NEW YORK — Despite heavy opposition from environmental activists, a viral TikTok campaign and a campaign promise by President Joe Bien to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels, the federal government greenlighted a controversial oil drilling project on pristine Alaskan land on Monday. That decision won't just impact the climate in the future, it could lead to more distrust of government among young people, experts told ABC News.
As climate activists utilized traditional methods to protest against the project by writing more than a million letters to the White House and launching multiple petitions that amassed more than 4 million signatures, the TikTok generation had other ideas.
"This is the first time a climate-related hashtag ever made it to a trending issue on the platform," Fisher said. Young people are poised to become the largest bloc of voters in America by 2025, Fisher said. But distrust among young people is likely growing now that the Biden administration has violated its campaign promise to not grant any new permits for oil and drilling, Lise Van Susteren, a general and forensic psychiatrist who has researched how climate change has affected the psychological health of young people, told ABC News.
The Interior Department said it substantially reduced the size of the project by allowing three drill sites instead of the five in the original proposal, the agency announced Monday. The decision also requires ConocoPhillips to relinquish its leases for 68,000 acres to create a buffer between the infrastructure for the Willow site and migratory routes for a nearby caribou herd.
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