Americans Rejected 'Drill, Baby, Drill' -- Bush Should Respect Our Choice
Part of the change Americans just voted for in overwhelming numbers was to move away from the failed energy philosophy of "drill, baby, drill" to a more farsighted strategy, emphasized by Barack Obama, based on clean, renewable energy and efficiency. Yet on the very day that we raised our voices for change, the Bush administration dragged us in the opposite direction.
The Bureau of Land Management cynically chose November 4 to announce a last-minute plan to lease huge swaths of majestic wilderness in eastern Utah for oil and gas extraction one month before President-elect Obama takes office.
As its clock runs out, the Bush administration also is trying to open-up drilling all over the Rockies and Alaska, to green-light oil shale leasing, and to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Though sad, it's no surprise, coming as it does from the same crowd that designed a misguided national energy policy in secret meetings with the oil, gas and coal industries.
The BLM didn't just try to slip the audacious Utah lease maneuver past the American people on an historic election day, it actually hid the ball from its sister agency, the National Park Service, and then rejected the Service's request for more time to review the scheme.
Among the 360,000 acres to be auctioned for industrial development is pristine land near Canyonlands National Park, adjacent to Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. This Christmas gift to the dirty fuel industry includes parts of Desolation Canyon, named in 1869 by the explorer John Wesley Powell, which has been proposed for national park status. In fact, the BLM itself described Desolation Canyon nine years ago as "a place where a visitor can experience true solitude -- where the forces of nature continue to shape the colorful, rugged landscape."
Words alone cannot do justice to the beauty of these places, but they do capture the absurdity of the Bush plan. Oil and gas drilling in Desolation Canyon? Industrial development along the meandering Green River? The thought makes one wince.
The Obama transition team already has signaled its opposition to the leases, and said that once in office the Obama administration will try to reverse them. Let's hope that's possible. Utah's eastern expanse is one of America's few remaining wilderness treasures. It's our land, it's our legacy, but will it still be here for our children and grandchildren? We made our wishes about that known loudly and clearly on election day.
We voted to take control of our own destiny by breaking our addiction to dirty fuels. We voted to re-power America with clean energy from wind, solar and geothermal power. We voted to use of our greatest resource, American ingenuity, to build economic, energy and climate security, and to preserve our natural heritage. Yes we did. And yes we can.
Robert Redford, an actor, director and environmental activist, is a Trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council and is the founder of Sundance, in Utah.
This post also appears on NRDC's Greenlight blog.
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The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 formalized a permitting program to prevent significant deterioration in regions that were already in attainment of air quality standards.
Three classes of regions were designated.
Class I: pristine areas such as national and international parks, and national wilderness areas, where no new sources of pollution were allowed.
To aid the implementation of this legislation, the IMPROVE program was initiated in 1985. This program implemented an extensive long term monitoring program to establish the current visibility conditions, track changes in visibility and determine causal mechanism for the visibility impairment in the National Parks and Wilderness Areas.
http://vis
EPA and other Agencies have been monitoring visibility in national parks and wilderness areas since 1988. In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a major effort to improve air quality in national parks and wilderness areas. The Regional Haze Rule calls for state and federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas.
The rule requires the states, in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans to reduce the pollution that causes visibility impairment.
Clearly all this hard work and legislation above is being tossed out the window!
Please visit
www.redroc
for how you can help.
More vile actions by an administration that has kept the American people in fear and ignorance far too long. I commend Robert Redford and media personalities like Rachael Maddow aka MSNBC for making us aware. Now, what can we do to show our support before it's too late?
so to whom do we write in protest??
The enviromentalists and the Democratic Party have vigorously stopped America from accessing many of her natural resources. This has been detrimental to our ecconomy and our security interests. This is just another of those culture wars no one wants to get bogged down by. If Democrats refuse to show flexibility on this issue, I find it hard to believe there will be any sort of consensus in Washington to work together to find any other solutions.
