In what may become the next in a series of knuckle-headed moves, Bush’s Interior Department has finalized a plan to expand the areas that oil companies are allowed to drill. Areas off of Alaska, Florida and Virgina, some of them fishing regions, are to be opened up to massive oil exploration in the hungry attempt to maintain our “addiction to oil”.

Drilling had been banned in most of these areas previously, but in January, Bush lifted the bans in the central Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. The removal of the ban makes most of the Gulf south of the Florida panhandle open for drilling.

The 5.6 million acres opened up in Alaska is the home of endangered whales and the worlds largest sockeye salmon run. Estimates put the oil under these federal waters are about 200 million barrels of oil, and about 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The US currently uses about 20 MILLION barrels of oil A DAY, in 1998 (last numbers I could find) we used 21.34 tcf/year (that’s trillion cubic feet) of natural gas. Meaning that this reserve would have less than half a years worth of oil, and natural gas.

Bristol’s Bay in Alaska was put off limits to drilling in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez tanker spill. The republican congress lifted that ban in 2003, but it remained under a presidential ban until January when Bush lifted it. Clearly the oil company has a poor record of safety. Do we really want to let them drill in even more spots, for what is already understood to be a drop in the bucket of our yearly energy needs? This is not an unexpected move from the same administration run by a former oil man, and containing many members of the cabinet that have ties to big oil (Condoleeza rice has a tanker named after her). Congress will have until the end of June to review the final drilling plan.

Exposing sensitive habitat to the the dangers of oil is the wrong strategy. Even if we were to find untold billions of barrels of oil in these regions (which we won’t) we shouldn’t pump it out. The problems we are having with global warming are because of our rampant burning of fossil fuels. Finding more oil will only allow for the continued reliance on this dirty and old fashioned energy supply.

Renewable energy like wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal should be our top priorities. Long after the paltry amount of oil in these regions has been pumped out, the wind will continue to blow, the sun will continue to shine. If the president really wants to build something in these regions why not a nice wind farm? I guess his “addiction to oil” comments in the state of the union can be lumped together with is other lies (“mission accomplished”, “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction”, “we do not tortue”, etc).