Incompetence has turned the Gulf oil tragedy into “Obama’s Katrina.” As more and more startling facts emerge we are finding almost criminal ineptness by Washington compounded by BP’s almost criminal negligence. As with many crises, Washington’s reactions cause greater damage than the event itself. Yet lurking in the mess are the extreme environmentalists staffing the Obama Administration with their declared agenda of shutting down all offshore oil drilling. The Sierra Club has bragged about how it helped shut down all new coal generating electricity plants. Other environmentalists are still happy that the Three Mile Island crisis succeeded in ending all new nuclear-generating power plants. Preventing new offshore oil drilling in Alaska is another of their primary objectives.
We have learned that the oil could have been skimmed early on so that very little—if any—would have reached shore.
• BP failed to follow established industry procedures and made several consecutive major errors which caused the blowout. This was not a reason to stop all drilling.
• Revamping Minerals Management in the middle of a crisis has created a catastrophe in the Gulf that permitted the government to shut down continuing operations, even in the shallow waters where Obama previously said drilling would still be allowed.
Wanting—or creating—scarcity has always been a part of the leftist agenda, on the theory that scarcities create the need for government allocation and control. One of the greatest threats of the current situation is that environmental extremists will use it as a justification to further their misguided agenda.
