New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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Fun CH
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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Rideback wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 7:26 am You're absolutely right I would be all over Trump if he had done this. And before I read the piece I linked to I was crazy angry at Biden. But the piece made me recognize the larger picture of what is going on and why Biden chose the least awful decision. I still don't like it, but it's reasonable to understand that this choice puts the fight into the hands of the private sector which will be able to take to the courts and carry out a stall that will, in the end, take so long that ConnocoPhillips won't be able to realize any drilling. So, the piece points out, Biden will be seen by the Alaskans as having their back and enriching their economy (a political win), he will remove his administration from court battles where Trump appointed conservative judges would more than likely rule against the decision, while costing billions to pursue, this decision allows the private sector of environmentalists to capture headlines and meanwhile technology is going gang busters with alternative fuels that will soon prove cheaper for the average consumer than fossil fuels. It's all about timing really. Because of climate change the Arctic and Alaska are getting tougher and tougher to drill in. Besides that, the shale industry has developed so many sources now that the US is out producing everywhere else and it's much easier to tap so the industry focus is on that arena.

I'm still mad that Biden has to play these games, but I also understand what the choices were now.
Thanks for being honest, we all would have jumped all over Trump if he opened up the Artic for this drilling project.

I agree that Biden is doing his politician thing as usual.

He did this with forgiving student loan debt knowing full well he had no power to do that with an executive order. He knows the courts will reject his plan and turn the issue over to the legislature (as they should). But Biden can say he kept his campaign promise.

Time to pass the torch, time for Biden to retire. He did what he needed to do.
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Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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pasayten
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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Ken, You sound like a trump campaign spokesperson most of the time... That is why your prattlings of "lies, cheating, and mis-direction of information" seemed so familiar...
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Rideback
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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How deep thinking of you.

So, put your political guru hat on and explain where the article is projecting? I've noticed that anytime someone explains something in the context of a larger picture you accuse them of lying. Simultaneously, it's obvious that you don't read the pieces by the questions you ask. I'm sorry that the Iveremectin hasn't worked for you.
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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I think you can figure it out, maybe read real slow and draw some pictures.
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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You might want to explain your comment. But if you've already used up your email directives for the day I'll understand if you can't.
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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No, but your projection sounds like they do for your ‘side’. If not for double standards you’d have no standards at all!
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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Within hours EarthJustice filed suit.
Dear Friend,
We’re going to court to keep 260 million metric tons of greenhouse gas out of our atmosphere.
More than 115,000 Earthjustice supporters, including many Mother Jones subscribers, told the Biden administration not to allow the largest ever proposed oil and gas undertaking on U.S. public land. But the administration didn’t listen. Instead, it announced it will move forward with the Willow Project even though new drilling undercuts the administration’s own climate goals.
So yesterday, Earthjustice sued the Biden administration to stop the destructive Willow Project. We will not let it accelerate the climate crisis and scar public lands.
Earthjustice is the largest nonprofit legal organization fighting to protect the planet. Our 200+ attorneys are often the last line of defense against environmental devastation. And we know how to win against the odds: we’ve fought this project before and won. Help us do it again by donating to Earthjustice today.

ConocoPhillips’ plan includes hundreds of miles of pipelines, dozens of miles of roads, an airstrip, and a gravel mine — all on public lands. It could devastate imperiled wildlife like polar bears, migratory birds, and caribou. It could also jeopardize the health and traditional practices of nearby Alaska Native communities.
In 2020, we sued to halt the project and won. The Trump-era permits for the project did not consider the Willow Project’s global climate impact, and our lawsuit forced the Biden administration to review them again before proceeding.
But despite its own climate goals and enormous public pressure to reject the project, the administration has chosen to move backwards in time instead of toward a clean‑energy future.
Earthjustice attorneys proudly represent our clients free of charge. We rely on donations from supporters who care about climate change and the environment to fund our litigation. We will continue to fight these years-long battles to keep the Arctic’s oil safely in the ground.

