By the time he leaves office, due to his horrendous leadership on the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump may have close to a half a million dead Americans on what passes for his conscience. But he’ll also have a lasting effect on our environment.

The Trump administration is asking oil and gas firms to pick spots where they want to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as it races to open the pristine wilderness to development and lock in drilling rights before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The “call for nominations” to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register allows companies to identify tracts on which to bid during an upcoming lease sale on the refuge’s nearly 1.6 million acre coastal plain, a sale that the Interior Department aims to hold before Biden takes the oath of office in January. The move would be a capstone of President Trump’s efforts to open up public lands to logging, mining and grazing — something Biden strongly opposes.

A GOP-controlled Congress in 2017 authorized drilling in the refuge, a vast wilderness that is home to tens of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl, along with polar bears and Arctic foxes.

We can hope that most drilling operations aren’t actually interested in the bad public relations that will follow any bid to despoil this pristine wilderness, and also that perhaps President Biden will be able to undo some of the damage. This same article says we should expect the Department of Energy to roll back regulations on shower heads, so we have that to look forward to.

All Republicans are terrible on the environment, but Trump seems to take a malicious pleasure in the enterprise.