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'Setback for Alaska and Our Oceans': GOP Governor Vetoes Ban on Single-Use Polystyrene Food Packaging in Alaska
"Products that we use for just a few minutes shouldn’t pollute our environment for hundreds of years," said one critic.
Jun 26, 2026
Critics are slamming Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy for his Thursday veto of a bill that would have banned state agencies and restaurants from using single-use polystyrene foam food containers.
The legislation, which passed last month with bipartisan support and would have taken effect starting in January, was intended to stop the use of non-biodegradable polystyrene containers, whose usage has resulted in microplastics polluting Alaska's waterways.
In justifying the veto, Dunleavy said that the bill would "create a short and unrealistic implementation timeline" and would “be especially difficult for businesses in rural Alaska, where shipping limitations, supply availability, and higher costs already make operations more expensive."
In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon (I-37) expressed frustration that Dunleavy has vetoed a number of measures this year that have had broad support, simply because they did not conform with his "far-right beliefs."
"Every bill that he has vetoed thus far, in my view, served in a valid public purpose," Edgmon explained. “It’s difficult to put so much work and so much public process and so much time and energy, and then, because they don’t meet the standards—whatever the standards are—they get canned."
Environmental advocates criticized Dunleavy for the veto, with Christy Leavitt, senior campaign director at Oceana, calling it "a setback for Alaska and our oceans."
"This veto undermines bipartisan action to reduce single-use plastic pollution at the source, and will only put Alaska’s communities, wildlife, and waters in further jeopardy," said Leavitt. "We applaud the efforts of the state legislature and look forward to working with lawmakers to pass this important bill in the future to phase out plastic foam foodware."
Dyani Lezama, state director at Alaska Environment, said she was "incredibly disappointed that the governor vetoed this opportunity to make Alaska’s environment safer and cleaner."
"Polystyrene foam is bad for our health, produces a huge amount of litter, and is incredibly hard to clean up," Lezama emphasized. "Products that we use for just a few minutes shouldn’t pollute our environment for hundreds of years."
Had Dunleavy not vetoed the legislation, Alaska would have become the thirteenth state to ban polystyrene foam containers, following Maryland, Maine, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Virginia, Washington, Delaware, Oregon, Rhode Island, and California.
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Analyses Expose Ocean Protection Failures Before UN Summit on 'Unprecedented Crisis'
"Conserving 30% of our ocean by 2030 is not just a target—it's a lifeline for communities, food security, biodiversity, and the global economy," said one advocate.
Jun 05, 2025
Ahead of the third United Nations summit on oceans, scheduled for next week, multiple analyses have highlighted how humanity is failing to address the multipronged emergency faced by the world's seas.
"The ocean is facing an unprecedented crisis due to climate change, plastic pollution, ecosystem loss, and the overuse of marine resources," Li Junhua, secretary-general for the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), told U.N. News.
UNOC3 is co-chaired by Costa Rica and France, and set to be held in the French coastal city of Nice June 9-13. Its theme is "accelerating action and mobilizing all actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean."
"Only $1.2 billion of finance is flowing to ocean protection and conservation—less than 10% of what is needed."
One of the new analyses—The Ocean Protection Gap: Assessing Progress Toward the 30×30 Target—was commissioned by the Bloomberg Ocean Fund and produced in partnership with nature groups, including WWF International.
The report, released Thursday, focuses on the 30×30 goal from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which is a commitment to conserve at least 30% of the world's land and ocean by 2030. The document warns that right now, "just 8.6% of the ocean is protected, with only 2.7% assessed and deemed effectively protected—a far cry from the 30% target."
Additionally, "only $1.2 billion of finance is flowing to ocean protection and conservation—less than 10% of what is needed," the report notes. It urges governments behind the framework to boost funding, including honoring their pledge to "provide at least $20 billion by 2025 and $30 billion by 2030 in international biodiversity finance to developing countries."
Calling the analysis "a wake-up call," Pepe Clarke, oceans practice leader at WWF, stressed that "we have the science, the tools, and a global agreement, but without bold political leadership and a rapid scaling of ambition, funding, and implementation, the promise of 30×30 will remain unfulfilled. Conserving 30% of our ocean by 2030 is not just a target—it's a lifeline for communities, food security, biodiversity, and the global economy."
🚨In a timely comment piece in @nature.com ahead of #UNOC3, leading ocean scientists make the case for protecting the High Seas from all extraction. @profcallum.bsky.social @ubcoceans.bsky.social @marklynas.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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— Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (@deepseaconserve.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Another new report, released Thursday by the U.S.-based Earth Insight in partnership with groups from around the world, details "the global expansion of offshore and coastal oil and gas development and its profound threats to marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of coastal communities—drawing on regional case studies to illustrate these threats."
