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.

The High Cost of "Drill Baby Drill", Part II- Where Are They Now?

Indeed Mrs. Palin...."How is it workin' out for ya?"

And for Michael Steele....Rudy Guliani...John McCain....and to Republican Governors Bobby Jindal (LA), Haley Barbour (MS), Bob Riley (AL), and newly minted independent Charlie Crist of Florida- are you still in favor of letting Big Oil use the Gulf of Mexico as their own personal cash register? The worst ecological disaster in more than 20 years, an oil spill 130 miles long and 70 miles wide has reached the coast line of Louisiana, and the first oil covered animals have been seen on shore. We can expect an area stretching from near New Orleans to Pensacola to be affected.

BP's platform exploded last week, 50 miles in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and sending the giant oil slick on a collision course with an area of the country called by some "The Redneck Riviera". The irony of the oil slick hitting and possibly devastating one of the most Republican areas of the country, states whose leaders (and many citizens) drank the GOP "Drill Baby Drill" Kool-Aide are about to find out....pardon the expression....an inconvenient truth. That is, offshore drilling has risks and unintended consequences- and in yet another tragic case greed won out over safety, and now an ecosystem is threatened with collapse by this spill. Some species may never recover, the wetlands may be polluted forever, and people who made a living from harvesting the Gulf and in tourism could find the extinction of their way of life by the time the weekend is over.

But where are THEY now? The "Drill Baby Drill Cheerleaders" have been strangely silent. That is, with the exception of Boss Limbaugh. Yes, Rush has a bizarre theory that President Obama had a hand in the creation of the oil spill. I won't even bother to try to explain it- his twisted "logic" makes my brain hurt.



A week or so ago I wasn't focused on offshore drilling. After all, the President proposed expanding offshore drilling earlier in the month. But that wouldn't be in by backyard. It would be in the Gulf, and along the Atlantic Coast off of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. No need to worry in New Jersey.

And then came the BP-Gulf Disaster of 2010. And the reality set in that here in the Northeast we would not be immune to any potential oil spills that could occur in the South. Imagine this- an oil spill like the one in the Gulf is the size of New Jersey. What if a spill off the Virginia coast of that size were to hit New Jersey? The state's second largest industry, tourism, would vanish overnight- and the impact would be felt in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and possibly Pennsylvania.

We use the term "teaching moment" a lot, so it seems. The spill in the Gulf was the hardest of lessons. And the after the full impact is felt, we all need to ask...."Now what?".

Click here for a very well written blog entry on the oil spill and the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd by WABC TV's Bill Ritter.