Obama’s move protects his environmental legacy in the Arctic region and along the Atlantic coast, creating a huge legal challenge for President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to allow more U.S. energy production.
Obama’s ban includes huge swaths of the continental shelf in both the Alaskan Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. The areas where drilling is banned include 115 acres making up 98 percent of federally owned lands in the Alaskan Arctic, and a 3.8 million acre stretch in the Atlantic Ocean extending from Norfolk, Virginia, to the Canadian border.
U.S. natural resources law at work
The Atlantic points out that not all climate change stories involve protests, melting ice caps or scientists. The president’s move to save his environmental legacy begins with a 1953 law that protects our natural resources.
In 1948, then President Harry Truman declared that the federal government controlled the huge seams of oil and gas beneath the seafloor offshore, around the coast of the United States. The federal government, “aware of the long-range worldwide need for new sources of petroleum and other minerals,” would encourage their development.
Congress ratified Truman’s declaration, and five years later, in 1953, after clarifying some of the terms and restoring some rights to the states, Congress adopted the Continental Outer Shelf Lands Act.
Under the law, the president can sell leases to mine federal oil reserves on the “outer continental shelf,” a legally defined area that begins three miles from shore and extends to the 200-mile international waters boundary. Under a similar law passed the same year, the Submerged Lands Act allowed individual states to offer oil leases for lands within three miles of their coastline.
An enduring legacy for future generations in the light of climate change
The president’s move was hailed by environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers and met with chagrin and anger by climate deniers and Republican lawmakers, as was expected, according to EcoWatch.
The incoming administration will undoubtedly work to reverse Obama’s move, but it will be more difficult because the declaration is not considered an “executive action.” “We believe there is a strong legal basis for these withdrawals,” said one senior administration official, according to CNN, predicting the moves would “go forward and will stand the test of time.”
“This action has the force of law. There is no authority for a future president to withdraw it,” the official said.
Dan Naatz, senior vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America had harsh words for Obama’s initiative on Tuesday. “We disagree with this last-minute political rhetoric coming from the Obama administration and contest this decision by the outgoing administration as disingenuous. With exactly one month left in office, President Obama chose to succumb to environmental extremists demands to keep our nation’s affordable and abundant energy supplies away from those who need it the most by keeping them in the ground.”
But nations across the globe must face the reality of climate change and the necessity of moving away from our reliance on fossil fuels. We must leave huge seams of oil and natural gas in the ground, permanently untapped.
