The No New Drilling Act would prevent the tremendous risk created by plans to radically expand offshore drilling all up and down America’s Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts.

If Kathy Catstor wants to protect her district from the extreme pollution that comes from offshore drilling, she’ll need to push for a new moratorium, not just the denial of a little distance.

For those residents of the 17th district in Pennsylvania who have been disturbed by the tremendous pollution that has resulted from the self-destruction of the Deepwater Horizon, it doesn’t seem that there is a single candidate who will step forward and speak for their concerns.

When Senator Mary Landrieu spoke of the benefits of offshore oil drilling, perhaps she was referring to the $357,050 in donations that she has taken from the oil and gas industry.

The best way to prevent oil spills is to stop the expansion of offshore drilling, reducing the number of petroleum-laden tankers and offshore platforms littering our nation’s coastlines. However, given the offshore drilling that already exists, the Oil Spill Prevention Act is an important bill that every senator should be able to support.

First, these lobbyists convinced members of Congress to vote in favor of expanded offshore drilling – but with the idea that Representatives could create special protections for their own states, letting other states take all the risks. Now that the barriers to new drilling have been taken down, members of state delegations to the House of Representatives have put together legislation that would ban offshore drilling, but only in their own states. Each little state-based coalition lacks the votes it needs for its own bill.

Seadrill, one of the companies involved in the Australian spill, has set up offices in Houston and is targeting the Gulf of Mexico for additional operations. Congressman Parker Griffith seems to think that’s just fine – but then, he’s got nothing to lose.

It’s the largest oil spill in Australian history, and it could go on for months more. How has Sue Myrick responded to the news of this massive oil spill? She hasn’t. Myrick is pretending that the oil spill isn’t happening at all, and she hasn’t taken any action to amend her legislation one bit.

Environmentalists should focus on serious threats, not on unsubstantiated worries and ideological obsession with the restoration of ecosystems to an abstract status of pristine, human-free perfection.

The fact that one of the supposedly spill-proof offshore drilling platforms has created one of the largest oil spills in history ought to give politicians like Congressman Adrian Smith second thoughts.