President Bush announced today that he is going to lift the executive order that bans offshore oil drilling.
Some have labeled this move as purely symbolic, since there is additionally a federal law in place.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Why It Must Be Stopped
President Bush’s decision, coupled with John McCain’s campaign promises, are part of a larger plan to place pressure on the Congress to repeal the law and do one last favor to the oil companies before the President skulks out of office.
Offshore oil drilling:
- Destroys fragile coral reefs
- Trashes nearby beaches
- Risk of devastating oil spills
What You Can Do To Stop It
Call your senators and representatives! Tell them you don’t want oil rigs damaging our coasts!
You can find their phone numbers here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml
“Hi, my name is _____, please do not allow the ban on offshore drilling to be lifted. Thank you.”
It will take less than 5 minutes to look up the phone number and make those calls.
More Info on Why It’s So Important
The Energy Information Administration says it will do no good. (…will not lower gas prices)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr …
McCain’s campaign also says it will do no good;
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/top-mccain-adv …
No expert will back the BushCain claim;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/23/impossibl …
The Saudi’s will pump more this year at our President’s request than the entire drilling venture would contribute
FIXED: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/24/151852/ …
This post could not have come together without the enormous and contribution of MorganMghee from Digg.com. Thanks Morgan!
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We need to reduce dependance on oil, not ruin the environment. The oil companies will not lower oil prices just to be nice. Please write your elected officials.
In response to the comment above, I don’t think it’s going to be all too feasable to reduce our dependance on oil by such a factor it actually matters soon enough.
Looking for alternative sources for getting oil though is what more attention should be focussed on, as for example bacteria which excrete oil.
The risk of damaging reefs off the coast of florida are slim to non. First off, drilling will take place over 200 miles off the coast line in deep water. AKA, no reefs. Also, natural seepage accounts for over 89% of all the oil in the environment and oil spills have been reduced from over 440,000 barrels from 1991-2000 to 1,000 barrels from 2003-2007.
Hey guys, thanks for the comments guys-
Slevi, you’re right that we won’t be able to decrease our dependence on oil quickly; however, one of the major explanations that has been given for drilling off America’s coast is that it would reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The irony is that the reserves produce so little that it would scarcely reduce the price of gas, and wouldn’t decrease our dependence on foreign oil at all.
HeyWhyNot- the concern are not the inshore coral reefs that are so famous, but the deepwater reefs (in the deep water miles off the coast) which have been increasingly shown to play a vital role as a base for marine ecosystems. They’re also very delicate and extremely slow to recover.
You can check out this link for more information.
http://www.oceansatlas.org/servlet/CDSServlet?status=ND0xODUwOCY2PWVuJjMzPSomMzc9a29z
Thanks for the information about oil spills - I’m curious, though, how many barrels were spilled in San Francisco last year, for instance. I have to imagine Californians would be nervous about more oil after that.
Now it’s more important than ever to find your representative’s phone number and address, make that call AND write that letter. It won’t take much of your time, sit your kids down and let them write letters too! You can rehearse a group message from the Soandso family “Hi, this is the Soandso family, David Marie Suzy Johnny, Please don’t lift the ban on drilling!” It’s important that when the summer break is over, those voice mail and mail boxes are full so there will be no doubt how they will need to vote!