Additional drilling is not a solution to our problems; it is a way to create new ones.Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
This week, the House could vote on three bills to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. It is remarkable enough that the House would take up such measures before Congress has done a thing to make drilling safer. But what is truly astounding about these bills is that they would actually make the system that governs offshore drilling weaker than it was before the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This is legislation that should give pause even to the most ardent proponents of offshore drilling.
These bills are more than a Big Oil wish list; they are a sort of oil utopia — and they could make sense only in a utopian world in which oil spills could never ever happen, in which there are never conflicts between the oil industry and other economic interests like fishing and tourism, and in which oil companies always take environmental and safety concerns fully into account. It’s as if Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the bills’ sponsor, set out to prove how apt it is to talk about the U.S. “addictionR... Read more
