Who could’ve seen this coming?

The most alarming problem is the bill’s mandating what is in effect a decade-long carbon bomb through oil and gas leases. If passed, any new wind or solar projects on public lands or waters would have to first offer, respectively, at least 2 million acres and 60 million acres of each for oil and gas leases — and that’s every year, for an entire decade. It would also revive Biden’s outrageous failed attempt to carry out the largest oil-and-gas lease sale in the country’s history, which a judge had blocked earlier this year for failing to properly account for the disastrous climate impact.

"It’s a renewable energy revolution on top of a fossil fuel build-out,” says Noël.

Others were less polite, calling the proposed pairing “deranged” and “madness.” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the CBD, called it a “climate suicide pact.” It’s not hard to see why: not long after the bill’s announcement, an Associated Press investigation was published revealing that hundreds of lease sites in the Permian Basin alone are every hour leaking between hundreds and thousands of kilograms worth of methane, a greenhouse gas dozens of times more planet-boiling than carbon dioxide. And that doesn’t even count the emissions from drilling, extracting, and eventually burning the fuel within.