Biden issued an executive order protecting 625 million acres of unleased coastal waters from offshore oil and gas drilling.
CarrZee on how Doomberg misses the point: Americans have already made more than their fair share from fossil fuels. The whole point of the Paris climate deal was that it imposes a carbon budget on the world (a global emissions limit). We may already be breaching it as we blow through targets in that agreement ….and climate justice says poor nations should be allowed to expand in fossil fuel use and drilling while the likes of the US massively scale back.
Snip of emailed story:
Arbitrary prosecutorial powers are but one weapon of the executive branch, and the bloated United States Code grants sitting US presidents near-limitless opportunity to exercise authority with the stroke of a pen. The trick of the trade is to find an old law passed by Congress that ceded an inch or two of power to the executive branch and then drive a mile-wide wedge through it, daring the other two branches of government to do something about it. They rarely do. This is how outgoing President Joe Biden leveraged 24 words of a 63-page bill passed by Congress 70 years ago to accomplish the following:
“On Jan. 6, two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Biden issued an executive order protecting 625 million acres of unleased coastal waters from offshore oil and gas drilling. Areas included in the ban, which has no expiration date, are the East Coast, much of the West Coast, the eastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico and part of the Northern Bering Sea.
‘President Biden has determined that the environmental and economic risks and harms that would result from drilling in these areas outweigh their limited fossil fuel resource potential,’ the White House said.
Hours later, Trump responded, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt, ‘I’ll unban it immediately.’”
The predictable parties were thrilled with the news:
“Greenpeace USA commends President Biden for taking decisive action to permanently protect these areas, which play a vital role in sustaining life, combating climate change and supporting the livelihoods of coastal communities. As coral reefs and Arctic sea ice disappear in rapidly heating oceans and millions of Americans suffer from climate-fueled storms, droughts, fires, and floods each year, halting any new offshore drilling is the kind of science-driven step needed right now. We have learned the hard way that when we allow oil drilling, we will have spills, often with catastrophic consequences. This is an important step toward consigning the harmful and short-sighted practice to the annals of history.”
The offshore drilling ban is but one of several executive actions Biden has signed in the final days of his presidency that will substantially impact the energy industry. Exploring the basis for Biden’s claimed authority on this particular issue lays bare just how far afield the federal government has deviated from what the framers intended. It also outlines what, if anything, incoming President Trump can do to reverse this memoradum or even dampen its impact. Let’s drill into the contemptible details…
