Californians say "baby, baby, no more drilling"

[bemildred]

Source: Rooters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar confronted a host of sea creatures and polar bears on Thursday as costumed Californians told the new administration 'no' to offshore oil drilling.

Salazar did not hint at the contents of President Barack Obama's energy policy, but said it would address climate change and include oil and gas.

"We're not going to turn off the oil and gas requirements we have for this country overnight or even in a decade. We're going to see oil and gas production," he told a packed hearing on offshore drilling.

The crowd booed a lonely supporter of offshore drilling and waved dollar bills to signify that they thought increased production of oil and gas was a sell-out of environmental policy.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE53G03Q20090417

[Arctic Dave]

1. Sounds like a 180 from the pro drilling supporters in Anchorage.

Although, I have to admit, the level of ingnorance on both sides of the drilling "protest" was apalling.

[bemildred]

2. People like to swim and surf and stuff here.

The fisheries died some time ago. I think the most important argument is that oil is temporarily in adequate supply, and we are supposed to be wanting to shift to other energy sources, so coastal drilling ought to have to work really hard to justify itself at present.

[XemaSab]

4. Not much swimming in the sea

and what surfing there is requires a wetsuit.

[Peace Patriot]

8. I see surf boards on cars all along the upper northern California coast for about half

the year (the warmer half), as well as kayaks (for ocean kayaking), and scads of abalone divers (in season)--all of which require wetsuits--as well as thousands of beachcomber tourists out for a vacation on the pristine, rugged beaches, local small businesspeople gathering seaweed from the least polluted coastal waters on earth, whale watching boats, fishing boats, and thousands of other enterprises solely dependent on the health and beauty of the environment. And that is just the upper coast--hard to get to, but famous for its spectacular beauty, and downhome atmosphere--a tremendous relief and refuge to many people from the harried cities and other more crowded parts of the California coast. Point Reyes to the south, and south of San Francisco (Monterey, Big Sur, Santa Cruz), there are tens of thousands of regular surfers, swimmers, boaters and other beachgoers, in season and out (wetsuit or no). (The water is warmer and does not require a wetsuit for about half the year.) You seem to think a wetsuit is unusual, and that therefore the interests of those who consider wetsuit surfing, wetsuit ab diving or wetsuit kayaking routine ought to be shoved aside. Gee, not many people do it--so who cares about them?

Well, a lot of people do it. Wetsuit wearing is much more common than you seem to think, in northern California, and, in any case, as the Surfriders association and others have pointed out, surfers are the "canaries in the coal mine." When a coastal environment is polluted, they are the first humans to be directly affected--they get ill from pollution!--so their interests are everyone's interests. When the surfers get sick, you know the fisheries are in trouble, and the whales and dolphins are in trouble, and all of humanity is in trouble. It would be utterly stupid of all of us to ignore such impacts because, in your opinion, it only affects a few.

[XemaSab]

10. I think you misunderstood my post

I wasn't saying that Californians don't love the ocean, I was saying that as a lifelong Californian I have never been swimming in the ocean because it's too cold. :P

[CreekDog]

13. there's tons of surfing here

and lots of fishing

[Bette Noir]

5. I don't know where your "here" is, but the salmon season was

opened in California and Oregon this year, after being cancelled last year, because of an unexpectedly robust recovery of salmon numbers.

I wish I had known about the protest sooner-- I knit myself an elephant seal head recently, and would have liked an opportunity to wear it.

The limited production of energy from offshore drilling is not worth the risk of catastrophic damage to the ecosystems of the ocean and the coast-- and the resulting damage to the local economy from that damage.

[bemildred]

6. I was talking about commercial fishing.

I know people that had to find another line of work, and I know that that's been going on for a long time on the California coast. Monterrey used to can a lot of sardines at one time. Humboldt Bay used to have a large fishing fleet.

But I am glad to hear there are still salmon to catch.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Corporate logic: Kill a fishery with dams and rapacious logging--and then it's fair game

for the ultimate degradations of oil drilling. I've seen logging predators use this same logic. Kill off endangered species--spotted owls, coho salmon, marbled murrelets--then you can clear-cut the last bits of the ancient redwood forest, because who cares?

In any case, your facts are wrong. "The fisheries died some time ago." Not true. California's northern coast may be in crisis from a century of corporate abuse, like every other place on earth, but it still is one of the few most productive fisheries in the country, and it is furthermore one of the least polluted coastlines in the world. It is also critically important habitat for gray whales (which hug the coastline on their yearly migrations) and other species. The recovery of the gray whales is one of the few environmental successes that the human race can point to, in a dismal and suicidal record of dramatic environmental decline. It is nuts to cite declining fisheries--a worldwide phenomenon--as an excuse for more pollution and degradation.

But there is something more. The northern California coast is BEAUTIFUL--spectacularly, awesomely, fabulously, breathtakingly beautiful. It is simply monstrous to pollute it with oil rigs, inevitable oil, drudge and other toxic spills, and all attendant off-shore and on-shore horrors. The corporate oil fuckwads who have hijacked our military for corporate oil wars, slaughtered a million people to get their oil, destroyed a country, displaced and impoverished millions, and have gas gouged us, and destroyed our democracy, have been trying to get their blood-soaked, greedy hands on the northern California coast for more than forty years. Its remoteness and ruggedness, and the ferocity of its people in opposition to oil drilling, have thus far prevented these monsters from doing so. To blithely dismiss this struggle with off-hand remarks, that the fisheries are dead anyway (so who cares?), and that the oil monsters have enough liquid gold for now, so...what? ...wait for another Bush Junta to get it? What are you implying?

