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President Biden ran on a platform of slowing the dangerous heating of the planet caused by fossil fuel emissions.
But despite the Democrats’ passage of an ambitious climate investment package last year, Biden has angered many of his core voters — particularly younger ones — by what they view as his continued support for the fossil fuel industry.
In many areas, chiefly his approval of new oil leases and gas export terminals, environmental groups argue that Biden has been a more committed friend to the industry than even his predecessor, former President Trump.
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
Here are four places where Biden has caught fire for prioritizing fossil fuel production just in the last month. Allowing an Alaska ‘carbon bomb’
In March, the Biden administration greenlit a massive, 30-year oil drilling project on Alaska’s Beaufort Sea.
The ConocoPhillips project will release 576 million barrels of oil, resulting in 239 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the administration.
That’s approximately the same as two new coal plants burning, or 1.7 million new gas-powered cars, pumping out emissions for the next 30 years, based on EPA data.
In a video posted to Twitter, activist group Climate Defiance said that Biden “committed ecocide” by giving a second approval to Willow, a project initially permitted by the Trump administration.
On Saturday, the group blockaded the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner to protest Biden’s approval of the project.
“We came of age amidst superstorms and fires and crumbling ice shelves,” the group tweeted. “We trusted our President – but he sold us out to fossil fuel CEOs.”
The White House, by contrast, argues that it was threading a needle on Willow: It approved the project in order to win political support for new policies that would put vast swaths of the rest of the Arctic Ocean off limits.
“My strong inclination was to disapprove of [Willow] across the board,” Biden said in March, according to The Hill.
But the president said administration lawyers feared that doing so would likely open the administration to a successful lawsuit from ConocoPhillips — which he implied could threaten further conservation goals.
“I thought it was the better gamble and a hell of a trade off to have the Arctic Ocean, the [Beaufort] Sea and so many other places off limits forever now,” Biden said.
At the time, environmental groups argued that Biden had traded an imminent oil buildout for easily reversed future protections.
“The benefits of these protections can be undone just as quickly by approval of oil and gas projects on public lands,” said Athan Manuel of the Sierra Club.
But the government’s hands were tied, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in March. ConocoPhillips’s existing leases “are decades old, granted by prior administrations.
