from the NY Times
BALTIMORE — THE Obama administration’s whiplash decision last week to allow oil and gas companies to drill along a wide area of the Atlantic Coast is a big mistake.
The facts support a ban on offshore drilling not only in the wilds of Alaska — as the administration has announced — but also along our densely populated, economically vibrant and environmentally diverse Eastern Seaboard.
The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster should remind us that the benefits of drilling do not outweigh the threat to local economies, public health and the environment when an inevitable spill occurs. The spill, occurring off the Louisiana coast less than five years ago, devastated the Gulf of Mexico region — most likely costing over $100 billion in lost economic activity and restoration expenses, disrupting or destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs and causing long-term damage to 3,000 miles of fragile wetlands and beaches. Experts estimate that only 5 percent of the 4.2 million barrels of oil spilled in the gulf was removed during the cleanup; even today, oil from the spill is still appearing on the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle.
To allow drilling off the Atlantic Coast is to willfully forget Deepwater’s awful lesson even as the economic, environmental and public health consequences continue to reverberate in communities along the gulf. If a disaster of Deepwater’s scale occurred off the Chesapeake Bay, it would stretch from Richmond to Atlantic City, with states and communities with no say in drilling decisions bearing the consequences. The 50-mile buffer the administration has proposed would be irrelevant. And unlike the gulf, the Chesapeake is a tidal estuary, meaning that oil would remain in the environment for decades.
Furthermore, we shouldn’t be so quick to embrace offshore exploration at a time when climate change is likely to cause increasingly powerful hurricanes, like Sandy in 2012. If a single hurricane has the power to damage or destroy more than 650,000 homes in its path, we should consider what might become of an oil rig.
Even in normal conditions, claims that safety has improved significantly in recent years should not be taken seriously. As recently as last fall, two people were killed in separate explosions off the Louisiana coast while working on offshore oil and natural gas facilities.
Oil prices are at record lows. The United States is the world’s top natural gas producer and third greatest producer of crude oil. There is simply no compelling economic or security reason to expose the communities of the Atlantic Coast to the threats offshore drilling presents.
Moreover, offshore drilling fails to promote what must be our country’s foremost energy policy objectives: achieving long-term energy security, creating sustainable jobs, supporting the development of new energy technologies and fighting climate change.
To be sure, the Obama administration has made laudable and hard-fought progress toward these goals. But we must quicken the pace forward, rather than accept a step back. Today, we rank 13th out of the 16 largest economies for energy efficiency. China is the world leader in clean energy investment, attracting $53.3 billion in 2013 — more than 30 percent more than the United States.
At a time when both Democrats and Republicans agree that creating jobs should be our top priority, we are forgoing at least 2.7 million of them through our inability to enact a clean energy investment strategy. Even though 2014 was the hottest year on record, renewable-energy businesses still aren’t even competing on a level playing field with fossil-fuel companies, which enjoy more than $4 billion in guaranteed federal subsidies each year.
We must make better choices for a more secure and independent energy future. In Maryland, over just eight years, we increased renewable-generation capacity by 57 percent, became a hub for new clean-tech businesses and jobs, and cut emissions by 10 percent. Clear goals, accountability and consistent choices drove better results.
As a nation, we must pursue the imperatives of accelerating cutting-edge clean-energy research, taking away the subsidies that give the advantage to the oil companies of the past over the renewable businesses of the future, modernizing our energy grid, and letting the market drive further innovation by limiting carbon emissions, among other measures.
Clean, inexhaustible sources of energy represent the biggest business opportunity in at least a century. The threat of climate change is real and immediate. Expanding offshore drilling is irreconcilable with the realities of climate science and irrelevant, at best, to taking advantage of the vast economic opportunities clean energy presents. We must move firmly toward a clean energy future.
Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, was the governor of Maryland from 2007 until last month.
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