As the biggest source of carbon emissions in the United States, the transportation sector is a key focus of Biden’s push to usher in a greener economy, according to The Washington Post. On Wednesday, April 12, the Biden administration issued new restrictions that will crack down on auto emissions harder than ever before, The Washington Post reported.
The Biden administration faced backlash after approving multiple new oil drilling sites in Alaska. Photo courtesy of Gillfoto via Wikimedia Commons.
By Sarah Grinnell ’26
Staff Writer
With ambitious pledges to cut U.S. emissions and prioritize climate policy, the election of President Joe Biden in 2020 seemed in line with the goals of many environmental activists, The New York Times said. However, many of these climate advocates are now expressing their ire over the major step the Biden Administration has recently taken towards greenlighting an $8 billion ConocoPhillips oil project on the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a project which activists and Indigenous communities argue will accelerate climate change and environmental damage to the Alaskan landscape, The New York Times reported.
According to The New York Times, in the wake of court appeals and challenges by a number of critics, the Bureau of Land Management has conducted an environmental analysis of the oil project, endorsing a scaled-back version of the original operation in order to reduce its ecological footprint. The Washington Post explains that this revised project, known as Willow, would reduce the five drilling sites to three so as to better protect wildlife. Despite these adjustments, Willow is still projected to produce roughly 600 million barrels of oil over the course of 30 years, The New York Times reported.
Due to the effects of climate change, Alaska is warming “faster than anywhere else in the world,” Alaska program director for Defenders of Wildlife Nicole Whittington-Evans said in a CBC News article. According to an Earthjustice article, this is posing threats to Arctic ecosystems in the form of sea-level rise, sea-ice melt and permafrost thaw. Additionally, the article explains that the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where the drilling would take place, provides essential wildlife habitat for species such as polar bears, migratory birds and caribou. Critics of Willow, such as Whittington-Evans, argue that its approval will only aid in exacerbating this ecological harm at the “great expense of wildlife and communities.”
Despite this pushback, the president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, Eric S. Isaacson told Smithsonian Magazine that “Willow will benefit local communities and enhance American energy security while producing oil in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.” Alaska’s senators agree with him. According to The New York Times, Republican senator Lisa Murkowski stressed that the project will create “thousands of good union jobs, and immense benefits that will be felt across Alaska and the nation” if it passes. In fact, Alaska’s oil and gas industry contributed $3.1 billion to state and local governments in 2019, helping to pay for services such as public safety and education, The Washington Post detailed. According to the article, this possibility of an economic upswing for Alaska is especially important, as Representative Mary Peltola emphasized Alaska’s recent economic struggles.
According to the New York Times, while some Alaska Native groups, such as the Alaska Federation of Natives and Alaska Native Village Corporation Association, support Willow and its economic prospects, other nations in the areas nearest to the project remain concerned. For example, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak of the Iñupiat community told The New York Times that “the project encroaches on the habitat of the millions of migratory birds who use the area, as well as whales, polar bears and the more than 80,000 caribou that locals depend on for subsistence fishing and hunting.” If Willow is approved, she said, “her community would be surrounded by oil and gas projects.”
In a CBC News article, Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, highlighted the same concerns, that “Arctic Slope communities have suffered health issues and the loss of traditional practices and food sources because of oil extraction.”
Broader environmental groups in Alaska and nationwide have also chimed in. In a statement on their website, Earthjustice argues that “the Willow Project would permanently scar the largest undeveloped area in the United States and jeopardize the health and traditional practices of nearby Indigenous communities,” and points out that “over 30 years, the project would produce an estimated 590 million barrels of oil — enough to generate approximately 260 million tons of CO2 equivalent once consumed.”
“No other oil and gas project has greater potential to undermine the Biden administration’s climate goals,” Karlin Itchoak, Alaska regional director for The Wilderness Society, argued in a Wilderness Society article. According to The New York Times, Itchoak said, “if this project were to move forward, it would result in the production and burning of at least 30 years of oil at a time when the world needs climate solutions and a transition to clean energy.”
According to The New York Times, a final decision by the Biden administration is expected to come within the next month, but the divided responses to the project reveal the complexity of the situation.Peltola addressed this conflict between economy and climate in The Washington Post: “[O]f course every person on Earth wants us to be shifting to renewables … But most people also recognize you cannot do that with a snap of the fingers.” However, as the various reactions show, if the project is approved, select Native communities and activists fear the U.S. will only move further away from that future of renewable energy production.
