Press Release: President Biden’s Climate Action Must Include Alaska
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 20, 2022
Andy Moderow | Tel: 907-360-3622 | Email: andy@alasakwild.org
Kristen Miller | Tel: 202-210-8760 | Email: kristen@alaskawild.org
President Biden’s Climate Action Must Include Alaska
Positive Climate Action and Approving the Willow Drilling Project Are Incompatible
Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, President Biden will address how the United States will take urgent action to solve the global climate crisis through executive branch leadership.
Statement by Kristen Miller, conservation director of Alaska Wilderness League:
“As part of any urgent climate action, the administration must reverse course on the Willow project, ConocoPhillips’ massive oil drilling proposal in our nation’s western Arctic region. Our public lands are a crucial piece of nation’s climate solution portfolio – and no single project on public lands has more potential to negatively impact America’s climate future. Willow is a climate disaster we simply cannot afford.
“As the President stands in front of a shuttered power plant, he is simultaneously considering a project that would lock in climate pollution through 2053 equal to the annual emissions of at least 76 coal plants. As he touts his offshore energy plans, a decision to move forward with the Willow drilling project threatens to double the greenhouse gas emissions that the President would avoid with his efforts to expand clean energy on our public lands and waters.
“Willow is the wrong project in the wrong place at the absolute wrong time – it would endanger public health, harm wildlife, and threaten the subsistence hunting that sustain local communities. By embracing the ‘no action alternative’ and preventing the Willow climate disaster from moving forward, the President will demonstrate the comprehensive leadership needed on climate.
“Transitioning to clean energy is totally incompatible with locking in decades of pollution from new oil drilling projects.”
More details on the proposed Willow drilling project and the work of Alaska Wilderness League can be found at www.alaskawild.org
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Photo credit: Dave Shreffler