Joshua Green: Even an oil spill won’t move Washington

[unhappycamper]

Even an oil spill won’t move Washington
By Joshua Green
May 6, 2010

IN WASHINGTON, environmental disasters come with a silver lining. They have the power to change the legislative dynamic almost overnight. A 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara was the impetus for the original Earth Day, and prompted Congress to pass the National Environmental Policy Act, which among other things banned new offshore drilling. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 helped speed passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, a landmark environmental law that Congress had been fighting over for eight years.

Historically speaking, then, a disaster like the one unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico would seem tailor made to jump start a legislative process that has broken down amid partisan recriminations. And that certainly describes Washington. For months, a group of senators — Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham, and Independent Joe Lieberman — worked to craft an energy and climate bill that fell apart last week before it could even be introduced. Then came the Deepwater Horizon oil rig collapse. This should have prompted the Senate to look anew at the energy bill, which steers the country toward a cleaner, safer energy future.

But that’s not what has happened. Many early responders in both parties have defended, not condemned, offshore drilling.

“I don’t think that there’s any argument that we should just start shutting down activity now, or even start shutting down new activity that’s planned,’’ Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana said on Sunday. House minority leader John Boehner seemed somehow encouraged. “This tragedy should remind us that America needs a real, comprehensive energy plan, like Republicans’ ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy,’’ he said Monday. The president’s own response was the most feckless. “Let me be clear,’’ President Obama intoned in a speech last week. “I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security.’’

The last month has seen two conspicuous energy failures related to the production of fossil fuels — the deaths of 11 oil workers in the Gulf explosion, and the 29 miners in West Virginia who perished in the worst mine collapse in 40 years. It’s also seen a major clean energy success in the approval of the Cape Wind project. A president more committed to clean energy would use these examples to press his case. Obama hasn’t. He seems curiously reluctant to point out the obvious: The environmental dangers of over-reliance on fossil fuels.

[Demeter]

1. Don't Give Up So Fast!

The government will move, or be moved.

It's like a pimple, coming to head, it will pop when the pressure behind it gets large enough, and woe to anyone in the target zone.

[nightrain]

2. knr. the Earth is not sacred to some and is there to plunder.

[amborin]

3. K&R

[The Damned]

4. What's needed is...

.....to relocate the San Andreas Fault to Georgetown!