Current guidelines allow private insurers to withhold birth control on moral or religious grounds. Photo courtesy of Thought Catalog via Flickr.
By Catelyn Fitzgerald ’23
Science & Environment Editor
On Jan. 30, the United States Department of Health and Human Services along with the Department of Labor and the Treasury proposed an adjustment to birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act. This adjustment would increase access for over 125,000 Americans, CNN reported. According to the CNN article, the new rule would alter existing exemptions which allow insurers to refuse to offer birth control for religious or moral reasons. The rule will be opened for public comment over the next few months before being finalized, the article said.
Currently, most Affordable Care Act plans are required to include no-cost birth control coverage, but a rule created in 2018 by the Trump Administration allows private healthcare insurers to cite “religious beliefs” or “moral convictions” to be exempted from providing contraceptives, a press release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said. According to the press release, individuals enrolled in a plan that uses the religious or moral exemption can only access contraceptives if their employer or insurer voluntarily grants them an accommodation.
The new rule proposed by the Biden Administration would eliminate the moral exemption to contraceptive coverage, and create a pathway for individuals to access birth control even if their insurer has a religious exemption, a Reuters article reported. The article explains that the new rule works by allowing any provider to offer free birth control and be reimbursed for the medication by an insurance company. The article went on to say that participating insurance companies receive credits from the government for sponsoring the purchase.
A senior Health and Human Services official told CNN that the new rule is intended to serve as a compromise between religiously affiliated employers and individuals seeking access to contraceptives. The CNN article highlighted the importance of the new rule in a post Roe v. Wade America, where states are able to limit access to abortions, and went on to emphasize that the extent to which individuals are aware of the new individual pathway will be a key determinant of its success in increasing birth control access.
April 8, 2021
Flooding in Australia has forced over 20,000 people to evacuate and over 150 schools to close down.
The journal Geophysical Research Letters published a new study that shows summer in the Northern Hemisphere is lengthening. As a result of climate change, by the end of the century, summer could extend by nearly six months.
Pope Francis made an appeal for humanity to face climate change by quoting Shakespeare, writing, “To see or not to see, that is the question.”
Human activity is currently responsible for degrading two-thirds of Earth’s tropical rain forests. Read more about it here.
A NASA study has confirmed that human activities are shifting Earth’s energy budget, as more energy from the sun is being trapped than can escape back into space.
A recent experiment found that coffee pulp, left over from the coffee making process, can aid in the regrowth of forests.
The Biden administration announced an expansive offshore wind plan that would install enough wind turbines on the East Coast to power 10 million American homes.
How is climate change affecting major league baseball? Read this article to find out.
The Biden administration recently delivered a major victory for environmental protection by reinstating the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area. The protected area off the coast of Alaska was originally designated in a 2016 executive order issued by the Obama administration. The designation was then revoked in the early weeks of Trump’s presidency. The NBSCRA was restored as part of Biden’s first executive order, the Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.
Caption. One of Trump’s last policies to enact in office reduced over 3 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl. Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.
By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
On day one, newly inaugurated President Joe Biden and his climate team got to work: They rejoined the Paris Agreement, rescinded the federal permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, reestablished the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases and placed a moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Biden has promised a presidency that centers on climate change. Despite his goals, the administration will be working with deep budget cuts, staff losses and the elimination of climate programs and research from the former administration. Drastic climate action will not occur until Biden officials remedy the deficiencies left behind. Gina McCarthy, the administration’s national climate advisor, said, “There is hard work ahead to rebuild agencies and our capacities from the ground up.”
Trump’s actions over his final two months in office weakened many existing environmental regulations. For example, on Jan. 13, with most attention focused on former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment vote, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule limiting its ability to regulate heat-trapping gases. That same day, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it had slashed over 3 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, possibly leading to logging in those areas.
Throughout his presidency, Trump made significant changes to the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Within the past month, additional changes took place, making it more difficult to define “critical habitats,” specific geographic areas set aside for a species’ survival. One of the changes he made reduces the amount of land considered “critical habitats,” while another makes it easier to avoid establishing a habitat.
