Oppose Huge New Oil Drilling in Alaska
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Dear members, supporters, and friends of The Shalom Center,
The NY Times confirmed early today an earlier report of a betrayal by President Biden of a promise to the American people, the people of the world, and all life-forms on Planet Earth to protect oil deposits in Alaska from further worsening of the climate crisis by approving leases for oil-company Corporate Carbon Pharaohs to drill for oil.
The Times reports the newly approved burning will send 280 million tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere each year for thirty years to broil Earth and bring worse plagues of fire, flood, famine, and disease upon us all. The time it will take to start the drilling will mean this has no effect whatsoever on the price of gasoline for several years to come.
Mr. Biden may think he needs to do this to win reelection in 2024. In 2020 he won election through the votes of millions of young people who believed his promise to Heal Earth, our common home and their shared inheritance. Betraying that promise will breed only cynicism and despair.
We urge all of us and all our friends and congregants to call the US Capitol at 202-224-3121, ask for the offices of our two Senators, call each one, and express our opinion of this deal. We will follow up with more action-suggestions.
Excerpts from the NYT and a link to its whole article follow. We at The Shalom Center will pursue this campaign for Love of Earth rather than Greed for Hyper-Profit.
We urgently ask you to share this Shalom Report with your friends and congregants, and we ask you and your friends to support this work with the strongest, most loving support you can give. The link is
https://bit.ly/ContributeToTSC
Biden Administration to Approve Willow Oil Project in Alaska, Officials Say
By Lisa Friedman
NEW YORK TIMES
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/climate/biden-willow-arctic-drilling-restrictions.html
EXCERPTS FOLLOW
Mar 13, 2023 01:28 AM
The Biden administration on Monday will formally approve a huge oil drilling project in Alaska known as Willow, according to two people familiar with the decision, despite widespread opposition because of its likely environmental and climate impacts.
The president will also impose sweeping restrictions on offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and across Alaska’s North Slope in an apparent effort to temper criticism over the Willow decision and, as one administration official put it, to form a “firewall” to limit future oil leases in the region. The Interior Department also is expected to issue new rules to protect more than 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska from oil and gas leasing.
The restrictions, however, are unlikely to offset concerns that the $8 billion Willow project, led by oil giant ConocoPhillips, will have the potential to produce more than 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years.
Burning all that oil could release nearly 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. On an annual basis, that would translate into 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution, equal to adding nearly two million cars to the roads each year. The United States, the second biggest polluter on the planet after China, emits about 5.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
Again, we urgently ask you to share this Shalom Report with your friends and congregants, and we ask you and your friends to support this work with the strongest, most loving support you can give. The link:
https://bit.ly/ContributeToTSC
With your help, we will continue and expand our effort to give new life to Earth and human Earthlings. As the Song of Songs teaches, “Love is strong as death!”
With blessings of love and shalom,
— Arthur