There will be no drilling for oil or gas anywhere off the 2,069 miles of the U.S. Atlantic coastline, President Barack Obama decreed on Tuesday.

In one fell swoop, Obama has closed a major avenue Americans might have followed toward energy independence. He did it to protect the environment, he insists.

But the same offshore drilling plan in which the president closed the Atlantic permits wells in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska’s coast. If drilling is a danger to the environment on the Atlantic coast, why is it not a danger in the Gulf, which has already been hit by the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, or along the Alaskan coast?

Once again, Obama is playing to his environmentalist base, which is cheering.

This involves politics, not pollution. Obama wants to go down in history as the president who saved us from global warming.

It would be nice to assume that within a year, with a new president, Obama’s economy-killing policies will be reversed. Any one of the Republican contenders for president could be counted upon to do that.

But bear this in mind: Both Democrats, Hillary?Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have made it clear that if elected, they will continue the Obama policies on energy.