Earlier this week, President Joe Biden pushed his climate agenda in an unexpected direction by announcing he had approved ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The decision “greenlights a carbon bomb,” the nonprofit Earthjustice responded. The executive director of the Sierra Club warned of the project’s potential to “entirely undo the clean energy progress we’ve made.”

A mix of politics, economics and legal obstacles pressured the president to rethink a campaign promise to end drilling on federal lands. It’s hard not to see the announcement as a setback, emblematic of the difficulties in getting all stakeholders to make steadfast commitments to emission reductions.