Arrested Perspective
Obama misses the climate point in Louisiana
August 23 was a remarkable day in Louisiana — and not just because I and others were arrested outside a federal office and jailed for demonstrating against expanding offshore fossil fuel development in the Gulf of Mexico, near a pile of debris from the recent extreme flooding in the state.
What made it even more significant was that President Obama was also in Louisiana to show his support for flood victims; yet he didn’t connect it to their plight to climate change, as The New York Times and other major media outlets already had. Instead he doubled down on his administration’s aggressive expansion of domestic fossil fuel production, quietly allowing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to sell 24 new offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf the very next day.
This disconnect between Obama’s climate and energy policies has been infuriating to the growing movement calling for climate action and an end to the leasing of public land and waters to fossil fuel companies. I’ve been an active part of that movement, working with Gulf Coast groups on a massive demonstration against another offshore lease sale in New Orleans in March and then actions at a series of hearings on the proposed expansion of offshore drilling from Florida to Texas.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I got on the plane in my hometown of San Francisco on my way to New Orleans. The images and stories of flood victims I’d seen were heartbreaking. Cherri Foytlin, a climate action leader from the Gulf who I’ve been working with, ended up with two feet of water in her living room. She and thousands of others in Louisiana were experiencing climate change now — desperately working with friends and family to tear out the walls, carpet and floors before the black mold took root — lending an urgent emotional edge to their opposition to new offshore drilling in the Gulf.
I spent the afternoon in jail, but that pales in comparison to what communities in the Gulf are facing in the aftermath of the flooding — over a dozen died; thousands have lost everything.
The evidence is clear and compelling that we must keep these fossil fuels in the ground if we’re to avoid climate catastrophe. On that same fateful morning of August 23, the Center for Biological Diversity, where I work, released a detailed study finding that burning the oil and gas in unleased federal waters in the Gulf would release 33 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, as much greenhouse gas pollution as running 9,500 coal-fired power plants for a year.
But rather than listening to the people of the Gulf or the climate scientists, the Obama administration has shut out its critics. The August 24 lease sale was the first that BOEM conducted completely behind closed doors, taking bids online and then refusing to let the public even witness the announcement. Clearly, the Keep It in the Ground movement — which has disrupted every public fossil fuel auction in the past year — is having an impact.
President Obama’s rhetoric on climate change can be soaring and inspiring, which is why his energy policy is so maddening. The United States already has enough identified fossil fuel reserves to get us through the transition to clean power. We don’t need more Gulf oil, a reality reflected in the record low bids that came in for this lease sale.
Obama is selling out his climate legacy for cheap. But it’s not too late to make a change. He’s scheduled to make the final decision on BOEM’s 2017–2022 offshore drilling plan — which currently includes 10 more lease sales in the Gulf — by the end of this year. With a stroke of his pen, he can protect the Gulf and the Arctic and cancel all future offshore leases.
The Gulf Coast has been treated like a sacrifice zone by the fossil fuel industry for far too long. It’s time to end business as usual, and that starts with keeping offshore fossil fuels in the ground.
