WOW !!! - Lessons From The Gulf Oil Spill - Seattle PI

Lessons from the Gulf oil spill
By Joel Connelly
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

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The crowd in New Orleans cheered last month as Sarah Palin, in a reprise of her 2008 vice presidential bid, defined energy policy as: "Lets 'Drill Baby Drill', not 'Stall Baby Stall'."

The huzzahs stopped when 210,000 gallons of oil a day began leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, after explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, and washed toward coastal estuaries that sustain a billion-dollar commercial and sport fishery, and shrimp harvest.

"They were saying this couldn't happen, and it happened," said former Louisiana Sen. J. Bennett Johnson, a longtime friend of Big Oil.

As the Obama administration worked to stem the damage, Rush Limbaugh was on the air blaming the lethal blast and leak on "environmental whackos" who want to "head off more drilling."

But this disaster needs to drill a fundamental truth into the heads of Americans.

Don't trust Big Oil, and don't let it set America's agenda. Our country cannot sacrifice its economy, climate, fisheries, air and water quality at the altar of the carbon economy.

"We are looking at a wildlife disaster that is unthinkable: This could be the Exxon Valdez on steroids," historian Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, said in an interview.

Brinkley has seen those TV ads in which British Petroleum -- owner of the lease site -- claims its initials stand for "Beyond Petroleum."

"We've got to stop listening to the oil companies' fake environmental rhetoric," Brinkley said. "There is no such thing as overregulation of this industry. Offshore drilling carries real dangers. It must be tightly regulated."

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a teaching moment. We, in the Northwest and Alaska, need to be learners.

Exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska is scheduled to begin in 59 days, in a harsh and icy Arctic environment. Will the Obama administration hold off, or adopt Palin's attitude to go-for-it even if, in her words, a wild creature has to "take one for the team"?

A few years back, British Petroleum wanted to virtually double the size of its refinery dock at Cherry Point, north of Bellingham, to accommodate more tankers. The dock expansion was to take place in front of our inland waters' premier herring spawning grounds.

Republican rulers in the U.S. House of Representatives included a provision deleting all safety restrictions on tankers in Puget Sound in legislation to encourage more refineries. Reps. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and Dave Reichert, R-Wash., raised hell and had the language deleted.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the oil industry's great and good friend, introduced a bill to repeal the 1977 law that limited the number and size of tankers serving Puget Sound refineries. Sen. Maria Cantwell stopped him with the threat of a filibuster.

This April, the Obama administration opened vast new areas off the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico to oil leasing. It put off-limits Alaska's Bristol Bay, but signaled a go-ahead for the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea.

Even this didn't satisfy Big Oil's strumpets on Capitol Hill...

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More: http://www.seattlepi.com/connelly/419308_joel03.html

:kick:

like JFK did for the moon thing. Ya know, "I challenge America to reduce our use of oil 5% a year for the next 10 years". (read that on dKos today). Oh well.

Msongs

Would love to know if that's been put on hold since the current disaster?

:shrug:

drilling plans have been halted, but so far there's been nothing but crickets. The administration needs to e called out on this.

:shrug:

Just read the whole thing:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

If the country had supported him and done as he wanted, we would have been energy independent for the last two decades. Think of how that would have changed this country. I am sure Obama is aware of that history and it could easily be one reason he has not been bold about changing energy policy. This catastrophe could be the trigger that will allow him to really push a stronger initiative.

because of their unwillingness to change from their fail business model.

n/t

forgot about that one. Guess entire industries, livelihoods and lives will take one for the BP team.