拜登政府拍卖掉周三，墨西哥湾的大片联邦所有水域，从渴望开始钻井的石油和天然气公司那里捞到了数亿美元，同时激起了环保组织的愤怒。
这场拍卖是在美国总统乔·拜登推动世界各国为地球做出集体牺牲后不到两周举行的COP26气候峰会在格拉斯哥。
环保组织没有错过时机，他们呼吁停止周三的拍卖，现在正在抨击拜登政府允许拍卖发生。
关注环境的政治组织“日出运动”的执行董事瓦尔什尼·普拉卡什说:“今天，我醒来时，对拜登会选择迎合化石燃料公司而不是我们的未来感到愤怒，但并不感到惊讶。“在第二十六届缔约方会议之后的日子里...他正在批准海湾地区的主要租赁销售，而不是尽一切努力停止开采更多的化石燃料。”
周三的拍卖产生了来自30多家石油和天然气公司的数百份出价，包括埃克森美孚、壳牌和雪佛龙，这些公司总共出价近2亿美元，获得了170万英亩石油丰富的海湾的钻探权。
这种类型的化石燃料开采导致有毒气体排放，而有毒气体排放是气候变化的原因——这一现实与拜登承诺的到2030年将美国排放量减半的目标不一致。
埃里克·盖伊/美联社档案
2020年5月8日，得克萨斯州阿肯色港，一名男子在停靠的石油钻井平台附近捕鱼。这.
这种情况让拜登政府官员处于守势。本周早些时候，内政部副部长汤米·博德劳在芝加哥大学主办的小组讨论中发言，试图转移对拍卖的批评，称拍卖是特朗普政府策划的一项法律要求。
“事实是，即将到来的石油租赁出售...是我们要改革的遗留系统的一部分，”他周一表示。
博德劳没有直接回答为什么政府没有采取更多措施阻止拍卖进行的问题，而是试图将责任归咎于特朗普政府，特朗普政府最初安排了租赁出售。
博德劳说:“在上届政府执政期间，租赁销售的行政程序已经完成。"这不是我们喜欢的做生意方式。"
拜登承诺在他的总统竞选期间停止在联邦土地上的新钻井，在他上任的第一周，他发布了一项行政命令，暂停租赁销售，等待对其环境影响的审查。
然而，今年6月，一名联邦法官下令恢复租赁销售，站在13个州一边，起诉政府越权。
政府对法官的裁决提出上诉，但环保组织表示，上诉来得太晚，无法影响此次租赁销售。
博德劳说，法官的裁决使政府“处于这样一种境地，尽管我们完全致力于改革石油和天然气项目...我们必须处理诉讼，我们必须处理从上届政府那里继承下来的条款。”
国家野生动物联合会主席兼首席执行官科林·奥马拉说:“政府被迫在两个糟糕的选择中做出选择，这不仅令人沮丧:大规模的法院强制和破坏气候的租赁出售，或者违反法院命令，以及让内阁秘书被藐视法庭。”。"我们绝对必须加快租赁计划的改革."
其他环保组织对政府的解释不太满意。
周一，新奥尔良的抗议者聚集在一起，表达他们对出售的不满。在华盛顿特区，活动人士向内政部大楼投射信息，包括“海湾不卖”和“拜登:信守诺言。”
环保组织还在一份请愿书上收集了10多万个签名，呼吁拜登坚持他的承诺，结束海上石油和天然气的新租赁，并计划与政府分享。
一个环保团体联盟正在起诉政府，阻止石油租约生效，政府称租约将于1月1日生效。
Rejecting environmentalists' pleas, Biden administration plows ahead with oil lease auction
The Biden administrationauctioned offlarge swaths of federally owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from oil and gas companies eager to begin drilling -- while stoking the ire of environmental groups.
The auction was held less than two weeks after President Joe Biden pushed countries around the world to make collective sacrifices for the sake of the planet at theCOP26 climate summitin Glasgow.
The timing was not lost on environmental groups, who called for a halt to Wednesday's auction -- and are now slamming the Biden administration for allowing it to happen.
"Today I woke up enraged, but not surprised, that Biden would choose to cater to fossil fuel corporations over our futures," said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environment-focused political group. "It speaks volumes that days after COP26 ... he is approving major lease sales in the Gulf rather than doing everything in his power to stop extracting more fossil fuels."
Wednesday's auction yielded hundreds of bids from more than 30 oil and gas companies -- including ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron -- who collectively dished out nearly $200 million for drilling rights in 1.7 million acres of the oil-rich Gulf.
Fossil fuel extraction of this type contributes to toxic gas emissions that are responsible for climate change -- a reality at odds with Biden's pledge to halve U.S. emissions by 2030.
The situation has put Biden administration officials on the defensive. Earlier this week, Interior Department Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau spoke at a panel discussion sponsored by the University of Chicago and tried to deflect criticism of the auction, describing it as a legal requirement engineered by the Trump administration.
"The fact is, the upcoming oil lease sale ... is part of the legacy system that we're here to reform," he said Monday.
Beaudreau did not directly address a question about why the administration had not done more to prevent the auction from taking place, but instead sought to cast blame on the Trump administration, which initially scheduled the lease sale.
"The administrative process for that lease sale had been completed during the previous administration," Beaudreau said. "It is not the way that we would prefer to do business."
Biden promised to end new drilling on federal lands during his presidential campaign, and in his first week in office he issued an executive order pausing the lease sales, pending a review of their environmental impact.
In June, however, a federal judge ordered the resumption of the lease sales, siding with 13 states that sued the administration for overstepping its authority.
The administration appealed the judge's ruling, but environmental groups say the appeal came too late to impact this lease sale.
Beaudreau said the judge's ruling left the administration "in a situation of, while we are fully committed to reforming the oil and gas program ... we have to deal with the litigation, and we have to deal with the terms that we inherited from the previous administration."
"It's beyond frustrating that the administration is forced choose between two awful options: a massive court-mandated and climate-damaging lease sale or violating a court order and having a cabinet Secretary held in contempt of court," said Collin O'Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. "We absolutely must accelerate reform of the leasing program."
Other environmental groups were not so satisfied with the administration's explanation.
On Monday, protesters in New Orleans gathered to voice their discontent with the sale. In Washington, D.C., activists projected messages onto the Interior Department building, including "The Gulf is Not For Sale" and "Biden: Keep Your Promise."
Environmental organizations also collected more than 100,000 signatures on a petition calling on Biden to uphold his commitment to ending new leasing for offshore oil and gas, which it planned to share with the administration.
A coalition of environmental groups is suing the administration to prevent the oil leases from taking effect, which the government said will occur on Jan. 1.
