The Real Environmental Disaster

...While publicly expressing deep concern about the impact on the Gulf states, Obama was apparently so preoccupied with loss of complete control that he also lost the competence to tackle the environmental challenges. As Gateway Pundit and others have pointed out: Obama accepted help from only five of 28 countries that offered aid. It took 53 days of gushing oil before the administration accepted help from the Dutch and British. It took 58 days to mobilize military personnel to the Gulf. Crude oil-sucking barges were shut down because of technical fire extinguisher regulations. The administration ignored oil containment-boom manufacturers that had miles of their product available in warehouses. Dredging for sand berms to block the oil from the Louisiana coast was forbidden for weeks. No skimmer boats were sent to Mississippi’s shore. Florida had to hire added skimmer boats because offederal inaction...Surely, the most shameful display of Obama’s eagerness to control all things was his mandate of a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. The New York Times May 27 reported his plan to stop new deepwater drilling for six months, suspend exploratory drilling scheduled off Alaska this summer, and cancel a lease sale off Virginia’s coast. The Interior Department used the flimsy excuse that a moratorium was necessary because of uncertainties about the cause of the oil blowout and the need to write new drilling rules...More than three months after the April oil blowout, “Gulf states and the oil industry are still howling” over unnecessary economic harm, the Christian Science Monitor said July 27. The Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee listened to testimony forecasting financial losses of $2.8 billion and moratorium-caused job losses exceeding 10,000. The Bayoubuzz.com in Louisiana reported that before the oil spill and the moratorium, 56 rigs were operating in the Gulf. By the end of July “there are only 12 active rigs. Most have “departed for the Congo and Egypt and more rigs may be leaving very soon…...more