Federal judge cites climate crisis in decision to cancel oil and gas leases in Gulf of Mexico
By Ella Nilsen, CNN
Updated 10:08 PM ET, Thu January 27, 2022
These were the SAME LEASES that Joe Biden made certain went MOSTLY to Kenan-controlled Exxon-Mobil -- in appreciation for their help FINANCING the Biden/Harris Campaign, as well as Joe Manchin and several other key Democrats POISED to destroy BUILD BACK BETTER if Machin and "Brain-Fart" Sinema ever get out of the way!!!
A coalition of environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Healthy Gulf and Friends of the Earth, sued the Biden administration to stop the lease sale. Environmental law firm Earthjustice represented the coalition.
"We are pleased that the court invalidated Interior's illegal lease sale," Earthjustice senior attorney Brettny Hardy said in a statement. "We simply cannot continue to make investments in the fossil fuel industry to the peril of our communities and increasingly warming planet."
Contreras' decision found the Biden administration had used outdated modeling when assessing the climate-warming impact of the lease sale, relying on modeling from the Trump administration that concluded the greenhouse gas impacts of not drilling in the gulf would be worse than holding the lease sale -- due to increased reliance on foreign oil and gas supply.
"Even under a deferential review, the Court believes that BOEM acted arbitrarily in excluding foreign consumption from its emissions analysis," Contreras wrote in his decision.
"That's central to the court's decision," Hardy told CNN. "Essentially, what the court determined is that the Interior Department was relying on totally flawed greenhouse gas emissions modeling, so they substantially underestimated the greenhouse gas impacts that would result from development on these leases that had sold."
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