The analysis found significant overlap between fossil fuel blocks—sites where exploration and production are permitted—and coral, mangroves, sea grass, and allegedly protected areas. It calls for halting oil and gas expansion, retiring blocks not already assigned to investors, ending financial support for coastal and offshore fossil fuel development, investing in renewables, ensuring a just transition, restoring impacted ecosystems, and strengthening legal, financial, and policy frameworks.
Last week, Oceana released another analysis of fishing in France's six Marine Nature Parks in 2024. The conservation group found that over 100 bottom trawling vessels appeared to spend more than 17,000 hours fishing in these "protected" spaces.
"Bottom trawling is one of the most destructive and wasteful practices taking place in our ocean today," said Oceana board member and Sea Around Us Project founder Daniel Pauly in a statement. "These massive, weighted nets bulldoze the ocean floor, destroying everything in their path and remobilizing carbon stored in the seabed. You cannot destroy areas and call them protected. We don't need more bulldozed tracks on the seafloor. We need protected areas that benefit people and nature."
Nicolas Fournier, Oceana's campaign director for marine protection in Europe, urged action by French President Emmanuel Macron.
"This is a problem President Macron can no longer ignore," said Fournier. "France needs to go from words to action—and substantiate its claim of achieving 30×30 by actually protecting its marine treasures from destructive fishing."
As #UNOC3 approaches, it's clear: a #FossilFreeOcean is no longer optional, but a moral and legal imperative. The fight for our oceans is urgent! Read more: bit.ly/3HtViJl
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— Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel.org) June 5, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Greenpeace has also recently called out the "weaknesses" of French marine protections—and then faced what the group condemned as retaliation from the government: Authorities blocked its ship, Arctic Sunrise, from entering the port of Nice.
"Arctic Sunrise had been invited by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to participate in the 'One Ocean Science Congress' and in the ocean wonders parade taking place right before the U.N. Ocean Conference," the group explained in a Tuesday statement. "Greenpeace International had intended to deliver the messages of 3 million people calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining to the politicians attending the conference."
Greenpeace International executive director Mads Christensen denounced the "attempt to silence fair criticism" before UNOC3 as "clearly a political decision" and "utterly unacceptable."
"France wants this to be a moment where they present themselves as saviors of the oceans while they want to silence any criticism of their own failures in national waters. We will not be silenced," Christensen declared. "Greenpeace and the French government share the same objective to get a moratorium on deep-sea mining, which makes the ban of the Arctic Sunrise from Nice even more absurd."
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Plastics Summit 'Die-In' Highlights Need to Cut Production
"This week governments have a choice: Stand up to this slash-and-burn approach by agreeing to radically reduce plastic output, or let the world be held to ransom by a dying industry."
Apr 23, 2024
As the fourth round of talks for a global plastics treaty kicked off in the Canadian capital on Tuesday, campaigners with the corporate accountability group Ekō staged a die-in at Ottawa's Shaw Centre to demand an ambitious plan to reduce production.
"Plastic pollution has reached the snows of Antarctica, the deepest oceans, even the clouds in the sky—and still fossil fuel corporations are trying to ramp up production," explained Ekō campaign director Vicky Wyatt. "This week governments have a choice: Stand up to this slash-and-burn approach by agreeing to radically reduce plastic output, or let the world be held to ransom by a dying industry. It's very clear to people across the planet which way they need to go."
Demonstrators—some wearing fish masks to highlight how plastic pollution impacts marine biodiversity—gathered in front of a 28-foot banner that used plastic trash bags to spell out: "Plastic is poisoning us. Cut production now."
(Photo: Ben Powless/Survival Media Agency)
Participants in the die-in—which followed the weekend's "March to End the Plastic Era" through the Canadian city—held smaller signs with similar messages, demanding that governments and industry "stop fueling climate chaos."
As Common Dreams reported last week, new research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California shows that planet-heating pollution from the plastics industry is equivalent to that of about 600 coal-fired power plants, and 75% of the greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production are released before the plastic compounds are even created.
The protesters also highlighted that more than 180,000 Ekō members have signed a petition urging action on plastic pollution. The petition specifically calls for banning all plastic waste exports from the European Union and fully implementing the Basel Convention within the bloc, while the summit has a global focus and the plan is to have a treaty by the end of this year.
After countries agreed to draft a treaty two years ago, the latest talks in Kenya last year were flooded by fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists and ended with little progress, increasing attention on the Canadian meeting that began Tuesday and is scheduled to run through Monday.
