Word: oiling
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President Obama announced a plan March 31 that would allow oil drilling 50 miles off the coast of Virginia and encourage exploration for future drilling sites along the Eastern seaboard and northern Alaska. (The Pacific Ocean and Bristol Bay are off-limits.) Obama called the drilling leases, the first of their kind in two decades, a "balance" between the country's future oil needs and a desire to protect its natural resources. The proposal was largely seen as an effort to court GOP support for an upcoming climate-change bill...
...from Delaware to central Florida—the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as more of Alaska, to drilling. This near-sighted plan endangers the environment while also doing little to advance the United States’ goal of energy independence. The research necessary to pinpoint tracts of oil and natural gas suitable for drilling is incredibly invasive; for example, the process often disrupts whale migration because of sonar equipment. Such research will likely drag on for 10 to15 years, while destroying precious ecosystems...
Apart from the severe environmental hazards, Obama’s proposal is problematic because of the short-term solution it provides. Experts estimate that the total yield from the new drilling proposal will only provide three years of oil and about two years of natural gas, based on current consumption levels. These are paltry numbers. Nor is this, in fact, really a “solution.” The recovered oil and gas will not be available for many years, and it is possible that once the oil and gas tracts are found, extraction may be prohibitively expensive...
While some believe that Obama’s proposal could free the country from dependence on foreign oil, The United States’ oil and gas reserves simply do not compare to the Middle East’s. Even suggesting that they do is a political façade. Rather than delude Americans into thinking that two to three years of (potentially forbiddingly expensive) oil and gas aids the energy crisis, Obama needs to focus on greater investment in sustainable, alternative energy solutions. The real problem lies in the United States’s heavy reliance on oil and fossil...
From an economic perspective, some may go so far as to argue that this oil and natural gas drilling will create jobs, in a time when many Americans are out of work. However, the administration would do much better to focus on generating green jobs. Promoting employment in the sustainability sector not only works to mitigate climate change but also provides workers with greater long-term job possibilities than a career on an oil...