Joe Biden Is Making Donald Trump Look Like an Environmentalist

President Joe Biden has pitched himself as a presidential model of Captain Planet. His marketing campaign local weather plan included “banning new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters.” But a brand new report reveals he’s approving fossil gasoline leases on public lands at a quicker clip than his climate-denying predecessor, Donald Trump.

The analysis comes from Public Citizen, which discovered Biden’s Bureau of Land Management permitted a median of 336 new fossil gasoline drilling permits monthly in 2021. That’s greater than the common quantity permitted yearly of Trump’s presidency besides 2020, and 40% increased than the common permitted throughout Trump’s first 12 months in workplace. Biden’s 2021 drilling approvals peaked in April when there have been 652 approvals. This is going on regardless of the Biden administration implementing a leasing pause. (It’s been challenged in courtroom, however the authorized setbacks don’t imply the administration has to lease land—in principle.)

These websites are vital sources of carbon and methane air pollution. According to the report, fossil gasoline extraction from public lands produced 246 million tons of coal, 314 million barrels of oil and three.3 billion cubic ft of pure gasoline in 2020. All informed, the extraction from these federal lands accounts for an estimated 918 metric megatons of carbon dioxide equal emissions. This is a reasonably bleak comparability to Trump, a man who not solely denied local weather science however wished to drill all the pieces in sight.

While 2021 could have seen much less drilling approvals than 2020, that determine might shoot again up in 2022 with 740,000 acres of public land already on the leasing docket for 2022. That would add insult to damage; Biden’s Interior Department oversaw one of many largest oil and gasoline lease auctions in U.S. historical past final month actually days after the president boasted to world leaders at a United Nations local weather convention in Glasgow about his dedication to confronting local weather change. The authorities estimates round 1.1 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic ft of pure gasoline may very well be developed from the latest sale. All informed, these deposits might launch 723 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the ambiance over the leas interval’s lifetime, according to the Center for American Progress.

“You promised to address the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves, and in Glasgow, you assured the world that your plans to cut emissions are a fait accompli, not mere rhetoric,” a coalition of greater than 250 environmental teams wrote in a letter to administration about that lease sale. “Selling more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas development just days after the international climate talks makes a mockery of those commitments.”

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Separately, the administration drew the ire of environmentalist groups almost immediately after entering the White House after his administration has supported the Line 3 pipeline that’s slated to pump thousands of barrels of oil through Minnesota’s sensitive wetlands and sites sacred to tribes.

The Biden administration has managed to deliver in some key areas, including rejoining the Paris Agreement and proposing tougher rules to bring down methane emissions. Better still, Senate Democrats are trying to maneuver around blockades set up by Sen. Joe Manchin and Republicans to pass Biden’s Build Back Better Act in the near future, which would be the first real climate legislation in 11 years.

But these efforts, which considerably enhance funding in renewable power sources and electrical autos, solely actually work in the event that they happen in tandem with winding down the fossil gasoline business. Scientists have discovered stopping new exploration is the solely credible pathway to decreasing the dangers of catastrophic local weather change. Just specializing in including renewables, although, is like pouring a cup of water on a raging inferno whereas persevering with to lease lands for fossil gasoline extraction is like throwing gasoline on the flames.