It’s Friday, May 14, and the U.S. is dropping Trump’s Arctic offshore drilling proposal.
The U.S. Department of Interior, headed by Deb Haaland, recently said it’s dropping a Trump-era proposal that would have made Arctic exploratory offshore drilling easier for fossil fuel companies and lowered safety and environmental protections for Alaska’s “sensitive ecosystem and Alaska Native subsistence activities.”
Former President Donald Trump’s proposal was meant to weaken rules once put in place to prevent oil spills like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. It would have eliminated a requirement that companies submit detailed operations plans before filing exploration plans, and it also would have changed rules around the usage of containment equipment — meant to mitigate oil loss during spills — during drilling operations.
Since the Trump-era proposal was never finalized, Obama-era regulations from 2016 will remain in place. Earlier this year, the Biden administration imposed a temporary ban on all new leases for onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling on federal land and water. Meanwhile, U.S. Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey is reintroducing legislation for a permanent ban on oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Smog
Need-to-know basis
A study of 50 years’ worth of ExxonMobil memos, studies, and ads finds evidence that the oil giant influenced rhetoric around climate change to emphasize individual responsibility. In its public communications, the company focused on “consumers,” “demand,” and “energy efficiency,” implicitly pointing the finger at the public rather than at the oil and gas industry itself.
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