Interior Department moves to open Alaskan reserve to more oil drilling

Bending to the wishes of the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration has taken the first step toward opening more of the still largely pristine Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve in the western Arctic to devastating drilling. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it would rewrite the reserve’s current management plan, an Obama-era compromise that keeps much of the western Arctic’s most valuable wildlife habitat off-limits to oil exploration. New drilling would degrade sensitive ecosystems and stunning wildlands that are home to herds of caribou, musk oxen, wolves, and several imperiled bird species. And let's not forget the recent climate change report by the IPCC that emphasizes the extremely urgent need to divest from fossil fuels (like, yesterday already) in order to save the planet.