Biden cancels Alaska oil leases, protects millions of acres in Arctic Refuge
The Biden Administration and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland have canceled seven oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, along with protecting 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve.
ANWR is one of the largest areas of pristine wildlife habitat in America and is home to indigenous peoples. But it also sits atop around ten billion barrels of oil, and thus, for decades, Republicans and oil companies have been trying to drill in it.
For the most part, these attempts were refused until 2017. At that time, a Republican Congress passed – and President Trump signed – a bill giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy, adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit and raising taxes on the middle class. However, this tax bill also opened up 1.5 million acres in ANWR to oil drilling.
On January 6, 2021 (yes, that January 6), the US government held a rushed oil and gas lease sale and issued 10-year leases on 430,000 acres. But 15 days later, on President Biden’s first day in office, he issued an executive order suspending those leases, stating that they did not undergo proper environmental review.
Today’s action permanently cancels those suspended leases, finding that they did not undergo proper review under the National Environmental Policy Act. However, two of the three purchasers had already requested that their leases be canceled and refunded, and the only remaining holder of these leases was the state of Alaska itself.
In addition to canceling the leases, the Department of the Interior will now give maximum protection to 13 million acres within the 23.6 million acre National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPRA), which sits to the west of ANWR. And it will prohibit any new leasing on 10.6 million acres, over 40% of the NPRA’s total area.
The newly protected areas are listed as “Special Areas,” a designation afforded to “areas with significant surface value” within the NPRA. Here’s a map showing them in Northwest Alaska:
This news comes months after Biden approved the “Willow project,” a large oil project within the NPRA, a move opposed by people who would prefer the planet to remain livable rather than turn into a burning hellscape in the name of oil industry profits. Today’s action does not reverse that approval – Willow will be allowed to continue as planned.
Electrek’s Take
Biden has been getting a lot of flack from environmentalists for allowing oil & gas lease sales, and this flack is deserved. If we want to avoid climate change, we have absolutely zero options other than keeping oil in the ground where it belongs. If we allowed all currently owned and explored oil reserves to be drilled and burned, we would overshoot necessary carbon targets by around 4x (see Bill McKibben’s excellent article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” about this).
That said – and this has not been a popular take among environmentalists (of which I am one) – I never found these oil leases to be all that disturbing. Because I kind of thought they would (or at least must) eventually be canceled, likely before they got very far into construction. And they did. So that’s good.
The government has been holding plenty of oil and gas lease sales lately, even while touting historic climate actions. This is dumb, and they shouldn’t hold these leases. However, we’ve also seen instances of companies not bothering to show up to purchase these leases, and all major US banks have given up on funding Arctic oil leases anyway. Everyone knows the oil companies have more than enough leases already and probably won’t ever be able to use them all – at least if the health of the planet matters to anyone (jury’s out on that one).
So these lease sales are kind of a waste of time for everyone involved, in my opinion. Instead of spending time leasing and unleasing land, we should work harder on protecting more of it. This is a good start, but I’d like to see more leases canceled – even on land that’s already being used for production, like Los Angeles wants to do.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike