US to auction off parts of Arctic wildlife refuge to oil drillers

> They said development would generate $900m, although an analysis by the non-partisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, based on historical bid data, found that it would bring in just a fraction of that amount – no more than $27.6m. That would be split between the federal government and the state of Alaska.

$900 million is a big number but when I opened this article I was wondering why any of the big name billionaires who are making climate change 'pledges', or basically thinking about Bezos here, wouldn't just buy it up instead.

Then I got to this part in the next paragraph

> The former governors Frank Murkowski and Bill Walker have encouraged the state to bid on any unwanted tracts itself, and last week a state-owned economic development corporation voted to authorize bidding up to $20m.

It looks like there is at least in Alaska some efforts to keep the lands away from oil companies.

Given that billionaires love to collect land even more than they like starting space companies, it'd be a huge philanthropic initiative to purchase it and have it turned into protected wildlife refuge.

These lands are not being sold to anyone as implied in the standard click-bait style headline.

It is probably best if this oil is left in the ground for future generations until we get our CO2 levels under control, but these are leases of the land for oil exploration and extraction. They expire and in many cases no wells will be drilled, especially if the price of oil keeps dropping.

This will still get caught up in litigation, won't be backed by the Biden administration, and won't be funded by any of the big banks, which have refused to participate [0]

[0]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bank-of-america-joins-big-...

Interesting how it’s good for energy production but not for the environment despite the environment producing energy.