I will not be flexible with selfish greedy individuals who take what they want without pause. i have spent my adult life defending against aggressors and will continue to fight to protect. Two sides to a story doesn't mean two equally valid sides. Superman has his side of the story, Lex has his. Stop supporting the bad guys.
I totally disagree. A comprehensive drillng and exploration program is exactly what we need to do. Along with coal, clean coal technology, natural gas, solar, nuclear and wind. Hydrogen probably will be the future, but that is years away.
On what basis do you totally disagree. The issue is to manage our resources thoughtfully.
As castlerider said below, the oil companies already have more drilling leases than they can handle, so there is nothing stopping them from a comprehensive drilling and exploration program. They are going after ANWR and other lands like the guest at the cocktail party shoving trays of hors d'ouvres in his shorts because its free food, at least its free for them while the Bush Administration is running up the tab on our credit card. They have plenty of leases to keep them busy, they're not going hungry any time soon.
Surely we should conserve, but we should explore everywhere and everywhere. Until we are truly independant of foreign oil we need to find our own reserves, and I don't really care how much money the big oil companies make, they provide American jobs, they provide a valuable service and commodity, and they pay a tremendous amount in taxes.
And regarding that credit card, soon the next administration will be in reciept of it, and the balance is going to get a whole lot more larger, or do you thik the spending will stop?
ARAMOS: Expain to me, in real, hard-core, irrefuatable terms what we wil gain by drilling in the Green River Shale. Let's start with extraction costs - and don't throw one study done by one oil company at one site at me. That's baloney. I mean a comprehensive analysis. Then explain to me what the resources from the Green River shale will be used for - they certainly are not going to be used fuel a car or a diesel truck. Then give me a cost/benefit ratio - I'm looking at one from the Rand group right now - and it says exactly what the price of crude must be per barrel for extraction from the Green River Formation to be viable - we are not anywhere close to it. Then explain to me - why - with millions of acres of Green RIver shale - across three states - that this needs to be done next to National Parks. It does not.
It is nasty political manuvering by the Bush administration to cast Obama in a bad light, it is lousy science, and it is unbelievably inane business strategy.
I would like to see a "manhattan project" for renewables.
we have known for far too long that this oil thing was a dead-end, and yet we kept pursuing it and subsidizing it. to consider all of the wasted resources is mind-boggling. we have painted ourselves in this corner - and while the last 8 years has contributed heavily to it, this has been going on for longer than that. we haven't had a president who was serious about energy since carter. I really hope obama is serious about this issue.
and based our entire energy policy on it!
Alaskans themselves want to expand drilling in their own state. We can't criticize Bush for supposedly contradicting the will of the American people and at the same time oppose the will of those people who would be most affected by his policy decisions.
Alaskans get paid a royalty for oil drawn from their state of over $3,000 per year per person, which explains the contradiction and is likely their motivation for being supportive of drilling. They aren't supporting it because they believe in free markets or some higher principle.
It would be interesting to see how supportive they would be of "drill, baby drill" if they didn't get that royalty and the money went to enriching the oil companies instead, as it does for the rest of us.
Which Alaskans? The AIP believes that Alaskan oil should belong to Alaska - and not to the United States. And since Sarah's pipeline (the one she paid the Candians $500 million for) has not even started - no easements, no cost/benefits analysis or other studies, not a shovel in the ground - how exactly is this supposed to happen. It was a nice idea of Sarah's - too bad she didn't have the experience to a) hire someone who was not a lobbyist for TransCanadian to make to deal and b) demand benchmarks of progress before she signed the contract and wrote a the check. Any mid-level corporate manager would have known to do those things.
A few things come to mind that we must do to lay the groundwork for opposing these abuses:
1) Obama should give a clear signal he intends to reverse these last minute abuses to remove the argument these companies will likely put forth in damages claims that they are innocent victims who relied on the government. They must know going in that they engage in this folly at their own financial risk.
