Our Earth's atmosphere will absorb a huge amount of greenhouse gasses during the 30-year run of this project. According to Open Access Government, a website seeking to inform people about a wide breadth of news, “The Willow Project has the potential to be extremely lucrative for the United States. Evidence has shown that the project would produce the equivalent of more than 278 million tonnes (306 million short tonnes) of greenhouse gasses over its 30-year life”. This will contribute heavily to our already increasing global temperature, and cause global warming to come even closer to being almost impossible to reverse. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that, in their 2021 Annual Climate Report, the rate of increasing ocean and land temperatures has been at 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880. Starting in 1881, however, that rate has since doubled, making the average rate of increasing global temperatures rise to 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. With the Willow Project being passed, the number of greenhouse gasses entering our atmosphere will no doubt increase the rate of global warming, causing our already warming planet to get even hotter.  Not only will our planet get warmer, but there are a number of systems that rely on the temperature of our planet, such as our oceans. The warmer the Earth gets, the more that our sea levels will rise due to melting ice. Summers will start to get even hotter and so will our winters. These effects are at risk of becoming irreversible when this plan is set into motion. 

This project does not only affect the animal kingdom residing there, though. Indigenous groups that live in Alaska depend on certain animal species for hunting. Since the approval of this plan directly harms so many communities, both human and animal, Scientific American says that Trustees for Alaska has filed a lawsuit “on behalf of a coalition of environmental and indigenous groups, called on the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to scrap the approval because the federal government failed to consider the project’s indirect and direct climate risks, as well as harm to wildlife such as denning polar bears and subsistence hunting” 

When President Biden was running for his current position, he made climate change one of the biggest items on his term agenda. Now that he has successfully approved the Willow Project, he has been facing massive backlash from other people in the government, as well as from people around the country. The situation is extremely conflicting for the president because, despite wanting to fix climate change, he has approved a project that will essentially erase everything he has already done well for the planet. The Associated Press states that press secretary for the White House Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden “has done more on climate change than any other president in history.” While this may be true, this project directly conflicts with everything he has done up until now for climate change. Many people are also using this situation to decide whether or not they want to vote for him again considering that he is working on his campaign for reelection. 

At the end of the day, this planet is the only one we have right now. We can’t move, and we can’t magically erase all of our problems, either. The traffic, noise, and damage that this project is going to cause will be devastating to the environment in Alaska and, eventually, the entire planet. With global warming at risk of getting worse and animals in the Arctic getting harmed, it is time we start paying more attention to how we treat our world. Take time to research different organizations and how they affect the planet because, while some organizations do, in fact, help us, many are harming the only home we have.