Dear President Obama: You Must Do This Bold Climate Act Before You Go

Dear President Obama:

With a simple stroke of your presidential pen, you can protect our planet and your legacy as the first U.S. president to seriously address climate change. Use your executive power to prevent the Trump administration from expanding oil leases in our oceans.

Having proclaimed that climate change is a hoax, the president-elect is poised to “drill, baby, drill,” unravel your climate gains and pollute our seas. So the world needs you to permanently protect our oceans and climate – something you have the full authority to unilaterally do today.

Climate scientists say we need to keep untapped oil in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change and meet our international obligations. The best place to do that is offshore. Unleased federal waters contain nearly 75 billion barrels of crude – more than twice that of unleased onshore federal lands. Simply by curbing offshore oil and gas leasing, you would keep up to 61.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere and oceans. That’s enough to make a difference.

Toss your existing plan to expand offshore leasing around Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s time to act boldly. There’s always been a contradiction between your climate goals and your “all of the above” energy policies. The clock is ticking and the window for action is closing fast.

The election of Trump, a climate change denier who has pledged to revive the coal industry and expand our domestic fossil fuel production, creates an urgency for you to act now. A recent analysis estimates that U.S. greenhouse gas output would increase 16 percent by 2024 compared to the energy policies proposed by Hillary Clinton, which were similar to yours.

Yet there’s little that Trump could do to reverse your decision to permanently protect federal waters from offshore drilling. Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gives you the authority to “withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the Outer Continental Shelf,” which provides no pathway for future presidents to undo what is intended to be a lasting action.

President Eisenhower used this same provision more than 50 years ago to permanently protect more than 75 square miles of coral reefs along the Florida Keys. You could use it reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and protect marine life and coastal communities from the next Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez disasters.

The world is waiting for the U.S., the world’s second-biggest carbon emitter, to reduce its impact on the global climate – and they’re likely to keep waiting under President Trump. But you don’t need to wait, you can use your existing withdrawal authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to honor the commitment you made at the Paris climate talks.

By permanently withdrawing unleased waters from the federal oil leasing program, you can be the change we need.