Stop Trump’s plan to drill in the Gulf of Mexico
It could be the BP Deepwater Horizon oilspill all over again.
Donald Trump is making good on his dangerous campaign promise to the fossil fuel industry to open up wide swaths of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration and drilling.
Trump’s plan to aggressively expand offshore drilling threatens our ocean and coastal regions with oil spills, pipelines and a worsening of the climate crisis.
But we can stop it. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is accepting public comments for the next few days regarding these oil and gas leases in the Gulf, so we must speak out now to stop these reckless attacks on our climate and environment.
Part of Trump’s offshore drilling includes and oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf totaling nearly 76 million acres. It’s a massive giveaway to Trump’s friends and donors in the fossil fuel industry and another in a long line of attempts to roll back important environmental and climate progress.
Making matters worse, this request for information by the Department of the Interior also launches the process of creating a new nationwide offshore drilling plan that could open even more U.S. waters to dangerous drilling, replacing an existing plan finalized under the Obama administration that protects the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
Dangerous and deadly oil spills are all too common, and this free-for-all in the Gulf of Mexico — and in waters across the country — will surely end in disaster again. The BOEM itself has concluded that there would be a 75 percent chance of a major oil spill if development and production in the Chukchi sea moved forward under even a single large lease sale. And we will never forget how the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people, spilled over 4 million gallons of oil, wiped out animal and plant populations and devastated the economy of Gulf communities.
With the global price of oil hitting record lows and the effects of climate change worsening by the day, we should be investing in renewable energy to slow the climate crisis and wean ourselves off fossil fuels. The Department of the Interior is accepting comments until Aug. 17, so we must act now to halt these oil and gas leases for good.
Originally published at act.credoaction.com.
