Joe Biden has issued more oil drilling permits than Donald Trump, despite gushing climate change promises

Oil extraction [image credit: ewg.org]

Politicking turns out to be more important than supposed climate ‘ambition’. As one observer commented: “Objectively, he over-promised and under-delivered”. Claims to be trying to save the planet from unthinkable climate nasties – which lacked credibility anyway – are left looking even more threadbare.
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Joe Biden issued more oil and gas drilling permits than Donald Trump in his first year as president despite pledging to halt the practice as part of ambitious climate change goals, says The Telegraph.

When he entered the White House, Mr Biden identified climate change as one of four priorities and promised a dramatic reversal after the tenure of Mr Trump, who frequently mocked climate science.

However, federal data shows the Biden administration approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first year, far outpacing the Trump administration’s 12-month total of 2,658.

The yawning gulf between Mr Biden’s policies on oil, gas and coal extraction and his initial promises has threatened to throw his climate credentials into disarray.

At November’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, the 79-year-old president called climate change “an existential threat to human existence” and pledged to cut US emissions by half over the next nine years.

Days later, the administration offered 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing and plans to offer more than 300,000 acres of public lands leases in March.

“Biden’s runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires ending new fossil fuel extraction, but Biden is racing in the opposite direction.”

Faced with a fuel shortage, rising petrol prices and increasingly likely defeat at the all-important midterm elections later this year, the White House agreed to increase oil production even as Mr Biden implored world leaders to stop burning fossil fuels.

Continued here.