Meanwhile Back in California, the Bush Administration Backs Drilling for Oil off the California Coast

by Mary

On Monday, Bush signed the massive giveaway energy bill that does almost nothing to address our real energy problem: namely weaning ourselves off our addiction to petroleum for our energy needs. The Bush energy strategy is to drill for every last bit of oil from US public lands which includes opening ANWR and pushing the drilling for oil off the California Coast. That along with their strategy to corral the important oil fields throughout the world is how they plan to make sure Americans can continue to be wasteful energy consumers and that their energy company benefactors can continue to make out like bandits. Of course, now that it looks like the world's supply has been exceeded by the demand, the Bush admin tactic of ignoring conservation to satisfy the wildcatter's desire to drill where ever there might be oil will certainly make the situation worse. Because oil can no longer be seen as an unlimited resource, the prices the oil gamblers can get for developing oil fields will make the battles over putting some areas off limits from drilling even more contentious.

Californians, both Democratic and Republican, have long opposed drilling off the coast, but this has never deterred the Bushies from their obsessive goals to reopen the waters off the coast to drilling. Well, this week, the Bushies were handed two setbacks in their relentless drive to desecrate the California coast. First, the California Coastal Commission voted to reject the US government's plan for extending the oil and natural gas leases off the Santa Barbara coast on Thursday. And on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the Feds could not proceed as they had not provided any evidence that the Federal Plans had considered the environmental impact of renewing the leases.

What's even more outrageous about the Fed push to open the California coast to drilling is that the oil that would be extracted couldn't be used for anything more than asphalt. So much for solving the energy crisis.

Nevertheless, as Kevin Drum noted, we are living in another world now. The battle for protecting our public lands from drilling is going to be a long and bitterly fought slog. As a citizen of these United States, I resolve to do my best to live more lightly on this land and to actively support conservation and alternative energy sources so that I can do my part in protecting the lands under assault by the Bush greed machine.