The High Cost of "Drill Baby Drill", Part II- Where Are They Now?

Indeed Mrs. Palin...."How is it workin' out for ya?"

And for Michael Steele....Rudy Guliani...John McCain....and to Republican Governors Bobby Jindal (LA), Haley Barbour (MS), Bob Riley (AL), and newly minted independent Charlie Crist of Florida- are you still in favor of letting Big Oil use the Gulf of Mexico as their own personal cash register? The worst ecological disaster in more than 20 years, an oil spill 130 miles long and 70 miles wide has reached the coast line of Louisiana, and the first oil covered animals have been seen on shore. We can expect an area stretching from near New Orleans to Pensacola to be affected.

BP's platform exploded last week, 50 miles in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and sending the giant oil slick on a collision course with an area of the country called by some "The Redneck Riviera". The irony of the oil slick hitting and possibly devastating one of the most Republican areas of the country, states whose leaders (and many citizens) drank the GOP "Drill Baby Drill" Kool-Aide are about to find out....pardon the expression....an inconvenient truth. That is, offshore drilling has risks and unintended consequences- and in yet another tragic case greed won out over safety, and now an ecosystem is threatened with collapse by this spill. Some species may never recover, the wetlands may be polluted forever, and people who made a living from harvesting the Gulf and in tourism could find the extinction of their way of life by the time the weekend is over.

But where are THEY now? The "Drill Baby Drill Cheerleaders" have been strangely silent. That is, with the exception of Boss Limbaugh. Yes, Rush has a bizarre theory that President Obama had a hand in the creation of the oil spill. I won't even bother to try to explain it- his twisted "logic" makes my brain hurt.



A week or so ago I wasn't focused on offshore drilling. After all, the President proposed expanding offshore drilling earlier in the month. But that wouldn't be in by backyard. It would be in the Gulf, and along the Atlantic Coast off of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. No need to worry in New Jersey.

And then came the BP-Gulf Disaster of 2010. And the reality set in that here in the Northeast we would not be immune to any potential oil spills that could occur in the South. Imagine this- an oil spill like the one in the Gulf is the size of New Jersey. What if a spill off the Virginia coast of that size were to hit New Jersey? The state's second largest industry, tourism, would vanish overnight- and the impact would be felt in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and possibly Pennsylvania.

We use the term "teaching moment" a lot, so it seems. The spill in the Gulf was the hardest of lessons. And the after the full impact is felt, we all need to ask...."Now what?".

Click here for a very well written blog entry on the oil spill and the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd by WABC TV's Bill Ritter.