Environmentalists are gearing up for a fight with the Obama administration if a new five-year offshore drilling plan slated to be released this week expands permits off nearly all areas of the U.S. coastline.
The activist group 350.org, which is involved in a national campaign to get presidential candidates to make climate change a core focus of their campaigns, says the president’s new offshore plan should place a hold on all new drilling. That group and others are bracing for the administration’s new five-year leasing plan to be issued as soon as Tuesday.
The administration is expected to hold back on proposing new drilling leases in the Arctic, but they could open up new swaths to drilling off the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
“Any new offshore drilling will be a stain on President Obama’s climate legacy,” said May Boeve, 350.org’s executive director, in a Monday statement. “If the president is going to meet the targets he agreed to at the climate talks in Paris, he needs to keep fossil fuels in the ground or in this case, under the sea.”
“We can’t afford any more oil spilling into the oceans and carbon pouring into the atmosphere,” Boeve said. “Selling off public resources to companies intent on destroying our future is an outrage.”
The five-year leasing plan lays out where and when the Interior Department will allow bids by oil and gas companies for federal permits to drill on the outer-continental shelf along the coasts of the United States. In recent years, it has become increasingly controversial as the agency looked to open the Atlantic coastline to offshore drilling in federal waters, a first for the agency.
The statement comes as other major environmental groups on Monday began endorsing Democrats for key spots in the U.S. Senate in battleground states like Illinois, ahead of the presidential primary election on Tuesday.
The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, The League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club came out in support of Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth’s bid for the U.S. Senate over the Republican incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk. The groups said Illinois deserves two Democrats in the Senate that support taking action on climate change.
Duckworth would join Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin if she wins the general election later this year.
“The people of Illinois deserve two senators who will consistently support climate action and defend public health, and we are thrilled to endorse Rep. Tammy Duckworth to join Senator Durbin as the next senator from Illinois to do just that,” said Alex Taurel, legislative director deputy with The League of Conservation Voters, in a joint statement from the three groups.
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The activists’ endorsement underscore priorities that President Obama laid out on Saturday, saying Democratic supporters must begin focusing on taking back the Senate as much as winning the White House in November.
