Despite a record-setting heat wave across most of the country, the Biden administration might continue to allow new offshore oil drilling. The White House and the Department of Interior are working on a new five-year plan and deciding whether to lease millions of acres of public waters to Big Oil.
The draft plan includes up to 11 new lease sales – 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Cook Inlet of Alaska. But this is just a draft, so we have to keep up the fight to make sure that none of these leases to Big Oil go through. We have 60 days remaining to flood the administration with public comments demanding a final plan with ZERO new leases for offshore drilling.
Offshore drilling hurts frontline and coastal communities who already bear the brunt of climate change burdens, with the continued inevitability of spills, harms to public health, and disastrous effects for the tourism and fishing industries on which so many of these communities rely. The refineries that must accompany offshore drilling release particulate pollution that exacerbates asthma and has been linked to lung cancer, and refinery malfunctions lead to acute air pollution episodes.
We cannot allow communities along the Gulf Coast and in Alaska to be sacrificed to the oil and gas industry. Ensuring there is no new drilling in the five-year plan is a matter of environmental justice.President Biden has the authority to end new leases for offshore drilling, but it’s up to you and me to force him to act.
We are in the middle of a 90-day public comment period, so this is the moment to generate as much public pressure as possible to make sure that the final plan includes zero new leases! Even if you’ve sent a message to the White House before, it’s important to do so again so it can be counted as an official public comment.
Food & Water Watch is working in coalition with hundreds of organizations from across the country to demand that President Biden reject fossil fuels. There are many things that the president can do to transition off fossil fuels, and ending new offshore drilling is a crucial step.
The next 60 days are critical. President Biden made a promise on the campaign trail to end offshore drilling, and we need to hold him to that promise. As the Biden administration takes comments on its proposed five-year plan for offshore drilling, the president must make good on this promise and prioritize people over polluters. Submit a public comment today and tell President Biden to end new offshore drilling!
Food & Water Watch and its affiliated organization, Food & Water Action, are advocacy groups with a common mission to protect our food, water and climate.
This email was sent to [email protected]— and we're glad you got it because it's one of the most important ways you can reclaim political power, hold elected officials accountable and resist corporate control.We're excited to keep working together to make an impact! But if you need to, you can
adjust your preferences or unsubscribe.
