BLOG: Trump to Lease Millions of Acres in the Gulf of Mexico for Fossil Fuel Extraction

Donald Trump's administration recently announced that it will lease around 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to be used for oil and gas drilling. The move, which represents the largest ever offshore lease deal in the U.S., will likely be finalized by March of 2018.

In a statement about the sale, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said “In today’s low-price energy environment, providing the offshore industry access to the maximum amount of opportunities possible is part of our strategy to spur local and regional economic dynamism and job creation and a pillar of President Trump’s plan to make the United States energy dominant."

However, environmental groups have come out strongly against the deal. In a statement, Athan Manuel, director of the lands protection program of the Sierra Club, said:

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club have it right. At a time when global climate change is worsening and has been shown to be linked to the burning of fossil fuels, the last thing that is needed is an increased investment in dirty energy sources. And it is particularly galling that an increased development of fossil fuels is happening in the Gulf of Mexico, a place already polluted by a multitude of past oil spills.

One of the administration's counterarguments to this would likely be that investments in oil and gas are good for the economy. But this is only true in the short-term. Oil and gas are finite resources. Eventually, we will run out of them. And when that happens, it's not going to be good for the economy to have to both transition to new energy sources and clean up the mess fossil fuels have created on our planet.

For these reasons and more, instead of investing additional money in oil and gas, Trump should be strengthening our commitment to the energy sources of the future. Two of these include:

• Solar, which is rapidly becoming more and more cost effective.

• Wind, which is on track to provide 10 percent of the country's energy by 2020.

Until Trump is willing to prioritize these energy sources and other renewables over dirty energy, the U.S. won't move forward in the fight against climate change.

Photo taken by Chad Teer.

#Environment #Oil #FossilFuels