Trump Acts with a Sense of Urgency
People who care about our environment are uniformly horrified at Trump’s policies that are rapidly destroying the planet, but we sure are impressed with the raw vehemence and unflagging constancy with which he goes about his work.
Here’s a business-as-usual article in the New York Times that begins:
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States coastal waters, giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard. The proposal lifts a ban on such drilling imposed by President Barack Obama near the end of his term (that) would signal that the Trump administration is not done unraveling environmental restrictions in an effort to promote energy production.
Actually, there is a surprising note to this. Had there been an indication that Trump had fully achieved his goal? If so, I sure missed it.
The author seems to be implying that Trump might relax, even though the U.S. is still lagging far behind the Chinese in terms of deaths from air pollution. We lose only about 13,000 per year, and they’re well over one million. That’s almost a 20:1 deficit on a per capita basis.
“America first,” as Trump’s fond of telling his supporters. Anyone who thinks he’ll start resting on his laurels doesn’t understand that our leader is on a mission.
Craig,
The US needs energy and oil to remain competitive and independent of imports. Despite some mishaps, (even spectacular mishaps) off shore drilling has a remarkably good environmental record.
Obama was wrong. The “leave it in the ground” attitude is the equivalent of demanding,the abolition of air traffic because of the potential for accidents, instead of improving safety.
While the scale of drilling activity has increased with newer and more accurate technology, the risk of mishaps has greatly diminished. The oil and gas industry will drill over a million wells by 2025. This is a truly colossal industry, the size of which is often unappreciated.
Problems with abandoned or temporarily sealed US coastal wells have proved surprisingly minimal. This is especially amazing considering the age of some of these wells, but there is always room for improvement in seepage prevention technology. It’s also important to remember drilling can prevent or reduce natural oil and gas seepage which is often much larger than caused by human drilling activity.
The University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have both conducted studies as how natural oil seepage affects the environment. Between 2004 and 2012, nearly 70% of all studies conducted into the effects of oil seepage were either shut down, or “refocused” as a result of pressure to conform to environmentalist anti-oil/gas ethos that swept through the science and academic world at that time.
Of those that remained, (some fund by oil companies) made surprising findings. 97% of all oil spillage is eaten by microbes essential for the growth of certain types of bacteria, which are in turn essential for the oceans ability to absorb carbon compounds!( Oil slicks may actually increase the oceans ability to absorb climate change gases from the atmosphere).
What happens to the 3% of residue remains elusive as does the reason why the microbes leave these compounds which are part of a 10 year study by Shell to determine the exact nature of the these elements.
There’s so much yet to learn about oceanic pollution. Emotive, knee jerk reactions based on popular misconceptions are not helpful.