Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Calling Dr. Strangelove!
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Russian submarines patrolling international waters off the U.S. East Coast (if you haven’t, take a look at a Reuters story about it) in what feels like an echo of the old Cold War. The Pentagon’s not worried about this particular venture, but there are concerns from the U.S. energy industry about another Russian foray — this one in concert with Cuba. In rhetoric that may ring a bell with anyone who saw the 1964 satirical nuclear-fear movie “Dr. Strangelove,” the Washington-based Institute for Energy Research is sounding the alarm about a Russian-Cuban deal to drill for offshore oil near Florida.
“Russia, Communist Cuba Advance Offshore Energy Production Miles Off Florida’s Coast,” is the title on the institute’s news release. Below that is the prescription for action: “Efforts Should Send Strong Message to Interior Dept. to Open OCS in Five-Year Plan.” OCS stands for outer continental shelf, an area that was closed to oil drilling until the Bush administration opened it last year in a largely symbolic move aimed at driving down the sky-high gasoline prices of the Summer of 2008.
Environmentalists hate the idea. So does Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has made opposition to offshore drilling one of his signature issues. But as it turns out, it’s unlikely that anybody — from Russia, Cuba, the United States or anywhere else — is going to get petroleum out of the OCS in the immediate future.
For a start, it takes time to set up a deep-water offshore drilling rig. And any Cuban effort would be further hampered by the need to use equipment with less than 10 percent American technology, to comply with the long standing U.S. embargo against Cuba. As my Reuters colleague Russell Blinch reported in June, there may be scope for possible U.S.-Cuban cooperation here but no Cuban drilling platform is likely to be in the area this year.
Seeking sentiment on drilling, Salazar gets an earful
There is no doubt that Californians made themselves clear on Thursday when they gathered to tell U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that they had had enough of offshore oil drilling and were ready to turn their attention to solar, wind and other renewables.
“I think the verdict today is very clear, that drilling is inappropriate,” said Leah Zimmerman, who attended the meeting dressed in a polar bear suit.
“California is well-known for being an innovative state. Why not take advantage of that rather than trying to dampen it?” asked Craig Cadwallader of the Surfrider Foundation, a group dedicated to protecting oceans and beaches.
When Salazar took office in January he was handed a Bush-era plan to open parts of the Atlantic, Gulf Coast, Pacific, and Alaska to outer continental shelf drilling.
Great to hear the people of California have got their priorities right.
Feinstein wants her desert and solar, too
California Senator Dianne Feinstein is fuming over a federal plan to use some Mojave desert lands to develop solar power plants and wind farms.
In a letter to Dept. of the InteriorSecretary Ken Salazar, Feinstein said she planned to introduce legislation that would protect the former railroad lands, thereby preventing the federal government from leasing them to renewable energy project developers. The 600,000 acres in question were acquired by and donated to the government’s Bureau of Land Management between 1999 and 2004 for the purpose of conservation.
“I have been informed that the BLM now considers these areas open for all types of use except mining. This is unacceptable!” Feinstein wrote in a March 3 letter made public last week.
Feinstein, a supporter of renewable energy, said many of the desert lands being considered for solar and wind development are unsuitable.
No to the solar desert project! 10,000 acres of desert ripped up and billions of gallons of water a year (in the desert) to sustain this project!
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…we need to apply all forms of energy that does not require electricity to create it in the first place, ranked from cheap to expensive. The environmental scale has tipped, to what the f ? maybe we can set jellyfish on fire with flints and see what happens.