Under pressure from Big Oil and a court order, the Biden Administration recently offered up 80 million acres for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and other drilling lease sales off our coasts are scheduled.

Thankfully, however, a federal court has cancelled this illegal and ill-conceived lease sale in the Gulf on grounds that Biden’s Department of Interior failed in its legal obligation to take climate change impacts into consideration. We here at NRDC could not agree more with the court ruling.

The law is clear — the Biden administration must fully consider the climate impacts of all new offshore oil and gas leasing. The climate crisis has also made clear that the administration must cancel all remaining lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska and not schedule any new ones. This dirty energy industry should not be allowed to wreak even more devastation on our oceans, wildlife, and coastal communities.

So we need to take advantage of this critical court ruling and ratchet up the pressure now.