Why must the GOP always pick the shittiest side of an issue? Like how they turn global warming into a political debate? Consider this: If they were right it would make the liberals look like environmental alarmists. If they are wrong? Then they look like they aided and abetted the destruction of civilization. See how the payoff isn’t the same? The risk is incalculable. You never want to be on the side of possibly allowing for the destruction of humanity. Just don’t go near it with a ten-foot pole guys.
Then, with Katrina, they turned it into a political thing. With conservatives (the wingnuts anyway) advocating the abandonment of New Orleans. So on that side of the issue they come out looking like folks who would advocate the exodus of a culture and the destruction of a city rather than meeting the challenge of protecting it. Imagine how moving and dramatic all those “Fall of America” stories would be with a decaying, abandoned New Orleans as their back drop.
And now their mantra is “drill, drill, drill.” Rather than meeting the energy challenges with renewable, clean energies or perhaps even modifying our lifestyles (hey, I’ve spent $30 in gas the last six weeks) to meet the challenge, their answer is, to quote Joe Biden, “more of the same.” Meaning, to keep drilling for oil until the faucet runs dry.
There is a reason why Americans don’t want drilling off their coasts. It’s a dirty, nasty, ugly business that will take place within a few hundred miles of United States coastlines. The GOP would like to see platforms all over all three coasts along with the mess that comes with them.
Consider this map of Gulf oil platforms. What a coincidence that the area right around those rigs is also rapidly losing land mass. Saying nothing of the relatively minor oil spill in the river a few months back that disrupted our lives for a few weeks.
What kind of a position is it to take where one of the outcomes could be turning Chesapeake Bay into Prince William Sound?
Sorry, but what you have written is emotional nonsense and both factually and morally wrong.
The spill in the Missisippi was caused by the transport of oil, as have most of the major spills in the US such as Exxon Valdez, Mega Borg, Huntingdon Beach, Athos 1 etc. The Cosco Busan spill in San Francisco was from a container ships own fuel oil.
Nowadays I cannot say that drilling has no risk, but it is very low. Don’t let one major spill at Santa Barbara 40 years ago skew the argument. Drilling for and producing your own oil will minimise the need for tankers to sail to the US and will significantly reduce the risk.
Of course we must reduce our profligate consumption and renewables must be developed, but when the wind doesn’t blow, the sun shine or the water flow, we need alternatives. So that brings you to nuclear which is reliable and has no carbon emissions.
But all of these things will take time to develop. We will need oil for a good many years to fill the gap. If you produce your own you will reduce your reliance on unstable foreign regimes, cut the environmental cost of transporting the oil to the US and reduce the risk of major spills. That seems a good thing to me.
Yes hurricanes may cause spills from rigs, but although there may have been many spills they have been relatively small and many of these have come from storage and onshore facilities anyway.
It is a fact that natural seeps of oil from the seabed are a bigger source of oil into the marine environment. This has gone on for millions of years and the environment copes with it because crude oil is a naturally biodegradable substance.
Marine transportation is also a bigger polluter than offshore exploration and production and run off from land based sources into drains rivers and the sea is the biggest polluter of all – factories, auto repairs etc. accounting for around 50% of all the oil entering the sea.
A number of reports show differing amounts for most of these categories, but all are agreed on the amount coming from offshore drilling and production
In a report in 1993, the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) estimated a total input of oils at 2.3 million tonnes per year and ranked the sources like this:
Land-based sources (urban runoff, coastal refineries): 50%
Oil transporting and shipping (operational discharges, tanker accidents): 24%
Offshore production discharges: 2%
Atmospheric fallout: 13%
Natural seeps: 11%
In a report published in 2002 by the National Research Council (NRC) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the average total worldwide annual release of petroleum (oils) from all known sources to the sea has been estimated at 1.3 million tonnes. However, the range is wide, from a possible 470,000 tonnes to a possible 8.4 million tonnes per year. According to the report, the main categories of sources contribute to the total input as follows:
natural seeps: 46%
discharges from consumption of oils (operational discharges from ships and discharges from land-based sources): 37%
accidental spills from ships; 12%
extraction of oil: 3% (Offshore drilling and production)
So the facts bear out what I am saying. Offshore drilling and production is the least of all the polluters.
But the big thing you say is you don’t want your shores to be dirtied – but its OK to put the risk onto Nigeria or the Gulf, so you can keep keep the UIS supplied but your beaches clean? What morality is that?
Varg, most of the conservatives I know want to drill so we won’t have to be dependent on corrupt regimes for middle east oil anymore (Do YOU like giving millions to leaders who torture their own citizens?). Neo-cons have no problem with alternative energy, especially nuclear (which the french use mostly), and are open to trying anything and everything. I’ve heard them say it myself. I guess you’re just referring to right wing radicals? Of course, it’s always easier to believe your enemy has no soul, right? Then it’s easier to ‘kill’ him with no conscience.
I’d also like to point out that W was the first conservative president to acknowledge that Global Warming is man made (something I vehemently disagree with). True, he denied the Kyoto treaty (but then so did Bill Clinton!).
Louisiana’s oil (and her protection of her land) is only as good as our representatives in the US Congress. And since we’re about to re-elect the hideously corrupt “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, you can blame extremist Democrat partisanship for the prolonged prostitution of our state.
So fine, not dependent on corrupt foreign regimes (even though we have a corrupt domestic regime in office right now). So the answer is to drill in Alaska and all up and down both coasts in pursuit of a resource that will be just as finite as it is now. And in the meantime, infrastructure will need to be built to facilitate this drilling, that’s on land and at sea. Huge, gigantic, dirty, ugly, infrastructure.
Conservatives have for many years used patriotism as their cause but their solution to the oil crisis is to jeopardize the environment here on our coast. So all this about stabilizing the Middle East (we will cast aside the notion that peace is being sought for the good of humanity) is really just balderdash because now the mantra is to abandon it and turn our shores into oil fields. So really, how patriotic is that in the long run?
If global warming is man made or not is less important. What I’m trying to say is it’s a dumb thing to get in on the wrong side of. No political party should pursue the position of hindering the study or, at the very least, reducing emissions. Like in the post, if they are right, then it gets lost in science, if they are wrong it looks like they are abetting human suffering on a global scale. Just don’t go near it. And now that W and the boys are starting to come around, it just makes their previous positions look that much more devious.
I’m not opposed to nuclear energy but it certainly isn’t my first choice either. Probably the combined effort of reduced usage, a focus on renewables, nuclear and oil / natural gas is the best solution. Everybody probably agrees with that. But know what McCain / Palin are being heard saying? Drill here, drill now. And turn the place into a shithole in the process.
As for the effects of drilling being minimal, it’s a point-of-view isn’t it? In the statistics the percentages of oil spilled in production when added together exceeds natural seepage (which we can’t do anything about anyway). The 37% statistic would go down if dependence on oil also went down. If we “drill, drill, drill,” that 37% operational percentage will also go up as more oil and combustion engines and everything else will be put into use. What I am saying is that it’s not just the spills (which do indeed suck) but the entire business of oil production from top to bottom, that is ugly and filthy.
I’m not really having a moral argument about Nigeria here. And I don’t think conservatives care much about foreign shores either. So the morality issue is moot. If Nigeria is willing to put their shores at risk then that’s their choice. I’m saying I don’t want to put ours.* Doing so would just once again signal the failure of US foreign policy and tempt environmental disaster along the coast. At which time the “fall of America” would be shown on World news.
*Even though, South Louisiana is already at risk and we can see the results of that in Acadiana.