Forget a “climate president”

The Willow Project unveils Biden’s abrupt desertion of America’s environmental and Indigenous protection

Five massively intrusive oil drilling sites, hundreds of millions of barrels of soonextracted crude oil, and a plan to wreck Alaskan ecology were given a green light by the Biden administration last month.

On March 13, the Biden administration approved the Willow Project to extract a projected 629 million barrels of oil and emit 263 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the drilling sites’ 30 year expected life, more greenhouse gas emissions than any other existing project on public American land.

The project, which attempts to lower record-high national oil prices, allows Alaskan crude oil producer ConocoPhillips to construct five oil drilling sites in Alaska’s North Slope, a 94 thousand square mile area in the National Petroleum Reserve.

And, while it is terrifying to me that ConocoPhillips is anticipating to begin construction and drilling as soon as they can, I am further disgusted by the Biden administration.

Three years ago, I joined news publications such as The Guardian and The New York Times in hailing Biden as America’s very first “climate president.” Three years ago, he pledged on his official website that he’d “ban new oil and gas” developments on public lands and condemned Trump for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I had high hopes for our country’s climate improvement when President Biden signed an instrument of acceptance to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement on his first day in office. I was excited to see a president that truly seemed to care about our planet just as much as capitalistic profit.

But actions speak louder than words. It’s angering to see how blatantly his current actions, when contrasted to his past promises, show overwhelming hypocrisy and doublecrossing.

In extracting hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, the project’s negative effects devastate the environment and people across America.

Regionally, the drilling sites will add substantive noise pollution and permanently damage the Western Arctic. The project will disrupt animal migration and habitats, such as the already endangered polar bears and the migration of Caribous reindeers, according to leaders of Nuiqsut, an indigenous tribe located 36 miles from the Willow Project’s designated drilling site.

Additionally, the excess carbon emissions will threaten the air quality and health of Alaska’s communities according to environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice by adding an equivalent of an additional 2 million gas-powered cars on the road