Along with more recent changes, the Trump administration has led to lost years of progress on emission reduction and developing public trust in scientific integrity. The administration also demonstrated pullbacks on climate regulations despite scientific authorities clearly communicating the urgent need to act. In 2017, Trump told the EPA to dismantle the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The plan aimed to reduce carbon emissions from the power sector to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This reduction would have avoided 70 million tons of emissions by the end of this year and over 400 million tons by 2030. The Clean Power Plan was replaced with the Affordable Clean Energy rule that the EPA said would result in only 11 million tons less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 2030. This rule was then unanimously struck down in federal court on Jan. 19, 2021.
Due to how long greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere, the Trump administration could influence climate change for years to come. A 2020 estimate from the Rhodium Group, a research institute aiming to provide independent and original research, data and analytics on a range of global subjects, found that the Trump administration’s actions, which weakened greenhouse gas regulations, could add 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2035. Additionally, various climate-related organizations have been adversely affected. EPA research labs and science advisory boards are currently smaller, as their workforce has lost over 600 people. The Department of Energy’s Quadrennial Energy Review, a four-part roadmap for U.S. energy policy up to 2040, has been curtailed, along with other research. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Environment and Energy has also been cut. Additionally, the Trump administration disengaged from the international Arctic Council and blocked climate work at the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.
Among the slew of decreasing regulations, the oil and gas lease spree has peaked during the last few months of the Trump administration, with the Bureau of Land Management approving the sale of 1,400 leases out of 3,000 applications. Oil and gas leases are difficult to undo because they often involve property rights laws. Furthermore, many of the oil and gas leases target sensitive habitats. The Bureau of Land Management headquarters recently relocated to Grand Junction, Colorado, from Washington, D.C., causing many leading officials to leave the agency and decrease its effectiveness.
In early January, the Trump administration announced it had issued drilling leases on over 400,000 acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The formal issue of the leases by the Bureau of Land Management came a day before the inauguration of Biden, who had pledged to protect the 19.6 million-acre land. Before leaseholders can begin drilling wells, they need to seek permits from the new administration. The Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska office said it had issued nine of the 11 leases that received bids at auction on Jan. 6 and were working on issuing the remaining two. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority was given seven leases. The other two were issued to Alaska real estate company Knik Arm Services LLC and Regenerate Alaska Inc., a unit of Australia’s 88 Energy Ltd. The Gwich’in Steering Committee that represents tribes reliant on the region’s Porcupine caribou denounced the move.
On day one of his presidency, Biden put a temporary moratorium on the gas and oil leasing activities in the refuge. This ban cited alleged legal deficiencies underlying the program and the inadequacy of required environmental review. Biden’s executive order will be directed to the Department of the Interior to review the program and the law surrounding the situation. It could be difficult for the Biden administration and environmental groups to challenge these leases. Once the lease is sold, its buyer has property rights over it, so there will likely be litigation if the leases themselves were validly issued. If any one of the leases are upheld in court, it will become much more difficult to revoke any of them.
Nevertheless, buried in the $900 billion stimulus package passed last December was some climate legislation. The package included the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbons, a class of super heat-trapping gases, and the extension of carbon capture tech tax credit for the industry. The United States will also officially rejoin the Paris Agreement on Feb. 19. The Biden team is likely to rely on state and local partners to help demonstrate emission cuts. The administration has removed the Keystone XL Pipeline’s permit, meaning the chances of it being built have significantly diminished. The pipeline would have supported new production beyond 2050. The administration is also reestablishing the Obama-era process that developed and maintained the social cost of carbon and methane. The metrics will assign a monetized value to each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere and will be used in cost-benefit analyses for regulation and other actions.
The Biden administration can replace many of the environmental protections Trump dismantled. Policies such as reinstating or tightening Obama-era standards on issues like car and truck emissions can take anywhere from a few months to a year. There are several pathways that the Biden administration may use to undo the regulatory accomplishments of the Trump administration. The fastest route is the Congressional Review Act that allows Congress to nullify a rule within 60 legislative working days of its passage. However, when a law is nullified, it prohibits future regulation that is considered “substantially the same.” This part of the act hasn’t been tested in courts, and it could backfire when developing similar legislation. Another pathway is through the use of courts to block regulations on various grounds. The rule-making process itself is another tool where it could be possible to simultaneously repeal and replace rules. Many of these processes can be full of delays and take years to go fully into effect.
