Offshore Drilling, Trump, & Why We Must Act ASAP

It seems every day we have to fight a new battle. Now, the Trump administration has unveiled a sweeping new offshore drilling plan—one of the most dangerous proposals in a generation. This horrid proposal would open vast stretches of U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas development. For the first time in decades, drilling leases could appear off the coast of California, across the eastern Gulf, and in nearly every offshore region of Alaska, including a newly drawn “High Arctic” area stretching 200 miles into fragile northern waters.

This plan is as reckless as it is unnecessary. Here’s what you need to know about this offshore drilling plan, and how you can take action to help stop it from advancing. Let’s Address This.

Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We Are Already Producing More Oil Than Ever Before

The first myth is that we’re in some sort of energy crisis. In reality, the United States is already producing more oil than any country in human history. There is no shortage, no emergency, no justification. What the administration calls an “energy plan” is simply a handout to multinational fossil fuel corporations—paid for by taxpayers, absorbed by frontline communities, and carried on the backs of future generations.

What Offshore Drilling Really Means for Our Communities

Across the country, coastal states, cities, tribal nations, and community organizations have been clear for decades: offshore drilling brings devastation. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, oil companies commit more than 150 oil spills annually--that’s basically one spill every other day.

One catastrophic spill can upend entire ecosystems. It can poison water, kill marine life, decimate commercial fishing, destroy tourism economies, and permanently damage local livelihoods.

But the harm doesn’t end at the waterline.

Where offshore drilling already exists, communities face some of the highest levels of toxic air pollution in the nation. Hazardous emissions from offshore operations and onshore refineries have led to elevated rates of cancer, asthma, chronic respiratory disease, rashes, and long-term environmental degradation. This is not a hypothetical risk—it is lived reality for thousands of families. And moreover, it disproportionately harms Indigenous, Black, Latino, and low income communities. You cannot separate climate justice from economic justice and racial justice.

What makes this even more obscene is that taxpayers already subsidize much of the existing offshore oil industry. We pay to clean up their spills. We pay for abandoned wells. We pay—through our health, our infrastructure, and our rising energy bills—for the climate disasters that their pollution and reckless acts fuel. No pun intended.

And while these companies benefit from enormous public subsidies, many have continued eliminating American jobs despite record profits.

This is not an energy policy. It is a wealth extraction scheme. And it’s getting worse. Consider the most devastating part of their new scheme, in Alaska.

The Assault on Alaska’s Arctic

The most extreme part of this plan targets Alaska’s Arctic. The administration proposes to auction nearly the entire region—including the Western Arctic and the new “High Arctic”—to fossil fuel companies.

The impacts would be irreversible for the following reasons:

• The Arctic is warming 3–5 times faster than the rest of the planet.
• Sea ice loss, thawing permafrost, and coastal erosion already threaten communities and ecosystems.
• Caribou, polar bears, seals, and countless migratory species face collapse if their habitats are disturbed.
• Indigenous communities whose cultural practices, subsistence traditions, and food security rely on these lands and waters would bear the brunt of the damage.

Opening the Arctic to full-scale drilling would accelerate climate feedback loops that intensify global warming for the entire planet. We cannot claim to care about climate stability while simultaneously turning the Arctic into an industrial sacrifice zone.

All to make a buck for a handful of multinational multi billion dollar corporations. In a word, absurd.

Why This Moment Matters

We aren’t helpless, and we cannot delay in taking action.

Earthjustice has spent decades defending this region in court, stopping one destructive proposal after another. They are preparing to fight again—and they need all of us. What this administration is attempting is not normal. It is not routine rulemaking. It is an aggressive effort to lock the country into another generation of fossil fuel dependence at precisely the moment we should be accelerating the transition to clean, safe, renewable energy.

And make no mistake: communities will pay the price. When the Arctic warms, oceans rise everywhere. When storms intensify, families across all 50 states endure the consequences. When fossil fuel companies win, working people lose—through higher energy bills, weakened infrastructure, poisoned air, and escalating climate disasters.

Our oceans belong to the public, not to corporations. And now is the moment to defend them. Here’s how to take action.

1. Support Earthjustice
Over the last year, the attacks on our environment have been relentless, but so has the response of Earthjustice. Just last week, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s plans to hold an 80-million acre oil sale in the Gulf of Mexico. You won’t be surprised to learn that the administration ignored laws passed to protect coastal communities and marine life from environmental hazards associated with offshore drilling. Earthjustice’s response was, “We’ll see you in court.”

As a nonprofit environmental law organization that represents all of its clients for free, our support enables them to continue to take on these critical fights on behalf of people and the planet. Right now, any gift to Earthjustice is doubled with a $1:$1 match.

Support Earthjustice

2. Voice your opposition to the Administration’s reckless plan to expand offshore drilling
Submit public comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and tell them our public waters are not for sale to the highest bidder. This action matters and aids Earthjustice’s litigation.

Submit comment

Conclusion

This moment demands clarity and courage. The Trump administration is betting that the public won’t notice, won’t act, or won’t care. They’re wrong. We’ve stopped reckless drilling plans before—and with enough public pressure, we will stop this one too.

But we need everyone. Not later. Now.

Donate to Earthjustice, submit your comment, call Congress, and stand with the communities who have everything to lose. And if you rely on this platform to cut through the noise and confront the corporate power structures driving climate collapse, I ask you—support this work. Subscribe, share, and help strengthen the only media ecosystem still willing to speak plainly about what we’re facing.

Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.