Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and other top Democrats strongly criticized President Joe Biden on Monday after his administration gave the green light to a huge oil drilling project in Alaska.
The Democrats said that the decision to move forward with the Willow Project, an oil drilling project that could produce up to 614 million barrels of crude oil over 30 years, goes against Biden’s larger climate agenda. They also said that the only thing that would have been okay would have been for the president to reject the project outright.
“The Biden administration has committed to fighting climate change and advancing environmental justice—today’s decision to approve the Willow project fails to live up to those promises,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a joint statement with Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “Their decision ignores … the irrefutable science that says we must stop building projects like this to slow the ever more devastating impacts of climate change.”
They continued-
“This administration clearly knows what the path to a cleaner and more just future looks like we wish they hadn’t chosen to stray so far from that path with today’s Willow decision“
“The only acceptable Willow project is no Willow project.”
On Sunday night, before the decision on Willow was expected, the government said it would keep about 16 million acres of land and water near where the project will be built from being used for oil and gas leasing in the future. In their statement, Ocasio-Cortez and the other Democrats also said, “Divided decisions on the climate crisis are not good enough.”
Overall, the federal analysis of Willow’s effects on the environment said that it could release as many as 278 million tons of greenhouse gases, which is the same as the carbon footprint of 2 million cars. And environmental groups have been calling the project a “carbon bomb” for years.
“It’s disappointing to see Secretary [Deb] Haaland and President [Joe] Biden approve the ‘Willow Project’ for ConocoPhillips,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., tweeted Monday. “The Western Arctic is one of the last great wild landscapes on the planet and as public land it belongs to every American. Industrial development in this unspoiled landscape will not age well.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., added in a separate tweet-
“This is a step backwards,”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., added in a separate tweet-
“The best way to lower energy prices is to shift to renewables — cheaper in the long run and not subject to Big Oil’s price gouging whims.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, said on Monday that Biden promised to stop all new drilling on federal lands both while running for president and soon after taking office. Willow is the biggest drilling project planned for federal land right now.
“This disastrous decision to approve the Willow Project in Alaska, one of the largest oil development projects in decades, will have devastating consequences on our planet, frontline communities, and wildlife,” Tlaib said. And Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., blasted the decision, saying it was “wrong on every level.”
The Oregon lawmaker tweeted-
“It destroys our climate goals and undermines international climate ambition”
“We can’t ask other nations to curb dirty energy production if we’re greenlighting fossil projects.”
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Several of the most important environmental groups, like the Democrats, criticized Biden for approving Willow.
As of Friday, more than 4 million people had signed two Change.org petitions telling Biden to “say no” to the Willow Project. And the hashtag #StopWillow went viral on social media, getting more than 650 million impressions across all platforms.
Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement-
“If Biden wants to protect the Arctic, he needs to protect all of it”
“The president has left us in the cold and missed a major opportunity to live up to his climate commitments. This project is on weak legal ground, and we’re gearing up for action.”
“This is a crushing step backward at a time when we need this administration to make every leasing and permitting decision through the lens of a comprehensive plan to make public lands part of the climate solution,” Karlin Itchoak, the Alaska senior regional director for The Wilderness Society, added.
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