The High Cost of "Drill Baby Drill", Part IV- Petition President Obama

The following petition to President Barack Obama has been generated by Firedoglake regarding the events in the Gulf of Mexico and the expansion of offshore oil drilling into new areas.

Subject: Bigger than Exxon Valdez?
Message: Hi,

I just signed a petition asking President Obama to end all plans for offshore drilling; will you join me in signing?

Click here to add your name: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/obamaoil

An offshore oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana last week, causing the underwater oil well to hemorrhage more than 42,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. It's still leaking as you read these words.

Yet despite the explosion, President Obama's spokesman says there are no plans to reconsider Obama's proposal to greatly expand offshore drilling in the very same waters where spilled oil now threatens thousands of miles of coastline and ocean.

If Obama moves forward with expanded offshore drilling, this disaster will only be the beginning.

Sign our petition to President Obama asking he end his plans for offshore drilling. We'll share the petition with the media and start a public call for Obama to change course on offshore drilling and invest in real energy solutions.

Click here: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/obamaoil

Forget the fact that offshore drilling is expensive, produces insignificant amounts of oil, takes no less than a decade to start extracting oil, and would only yield about one year's worth of oil. Now we see the very real, deadly environmental consequences of drilling for oil in our oceans.

The oil rig explosion has already covered more than 1800 miles of ocean in oil, killing 11 workers on the rig and harming untold numbers of animals in the water. It could easily be the worst oil spill since the Exxon Valdez disaster, if not worse.

We need to show Obama that not only is offshore drilling not worth the risks, it's deeply unpopular too. To do that, we need tens of thousands of people to stand up and say no to offshore drilling.

Click here to sign our petition to President Obama to cancel plans to expand offshore drilling:

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/obamaoil

This is exactly the kind of disaster critics warned about when Obama changed course earlier this month in announcing expanded offshore drilling as part of his energy plan. Indeed, it's the very kind of disaster Obama himself warned about when he opposed offshore drilling during the presidential campaign.

Candidate Obama called offshore drilling a "gimmick" that would fail to protect "pristine coastlines" from environmental disaster. He praised the decades-long "bipartisan consensus" against offshore drilling to protect our coasts and criticized John McCain's flip-flop on the issue to support drilling.

And just weeks after his own flip-flop in favor of offshore drilling, the brutal reality of the dangers of offshore drilling show themselves in an 1800 mile-long oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sign our petition to President Obama to abandon his plans for offshore drilling. Click here to add your name now.

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/obamaoil

Between the mining disaster in West Virginia and the oil rig explosion, it's clear that we need to come up with new sources of energy that don't put our environment -- and our workers -- at risk.

Please forward this on to your family and friends, and join me in telling the White House we can't sustain tragedies like this any longer.

Thanks,

Please, click this link to sign the petition to President Obama, and then take a minute to contact your Congressmen and Senators regarding this matter.