"It's a crucial moment of this process," Andrés Gómez Carrión, chair of the negotiations and an Ecuadorian diplomat in the United Kingdom, told Reuters on Monday. "One of the biggest challenges is to define where the plastics lifecycle starts and define what sustainable production and consumption is."
Petrochemical-producing countries including China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia "have opposed mentioning production limits" while E.U. members, island nations, and Japan aim to "end plastic pollution by 2040," the news agency reported. The United States supports that timeline but "wants countries to set their own plans for doing so" and submit pledges to the United Nations.
"We are facing a global plastics crisis that requires urgent, global action. Reducing plastic production needs to be a core component of the solution," Christy Leavitt, campaign director at Oceana in the United States, said in a statement. "Countries must act now to stop the flood of plastic pollution that is harming our oceans, climate, health, and communities by starting at the source to reduce its production."
"The U.S. should support a strong, legally binding plastics treaty that addresses the full life cycle of this persistent pollutant from extraction and production to use and disposal," Leavitt added. "Now is the time for the United States to show its support to reduce plastic production, eliminate unnecessary single-use plastics, prohibit hazardous chemicals in plastics, and establish mandatory targets for reuse and refill systems. The United States and the world must act before it's too late."
Greenpeace last month installed a 15-foot monument outside the U.S. Capitol to send President Joe Biden a message.
"He can be the president who put an end to the plastic pollution crisis, or he can be the one who let it spiral out of control," Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar said of Biden. "We're calling on him to stand up to plastic polluters like Exxon and Dow and put us on a greener and healthier path."
The petrochemical industry, Reuters noted, "argues that production caps would lead to higher prices for consumers, and that the treaty should address plastics only after they are made."
Sam Cossar-Gilbert of Friends of the Earth International emphasized the need to resist corporate pressure in a statement Tuesday.
"A people-powered movement and some governments are proposing ambitious steps to address the plastic problem, like regulating the harmful waste trade, single-use bans, and reducing global plastic production," said Cossar-Gilbert. "But multinational corporations will also be lobbying with their false solutions, distractions, and delays. Only by stamping out corporate capture can we deliver a new global treaty to end plastic pollution."
Mageswari Sangaralingam from the green group's Malaysian arm, Sahabat Alam Malaysia, stressed the need for strong waste management policies, given that Global South countries have become dumping grounds for richer nations' discarded plastic.
"Waste colonialism, whether in the form of trade in plastic waste and other hidden plastics, perpetuates social and environmental injustice," said Sangaralingam. "However, ending the plastic waste trade without reducing plastic production will likely trigger more dumping, cause toxic pollution, and contribute to the climate crisis. The global plastics treaty is an opportunity to plug loopholes and address policy gaps to end plastic pollution."
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Gulf Drilling Leases Decried as Another Biden Climate Failure
"Communities of the Gulf Coast are tired of being a sacrifice zone, and the Biden administration disappointingly missed a historic opportunity to protect our people and planet," one campaigner said of the latest auction.
Dec 21, 2023
Climate campaigners are calling out U.S. President Joe Biden for holding a court-ordered auction for drilling rights in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico this week as they demand far bolder action on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
After a drawn-out legal battle over 73 million acres important to the endangered Rice's whale as well as local fishing and tourism, Lease Sale 261 was held Wednesday and raised $382 million from 26 companies including Anadarko, BP, Chevron, Hess, Equinor, Repsol, and Shell.
With the sale, "we're again seeing our waters and environment sold off at bargain prices to oil and gas companies, just devastating after a year of record-breaking heat," said Healthy Gulf campaign director Raleigh Hoke. "Communities of the Gulf Coast are tired of being a sacrifice zone, and the Biden administration disappointingly missed a historic opportunity to protect our people and planet and solidify his commitment to climate justice by standing up to Big Oil."
"Lease Sale 261 is a major step backwards for President Biden's climate and justice goals."
Hoke and others, including Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), stressed that future drilling in the region could imperil marine life, including further threats to the already at-risk whale species.
"The oil industry and its allies know the Rice's whale could go extinct if they keep expanding Gulf drilling, but they've pushed aggressively to prioritize their profits and hold this sale anyway," said Monsell. "Perpetual leasing, new fossil fuel export projects, and oil spills in the Gulf are creating a hellish situation for marine life and frontline communities that's only getting worse. We can't wait any longer for President Biden to fight back and phase out offshore drilling altogether."
Oceana acting campaign director Michael Messmer pointed out that "the gluttonous appetite of oil and gas companies has led them to already hoard away thousands of leases on millions of acres across the Gulf of Mexico. They don't need any more."
