On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports,” White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy declared, “President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands.” And said that the Biden administration “had no choice” but to put out new drilling leases, “but they also found ways to reduce the size of that and its impact.” She also said that “we are making an irreversible change towards clean energy that no court is going to block because we’re doing it in a legally solid way.”
McCarthy said, “President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands. The challenge that we faced was that we had a court that ordered a new lease to be done. The Department of Energy had no choice but to put it out, but they also found ways to reduce the size of that and its impact. And we’ll keep doing what we need to do to appeal those decisions and to make our case in a court. Because we know that there are laws that were written decades ago that challenge our understanding now of what the key issues are moving forward, and climate is certainly one of them. And President Biden has already made historic progress on, not just putting us back in a leadership position internationally, but on the domestic front, we are making an irreversible change towards clean energy that no court is going to block because we’re doing it in a legally solid way. But we’re also doing it in a way that the public will understand it’s to their benefit. It is creating jobs for them. It’s creating opportunities to save money for our families.”
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