2) Congress and the President-Elect could give advance notice that they intend to apply sanctions against companies who seek to benefit from these abuses if the sales are upheld, to include loss of future government contracts and higher taxes, fines, or levies for their complicity. They must know it will not be in their interest to oppose the people.
3) On the positive side, we must also offer a carrot. These companies may be desperate for contracts in these troubled economic times. Let them know their cooperation will generate public good will for which they may be rewarded, perhaps through the economic stimulus package that the President-Elect is putting together now.
4) If all else fails, use the organizations built during the election to affect a boycott. We are going to have to tighten our belts anyway, why not do it for our children's future and the protection of our beautiful and soul-enriching natural environment.
I so want to go see Desolation Canyon now. Thank you Robert, for using your voice in this way.
Please explain why it wouldn't be possible to stop this. What are our options as a government and a people to reverse these actions and business deals?
If Obama backs away from drilling in the US, which he agreed to during the election, now that he is elected, it will be one of many nails in his coffin to the successful of his presidency.
Obama won for a variety of reasons, but not because people want him to go to the left on every issue. If he does this he will fail.
There's already plenty of available land for drilling that has not been touched for years that can keep the oil companies busy for decades, without making more land, especially land adjacent to our National Parks, available for the "dirty fuels" he's talking about. Obama will be happy to allow the drilling where it's safe, but Bush is showing his disregard and actual contempt for protecting our resources from the greed of these oil barons.
Bush can't be sent home soon enough.
AMEN. The Green River shale covers millions of acres in WY, UT and CO. There is absolutely no reason why permits should be granted outside National Parks. I is deliberate on the part of the BLM and Bush administration.
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid rather than learning economics 101. First you guys stated that Bush was just supporting oil gouging to take care of hias oil buddies. Today gas in some places is $1.89/gall
Yes, Mr. Redford, Bush should respect our choice, but he's too busy being resolute. It's fortunate we kicked him out of office because even now, he's too busy supporting his big-oil cronies to do what needs to be done in the way of building up a green economy.
A green re-industr
Democrats ahve consistently looked past the needs of these communities and have reflexively responded to maintain their financial base. I look forward to the day when environmentalists become as concerned with the process as they are with the results.
The Green Party is working to focus on bioregional planning rather than Federal dictates. Urban and resource planning need funds to upgrade and modernize public infrastructure. But they need to have greater input from ordinary people and an end to the "grow, grow, grow" strategy. Smart growth is not the same as uncontrolled sprawl or suburbanization. Green re-industr
The Bush administration spent the whole 8 years saying they didn't care about polls. When Cheney recently was reminded that his proposals were completely against what the American people said they wanted, his reponse was "So what." With the recent landslide election in favor of Democratic views the Republican old white guy minority in Congress has come out with the response that Obama better govern the way they want him to.
So, why would anyone expect this Repubican administration to do anything different from what it's doing in the last two months?
Best to donate heavily and work for Jim Martin in GA, and then weed out all Blue Dog Dems as well as Republicans that can be replaced in 2010 (and Liberman), and then make sure we get those who don't get the message - like Mitch McConnell in 2012.
They don't understand anything else.
What the hell are you talking about Redford? 52% of voters voted for Obama, and that means that we shouldnt open up our own domestic resources for energy? I suppose you would agree that since California voted for Prop 8 that everyone should just respect that too huh? Is that too much to ask then?
The only way to husband a scarce resource is to frugally conserve it. Is that statement in any way controversial? Being that US in-the-ground reserves constitute the smallest percentage of oil among the developed nations, it stands to reason that US oil should be the last oil on the planet to see the inside of a barrel. Those who claim that we need to drill our own oil to ease our dependence on foreign oil are instead condemning the US to instead be FOREVER utterly dependent on foreign oil - when ours is gone, there will be no more - EVER - and we will ever after be at the mercy of foreign suppliers. Better to pay the going rate at the pump with a smile while we (quickly) develop alternatives and await the inevitable day when OUR oil becomes the most valuable oil on the planet. That's called long-term strategy.
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