"While President Biden had to move forward with this sale by court order, he does have the authority to prevent the expansion of offshore drilling through executive authority to permanently protect U.S. waters and coasts," Messmer added. "The United States can lead the call for a transition away from fossil fuels that was agreed upon by more than 200 countries at COP28 last week, but only if President Biden steps up to permanently protect our waters from future offshore drilling."
The final deal out of COP28, the United Nations climate talks that concluded in Dubai earlier this month, explicitly endorsed a move away from fossil fuels—a historic first but far from the phaseout demanded by science and many countries enduring the impacts of global warming, including rising seas, more extreme weather, and devastating wildfires.
"On the heels of a historic global agreement at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels and the release of the first-ever White House Ocean Justice Strategy, Lease Sale 261 is a major step backwards for President Biden's climate and justice goals," said Ocean Defense Initiative director Jean Flemma.
While campaigning in 2020, Biden—who is now seeking reelection next year—vowed to end new fossil fuel leases for public lands and waters, but he has run up against the courts and industry allies in Congress. A CBD analysis from January found that the administration allowed more drilling permits for federal land during its first two years than were approved in 2017-18 under former President Donald Trump, the GOP's 2024 front-runner who says he wants to "drill, drill, drill" if reelected.
The Inflation Reduction Act signed by Biden last year included significant climate provisions but also mandated some lease sales—including the one held Wednesday—and conditioned the use of public lands and waters for renewable energy development on future fossil fuel auctions. In line with that, the administration on Friday finalized a new offshore drilling plan.
The five-year plan features the fewest Gulf sales in history, with just three set to be held in 2025, 2027, and 2029. While Big Oil and its congressional backers wanted a more industry-friendly plan, critics warn any more drilling is incompatible with climate ambitions.
"Each additional oil and gas lease sale makes it harder to achieve the ambitious goals we need to achieve to stave off climate catastrophe," Athan Manuel, Sierra Club's lands protection program director, said Wednesday. "2023 will likely be the hottest year on record. At this critical moment, we should be expanding clean energy, not locking ourselves into fossil fuel for decades. We once again call on the Biden administration to take the bold action we need and end new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters."
Biden has enraged frontline communities, green groups, and younger voters by not only continuing lease sales but also backing liquefied natural gas expansion, the Willow oil project in Alaska, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia. He also skipped COP28 and has refused to declare a national climate emergency.
"No amount of new leasing or development for offshore oil and gas is acceptable to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis," charged Zero Hour executive director Zanagee Artis. "The hundreds of millions of dollars in bids on Lease Sale 261 represent a failure of our leaders to protect the futures of young people and our most vulnerable communities and ecosystems. It is time to end the era of fossil fuels."
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Biden Offshore Drilling Plan Continues 'Dangerous Cycle'
"Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis," said one campaigner.
Dec 15, 2023
The Biden administration on Friday finalized a five-year plan for offshore fossil fuel leasing that was initially released in September and sharply condemned as a "climate nightmare."
The Department of the Interior (DOI) highlighted in a statement Friday that the 2024-29 National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program has the fewest sales in history, with just three for the Gulf of Mexico set to be held in 2025, 2027, and 2029.
The DOI also stressed that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed last year by President Joe Biden "prohibits the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) from issuing a lease for offshore wind development unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing on the OCS in the previous year."
"BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production."
That part of the IRA is one of the key reasons it has been criticized by climate campaigners, who continue to warn that the landmark package is far from enough to meet the U.S. goal of halving planet-heating emissions by the end of this decade.
The DOI's plan outraged the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) for not being friendly enough to the fossil fuel industry while advocates for the planet warned that it's not bold enough given the worsening climate emergency.
"Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis," Beth Lowell, Oceana's vice president for the United States, declared in a Friday statement about the finalized program. She pointed out that the process actually began under former President Donald Trump, who proposed 47 leasing sales.
"This five-year plan started with President Trump proposing to open nearly all U.S. waters to offshore oil drilling and ends with President Biden's final plan that is the smallest to date," she said. "The footprint of offshore drilling was not expanded, but the dangerous cycle of drilling and spilling must end."
After the Biden administration released its proposal in September, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Irene Gutierrez wrote the following month that "BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production."
"BOEM also fails to account for the severe risks from additional oil and gas leasing to the Gulf ecosystem and species like the critically endangered Rice's whale," Gutierrez charged. "BOEM's analysis also treats catastrophic oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster as events that are speculative and unlikely to repeat again, and the program excludes such spills from its analysis."
"In our comments to the proposed program and in other advocacy, we urged BOEM to issue a program with no new lease sales. The agency has ample authority to do so," she noted. "Further, declining fossil fuel demand and existing energy reserves mean that no new offshore leasing is needed for at least the next 30 years to meet national energy needs. BOEM could have issued a zero-lease sale plan, but declined to do so, despite calls from a wide range of community and environmental groups for no new leasing in the Gulf."
