Tomorrow, January 20th, Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States, bringing the era of the environmentally destructive Trump administration to an end.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Biden promised that he would “ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.”
Fossil fuels extracted from federal lands account for nearly one-quarter of carbon emissions in the U.S. Stopping coal, oil, and gas production on public lands and waters and supporting workers and communities in the transition to a renewable future will go a long way to tackling the climate crisis while protecting farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and vulnerable communities — Black, Brown, White, rural, urban, and working-class — in the Gulf South, Western states, Alaska, and across the country.
We know that Big Oil executives and climate-denying politicians are already gearing up to prevent Biden from keeping his campaign promises. It’s up to us to speak up and remind Biden of his campaign promises, so that he fulfills his pledge to stop new fossil fuel leasing and permitting on our public lands while ensuring that workers and communities have the resources they need to thrive in a world beyond fossil fuels.
Biden made us this promise, and we need to fight to ensure he keeps it!
Since January 2017, the Trump administration has sold 4,928 parcels (or more than 9.9 million acres) of public lands to oil and gas companies for development, including more than 5 million acres onshore and more than 4.9 million acres offshore — turbocharging a decades-long policy of opening our cherished public lands and waters to coal, oil, and gas extraction such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the waters of the Gulf South.
According to a 2018 scientific analysis from the US Geological Survey, fossil fuel extraction from federal lands produced nearly a quarter of the United States’ total carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 - 2014. In 2018 alone, our public lands and waters produced 39% of total U.S. coal, 21% of total U.S. oil, and 14% of total U.S. gas.
President-elect Biden has the opportunity to take action on climate on Day One of his presidency.
Congress has its own set of priorities in the weeks to come, including passing the pro-democracy bill HR-1 and passing additional COVID relief. By using his presidential powers to issue an executive order halting new fossil fuel drilling and permitting on our public lands and waters and committing resources to support affected communities and working families to thrive in the transition to a renewable energy future, President-elect Biden will begin to fulfill his commitment to heal our communities and build back better from the climate, health, and economic crises we face.
Onward into a new administration,
Charlie Jiang
Climate Campaigner, Greenpeace USA
