Court ruling gives Biden chance for reset on climate policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has an opportunity for a reset on climate policy after a federal judge rejected an administration plan to lease millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil drilling.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras tossed the drilling plan late Thursday, saying the Interior Department did not adequately take into account the proposed drilling’s effect on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists say the lease sale goes against Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil and gas leasing on federal land and water. The court decision was released on the one-year anniversary of a federal leasing moratorium Biden ordered as part of his efforts to combat climate change.

The Biden administration proceeded with the sale after losing a court case in Louisiana last summer. Energy companies including Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil offered a combined $192 million for drilling rights on more than 300 tracts totaling nearly 2,700 square miles, one of the largest sales ever in the Gulf.

The 68-page decision by Contreras sends the proposed Gulf lease sale back to Interior to decide next steps.

Biden has set an ambitious goal to slash planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, speeding what is already a market-driven growth of solar and wind energy and lessening the country’s dependence on oil and gas. The push comes as the effects of climate change, including more powerful hurricanes, wildfires and drought, are increasing.

Moving ahead with the sale — initiated by the Trump administration — “was terrible policy and also bad politics,'' said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, one of the environmental groups that challenged the offshore sale.

Biden “campaigned on addressing climate change,...