Ken, a question. Do they give you cue cards in your daily email box of how to respond to everything? Your response is the same for every post so now I'm wondering if they give the 'free subscribers' just one response but you have to be a paid subscriber to get more? Just wondering.
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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Yes, you operate in this too. Still performing armchair psychological evaluations Ray? Do we need to call you Dr, like Jill?
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pasayten
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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dorankj wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:22 am Lies, cheating and mis-direction (information) is how all you re-gressives do everything! Boy how I love the holier than tho, I know what’s best for everyone mindset.
Dang that sounds familiar...
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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Lies, cheating and mis-direction (information) is how all you re-gressives do everything! Boy how I love the holier than tho, I know what’s best for everyone mindset.
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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You're absolutely right I would be all over Trump if he had done this. And before I read the piece I linked to I was crazy angry at Biden. But the piece made me recognize the larger picture of what is going on and why Biden chose the least awful decision. I still don't like it, but it's reasonable to understand that this choice puts the fight into the hands of the private sector which will be able to take to the courts and carry out a stall that will, in the end, take so long that ConnocoPhillips won't be able to realize any drilling. So, the piece points out, Biden will be seen by the Alaskans as having their back and enriching their economy (a political win), he will remove his administration from court battles where Trump appointed conservative judges would more than likely rule against the decision, while costing billions to pursue, this decision allows the private sector of environmentalists to capture headlines and meanwhile technology is going gang busters with alternative fuels that will soon prove cheaper for the average consumer than fossil fuels. It's all about timing really. Because of climate change the Arctic and Alaska are getting tougher and tougher to drill in. Besides that, the shale industry has developed so many sources now that the US is out producing everywhere else and it's much easier to tap so the industry focus is on that arena.

I'm still mad that Biden has to play these games, but I also understand what the choices were now.
Fun CH
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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I disagree, it is betrayal. Pay the 5 billion (peanuts) to the oil company. What this tells me is that Biden is in the oil companies pocket as they reep record profits during his administration.

Polls say that Democrats are starting to soften in regards to Biden running for president again. After this lie, keep the pressure up for the man to retire.

If Trump had done this, you'd be singing a different tune, yes?
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding--Nick Lowe
Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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Re: New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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https://climatecrocks.com/2023/03/14/bi ... otCiPiRLjA

'A whole lot of outrage being expressed on social media about a newly approved Arctic drilling site. Everyone needs to chill.

No, it’s not a betrayal, it’s a tough choice among limited options.
Key in this case is to continue working to lower demand for fossil fuels, and make this a bad investment and a stranded asset for Big Oil.

I’m reminded of the heat the Obama Admin took when it approved Shell oil drilling in the offshore arctic – a decision I thought was actually wise and well advised.

My information at the time, from folks like the late U of Manitoba’s David Barber, was that, contrary to the CW that drilling in the arctic was supposedly getting easier – in fact, the break up of reliably frozen areas in the arctic ocean was actually making things dicier, more difficult and unpredictable in the area. I suspect that Obama was getting this advice as well.

The outcome was that an expensive, high tech Shell drilling rig, after dodging and fleeing from massive icebergs for weeks, ended up aground on a remote island, and Shell abandoned 7 billion in arctic investments as oil prices could not support the continued effort.


The takeaway – keep working to further the energy transition, stay behind the administration, and suck it up.

New York Times:

As a candidate, Joseph R. Biden promised voters worried about the warming planet “No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.” On Monday, President Biden approved an enormous $8 billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from pristine federal land in Alaska.

The distance between Mr. Biden’s campaign pledge and his blessing on that plan, known as the Willow project, is explained by a global energy crisis, intense pressure from Alaska lawmakers (including the state’s lone Democratic House member), a looming election year and a complicated legal landscape that government lawyers said left few choices for Mr. Biden.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and one of the chief advocates for Willow, which is projected to generate 2,500 jobs and millions in revenue for her state, said the president was inclined to oppose it and “needed to really be brought around.”

Mr. Biden was acutely aware of his campaign pledge, according to multiple administration officials involved in discussions over the past several weeks. Environmental activists had also openly warned that Mr. Biden’s climate record, which includes making landmark investments in clean energy, would be undermined if he approved Willow, and that young voters in particular could turn against him.

Approval of the Willow project marks a turning point in the administration’s approach to fossil fuel development. Until this point, the courts and Congress have forced Mr. Biden to sign off on some limited oil and gas leases. Willow would be one of the few oil projects that Mr. Biden has approved freely, without a court order or a congressional mandate.

And it comes as the International Energy Agency has said that governments must stop approving new oil, gas and coal projects if the planet is to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Ultimately, the administration made the internal calculation that it did not want to fight ConocoPhillips, the company behind the Willow project.

ConocoPhillips has held leases to the prospective drilling site for more than two decades, and administration attorneys argued that refusing a permit would trigger a lawsuit that could cost the government as much as $5 billion, according to administration officials who asked not to be identified in order to discuss legal strategy.

