As 2008 Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin proclaimed, "The chant is 'drill, baby, drill.' And that's what we hear all across this country because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into."
Joseph Biden seemed a very different sort of candidate. He promised voters, “No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
Profits versus Climate. Profits won.
The science is clear: fossil fuel growth must be stopped and fossil fuels phased out if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.
At the COP26 summit in Glasgow, President Biden called climate change “an existential threat to human existence” and pledged to cut U.S. emissions by up to 51% over the next nine years.
Then the administration offered 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing.
On March 13th 2023, Biden approved an $8 billion oil development project to extract 600 million barrels of oil from pristine federal land in the Arctic of Alaska.
Called "Willow", the project will be run by the oil giant ConocoPhillips. It aims to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day, or 600 million barrels over 30 years.
Willow could result in the release of more than 249 million tons of carbon dioxide over three decades, after all the oil is drilled and burned — the equivalent of adding 2 million gasoline-consuming cars onto the road or running more than 70 coal-fired power plants for a year.
It will do irreparable damage to ecosystems and Alaska's wildlife including polar bears, caribou, whales and migratory birds.
It will show the true value of a Joe Biden promise, and show the world that the US values profits for the few over our planet's irreplaceable eco systems and climate.
References
-Julie Wornan