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US Interior Secretary Burgum hypes innovation at WGA, steers clear of public lands controversy • North Dakota Monitor [1]
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Date: 2025-06-24
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum acknowledged the importance of public land in the west during remarks to the Western Governors’ Association on Monday, but did not address the prospect of 250 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land becoming eligible for sale under the proposed federal budget making its way through Congress.
Nor did any of the western governors ask him about the Congressional Republican proposal when Burgum took their questions. The secretary did not take questions from the media and, as of publication, press availability with him had not been announced.
Originally scheduled to speak later in the day, Burgum instead swapped places with Education Secretary Linda McMahon. A protest against the sale of public lands timed to Burgum’s original speaking time proceeded as planned.
Former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Democratic candidate in New Mexico’s 2026 governor’s race, released a statement Monday denouncing the GOP proposal and said Burgum “should answer to New Mexicans while he visits our state and explain why he prioritizes corporate greed over New Mexico’s wellbeing.”
In his remarks, Burgum, a former governor of North Dakota, noted his belief that “the only people that should ever be head of Interior are people who’ve already been a western governor,” and noted that states such as New Mexico, Montana and Wyoming—to name a few—“are more than geographic destinations.” They aren’t “snow globes,” he said. “One of my messages here to all of you today is one of abundance…you can have amazing national parks, national historic sites, national monuments, you can work collaboratively with the tribes…and you can still contribute mightily to the nation’s economy and the nation’s security.”
Burgum returned to the theme of “abundance” in remarks about energy and what he characterized as the United States’ over-dependence on China for “critical minerals.” That “lopsided” dependence, he said, works against environmental concerns, contending that “if you care about the environment, do it in the U.S., because we do this stuff cleaner, smarter and safer than anyone. So, energy dominance is about us…having affordable energy to power all Americans.” Having “low-cost, affordable reliable energy,” he continued “drives everything home…because it keeps inflation down for every single production. There isn’t a product you wear, there isn’t a product that you eat, there isn’t a product that you drive, there isn’t a home that you live in that doesn’t have an energy component already in it.”
President Donald Trump upon taking office issued an executive order prioritizing mineral mining on federal lands and opening the door to rescinding existing bans.
While WGA emphasizes the bipartisan nature of its organization, Burgum alluded to outside tensions, arguing that “part of the divisiveness in our country is getting people to believe that everything is scarce, and if we do A, then we can’t do B, or if we do B, we can’t do A. We just have to get an abundance mindset, and we have to understand that innovation will solve any problem that we have.”
Specifically, he homed in on artificial intelligence, which he said is “going to change every job, every company and every industry. It would be impossible for me to overhype this in any possible way.”
Technological advances “extends human capability” such that “we’re at this tipping point where we now have the ability to actually solve all of our problems and stop living in a world where everything is a trade-off.”
But this vision can only come to pass if America has enough energy, Burgum said, and at present “our grid is at great risk.” Rolling blackouts and rolling brownouts during peak summer and peak winter are possible, he said, not because of climate change or the environment, but because you “can’t run a grid if the majority of your energy source is intermittent.” For instance: “The sun goes down at night,” thus, “there’s no solar production at night in this country.”
On the other hand, he said, in about 10 years, “the advancements coming in nuclear will produce clean energy in unlimited forms.” Burgum noted four executive orders Trump signed in May aimed at expediting approval of nuclear reactors, among other goals.
Hence, he said “the existential threat that we are facing is not one or two degrees of climate change in 2100, because we’ll solve all that… in the next decade or two by the innovation that will be provided if we can cut the red tape and have enough energy to drive AI and have enough energy to sell to our friends and allies, so they can stop buying from our adversaries.”
Outgoing WGA Chair New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently announced a $1 billion geothermal plant in the state and attended an energy summit in Alaska. In her question to Burgum about the role western states can play, she noted that New Mexico “continues to have huge opportunities for energy production, everything from fossil fuels to small-scale nuclear.” Western governors want to “help demonstrate” the ability to deploy “effective clean energy across the spectrum.”
Burgum noted that the strategy in New Mexico and other Western states is one of “energy abundance” and an “understanding it’s not an energy transition.”
New Mexico does, in fact, have an Energy Transition Act that sets zero-carbon goals for the coming decades.
“There is no transition,” Burgum continued. “It’s energy addition. We need everything we have, and then we need a lot more of it.”
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https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/06/24/us-interior-secretary-burgum-hypes-innovation-at-wga-steers-clear-of-public-lands-controversy/
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