The American people do not want our fragile coastal waters exposed to dangerous oil and gas drilling. Yet the Trump administration is pushing a new five-year offshore plan that would allow drill rigs to be put virtually on every inch of our nation’s coastline at risk of devastating oil spills. It’s unconscionable, and it must be stopped.
We should be putting our money into clean renewable energy. They should stop spending our tax money to prop up oil companies.
Expanding offshore drilling threatens our coastal communities, whales, marine life that is part of our food chain and other marine life with catastrophic oil spills. It blocks our path to a clean energy future and keeps us shackled to the heavily polluting fossil fuels of the past. It’s nothing more than another handout to private oil companies, forcing taxpayers to continue subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.
Fossil fuels are the cause of the excess carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide which pollute our air and cause over 10,000 premature deaths every year in the U.S., and millions worldwide, from bronchitis, asthma, lung and heart disease and stroke.
But that is what Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke and President Trump want to do. Why? Because if gives another handout to private oil companies, but it also increases the likelihood of another dangerous oil spill such as the Deepwater Horizon Spill in 2010, in which 1,100 miles of shoreline were polluted and which left 12,000 people in the fishing industry unemployed.
What will it do for us—the taxpayers? Nothing but block our path to a clean energy future. Of course Trump’s 30 percent tariff on solar panels made in China does the same thing by making it more expensive to install solar, thereby locking some people out of the option of going solar.
Even Alaska Republican Rep. Lisa Murkowski and Republican Gov. Rick Scott of Florida have both asked Zinke and Trump to back off of this plan. Now it is up to us to ask the same thing. Call your congressman and senators and say no to offshore drilling for unneeded oil and gas. It is time to take action to save our planet for future generations.
Bette Holland
Dawsonville