Environmental Groups Decry Obama Plan to Lift Moratorium on Offshore Drilling

From Democracy Now:

BRENDAN CUMMINGS: It’s horribly disappointing. Rather than instituting a fundamental change of the failed energy policies of the Bush-Cheney era, what we saw yesterday is Obama essentially embracing wholeheartedly the policy of—that we can really drill our way to energy independence, that we can drill our way out of the climate crisis, and that somehow it’s OK to permanently sacrifice some of the most sensitive, some of the most ecologically important areas of our nation just for short-term political gain. And that’s horrendously disappointing, and we would have hoped for far better from the President.

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I've noted here a few times in the past how the environment is not one of the issues that makes me burn with passion. I mean sure, I'm concerned, definitely. But it wasn't really until I started to understand that the same forces that have whittled away at the middle class for decades, that have driven millions of average Americans into debt, that flagrantly and shamelessly exploit workers in order to gain outrageous profits, and that have shifted the US from a democratic republic to an oligarchic plutocracy are, in fact, the same forces that are destroying the environment. Actually, it all comes together with global warming: corporate capitalism, if unrestrained, will make our planet incapable of supporting modern civilization as we currently understand it, all for short term profit.

So it's more the nexus between economic justice and environmentalism that brings me on board. Unfortunately, the sight of baby seals covered with oil may pull at my heart strings, but it doesn't piss me off the way that rich and powerful greedy bastards bending us over the barrel does.

But then, that's what this "liberal" drilling plan is about.

Whether the President really believes that tapping out the two percent of world oil reserves existing in American territory will really make us energy independent, which it won't, or whether he's simply tossing a bipartisan bone to a right wing which is currently pissed off beyond all rationality about the recent passage of health care legislation is really kind of a moot point. New offshore drilling will definitely spoil the environment. New offshore drilling will necessarily contribute to global warming. New offshore drilling will line the pockets of the already wealthy oil industry with even more colossal amounts of cash.

That is, how the fuck can anybody, anybody at all, describe President Obama as a "liberal" while keeping a straight face?

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