Alaska’s Willow arctic drilling project is a climate turning-point. Biden must say no |

President Biden faces a legacy-making – or legacy-breaking – decision in arctic Alaska with the $8bn Willow project, the largest oil and gas project currently proposed on US public lands.

If Biden remembers his visionary pledge – forged in the hard truth of human-caused climate change – that the US will expand into clean energy and approve no new oil drilling on federal lands, then his decision should be straightforward.

He will say no.

The world we live in today is not the same as the world of 1968 when oil was first discovered in arctic Alaska, in Prudhoe Bay. Back then, there were about 200 days a year that heavy vehicles could drive on so-called “ice roads.”

Now, it’s down to about 130. The eight warmest years on record have been the last eight. Oceans across the world are warming and rising and turning acidic. Villages are washing into the sea. Salmon are declining. Extinction rates are estimated at 100 times higher than historic levels. The arctic is heating at twice the rate as the rest of the world. And permafrost in many places is no longer permanent.

The single…