The US government on Thursday moved to vastly expand offshore drilling from the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans with a plan that would open up federal waters off California for the first time in more than three decades.
The new five-year drilling plan could also open new areas of oil and gas exploration off the east coast from Florida to Maine, where drilling has been blocked for decades.
While some lawmakers in those states support offshore drilling, the plan drew immediate opposition from governors up and down the east coast, including Florida Governor Rick Scott and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, both Republicans, who pressed US President Donald Trump to withdraw their states from consideration.
Democratic governors on both coasts also criticized the plan.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called it “another federal assault on our environment,” while California Governor Jerry Brown vowed to block “this reckless, short-sighted action.”
The five-year plan would open 90 percent of the nation’s offshore reserves to development by private companies, with 47 leases proposed off the nation’s coastlines from next year to 2024.
Nineteen sales would be off Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic and seven in the Pacific, including six off California.
A coalition of more than 60 environmental groups denounced the plan, saying it would impose “severe and unacceptable harm.”
“These ocean waters are not President Trump’s personal playground. They belong to all Americans, and the public wants them preserved and protected, not sold off to multinational oil companies,” the coalition’s statement said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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