President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is putting the U.S. territorial waters in the Atlantic, Pacific, Eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska off-limits to offshore drilling. This action is important news for the whales, fish and coastal communities that need oil-free waters to thrive, and perhaps it also marks a sea change in how America thinks about offshore drilling.
Only a decade ago, the Obama administration put forward a proposal to expand drilling into the southeast Atlantic. If it had gone forward, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia would have, for the first time, faced the risks inherent in offshore drilling: ongoing, daily pollution; industrialization of the coastline; and the ever-present risk of a catastrophic oil spill.
As we have seen from Alaska to the Gulf in recent decades, the consequences of an oil spill in our coastal waters are wide-reaching and can take decades to resolve. Oil slicks cover wildlife in toxic oil — killing sea turtles, seabirds and fish and poisoning marine mammals, including whales and dolphins. Oil washing ashore fouls beaches and coastal wetlands, and the oil that isn’t collected can linger in the environment for decades.
Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle covered in oil from Deepwater Horizon spillPhoto by Blair Witherington | CC-BY-2.0
Plus, onshore risks come with the pipelines and other industrial infrastructure needed to support offshore drilling.
For communities all along the Atlantic seaboard, these threats to their pristine beaches and ocean ecosystems were too great. They mobilized en-masse, packing public hearings and passing city council resolutions opposing drilling off the coast. And the Obama administration heard them: the final offshore drilling plan declined to expand drilling to the Atlantic, even as it continued offering more drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
The first Trump administration proposed drilling in nearly all of the continental U.S.’ ocean territory. But, just as President Barack Obama found in the Southeast, President Donald Trump soon faced pushback from all coasts and across the political spectrum. The public in coastal states didn’t want to risk the water quality and marine life in their oceans for a little more oil.
This bipartisan opposition was intense, and the Trump administration chose to pull back. Not only did the administration choose not to finalize a plan that expanded drilling to all of our coasts, President Trump even used his authority to protect most of the southeast Atlantic and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico from drilling leasing for 10 years.
President Biden’s proclamations Monday mark yet another step forward in the long fight to keep drilling away from pristine parts of the ocean. This decision might have been a long time coming, but it’s also common sense: Expanding drilling to new places at a time when we are producing more and more of our energy from clean, renewable sources is a bad choice.
But even with this welcome milestone, we still have a long way to go.
First, we’ll need to ensure that this ban on offshore drilling endures. Already, President-elect Trump and members of Congress are pledging to reverse it.
Second, even as the public has rejected drilling in new areas over the past decade, many people continue to support ongoing or even increased drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — drilling that, every day, risks spilling oil in the same waters that are home to whales, sea turtles and coral. This was reflected in drilling policy: under the Biden administration, oil leasing in the Gulf continued, and based on President Trump’s campaign statements, we can expect plans to continue or even expand Gulf drilling in the next four years.
We don’t want this issue to be a back-and-forth affair. We want to see a permanent swing of hearts and minds against offshore drilling, because the ocean is too beautiful and valuable to put at risk.
So we’ll continue all our work to keep ramping up solar, wind, EVs, EV charging and other renewable energy technologies that eventually will render fossil fuels obsolete. Because if we don’t need the energy that would come from offshore oil rigs, even the most ardent “drill, baby, drill” politician would find that message hard to sell.