The DOI plan comes near the end of what experts have said will be the hottest year on record. It also comes on the heels of United Nations climate talks that scientists called "a tragedy for the planet," given that the final deal out of COP28 called for "transitioning away from fossil fuels," but did not endorse the "phaseout" demanded by civil society and most participating countries.
Biden—who is seeking reelection next year and may face off against Trump—has previously come under fire from frontline communities and climate organizations for skipping that U.N. summit, supporting the Willow oil project and Mountain Valley Pipeline, enabling the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports, and refusing to declare a national climate emergency.
On Thursday, the Biden administration released new proposed guidance on clean energy tax credits from the IRA.
"President Biden must do so much more if he wants to be taken seriously by young voters," Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said in response to the guidance. "He is overseeing an explosion in oil and gas production that has resulted in the U.S. producing more fossil fuels than ever before."
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As Biden Revives Offshore Safety Rules, Advocates Say Drilling Must End to Prevent Disaster
Even with oil spill prevention measures, said one advocate, "offshore drilling simply will never be safe."
Aug 23, 2023
Environmental advocates on Tuesday said the Biden administration's decision to reinstate offshore drilling safety rules would help undo damage caused by former Republican President Donald Trump's repeal of the regulations, but were clear that the rules would not change the fact that fossil fuel extraction is imperiling ecosystems and the planet.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced that the rules have once again been finalized and will go into effect in October, governing the use of safety equipment on offshore oil rigs.
The rules were originally put in place by the Obama administration after BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which sent four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and killed 11 people, an estimated one million seabirds, and up to five million fish.
The oil and gas industry strongly supported Trump's repeal of the rules, which Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said at the time would "make dirty offshore drilling even more dangerous" by making oil spills more likely.
But Jackie Savitz, chief policy officer for the ocean conservation group Oceana, said new safety regulations for drilling operations are no replacement for halting offshore drilling altogether.
"Offshore drilling simply will never be safe," she said. "When there is a spill like Deepwater Horizon, it's too late, our options are severely limited, so prevention is the only solution and this is a good step in that direction."
The reinstated rules are "a big step in getting us back on track" to ensuring there's no repeat of disasters like Deepwater Horizon, Savitz said, but "there is no way we can do enough to prevent an oil spill."
"It is an inherently risky business and it's not a matter of if, but when we will have another one," she added. "So a big part of prevention has to be to stop selling new leases."
The newly reinstated rules will require:
- Real-time monitoring of drilling operations;
- The third-party certification of emergency devices;
- Increased strength requirements for blowout prevention devices, which stop the uncontrolled flow of oil or gas in the event of an accident;
- The reporting of failure data on blowout preventers to the government; and
- Investigations into failures that start within 90 days of an accident.
Ahead of the announcement, Zero Hour founder and executive director Zanagee Artis and Taproot Earth national policy director Kendall Dix wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald, calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to "move the country off of its addiction to fossil fuels by barring new leasing on public lands and waters," as he promised to when he campaigned for the presidency in 2020.
With the Interior Department considering a five-year oil and gas leasing program that would allow the fossil fuel industry to conduct extraction operations in even more areas of the nation's oceans—a proposal expected to be finalized this fall as the revived safety regulations go into effect—"the risk of environmental disaster from offshore drilling is not a question of if disaster will strike, but when," wrote Artis and Dix.
They pointed out that in addition to the International Energy Agency's call for an immediate end to fossil fuel extraction in order to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and the United Nations' warning that oil and gas drilling are "incompatible with human survival," offshore operations are simply not necessary "to meet the nation's energy needs."
"An analysis by industry experts found that, even without a single new lease offering, oil production in the United States will remain steady into 2035, at which point the nation's transition to renewable energy will be approaching maturity," Artis and Dix wrote.
"We don't need to sell off more of our ocean to Big Oil," they added. "Every oil spill began with an offshore lease sale."
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13 Years After BP Disaster, Oceana Urges Biden to Block New Offshore Drilling
A report from the ocean conservation organization details how the president can still keep a key campaign promise.
Apr 18, 2023
Thursday will mark the 13th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in which a BP drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and hundreds of thousands of animals. The disaster, one of the worst environmental catastrophes in U.S. history, was an object lesson in the dangers of fossil fuels.
Despite this, President Joe Biden has so far violated his campaign promise to stop further offshore oil and gas drilling, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—regardless of its status as the most important U.S. climate legislation to date—actually mandates its expansion.
