Intervention: America’s Oil Addiction

By Jason M. Schaefer
Contributing Writer

Burn it! Put a metal dome over it! Spray toxic chemicals on it! Pour garbage into the well!

These are some of the ideas for stopping the 200,000 gallons of oil that are gushing out of the ocean floor every day into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the recent explosion at British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon rig.

Yet, nothing is working and we continue to get more desperate.

It was desperation that got us into this mess in the first place. Our desperate attempts to feed our insatiable oil addiction.

We’re addicted to oil, there’s no doubt about it. Oilman President Bush even said it. Could this oil spill in the Gulf be the equivelant of an addict hitting bottom?

This spill will likely go down as America’s largest environmental disaster with estimates ranging from over 4 million gallons on the low-end to 21 million (and counting) on the high-end of oil polluting the Gulf of Mexico. While our 24-hour news cycle may get bored with the story, it’s not going away. Oil has just started to reach the coast, with the worst likely still to come.

This is a disaster for humans and wildlife alike. Eleven men died in the explosion and fishermen have lost their livelihoods. Some 40 percent of America’s fish catch comes out of the gulf. Those states also depend heavily on coastal tourism. At risk as well is the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. It was created by Teddy Roosevelt and is one of our richest cornucopias of biodiversity.

Our continued addiction to oil only increases the chance of another disaster like the one in the Gulf. Keep in mind that there are thousands of oilrigs off our coastline, and just one rig explosion is wreaking economic and environmental havoc, profoundly affecting the entire country.

“This is not just about making oil platforms safer—this is about moving to a new energy platform,” said National Wildlife Federation President and CEO, Larry Schweiger, who has been down on the coast coordinating volunteer efforts.

We have to get serious about ending our oil addiction. As Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Tom Friedman said, “The only meaningful response to this man-made disaster is a man-made energy bill that would finally put in place an American clean-energy infrastructure that would set our country on a real, long-term path to ending our addiction to oil.”

Yet, while Congress debated climate and clean energy legislation over the past year, big polluters have often hyped the supposed increase in costs to taxpayers and damage they say clean energy legislation would do to our economy. However, Big Oil and their lobbyists are now conspicuously quiet as the price tag for cleaning up the mess they created steadily climbs from $12 billion to $20 billion to who knows how many billions of dollars when all is said and done. That staggering price tag doesn’t even take into account the countless number of jobs lost and other economic impacts in the wake of this oil spill. The economic costs are spreading like an oil slick itself.

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to move to a clean energy economy. Senators Kerry and Lieberman just introduced the American Power Act. This is the kind of comprehensive energy and climate legislation that President Obama called for in his State of the Union address. This bill help us end our oil addiction and reduce pollution, while creating millions of jobs and making sure that we lead the clean energy economy of the 21st century. More importantly, polluters will finally pay a price for the pollution that endangers our air and water.

It is time for Congress to act. As T. Boone Pickens likes to say, we have not had an energy plan in this country in decades.

But, we, the people, need to act as well. Idiotic drill, baby, drill chants or feel-good Earth Day concerts aren’t going to cut it.

Forty years ago, 20 million people from all walks of life came together for the first Earth Day after one-too-many environmental disasters, like the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching on fire. They demanded change and they got it. Congress passed the Clean Air, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and more.

The BP oil spill can serve as our wake-up call. But it will require us to make our voices heard.

Jason Schaefer is a North Dakota Representative for the National Wildlife Federation. He encourages readers to learn more about how they can help at http://www.nwf.org/oilspill or donate by texting WILDLIFE to 20222

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