Trump's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling again. At this point, they're just asking oil companies to identify where they want to drill. But the fact remains there's no safe place to drill in the Arctic Refuge, one of the most ecologically and culturally significant places left on Earth.

Trump's One Big Ugly Bill required the federal government to hold a lease sale. But there's no law that requires oil companies to participate. And there's no justification for ruining the Arctic refuge with fossil fuel extraction.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is home to iconic wildlife from endangered beluga whales and polar bears to migratory birds, bears, and caribou. And it's a globally-renowned region that sustains the Gwich’in and Iñupiaq people. Oil and gas exploration in the Arctic will raise harmful, climate-warming pollution, destroy wildlife habitat, and threaten the health and human rights of the Indigenous. Not to mention that it will accelerate global warming in what is already one of the fastest warming placed on earth.

Even oil companies recognize that drilling in the Refuge is financially risky, publicly unpopular, and incompatible with a rapidly changing Arctic. And that's why we're squawking up now. If enough of us speak out early in this process and tell oil companies to stay away we can ensure that any future lease sale is a failure—and that Big Oil once again walks away from the Arctic Refuge.