"It's as if we learned nothing from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster," Oceana campaign director Diane Hoskins said in a statement. "We know that when oil companies drill, they spill. It's not a matter of if there will be another spill, but when. And those spills bring immediate economic and environmental devastation to our coastal communities."
That's why Oceana released a new report Tuesday outlining how Biden can make good on his promise after 2024 without contradicting the terms of the IRA. The report, A Simple Solution: How President Biden Can Meet Offshore Clean Energy Goals and Prevent New Offshore Drilling, comes weeks after the latest update from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that emissions from already existing fossil fuel infrastructure could blow through the carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, while planned expansion added on top could push the Earth above 2°C.
"President Biden has the responsibility to ensure his administration advances the policies needed to meet the ambitious and necessary climate goals of the United States," the Oceana report authors wrote.
How can he do this? The IRA put up three major stumbling blocks. First, it required the federal government to lease at least 60 million acres of public waters for oil and gas drilling the year before any new offshore wind lease sales. Second, it mandated that 1.7 million acres in the Gulf be leased for oil and gas despite a court ruling that the sale was backed by an insufficient environmental impact statement. Third, it set deadlines for additional lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf for 2022 and 2023.
However, Biden can still honor his campaign promise for 2024 and beyond through his administration's proposed five-year plan for oil and gas drilling , the final draft of which is expected this coming September. The initial proposed program, released last July, floated various options for lease sales for 2023-28, from zero to 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and potentially one in Cook Inlet, Alaska. Oceana hopes the final proposal will stick with zero.
"President Biden has a window now—where he can both abide by the Inflation Reduction Act and honor his campaign commitment—by issuing a five-year plan that includes no new offshore oil and gas leases," Hoskins said.
In addition, Oceana said that the Biden administration could exceed its goal of developing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030 without additional oil and gas lease sales, since the sales already planned for 2022 and 2023 would allow offshore wind leasing to proceed through much of 2024. The group further called on Congress to pass legislation reversing the IRA stipulation tying offshore wind development to oil and gas and on Biden to permanently protect more vulnerable coastal areas from offshore drilling by using his powers under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
There are many arguments in favor of banning offshore oil and gas drilling from 2024. As the Deepwater Horizon spill proved, it's incredibly dangerous, killing an average of three workers a year. It contributes to the climate crisis: A recent study found that methane emissions from Gulf drilling were double previous estimates and that stopping its spread and boosting the renewable energy transition would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 6.9 billion tons a year by 2050. In the U.S. alone, preventing new drilling in federal waters could keep more than 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere, which is almost three times more than what the nation emits each year.
"Every new offshore well drilled is another BP Deepwater Horizon disaster waiting to happen."
Then there are the local impacts. The Deepwater Horizon spill spewed 200 millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf and polluted 1,300 miles of shoreline from Texas to Florida. This devastated ecosystems and human communities, triggering the Gulf's largest-known die-off of marine mammals and costing the seafood industry nearly $1 billion. As is common for environmental disasters, the impacts disproportionately harmed marginalized communities. Around 50 million pounds of oil waste from the cleanup—approximately half of the total—were dumped into communities of color.
The spill's legacy persists today in destroyed wetlands and 60 million lingering gallons of oil. And it's only one incident. Between 2010 and 2020, the oil industry averaged nearly two spills per day.
"Every new offshore well drilled is another BP Deepwater Horizon disaster waiting to happen," the Oceana report authors wrote. "Continuing to expand oil and gas development is reckless and irresponsible."
It's also unpopular. A poll released today by coalition Protect Our Coast found that 50% of voters support a ban on new offshore drilling and two-thirds prefer the government prioritize wind and solar developments over oil and gas drilling.
"The data makes clear that American voters prefer expanding clean energy over expanding offshore oil and gas drilling," Lake Research Partners President Celinda Lake said in a statement. "From the Gulf Coast to the eastern seaboard, most voters want to prevent more offshore drilling and protect our coasts from the impacts it has on coastal communities, marine life, and seafood fishing. The Administration can strongly appeal to young people and Democrats by taking action to prevent new offshore oil and gas drilling."
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After Biden Cancels Lease Sales, Groups Call for End to All Offshore Drilling
"It is time for the U.S. to commit to no new offshore oil and gas leasing and to invest in the clean energy future that we—and our planet—need."
May 12, 2022
While welcoming the Biden administration's decision to cancel three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, conservation and climate groups on Thursday also renewed demands for an end to all offshore drilling in U.S. waters.
"We need to end new leasing and phase out existing drilling."
The U.S. Interior Department explained in a statement late Wednesday that the Gulf decision was "a result of delays due to factors including conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed sales," and it wasn't moving forward with the Cook Inlet sale "due to lack of industry interest in the leasing area."
