Analysis | The Alaskan oil project is a symbol of a larger argument: What matters more, curbing demand or keeping fossil fuels in the ground?
on Twitter. “This decision betrays Biden’s own climate promises,” Jeff Ordower, the North America director of the environmental organization 350.org, said in a statement.During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden had promised to prevent new oil and gas drilling on federal lands — a vow that runs contrary to his administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’s operation, known as Willow, in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
— and, by extension, the climate movement — has been divided on a key question. What matters more — cutting fossil fuel demand, by encouraging consumers to shift to things like renewable energy and electric vehicles, or tamping down on supply by preventing oil and gas drilling in the United States?The Biden administration, with its huge investments in a build-out of clean energy, has largely focused on the former.
This also creates an accounting problem when assessing the project. Activists and opponents referred to the project as a “carbon bomb” — and indeed, according to, the project would produce around 277 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during its lifetime, or around 9.2 million tons per year. But that number assumes that, if the ConocoPhillips project didn’t go forward, no other oil companies would pick up the slack. Accounting for leakage, the Biden administration’s estimate for theCO2 from the project is closer to 70 million metric tons, or around 2.3 million tons per year — not nothing, but significantly smaller.
The Biden administration, however, has not taken drastic steps to cut fossil fuel supply, even as the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars boosting clean energy. Some of this is politics: Mary Peltola, the first Alaskan Democrat elected to the House of Representatives in 50 years, supports the project.Legal considerations also come into play.
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