Biden climate legacy tested by backlash over Willow project
When Elise Joshi was at the White House last year, her eyes welled with happy tears as President Joe Biden hosted thousands of supporters to celebrate groundbreaking legislation targeting climate change.
“In that moment, I felt a lot of hope that the administration was listening to us,” said Joshi, a California college student who is a leader of Gen-Z for Change, a coalition of young activists on social media.
Now Joshi is planning to return to Washington, but for a very different reason. She's outraged that administration officials approved the Willow project, a largescale oil drilling proposal in Alaska, and she's organizing demonstrations with compatriots from around the country.
Joshi's pivot underscores the political fallout that Biden is facing over Willow and the tension between honoring his promises on climate change and the nation's energy needs.
The president made fighting global warming a central part of his agenda, and White House officials are quick to defend efforts to put the United States on track for steep emissions reductions in the coming years.
But the decision on Willow has alienated supporters, particularly young activists predisposed to skepticism about compromise and incrementalism, at the same time Biden is planning to announce his campaign for reelection.
“There is disappointment. There is anger. There is frustration,” said Lori Lodes, the executive director of Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group aligned with the administration.
But, she added, “what's happened on climate in the past year is nothing short of revolutionary,” including hundreds of billions of financial incentives for clean energy in last year's legislation, and Republicans have refused to confront the problem of global warming.
When it comes to the 2024 election, “I don't really think there's a choice,” Lodes said. “If you care about the climate, there's not a choice.”
White House officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, acknowledged the indignation over Willow, which became a focal point for activism in recent weeks. They emphasized that ConocoPhillips has held leases in that area of Alaska for decades, strengthening the company's legal right to drill.
“The president kept his word where he can by law,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, adding that Biden “has done more on climate change than any other president in history.” Environmental groups already have sued in a renewed effort to block Willow.
Regulators focused on paring down the project's footprint during the approval process. The final decision includes three drill sites, down from the originally proposed five, and the company relinquished about 68,000 acres of other leases as part of the deal.
Administration officials also paired the announcement with a conservation plan that bars drilling in 3 million acres of the Arctic Ocean and seeks new rules on 13 million acres of Alaska land.