Obama’s Climate Irony: The Administration Just Announced Plans to Open the Atlantic to Oil Drilling

The Obama administration Tuesday announced a proposal to ban drilling in certain environmentally sensitive parts of the Arctic — but in exchange, it will open up the Atlantic to gas and oil interests for the first time in decades.

The Interior Department’s draft plan for five-year lease sales, which would begin in 2017, cover 14 potential sites: 10 in the Gulf of Mexico, three off Alaska, and one in the Atlantic, off the shores of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.

It’s the kind of arrangement that the administration presents as a “balance” between energy interests and environmental concerns, in that no one’s happy about it — Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has already been freaking out over an earlier decision to prohibit drilling in 12 million acres of Arctic Refuge – but it’s a major, and surprising, blow to environmental groups that have fought to keep Big Gas and Oil out of the Atlantic .... http://www.salon.com