I’m writing to ask that all new offshore leases for drilling be removed from the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. Like the Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic should not be opened for drilling, and instead of new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, we need a plan to transition communities to a clean, renewable energy economy.
Now more than ever, we are seeing the growing impacts of man-made climate disruption, fueled by our continued reliance on oil, gas, and coal. President Obama has a critical opportunity to extend his climate leadership into the next administration by using the upcoming OCS five-year plan to keep the fossil fuels off our nation’s coasts in the ground where they belong. Our most vulnerable communities are at risk, both from rising sea levels and the very real dangers posed by offshore drilling.
Exploration, drilling, and transportation raise the risks of catastrophic oil spills, and expose our air, water, and wildlife to significant amounts of pollution. There have been 40 large oil spills (greater than 42,000 gallons) since 1964, but smaller spills occur on a daily basis. In the past 45 years, BOEM estimates that more than 500,000 barrels of oil have leaked, unreported, into American waters.
If the estimated oil and gas reserves on the Outer Continental Shelf are extracted and burned, more than 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions would be released, negating the positive efforts by the Obama administration to lower emissions from coal plants and vehicles.
[Your comment will go here]
Thank you for removing the Atlantic coast from the 2017-2022 OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program. Now I urge you to please remove the Arctic as well, and do not include any new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