Kristen Monsell, the Center for Biological Diversity's Oceans Program legal director, said that "I'm glad Cook Inlet belugas won't be forced to face even more oil drilling in their only habitats, but much more must be done to protect these endangered whales from offshore drilling."
"To save imperiled marine life and protect coastal communities and our climate from pollution, we need to end new leasing and phase out existing drilling," she said.
CBS News noted that "the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has previously canceled lease sales in Cook Inlet three times--in 2007, 2008, and 2011--also citing 'lack of industry interest' at the time as the reason for scrapping the sales."
Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans for Earthjustice, told CBS that the administration's decision is "good for the climate, which can't handle new oil and gas development."
"It's good for Cook Inlet because offshore drilling is dangerous and disruptive," he continued. "And it's good for the people of Cook Inlet, including native people, who cherish the inlet in its natural state. So it's a really good thing."
"The scientists are telling us the time to shift from fossil fuel energy is not years from now," Caputo added. "It's today. We need to end offshore oil leasing."
Both Caputo and Oceana's Diane Hoskins countered criticism from the fossil fuel industry and Republicans by pointing out how long it would take for those leases to impact gas prices, which are soaring for a range of reasons, including Russia's war on Ukraine and corporate price gouging.
" Big Oil is using anything they can find to try to extend the life of a dying fossil fuel industry. They are lying when they say they need more leases," Hoskins told The Washington Post. "We cannot drill our way out of high gas prices, and it would take years or decades for any new leases to begin producing."
While President Joe Biden promised as a candidate to end new oil and gas leasing, a federal judge last year struck down his moratorium and the administration has claimed it is obligated to keep up sales--a position climate groups have contested.
As the Post detailed Wednesday:
Barring unexpected action, the current five-year offshore drilling program will lapse at the end of June. Interior cannot hold any new oil and gas lease sales until it has completed a replacement plan. But though the federal government is legally obligated to prepare one, the administration has not released its proposal, nor have officials said when it might be coming...
Replacing the current plan won't happen overnight. The timeline spelled out in regulations governing the program requires a three-step process involving environmental analysis, public comment periods and a review by the president and Congress.
It typically takes the government at least six months to a year to finalize a new offshore drilling plan. This means that even if the Interior Department unveils a new proposal in the coming weeks, the soonest energy companies will learn whether they will have access to new leases, and where, is probably early 2023.
Linking to the newspaper's report, climate journalist Antonia Juhasz tweeted that "by not releasing a new plan, the administration is effectively putting a halt to any new offshore oil and gas leasing, thereby fulfilling a campaign pledge to do so."
In a Thursday blog post about the "big win for Alaskan and Gulf of Mexico communities," Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Irene Gutierrez wrote that "existing production allows us to meet our energy needs for the next decade" and "more drilling today will not make gas any cheaper for consumers, while costing us billions of dollars in climate change-related damages and public health impacts."
The Interior Department "has ample authority to shape the nation's offshore energy program to move away from fossil fuels and advance renewable energy sources," Gutierrez noted in anticipation of the forthcoming five-year plan. "It is time for the U.S. to commit to no new offshore oil and gas leasing and to invest in the clean energy future that we--and our planet--need."
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US Must Tackle Marine Plastics Pollution 'From Source to Sea': Report
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study found that the U.S. is responsible for about a quarter of the plastics that enter the world's oceans each year.
Dec 01, 2021
The United States is the world's leading marine plastics polluter and should devise a "national strategy" by the end of next year to address the crisis, according to a new report published Wednesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
"We can no longer ignore the United States' role in the plastic pollution crisis, one of the biggest environmental threats facing our oceans and our planet today."
The congressionally mandated report--entitled Reckoning With the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste--revealed that at least 8.8 million tons of plastics enter the world's oceans each year, with about a quarter of that amount coming from the United States.
"Plastic waste is an environmental and social crisis that the U.S. needs to affirmatively address from source to sea," Monterey Bay Aquarium chief conservation and science officer Margaret Spring--who chaired the study committee--said in a statement.
"Plastic waste generated by the U.S. has so many consequences," she added, "impacting inland and coastal communities, polluting our rivers, lakes, beaches, bays, and waterways, placing social and economic burdens on vulnerable populations, endangering marine habitats and wildlife, and contaminating waters upon which humans depend for food and livelihoods."
The report lists six steps that can be taken to begin to address the marine plastics crisis:
- Reducing plastic manufacturing--especially for single-use and nonrecyclable products;
- Innovating design and materials to develop substitutes that degrade more quickly or can be more easily recycled or reused;
- Decreasing waste generation by reducing the use of disposable plastics;
- Improving waste management including infrastructure, collection, treatment, leakage control, and accounting;
- Capturing waste in the environment; and
- Minimizing the maritime disposal of plastics.
