Imagine 10 billion more cars on the road and ten times as many oil spills as routinely occur now. That’s what would happen if President Trump’s offshore drilling push moves forward as planned. Last week, the Center for American Progress released a new study with this and other estimated impacts.

According to the report, “the resulting combustion of the additional fossil fuels extracted would add as many as 46 billion metric tons of [greenhouse gas] emissions to the world’s atmosphere. That is nearly seven times more than all GHG emitted by the entire United States each year. Put another way, such an increase is the equivalent of the yearly emissions from nearly 10 billion cars—nine times as many cars as are on the road worldwide today.”

At a time when we need to move toward Clean Energy for All, not continue relying on dirty fossil fuels, adopting this plan would send our climate irreversibly over the brink. And it would devastate our coastal economies, the lifeblood of millions of North Carolinians who rely on fishing and tourism and other trades to make a living. The report pegs the economic damage at “2.6 million sustainable jobs and $180 billion in gross domestic product…. These resources are worth more than the potential of tapping fossil fuel reserves that would meet only six years of the nation’s oil demand and natural gas needs.”

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis supports Trump’s drilling plan, despite the overwhelming opposition of North Carolinians across the state, including within his own party. Several bills to protect our coast have passed the U.S. House, but have gone nowhere in the Senate. Click here to tell Tillis to speak up for our people instead of petroleum polluters!