More than a few reporters and liberal pundits have lately noted with bafflement that some, especially on the right, have blamed environmentalists for the Gulf oil spill. To them this is an absurd notion that proves just how nutty the right has become.
Two things are worth noting in response. First, it is not just a few people who think this way. And second, there is a rational, and fairly compelling, argument that the greens are at least indirectly responsible.
This doesn’t spare BP (BP) and the others actually running the Deepwater Horizon from principal responsibility for the spill. Still, if we are going to seriously discuss drilling policy, we should at least note how green concerns are part of the reason why there is deep-water drilling in the first place: Energy companies are not allowed to drill elsewhere, thanks to regulations.
Karen Tumulty provides a good example of the baffled attitude among reporters and pundits in her Washington Post article on Friday. The piece uses Texas GOP Rep. Joe Barton’s already-infamous apology to BP executives as a hook to discuss how Republicans have been more reluctant to criticize BP than Democrats. Tumulty then adds:
Sarah Palin has gone so far as to suggest that the real fault for the catastrophe in the Gulf lies with the environmental movement.
On June 1, the former Alaska governor and former vice presidential nominee sent this message out on Twitter: “Extreme Greenies: see now why we push ‘drill, baby, drill’ of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR [The Alaskan National WildLife Refuge]? Now do you get it?”
Tumulty calls this “spin” that is “out of touch with public outrage.” (By the way Karen, the “A” in ANWR is for “Arctic” not “Alaskan”.)
Palin is not as out of touch as Tumulty thinks. A recent IBD/TIPP poll found that 26% blamed green groups for the tragedy. That is more than they blamed either President Obama (23%) or former President Bush (24%).
Why do 26% think that? Capital Hill cannot explain it any better than Charles Krauthammer:
(W)e don’t know how to make renewables that match the efficiency of fossil fuels. In the interim, it is Obama and his Democratic allies who, as they dream of such scientific leaps, are unwilling to use existing technologies to reduce our dependence on foreign (i.e., imported) and risky (i.e., deep-water) sources of oil — twin dependencies that Obama decried in Tuesday’s speech.
“Part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean,” said Obama, is “because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.”
Running out of places on land? What about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the less-known National Petroleum Reserve — 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope, near the existing pipeline and designated nearly a century ago for petroleum development — that have been shut down by the federal government?
Running out of shallow water sources? How about the Pacific Ocean, a not inconsiderable body of water, and its vast U.S. coastline? That’s been off-limits to new drilling for three decades.
We haven’t run out of safer and more easily accessible sources of oil. We’ve been run off them by environmentalists. They prefer to dream green instead.
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