‘Code Red’ to Oil Black in Just 23 Days

New U.S. administration continues same-old fossil fuels doublespeak.

President Joe Biden is looking a lot like the supposedly wise old owl from the Tootsie Pop commercials.

People over a certain age in the USA will remember them well. They featured a youngster asking an owl, who is wearing an academic mortar board to signify his intelligence, how many licks it takes to get to the chocolate center of a Tootsie Pop (see video below).

The owl takes a lick and counts aloud: “A-one.” Then another lick: “A-two.” And a third: “A-three.” 

Then, suddenly, the owl crunches through the hard candy shell to the chocolate and polishes off the treat.

“Three,” he says authoritatively, handing the empty Tootsie Pop stick back to the kid.

Instead of three, Biden’s number is 23. 

That’s how many days it took him to go from saying – 

“’This is code red’:
Biden sounds alarm on climate crisis…”
The Guardian, Sept. 7, 2021

To allowing this – 

“BOEM announced on September 30, 2021,
that it will hold an oil and
gas lease sale for
the Gulf of Mexico
on November 17, 2021.”
U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

It’s called Lease Sale 257, and the Biden administration announced it 23 days after his ‘Code Red’ climate change proclamation.

Just 23 days from blood red to money green.

Blood Money.

Climate Action Example?

And just like the owl’s response to the kid, Biden’s response to Earth’s citizens regarding the climate crisis is entirely inadequate. Not to mention hypocritical.

Insult to injury – 

Even after his administration announced the offshore oil lease dumpster sale in the Gulf of Mexico, which would be the largest in U.S. history, Biden said this (during the COP26 global summit on addressing climate change, no less):

“We’ll demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table
(on climate change) but hopefully leading by the power of our example.”

Lease Sale 257?

Some example.

Some Sanity. Please.

The usual groups are raising Cain, issuing statements that combine condemnation with appeals to the better angels of Biden’s nature.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the White House or Interior Department, there must be an adviser whispering in Biden’s ear, “Um, Sir, this offshore oil lease sale is inconsistent with your public position on climate change.”

Someone in his administration must understand that “Code Red” means it is absolutely essential to the viability of the human race to halt fossil fuel extraction immediately, then take actions to shift infrastructure and systems to renewables, fund adaptation measures and address racial and economic inequities that are inextricably bound up with the climate crisis. 

But no.

As of now, Biden is allowing the sale of offshore oil leases to proceed. If it does, decades more of carbon dioxide emissions will be locked in.

Same Ol’ Fossil Fuels Song & Dance

Bush I
Clinton
Bush II
Obama
Trump

It hasn’t mattered. Nor has control of the U.S. Congress by one major party or the other.

The science on the disastrous cause-effect relationship between fossil fuels and global warming has been clear all along, but the illogical furtherance of fossil-fuel extraction and burning has bulldozed ahead, unfettered.

Just how many licks are we going to give fossil-fuel companies and the crooked politicians they keep in their pockets like so many lollipops? How many more times are we going to allow them to play us for suckers?

Contact your U.S. representative, U.S. senators, President Biden and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland today. Tell them to stop Lease Sale 257.

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Featured image by Clyde Thomas via Unsplash