“Drill, Baby, Drill” became a popular campaign mantra back in the 2008 election cycle. But now we’re hearing the opposite call: “Leave It in the Ground.”
Is there a middle ground that can supply the energy we need without causing significant climate damages? Yes. And it doesn’t involve exploiting all available resources, nor banning their use.
What if we continued to lease the rights to access fossil fuels on federal land but required the leases and royalty payments to reflect the full climate damages from these fuels? Doing so would put the market to work by unlocking fossil fuels that have the highest value in relation to their impact on the climate. The bonus: It provides money to pay for some of the damage of climate change.
Luckily, there is a way to determine this. It is called the Social Cost of Carbon (S.C.C.), and the federal government sets it at $40 per metric ton of CO2 emissions. The S.C.C. is used to inform a wide variety of regulations that limit the use of fossil fuels, including emissions standards for vehicles, appliances and power plants. But the S.C.C. has not been used to guide extraction policies. If the S.C.C. were applied as a part of leasing and royalty rates on federal lands, we would unlock resources with the greatest net benefits.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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