April, 2023
By Liliana Castillo, Staff Reporter
The Biden Administration has given its approval to an oil drilling project, however, it is still unclear if this project, the Willow project, is worth its results on Climate change.
The Willow Project is still up for debate as to whether or not it is a wise idea. There have been several debates for and against this project, all having reasonable claims and defensible arguments for each party. Even so, when looking at all the facts, it is clear that ethics have a huge part in deciding whether the Willow Project is morally correct.
To start, the Willow Project is a project proposed by the company ConocoPhillips that wants to begin drilling into the Northern Alaskan territory to progressively obtain hundreds of thousands of oil barrels per day. However, this company has faced several controversies over this project, and rightfully so. Going through with this project will mean the death of several arctic animals and approximately 9.2 million metric tons of pollution will be released in the atmosphere. With this, it will mean the loss of several homes and jobs, pollution levels to skyrocket, illnesses like cancer in humans to become common, and so much more.
Nonetheless, this not only affects the United States. Every living being on this planet is affected equally, and if we are unable to stop this project, it could mean certain doom for the future of our society and generations. Now, the question of morality for this project is mentioned several times within arguments to stop ConocoPhillips.
This project is morally wrong and unethical in a number of ways. Firstly, the Willow project is mainly based on the idea of money and power. The United States is obsessed with the idea of becoming the richest among all states, and the process is literally killing the Earth. Ecosystems are being destroyed every day so that a president, who went back on his word, can earn more money than he can spend in a lifetime. Even if the project proposes more “benefits” in the near future, the damage far outweighs the advantages and is absolutely detrimental to the people of future generations. Instead of us, they will have to deal with the stupidity of present day people, and by then, it will already have been too late.
However, there is an upside among this chaos. Since the announcement of this death plan, there are several protesters who will stop at nothing to get this project canceled. More than 1 million letters to the white house and over 5 million signatures in a petition to stop the project have made a significant amount of civilians aware of this monstrosity. The overwhelming support to put a stop to this project has inspired the people in America and has also challenged the ideas of several Americans. The people of today need to realize that money will be worthless once we have exhausted all of Earth’s resources.
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