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This is the catastrophe that oil industry lobbyists and their friends in Congress said would never happen.
They said new technology made drilling "safe and protective of the environment."2 And in 2008, after spending millions on lobbying, Big Oil got President Bush and the Democratic Congress to repeal the ban on new off-shore drilling that had been in place for more than 30 years.
But now public support for drilling is plummeting, and we must seize this moment to stop Big Oil from getting their hands on any more of our precious coasts.
Can you call Senator Sherrod Brown today? Tell him that you want Congress to immediately reinstate the ban on new off-shore oil drilling. Here's where to call:
Senator Sherrod Brown
Phone: 202-224-2315
Then, please report your call by clicking here:
Move On
How many times will we have to learn the hard way that off-shore drilling is a disaster waiting to happen?
Forty-one years ago, oil covered the beaches of Santa Barbara, California in what was, at the time, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. If we had started right then doing everything possible to end our dependence on oil, we could have saved enough oil to end our imports of foreign oil and shut down every last off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
But instead, our elected officials have allowed Big Oil to dictate our energy policy. We've paid lip service to clean energy while spending hundreds of billions subsidizing the oil industry and fighting two wars to protect our supply from the Middle East. We're seeing the consequences in the Gulf of Mexico right now.
We're not going to get off oil in a day, but we need to start now by drawing a line in the sand and saying no to any expansion of off-shore oil drilling.