Photo by iStock.com/nielubieklonu
At the end of this month, the Biden administration is set to announce a new offshore drilling Five Year Plan that will have direct implications for our climate and frontline communities living along the Gulf and Alaska coasts. The plan will lay out the schedule of onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years -- if any are going to happen. President Biden made a campaign promise to end new offshore drilling, and we're eagerly awaiting to see if he will keep that promise.
Ensuring the end of new offshore drilling would help mitigate climate change and its effects on coastal communities, who already suffer disproportionate harm from the refineries and other fossil fuel infrastructure in their backyards. Oil and gas companies build refineries, drilling platforms, and other dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure all along the coast, sometimes covering thousands of acres of land. We saw with the BP disaster in 2010 just how devastating it can be when these fossil fuel projects leak and spill—but the disasters didn’t stop then. Just last week, there was an explosion at the Freeport LNG facility in Texas, one of the largest in the country, subjecting community members to dangerous levels of air pollution. Even when facilities are operating normally, they release particulate pollution that exacerbates asthma and has been linked to lung cancer.
That pollution also fuels the climate crisis, which leads to increasingly frequent and extreme weather events. Strong hurricanes, like Hurricane Harvey and Ida, have hit the Gulf Coast over the last few years and conditions will only get worse if we fail to act—the UN expects us to see an 18-inch sea-level rise by 2050. These events are reminders that coastal communities, particularly under-resourced communities and communities of color, are already feeling the devastating impacts of the climate crisis. Exposing these communities to new fossil fuel projects that present immediate health risks—while exacerbating the climate crisis— is exactly the wrong path to take.
Earlier this month, Gulf communities came together during the Gulf Gathering for Climate Justice and Joy to celebrate their land, oppose more dangerous drilling, and call out the oil and gas industry for their false promises to fight climate change with supposedly “green” technology like carbon capture. Selling off more of our waters to the industry just doesn’t make sense if we want to meet our climate commitments and respect these frontline communities.
In Alaska, offshore drilling puts the food sources for Indigenous communities and countless others at risk. Marine animals, like the bowhead whale, are threatened by oil spills and seismic activity. Around Cook Inlet, Alaska’s longest-standing oil and gas basin, Indigenous peoples are already feeling these impacts in the land and waters they have relied on for generations.
Although the last plan for offshore drilling in the area was canceled, the inlet is back at risk as the Biden administration considers the next Five Year Plan. The same is true of so many other coastal communities around the country.
It doesn’t have to be this way. This Five Year Plan can be an opportunity for the Biden administration to listen to the communities who deal with the consequences of offshore drilling every day—while also helping make the climate progress we so direly need.
The Biden administration’s Department of the Interior announced last month that it would not hold three planned lease sales for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska. That’s great news—and progress to build on. We urge the administration to ensure that the new Five Year Plan responds to the grave concerns of local, frontline voices by making sure that no new offshore drilling leases are included.