Shortly after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration declared a moritorium (go look it up!) on deepwater oil drilling. Today, a federal judge struck down that moritorium. Find out why the judge did this and how the Obama administration is reacting by clicking here to read an article about the decision. Then address the following prompts:
Do you agree or disagree with the judge's ruling? Why or why not?
Why do you think the Obama administration imposed the moritorium in the first place?
If you agree with the moritorium, what kind of regulations do you think should be in place before deepwater drilling is allowed again?
According to Gallup polling data, Americans' perception of how President Obama is handling the oil spill is lower than his overall approval rating. Should we hold the President accountable for the spill? Why or why not?
4 comments:
moratorium**
I believe President Obama is a scapegoat in both this oil spill and the BP oil spill. Yes, he opened up offshore drilling, but obviously he couldn't predict these accidents. He wanted to lower America's dependency on foreign oil and lower gas prices, but he didn't mean for there to be so much environmental damage. The oil spills were unintentional, so we can't fairly blame the president. Instead of playing the blame game, we should be trying to better our drilling technologies to prevent future spills.
I think Pres. Obama imposed the moratorium in the first place because his administration receiving so much criticism for the spills, and it's lowering his popularity. He's trying to protect himself against future spills... but not only himself. I'm sure he's worried about how future spills could further damage the environment, and he's just being extra cautious to ensure they don't occur. Better safe than sorry, correct?
However, even though I see where Obama is coming from, I agree with the judge's ruling. I can see his obvious biases: he has so much money in these companies, so he can't afford for a ban to be placed on the industry. Regardless of his biases, however, I believe he's doing the right thing. The reasons behind offshore drilling are sound: lowering gas prices and foreign oil dependency, and promoting development of alternative fuel. I feel like these benefits are important enough to maintain offshore drilling efforts despite the risks. And I agree with the judge when he says, "If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are? Are all airplanes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed, and rather overbearing." Not all the equipment is unsafe, so instead of banning offshore drilling all together, why don't we focus on the equipment? improve it so it's less likely to happen again.
I disagree with Judge Martin Feldman’s ruling. First and foremost, I think it’s safe to say that the judge has substantial bias for offshore drilling, considering he has investments in the oil and gas industry, therefore I don’t find his ruling to be very credible. Feldman makes his ruling on the statement that the “government simply assumed that because one rig exploded, the others pose an imminent danger, too.”
However, I deem it necessary to believe that others rigs pose danger to explosion as well, maybe not imminent danger, but danger nonetheless. If we, as a society, don’t take necessary precautions in areas such as this, then how can we assume offshore drilling to be safe at all? I believe that President Obama was making the correct decision in declaring the moratorium, “…giving a presidential commission time to study improvements in the safety of offshore operations.”
I agree with President Obama in that, advancements in safety should be made before drilling resumes. Regulations for drilling should be updated such as: pre-approved plans (both short-term and long-term) for the event of an explosion, better plans of action for cleaning up the mess, and pre-tested ways to fix the problem-instead of scrambling to block the leak by different methods, yet to no avail.
This being said, I do agree with Kelsey in that President Obama is being used as a scapegoat for this whole mishandled event. I do think that there are areas where the President could have used his position more influentially, but for the most part, this accident was not his fault.
I think Jenny made a good point with her comment about how not all equipment is defective, so we should not pass laws on this assumption. We should definitely improve the equipment, and create tougher inspection laws to insure a safer network on these rigs.
In placing blame, I think those who defend Obama, are being extremely hypocritical, in that Bush had his Katrina, Obama his BP spill. Both were caused by unforeseen disasters, both we're handled incorrectly, and both deemed as less of a problem than it actually was. To be fair, Obama did not cause this, but he should be doing everything to assist in the clean up. America bails out companies in bad situations all of the time, can they not help BP in this one?
I agree with Jenny and Truax as well. We need to build on new technology and equimpent for oil drilling. Once we do that we should oil drill again and nothing like the BP spill will occur again.
The blame shouldn't be held on Obama. Nobody could have guessed that a disaster like this would happen. The way Obama took it though was wrong. He couldn't handle the situation at hand and it caused a lot of damage and money to the economy.
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