August 3, 2014 — The nation’s largest environmental group is earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas, despite pledging a decade ago not to permit new oil and gas drilling on land supposedly set aside for conservation.
That revelation is contained in a forthcoming book about climate change by the writer and activist Naomi Klein, and the essential facts of the case were confirmed last week by the Nature Conservancy, the environmental group in question.
The Nature Conservancy — which says it helps protect about 20 million acres in the United States — argues that it has had no choice in the case of the well. Under the terms of a lease it signed years ago with an oil and gas company and later came to regret, the group says it had to permit the drilling of the well in 2007.
But the lease contains termination clauses, and Ms. Klein argues in the book that the Nature Conservancy could most likely have stopped the 2007 drilling. The group has earned millions of dollars over the years from gas and oil production on the property, though the 2007 well was not especially lucrative.
The property is supposed to be a refuge for the Attwater’s prairie chicken, one of the most critically endangered birds in North America. The birds appear to have disappeared from the site, though it is unclear whether the drilling had anything to do with that. The Nature Conservancy contends it took exhaustive steps to protect the birds, which continue to exist in small numbers elsewhere in Texas.
The new book — “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” — is due for publication on Sept. 16, and word of Ms. Klein’s finding has been filtering out.
Read the full story at the New York Times