Ed Markey Notes Exxon Valdez 20th Anniversary
Congressman Ed Markey took the opportunity of yesterday’s 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska to send a message to President Obama. The message: Protect the Arctic from environmental exploitation.
Markey wrote, “Twenty years from now, we can’t look back and think ‘what should we have done to save the Arctic?’ The time to create a comprehensive plan to fight global warming and create sane energy policies is now, for the future of the Arctic and for us all.”
A comprehensive plan to create sane energy policies? I like that idea. However, a comprehensive plan cannot just include the Arctic.
Ed Markey and scores of Democratic colleagues are asking President Obama to protect Arctic waters from offshore oil drilling. That’s nice, but it’s not a comprehensive plan. A comprehensive energy policy would protect the rest of the coastal waters of the United States from expanded offshore drilling. After all, it isn’t just Arctic coastlines that are environmentally vulnerable to oil spills. Why should the Alaskan coasts receive special treatments other shorelines do not receive?
The Democrats in Congress are pussy footing around this subject for the awkward reason that many of them supported an end to the moratorium on offshore oil drilling themselves last year. Among them was Senator Barack Obama.
Their absurd claim was that energy prices could only be lowered with expanded offshore drilling for oil – even though new offshore drilling could not be in place for years, and would depress the price of gasoline only by a few pennies. Then, gasoline prices dropped on their own, when irresponsible speculation ended and Americans engaged in simple energy conservation.
Oh dear. There’s a 2 ton elephant seal in the room… and it looks like it’s coated in crude oil.
