Irate residents in small coastal towns say Obama’s map to open a novel fossil fuel frontier would harm endangered marine life – as politicians warn of ‘tragedyKure Beach,North Carolina, doesn’t seem a likely place to call itself “ground zero” for a key plank of Barack Obama’s presidential legacy. The small coastal town’s concerns rarely stretch beyond its golden beaches and shucked oysters; but it has found itself at the forefront of a struggle to head off a huge expansion in US oil drilling.[br]Obama’s interior department has proposed prising open the US’s Atlantic seabed for oil and gas drilling, or ending various congressional and presidential bans that stretch back to 1984. The nascent 2017-2022 map,to be finalised by the cessation of the year, would lease out nearly 104m acres of the Atlantic – stretching from Maryland down to Georgia – to petroleum companies.
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Source: theguardian.com