinction event”

Representatives of the Harvard Law School Animal Law and Policy Program also reached out to the Biden administration to advocate for climate considerations in the application of the Endangered Species Act. 

In February 2021, they congratulated Biden on his successful election campaign and wanted to provide the new president with ways to accomplish his fight against the “climate crisis.” The program's heads explained that the Endangered Species Act is the strongest protection for species on the brink of extinction, and they claimed climate change was driving a “mass extinction event.” 

They then provided examples of how the previous administrations’ Interior Department, including that of the First Trump administration, were instructed to ignore greenhouse gas emissions when implementing the Endangered Species Act. 

The letter contains a number of other signatories from outside the program, including celebrity scientist Micheal Mann, who this year was rebuked by a D.C. Superior Court judge for arguing “in bad faith” a libel case Mann filed against two bloggers who challenged his research. 

Though the Center for Biological Diversity failed to get its meeting with the political appointees at the Interior Department, Chamberlain with Protect the Public’s Trust said throughout the Biden administration, these kinds of organizations were involved at many levels of policy making. 

“They were extremely influential, and a lot of the policy came from these organizations. And in fact, a lot of the people came from these organizations,” Chamberlain said. 

Double standard for renewable energy

The Center for Biological Diversity’s white paper also argues that climate change should be factored into “take” permits for endangered species. These permits are required for any project expected to injure or kill animals. That includes offshore wind developments, which are required to get incidental harassment authorization in order to conduct activities that might threaten marine animals. 

While offshore wind developments only create emissions in the manufacturing of the turbines and construction of the projects, they are allegedly impacting different species of endangered whales, and environmental groups have always had a double standard when it comes to the impacts of renewable energy on endangered species. 

The lawsuit filed last week against the Trump administration’s exemption for oil and gas drilling argues that the Endangered Species Committee provided no evidence to demonstrate that energy security is impacted by lawfare. The committee’s decision, the lawsuit argues, threatens endangered whales. 

“The Gulf is home to some of the nation’s most treasured wildlife, including more than two dozen species protected as either threatened or endangered under the ESA. They include the critically imperiled Rice’s whale — with only about 50 individuals remaining,” the complaint states. 

Should the courts side with the environmental groups Earthjustice is representing, which includes the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, then oil and gas operations in the Gulf will be faced with more litigation aimed at delaying or stopping the projects.