College Democrats demanded the Biden administration end the Willow Project, cut oil drilling on federal lands and zero in more on tackling climate change, blasting the president’s “indifference” toward climate change in the wake of the COP28 conference.
The college outreach arm of the Democratic National Committee urged the administration to deliver on its climate promises and demanded Congress pass pro-environmental legislation in a letter to President Biden shared with The Hill on Wednesday.
“With every waking moment of indifference in regards to the issue of climate change, we sink progressively deeper into a global environmental crisis,” the group wrote. “Its impacts, ranging from rising sea levels, unprecedented climate shifts, increased frequency of natural disasters, and worsening of air and water quality, have placed the planet that young people are destined to inherent in jeopardy.”
President Biden, who attended the previous two climate summits, did not travel to the latest U.N. climate conference in Dubai.
The president has infuriated climate change activists and younger voters with his approval of the Willow Project in Alaska and acceleration of gas exports to Europe. As the continent grapples with an energy crisis due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the move by the U.S. made Europe the nation’s largest gas purchaser.
The plan to increase natural gas exports caused a stir even within the Democratic Party. Just last week, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) urged the administration to stop investing in gas plants abroad, citing the $1.8 billion expenditure on fossil fuel plants overseas this year.
“The United States can’t preach temperance from a bar stool, and right now, America is drunk on oil and gas production and exports,” Markey wrote last week.
During the climate summit in Dubai, the administration presented a new plan to cut leaks stemming from methane production, the biggest component of the gas, in hopes of reducing one of the sources of harmful pollution.
By supporting the increased production and exports from the liquid natural gas industry, the administration faces backlash from environmentalists and congressional Democrats.
“Failure to avert climate disaster is a failure of the state,” the student organization wrote in the letter. “Hence, we call on our elected leaders of all levels to leave the world to their children, grandchildren, and young people throughout the nation in the same pristine condition they inherited.”