The Trump administration Thursday announced a plan to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region off Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.

The plan is one of President Donald Trump’s most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.

It comes at the same time that dozens of countries have been calling for a phaseout of oil, gas and coal at the United Nations climate conference in Belém, Brazil, an event that the United States is skipping this year.

Under the proposal made public Thursday, the Interior Department would hold as many as 34 sales of leases in federal waters spanning roughly 1.27 billion acres,

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