President Obama announced Tuesday he has indefinitely blocked offshore drilling along most of Alaska's coast and from Norfolk, Virginia, to the Canadian border.
Obama is rushing to protect his environmental policies before he leaves office in January, and he used an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to enact the ban, saying it gave him the authority to act unilaterally, The New York Times reports. Drilling is now banned in 115 million acres of federally owned Arctic waters, home to endangered species like polar bears, as well as 3.8 million acres along the Atlantic Coast, protecting coral canyons.
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