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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (73133)	4/29/2010 12:18:01 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

'Not here, not now, not ever' tampabay.com By Sue Carlton St. Petersberg Times Columnist In Print: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 A couple of months back I was walking one of our glorious beaches on a cool Saturday morning when people dressed in black started showing up by the dozens. There were a few hundred of them, old folks, little kids and everyone in between, gathering by the water. Strangers took each other's hands to make a paper-doll line of people. The effect was not subtle: Across the clean white sand, they were the color of an oil spill. As waves rolled and gulls squawked, some of the protesters said over and over: "Not here, not now, not ever," a quiet counterattack to the mindless "Drill, baby, drill." They were a remarkable sight, a human chain across a beautiful beach, a scene repeated that day on shorelines around the state. It's one of the best things we have, protesters were saying, and we won't get it back. Don't sacrifice our Florida for a drop in the bucket. But up in Tallahassee, legislators were pushing — again — to allow drilling in state waters. Earlier this month it was tabled. At least until next year. And more trouble, further out: President Barack Obama announced a shortsighted and sweeping plan that would, among other things, kill a ban on oil drilling off Florida's west coast — a political poker chip in his bigger push on the energy bill. Given all this, could anyone have asked for a better — or worse — object lesson than the disaster currently playing out in the gulf? And how ironic, if a catastrophe gets across what protesters and environmentalists and just regular people who care enough to save this state could not. The story isn't new: An oil rig, this one called the Deepwater Horizon about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, exploded and later sank. Forty-two thousand gallons of oil were gushing into the gulf daily as workers desperately tried to stop the flow. Out there are miles and miles and miles of oil. As the story played out, the headline in Tuesday's Times seemed almost inevitable: Gulf oil spill could threaten Florida. This is bad news we need to keep from repeating. We dippy tree huggers were told not to worry, that improved technology and tighter regulation would limit the potential for this kind of thing to happen. The rig that blew was considered one of the more advanced. But even that doesn't matter when you consider the damage that one good hurricane — and they have been known to make their way into the gulf now and again — can do to oil drilling operations. So here's the pitch, as we watch and wait and hope for the best in the current crisis: Drilling in the gulf will not do enough to render us energy independent, which makes it not worth the risk of devastating the best things about our state. It will not even make us feel appreciably better at the gas pump. And if protecting our pristine beaches isn't enough, remember those critical tourist dollars those beaches bring in. And if a 125-mile buffer seems adequate to you, check the map on how far away from us that spill is as all that oil seeps out. Imagine our beaches fouled, our marine life threatened. Then again, we may not have to imagine. Drill, baby, drill? Here's a better one. Not here, not now, not ever.

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (73133)	4/29/2010 12:26:10 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Oil Spill Estimates Raised Fivefold online.wsj.com

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (73133)	4/29/2010 4:07:09 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

Offshore oil drilling: Lessons from the disaster latimes.com Last week’s oil rig disaster should remind us that expansion of the environmentally risky practice is not the way to go. April 28, 2010 \| 4:16 p.m. Last week's explosion and sinking of an oil-exploration rig off the coast of Louisiana prompted that state's Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu to call for a federal investigation. She also said the rig's owners should "commit every available resource to learn from this tragic event." Here's what we've already learned: Offshore drilling is more dangerous than industry apologists claim (11 men are believed to have died in the explosion), and it can have environmentally devastating impacts. Somehow, though, we suspect that's not the lesson Landrieu and other Democrats who hope to expand offshore drilling — including President Obama — will take from the disaster. Democratic leaders have calculated that the way to attract Republican support for their efforts to fight climate change is to open more of the nation's coastline to drilling. Never mind that there is no sign Republicans want to play along, and that the sole GOP senator willing to even discuss a climate bill, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is backing out. Last month, Obama announced a plan to give oil companies access to large areas of the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan coastlines. Landrieu, meanwhile, has fought to add language to clean-energy bills that would grant states royalty payments for oil drilled off their coasts. The crisis in the Gulf isn't changing many minds. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs shrugged off the ongoing oil leak, which could develop into the worst spill in U.S. history, by implying that it was just a fact of life. "I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last," he said. Meanwhile, 42,000 gallons of oil a day are pouring from a well drilled by the downed rig. The Coast Guard is scrambling to collect and burn the escaping oil, but that probably won't be enough to head off environmental catastrophe — experts say the oil could reach environmentally sensitive areas on shore in a matter of days if the flow can't be stopped, and it may take months to plug the leak. This kind of environmental tragedy isn't unprecedented — a similar rig explosion happened last year off Australia — and we'll probably be seeing it more often if Congress expands drilling off U.S. shores. There's a better way of using our coastal resources to generate energy. On Wednesday, the Obama administration approved the country's first offshore wind farm, a 130-turbine project off Massachusetts that is guaranteed never to foul beaches with tar or emit carbon into the atmosphere. Cape Wind is the future; the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig represents a tarred past. Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times _________ Comments (2)Add / View comments cynthiaa1101 at 10:10 PM April 28, 2010 The recent Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico is spilling massive amounts of crude oil into the sea and is threatening the environment and those people who depend on the wetlands for their livelihood, such as fishermen and lobstermen. There is also the issue of a possible loss of revenue for the hospitality industry and other industries in which people are affected and wages could be lost, all of which lead to potential damage claims. Sadly, other oil rig workers are leaving the site and losing wages, but they have valid fears that the spill will catch fire. The tragedy is also raising very serious environmental concerns, and could threaten the fragile ecosystem of the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, which serve as nurseries for fish and shrimp and habitat for birds. The disaster is in violation of a number of environmental acts, including the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act and is among the worst offshore drilling disasters in recent U.S. history, and could be the deadliest. More information on this tragedy and its devastating effects on our environment can be found at oil-rig-explosions.com