This coast should off limits to oil drilling forever. Period. End of story. It should not be held hostage to monster greed and human idiocy in the future. This must be the turning point. This must be where we end these corporate monsters' death grip on the earth, on our lives and on our democracy. Let it end, starting now!

[bemildred]

9. I love the North Coast.

I lived there 17 years, worked in the sawmills for 12, have family there. The fishing business is a shadow of what it once was, as is the lumber business. (Edit: and that WAS a crime.) I'm not sure why you are arguing with me about it. Do you think I favor drilling?

[Peace Patriot]

12. "Do you think I favor drilling?" Yes, it sounded like you were casually dismssing

the north coast (fisheries gone, so let the oil drilling begin). It seemed off-hand and ill-informed. Perhaps you didn't mean it that way. But that's what it sounded like.

The coastal fisheries have been over-fished--more the crime of foreign dragnet boats than the local coastal fleet, whose fishermen and women have long agreed to limits--but that doesn't mean that the fisheries are dead. In fact, they would soon recover if there were more marine sanctuaries (which soon become natural hatcheries for commercial fishing, if the commercial fishers respect them--the catchable fish migrate out of the sanctuary). The native coho salmon may be gone forever, due to overlogging. They are especially sensitive creatures, and their spawning habitat in coastal streams and rivers has been decimated. But there are other hardier salmon species, and other species of fish (that don't migrate up streams to spawn) that would quickly recover, given half a chance (as the newly opened king salmon season this year has shown). We shouldn't count a fishery as dead because it has declined. One other thing: The government has let the onus of other industries' behavior fall harshly upon the fisherfolk, with little relief for these hardy, wonderful small business people. The logging corporations get every break imaginable; the small fisherfolk are allowed to go belly up. This is insane government--and it is a reflection of corporate rule. The multinational oil monsters want the small fisherfolk gone. The fisherfolk--who obeyed the rules. The fisherfolk--who agreed to limits. The fisherfolk--whose livelihood depends on a healthy environment, and true sustainable use of natural resources. The fisherfolk--small scale, hard-working, community-minded, stubborn resisters of the corporate monster--whether nuclear plants, or oil rigs, or clear-cutting. The decline of the north coast fishing fleet has as much to do with corporate control of our government as it does with declines in the fisheries.

To say that the fisheries are dead is not only wrong, it is a misunderstanding of the problem. The fisheries are not dead; and the loss of most of the fishing fleet I would say is largely due--some might say at least partly due--to corporate-run government. Small scale commercial fishing and the kinds of people who do it are a nuisance to the corporate rulers. This is true worldwide, not just here. The global corporate predators who are running things are the enemy of small business, but especially of small businesses that use resources sustainably, and that hold communities together. They don't at all mind large-scale, corporate dragnet operations from Singapore. They invest in those. They don't at all mind giant tankers polluting the oceans. They profit from them. But our local communities, our local fishing fleet, our local harbors? They are a pest. They are a bad example. If you want to eat fish, you should have to get it from Chile or Ecuador, at tremendous cost in oil wars and pollution (--not to mention environmental and labor impacts in Chile and Ecuador). You should be dependent on the corporate rulers for fish, as for everything else. They don't want healthy, small scale, local enterprise. There is a deliberate intention to extinguish such enterprise. So...who gets the bailouts? Who gets the tax breaks? Who gets financial credit? Who gets helped in hard times? Who gets de-regulated? Who gets serviced by the regulatory agencies, at the expense of everything and everyone else? Not the small fisher folk.

[bemildred]

15. I think you hear what you want to hear, and I will leave you to it.

I mean I agree with you, but you seem to want to belabor me for that.

[Theobald]

11. Hypothetical question for you

Each year 62 million gallons of oil naturally seeps into the ocean and 15 million gallons is spilled from oil platforms. http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html.

If an oil platform could be put into operation off the Californian Coast, out of sight from anyone on the coast, that would result in a net decrease in oil pollution, would you support it?

I'm not sure this can be done, but it would seem to me if you have an area where you know there is a natural oil spill occuring, that if you could tap into that resevior of oil and reduce the pressure by removing the oil, you could stop the natural leek.

[CreekDog]

14. when has a "seep" killed millions of animals and closed beaches for days?

yeah i thought so. :eyes:

[XemaSab]

21. There are natural seeps in Santa Barbara

It's pretty gross.

[bemildred]

22. Yup. "Tarheels" is not just for Carolina.

But the platforms didn't help either, I'm told. And the Indians found the stuff useful.

[XemaSab]

23. The Native Americans used the tar to caulk their canoes

:)

[bemildred]

24. Yes, "native americans", or "first peoples", my mistake.

:-)

[Arctic Dave]

16. Harvesting of food from the oceans is very much alive here.

I hope it never changes.

[roody]

3. I listened for hours on kmec

and I was impressed by the intelligent comments. One woman who harvests seaweed for a living brought a gift for Salazar of palm frond seaweed, unique to the area.

http://www.kmecradio.org/listen /

[Arctic Dave]

17. It looks like we don't have to worry about it now.

The Dept. of Interior did the right thing.

[roody]

18. What did they do?

[ohio2007]

19. They didn't need to do anything as the market forced the issue

U.S. gasoline price marks biggest drop ever: survey 10/12/08

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3541280&mesg_id=3541453

[Arctic Dave]

20. Obama shut down ALL offshore leases b*sh pushed through

at the end of his tyranny.