Amidst growing national outrage as oil from BP's deep-sea oil well blowout spreads across the Gulf of Mexico and has just reached the delicate Louisiana coastline, what's noteworthy about Arthur B. Robinson, running on the GOP ticket this year for Oregon's 4th Congressional District, is his stated support for disposing of oil and nuclear waste at sea which, according to Robinson, is the safest place in the world to dispose of certain types of industrial waste material.
In 2004, Robinson's "Access To Energy" newsletter contained a column titled, "OCEAN DUMPING? YES!" which declared,
"Wastes dumped into the deep ocean will soon reach the bottom, where they are less hazardous than nearly any other place on Earth. Most materials will remain there: marine organisms are rare in the deep ocean, food chains are long, and few materials will be carried back to mankind. And that is what waste disposal is all about...
...The oil companies' reckless greed, we are told, has devastated the oceans with their oil spills.
Baloney."
But it then went even further, claiming that the Earth's oceans are "starved for" crude oil,
"As for oil spills in the open and deep ocean, they amount to far less than natural seeps and river runoff, and any unbiased oceanographer will confirm that they are a boon to marine life, inflicting damage mainly on the oil and shipping companies. For crude oil is a natural, organic, biodegradable product of the earth's ancient plant and animal life, and it is this type of hydrocarbon that marine life in the open and deep ocean is starved for."
Further, as explained in another article in the 2004 newsletter, the free market, and the profit motive, are absolutely the best guarantors of a clean environment:
"The environment, then, has no better protector than its owner, and no worse enemy than a system where everything belongs to "the people." Species are endangered when they belong to everybody and nobody; and nothing short of the profit motive will protect them."
The 2004 "Access To Energy" newsletter post heavily referenced an article that originally appeared in a 1985 UN Environmental Program publication, by retired professor of oceanography Dr. C.L. Osterbeg, titled "Waste Disposal: Where should it be? Land or Sea?" which argued that dumping toxic waste in the deep ocean could protect fragile coastline areas. Observed Robinson,
"Nuclear wastes, which are not singled out in Osterberg's article, are obviosly [sic] subject to the same principles, even though their disposal is (except in the programmed reflexes of the scaremongers) a less acute problem than chemical wastes..."
Osterberg's views were not considered fringe in the late 1980's. In response to a new US law banning the dumping of sewage and industrial wastes in the ocean after December 31, 1991 professor Osterberg managed to place a June 14, 1989 op-ed in the New York Times, "Deep Ocean: The Safest Dump," which observed,
"The new law places two-thirds of our planet off-limits to mankind's wastes. This is an interesting new philosophy: that our wastes should go where we live -- the land -- and not where we don't live -- the much bigger, deep ocean, with water depths of 3,000 feet or more."
British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil well, now blown out and gushing many thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, was drilled at a water depth of 5,000 feet.
In March, The American Spectator ran a warm cover story on Arthur Robinson's congressional bid, noting that,
"Robinson is best known for his "Petition Project," in which he collected 31,000 signatures from scientists who oppose the "scientific consensus" supporting man-made global warming. He also publishes a newsletter, Access to Energy."
In 1998 Robinson publicly admitted that most of the signatories to his "Petition Project" did not work in scientific fields that had a bearing on Global Warming and atmospheric study.
Formerly a talented chemist, Arthur Robinson has carved out a niche selling a Christian home schooling curriculum developed by his late wife, who according to Robinson compiled it curriculum from material culled from Christian homeschooling curricula published from Bob Jones University, the A Beka Book series, and other sources.
Robinson's curriculum "emphasizes the wonderful collection of historical novels written by G. A. Henty." According to a PBS description of Henty's numerous formulaic 19th Century novels geared towards adolescent boys, "Henty's books are notable for their hearty imperialism, undisguised racism, and jingoistic patriotism."
In his 1884 novel "By Sheer Pluck," in a chapter titled "The Dark Continent" Alfred George Henty wrote,
"the intelligence of an average negro is about equal to that of a European child of ten years old. A few, a very few, go beyond this, but these are exceptions...
Living among white men, their imitative faculties enable them to acquire a considerable amount of civilization. Left alone to their own devices they retrograde into a state little above their native savagery."
The Robinson Self Teaching Curriculum includes, as a reference for students, a 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and a 1611 King James Version of the Bible which "is the foundational book of the Curriculum."
Signatory to A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, a 2001 statement, from the creationist Discovery Institute, that challenges the Theory of Evolution, Art Robinson in 1986 co-authored with Dr. Gary North a book on how to survive nuclear war titled, Fighting Chance: Ten Feet To Survival. The book advocated bringing back the so-called "Duck and Cover" civil defense approach promoted by the US government civil defense film "Duck and Cover" shown in US schools to schoolchildren in the 1950's and 1960's.
Gary North, a theologian, prolific author, and former Congressional staffer for Texas Congressman Ron Paul, was a protégé of founder of the Christian Reconstructionism movement Rousas J. Rushdoony. In 1992 Rushdoony spoke at the inaugural event of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, later re-branded as the Constitution Party. In 2008 Ron Paul endorsed the Constitution Party candidate for president of the United States, and current Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul keynoted a Minnesota Constitution Party rally in April 2009.
Rousas Rushdoony advocated executing homosexuals by stoning, wanted to reimpose the institution of slavery, claimed that African-American slaves were lucky, was a Holocaust denier and a creationist, and maintained that the Sun rotates around the Earth.
Arthur Robinson's homeschooling curriculum, for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools," contains several references to R. J. Rushdoony including a 51 minute audio recording of an interview with the now-deceased Christian Reconstructionist titan.