“The lease does not give Conoco the right to do whatever they want, but it does convey certain rights,” said John Leshy, who served as the Interior Department’s solicitor under President Bill Clinton. “So the administration has to take that into account. I would not say their hands were tied, but their options were limited by the lease rights.”

The leases are essentially a contract and if the Biden administration denied the permits, essentially breached the contract, without what a court considered a valid argument, a judge would likely find in favor of the company, Mr. Leshy said. It would be unusual for a court to simply order the government to issue permits; more likely a judge would award damages, he said.

That figure could include not just compensation for investments ConocoPhillips has already made but also profits that the company could have gotten if it had been allowed to drill, Mr. Leshy said, putting a potential judgment into the billions of dollars.

Ms. Murkowski said she believed the legal argument was the turning point for Mr. Biden. “There was no way around the fact that these were valid existing lease rights,” she said. “The administration was going to have to deal with that reality.”

To try to minimize the fallout, the Biden administration demanded concessions. It slashed the size of the project from five drilling sites to three. ConocoPhillips agreed to return to the government leases covering about 68,000 acres in the drilling area, which lies within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. And the administration said it would put in place new protections for a nearby coastal wetland known as Teshekpuk Lake. Those measures would effectively form a “firewall” that would prevent the Willow project from expanding, the administration said.

Mr. Biden also intends to designate about 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean near shore in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska as off limits for future oil and gas leasing. And the Interior Department plans to issue new rules to block oil and gas leases on more than 13 million of the 23 million acres that form the petroleum reserve.

But several of those measures could be revoked by a future administration, and none of them seemed to appease environmental groups, which termed the project a “carbon bomb.”

“The announcement is nothing more than window dressing,” Ben Jealous, president of the Sierra Club, said in an interview. “If President Biden were sitting here I’d tell him don’t spit on us and tell us that it’s raining, Mr. President.”

He called the Willow approval “a major breach of trust” and warned that with it, Mr. Biden has alienated many of his supporters, particularly young voters.

“President Biden’s decision to move forward with the Willow Project abandons the millions of young people who overwhelmingly came together to demand he stop the project and protect our futures,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate change advocacy group.

Earthjustice, an environmental group, said it would sue to stop the project as soon as Wednesday and expects to be joined by several other organizations. Environmental groups argued that the administration had the legal authority to deny ConocoPhillips a permit and should have done so based on a federal environmental review that found “substantial concerns” about the project’s impact on the climate, the danger it poses to freshwater sources and the way it threatens migratory birds, caribou, whales and other animals that inhabit the region.

The Willow project would be constructed on the nation’s largest swath of undeveloped land, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Some analysts said Mr. Biden’s decision could ultimately help him with moderates and independents, given elevated gas prices amid an energy crisis created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Republican attacks that Democratic climate policies are jeopardizing American energy independence.

“I think the White House feels the president has strong climate credentials now, but that he does need to reach out to working class voters in swing states who care about gasoline prices,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate aide in the Clinton administration who now works at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank.

But Mr. Bledsoe said he also thought the administration needed to make a stronger case publicly that the Willow project will not make a large contribution to the climate crisis.

“The problem with climate is not supply, it’s demand,” he said. “The world is awash in oil and other countries will supply the oil if we don’t. The question is, can we reduce demand through substitute technologies? And that’s where the administration has been very strong.”

The burning of oil produced by the Willow project would cause 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to a federal analysis. On an annual basis, that would translate into 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution, equal to adding nearly two million cars to the roads each year. The United States, the second-biggest polluter on the planet after China, emits about 5.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.

A key factor was the widespread support Willow enjoyed from lawmakers of both parties, including Mary Peltola, a Democrat and the state’s first Alaska Native elected to Congress; labor unions; and most Indigenous groups in Alaska.

UPDATE:

NBC News:

A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines. Administration lawyers determined that the courts would not have allowed Biden to reject the project outright, as ConocoPhillips has long held leases on land in the petroleum reserve and could have levied fines on the government, the source added.
Fun CH
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New Arctic Drilling ;And you thought Biden was serious about climate change

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyor ... roject/amp


"By the Administration’s own estimates, burning all that oil will result in the emission of about ten million tons of carbon dioxide per year, or some three hundred million tons over the life of the project. "

"As Politico noted, this “would be the equivalent of adding two new coal-fired power plants to the U.S. electricity system every year.” The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on earth, which means that the Willow project itself will be vulnerable to climate change"
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding--Nick Lowe
Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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