Secretary Burgum: Focus on Climate, Not Cookies and Copters

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has a crucial job: stewarding our public lands, safeguarding wildlife, and tackling the climate crisis that threatens our communities and planet. But instead of rising to meet this urgent challenge, reports show Burgum is more focused on cookie deliveries and helicopter rides than climate leadership.

Sign the petition  to demand that Secretary Burgum take climate change more seriously than cookies and helicopter rides.

According to multiple published news reports, Secretary Burgum has spent his early tenure preoccupied with trivial optics—like demanding his staff bake him chocolate chip cookies and act as servers during dinners, and using a Park Police helicopter for personal transport. These distractions come at a time when the Department of the Interior should be focused on accelerating renewable energy, phasing out oil and gas drilling on public lands, and protecting biodiversity in the face of record heat, fires, and floods.

We need bold leadership—not ridiculous demands that political appointees bake chocolate chip cookies for the Interior Secretary and his guests.

The Interior Department oversees one-fifth of the land in the United States. It plays a pivotal role in permitting energy projects, managing national parks, and upholding treaties with Tribal Nations. Every day wasted on vanity projects and sweet treats is a day lost in the fight against climate collapse.
Meanwhile, the planet is heating up, communities are suffering, and frontline ecosystems—from the Arctic Refuge to the desert Southwest—are being pushed to the brink. The Interior Secretary should be using every tool available to help the U.S. meet its climate goals, not fueling headlines about cookies.

Secretary Burgum should stop treating his cabinet position like a place of endless perks and start doing the crucial work to save the planet. That means halting new fossil fuel leases on public lands and waters, speeding up clean energy development, respecting Tribal sovereignty, and protecting nature from industrial exploitation. It’s time to act like the climate crisis matters—because it does. Please sign the petition to tell Burgum to do his job.