The marine conservation group Oceana said in a statement that "there isn't a place on Earth untouched by plastic."
"Plastic has now been found everywhere, including in the most unexpected places: Arctic sea ice, the Mariana Trench, air in the remotest of mountains, rain in our national parks, and our food, including honey, salt, water, and beer," the group continued. "Scientists are still studying what all this means for human health. With plastic production growing at a rapid rate, increasing amounts of plastic can be expected to flood our blue planet with devastating consequences."
Oceana plastics campaign director Christy Leavitt said that "we can no longer ignore the United States' role in the plastic pollution crisis, one of the biggest environmental threats facing our oceans and our planet today."
"This report shows that much of the plastic waste that threatens critical ecosystems, wildlife, and human health around the globe originates here in the U.S., and our country's leaders have a responsibility to change that," she argued.
"A national solution is already mapped out, thanks to the introduction of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act earlier this year," Leavitt continued, referring to a bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.).
"Now it's time for members of Congress to pass it," she added, "so we can stop wasting time with inadequate solutions and finally tackle the plastics problem with the comprehensive approach and source reduction it requires."
The report comes less than two weeks after the Biden administration--in sharp contrast to the Trump era--announced support for developing a global treaty to tackle marine plastic pollution, a move that was applauded by environmentalists.
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'Lighting the Fuse on a Massive Carbon Bomb': Biden Rebuked on Eve of Drilling Lease Sale
"It's hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit."
Nov 16, 2021
Climate and environmental campaigners on Tuesday took President Joe Biden to task on the eve of his administration's scheduled oil and gas drilling auction of 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico--a move that comes just days after the U.S. leader pleaded for "every nation to do its part" to combat the climate emergency at the U.N.-backed climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
"Continued leasing for dirty and dangerous offshore drilling is a disaster for our environment, our economy, and our climate."
The Biden administration's first offshore fossil fuel extraction auction--Lease Sale 257--is scheduled for Wednesday morning, and would break the president's campaign promise of "no more drilling, including offshore."
The sale would also mark the end of a pause in federal fossil fuel leases implemented by executive order during Biden's first week in office.
In resuming U.S. lease sale auctions, the Resist Line 3 coalition accused the Biden of "actively selling away our futures."
Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement that "the Biden administration is lighting the fuse on a massive carbon bomb in the Gulf of Mexico."
"It's hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit," Monsell added.
Diane Hoskins, campaign director at the marine advocacy group Oceana, said Tuesday that "continued leasing for dirty and dangerous offshore drilling is a disaster for our environment, our economy, and our climate."
"The industry has already stockpiled eight million acres of unused offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico--more than six times the size of Delaware--and that's before any new leases are sold," she continued. "Getting serious about reducing emissions from fossil fuels must start with ending leasing for more offshore oil and gas development."
According to an Oceana analysis:
Permanent offshore drilling protections for all unleased federal waters could prevent over 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That's the equivalent to taking every car in the U.S. off the road for the next 15 years... Permanent protections in all unleased federal waters could prevent more than $720 billion in damages to people, property, and the environment.
"Leases sold today will not produce oil and gas for at least five years and will continue to pollute for another 30 years," Hoskins added. "We cannot afford reckless decades of carbon pollution in order to avert the worst impacts of climate change."
Last week, more than 260 organizations, including three dozen groups representing Gulf of Mexico communities, sent an open letter to Biden following the president's promise in Glasgow that the United States would be "leading by the power of our example" in combating the climate emergency.
"You promised to address the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves, and in Glasgow, you assured the world that your plans to cut emissions are a fait accompli, not mere rhetoric," the letter stated. "Selling more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas development just days after the international climate talks makes a mockery of those commitments."
Although supporters of the president note that a federal judge blocked Biden's pause on new drilling on public lands, he had already come under fire for approving more fossil fuel drilling projects on public lands than either the Barack Obama or Donald Trump administrations.
CBD's Monsell said that the new auction "will inevitably lead to more catastrophic oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast."
"Biden has the authority to stop this," she added, "but instead he's casting his lot in with the fossil fuel industry and worsening the climate emergency."
Hoskins said that "instead of repeating mistakes from the past, President Biden must uphold his commitment to end new offshore oil and gas leasing. We urge the administration to immediately reverse course and explore every opportunity to uphold the president's commitment to protecting our communities, our climate, and our economy from the threat of drilling."
"Our oceans can and must be a major part of our clean energy future through renewable offshore wind power," she added, "but we are counting on President Biden to keep his promise to end further offshore oil and gas leasing."
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