Dear NRDC Activist,

The Republican House majority has narrowly passed an extreme dirty energy bill that would dramatically turn back the clock on climate and clean energy progress.

The Strategic Production Response Act's proposed drilling plan is so massive in scale that it would eclipse all historic precedent and pave the way for federal oil and gas leasing on public lands well into the next century.

This new energy bill is Republican leaders telling us who they are. This is a blatant attempt to give away our public lands and waters to the oil and gas industry with no strings attached — and we need to make sure they know it is unacceptable and we are watching.

Tell your Representative you strongly oppose this extreme dirty energy plan and will not stand for reckless, catastrophic exploitation of our shared public lands and waters.

Our fight against this disastrous Republican oil drilling plan comes as our sister organization NRDC has filed a lawsuit in federal court to block another climate bomb — the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, recently approved by the Biden administration.

And this new House bill, the Strategic Production Response Act, would require that any draw from the U.S.'s emergency stockpile of petroleum be met with a catastrophic and short-sighted requirement that they lease the same percentage of public lands to make up the deficit.

The agencies implicated by this bill have jurisdiction over 3.1 billion acres of onshore and offshore areas. Even if a proposed 15% cap on sales is implemented, 465 million acres could be leased to the oil and gas industry — more than 12 times as many acres currently under lease.

And that's not all. In the course of the bill's consideration, House Republicans recklessly voted down several common sense amendments, instead opening drilling in:

• Our national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges
• Within 3,200 feet of our homes, schools, and hospitals
• Historically protected places like the Great Lakes and Florida's Big Cypress National Reserve, among others
• Areas where oil and gas leasing would disproportionately burden Indigenous people and other communities of color
• Along the West Coast and Mid-Atlantic states with no exceptions for protected areas

This is just one part of the House Republican majority's dangerous energy platform — and they are going to keep trying to pass bills like this one, again and again, unless we act. We need to stop this horrifying new energy plan NOW and decisively show the House Republican majority that the American people reject their extreme pro-fossil fuel agenda.

Tell your Representative that you are extremely disappointed by the passage of the Strategic Production Response Act and the short-sighted attempts to gift our public lands and water to the fossil fuel industry.

Big polluters and their vocal allies in Congress want to push for more and more climate-busting oil drilling and block the transition to clean energy, but we won't let them. Thank you for continuing to fight with us.

Sincerely,

Kyle Jones
Senior Advisor, Federal Affairs, NRDC Action Fund