No New Offshore Drilling!
Officials currently estimate that a million gallons of oil per day may be leaking from the broken BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig, with no near-term fix in sight. Despite the massive disaster, President Obama still has not reversed his March 31 decision to expand oil drilling.
Hundreds of imperiled species in the Gulf will be harmed by the toxic oil from the loggerhead sea turtle to the Alabama beach mouse and Atlantic bluefin tuna. On top of that, local communities dependent on the ocean for their livelihoods are already feeling the devastating impacts with no relief in site. And Obama has proposed opening the Arctic, Atlantic coast and Eastern Gulf to new drilling.
The massive oil spill from BP's Deepwater rig must be a wake-up call that the current offshore drilling is fraught with both social and environmental problems.
Urge President Obama to enact a permanent ban on all new offshore oil and gas exploration and development.
Dear President Obama,
I am writing to urge you to reverse your March 31 decision to expand offshore oil drilling nationwide and to enact a permanent ban on new offshore oil exploration and development. The massive oil spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig should be a wake-up call that the current exploratory plan approval process is broken, the environmental impacts of an oil spill are disastrously high, and industry claims about the unlikeliness of a spill and the safety of its offshore drilling operations are simply untrue. I urge you to take swift action now to permanently stop new offshore oil drilling.
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Further, I urge you to permanently withdraw your approval for Shell Oil or any oil company to drill in the Arctic. The Chukchi and Beaufort seas are both biologically rich and extremely fragile. They are home to America's only populations of threatened polar bears, Pacific walrus, and many ice seal species. It defies logic to open up this fragile, melting environment to dirty, industrial oil and gas development. In order to truly protect the people and environment of the Arctic, you must not allow exploration and development of the current leases in the Arctic.
We must learn from the devastation unfolding in the Gulf and take action now to stop future offshore oil drilling.
