Arctic Circle Jerk
“On February 9, 2020, at a town-hall meeting in Hudson, New Hampshire, Joe Biden, then a Presidential candidate, took a question from a woman standing near the bleachers. The woman asked about oil drilling in Alaska. Biden, in response, pledged, “No more drilling on federal lands, period, period, period.” It was, he added, ‘a disaster’ to drill for oil in the Arctic—’a big disaster, in my view.'” Well, times (and politics) change, and Biden, who could fairly be called the Climate President just “granted ConocoPhillips approval for an immense new drilling project—the Willow oil project—in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.” The New Yorker: Why Did the Biden Administration Approve the Willow Project? This is the most foreboding part of the story: “The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on earth, which means that the Willow project itself will be vulnerable to climate change. To deal with the problem, ConocoPhillips has plans to install chillers to keep the permafrost frozen under its heavy equipment.” (You can’t say we weren’t given any warning signals.)