This one makes my blood boil.
The Obama administration’s policies to permanently destroy the Gulf oil industry along with thousands of much needed jobs in this country is also causing irreparable damage to marine ecosystems. What we’re dealing with is irrational hatred of anything not perceived as green according to the Book of Obama.
Make no mistake, Obama and his team of radical progressives are incapable of making any decision that isn’t submerged in rank ideological stupidity. Team Obama talks green but then adheres to policies that destroy the environment. Team Obama supports industries they like and have decided will be the winners of the energy race.
The reality is they hate anything that competes with their vision of windmills for as far as the eye can see, electric cars and solar energy for everyone regardless of the costs, ergo their war against oil, gas, and coal.
The focus and raison d’être of this blog is common sense environmentalism. The consequences of the government dictated dismantling of oil platforms in the Gulf is destroying tens of thousands of fish and their ecosystem of artificial reefs that grew as a result of the huge platforms in the Gulf.
According to FrontpageMag:
The most prolific marine ecosystem on earth is being systematically destroyed on orders of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Where the BP oil spill failed miserably, Obama’s Dept. of the Interior now triumphs.
[…]
Dismantling their production platforms could cost oil operators “$6 billion to $18 billion in lost future production,” according to a report by Mark Kaiser and Allan Pulsipher of the Louisiana State University Center for Energy Studies.
The federal government, however, is unmoved by such projections. Production? Costs? Profits?—come on! Where’s the federal “environmental expert” affected by such stuff?
So let’s try this: the most prolific and “diverse marine ecosystem” ever recorded by marine scientists was created by the “facilities” the U.S. Dept. of the Interior is hell-bent on dismantling (offshore oil platforms). Acting as artificial reefs over the past half century, the natural beauty, teeming fish life, coral colonies, and “bio-diversity,” created by these structures is amply documented in several studies commissioned by none other than the U.S. Dept. of the Interior.
One recent report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Minerals (a division of the U.S. Dept. of the Interior) boasts that “fish densities are 20 to 50 times higher at oil and gas platforms than in nearby Gulf water, and each platform seasonally serves as critical habitat for 10 to 20 thousand fishes.”
In fact, “villainous” Big Oil produces marine life at rates that puts to shame “wondrous” Earth Goddess Gaia. “The fish Biomass around an offshore oil platform is ten times greater per unit area than for natural coral reefs,” found Dr. Charles Wilson of LSU’s Dept. of Oceanography and Coastal Science (emphasis added). ”Ten to thirty thousand adult fish live around an oil production platform in area half the size of a football field.”
I look for and support common sense energy policy and environmental solutions. This policy lacks common sense and good stewardship of the earth’s marine environment. This is wonton destruction on a grand scale!
Accidentally drop your boat anchor over coral off the Florida coast and you’ll be fined up to $25,000 pursuant to federal regulations. Catch and keep a Gag Grouper, Amberjack or more than 2 Red Snapper per fishing trip in any U.S. federal waters and you’ll be fined $600 per fish, pursuant to federal regulations.
Yet endangered coral in the Gulf of Mexico is being blown up, blow-torched, and winched out of the Gulf by the ton to bleach in scrapyards — as mandated by federal regulations. Tons of Red Snapper, Grouper, Amberjack and thousands of other “endangered” or “threatened” fish species are being dynamited in the Gulf of Mexico and left as shark-chum—as mandated by the same federal regulations. Most of these “facilities,” you see, are “dismantled” with explosives detonated around their legs below the Gulf floor.
I once called Barack Obama the worst pResident for the environment ever. These federally mandated regulations prove this beyond a doubt.
For more read here.