The fate of the people, the planet, and the Outer Continental Shelf

President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

In "Drilling for war, offshore," I reported on the Obama's Interior Department's public hearings on one of George Bush's parting gifts,  a plan to extend oil and gas drilling leases into all 1.7 billion ocean acres of the OCS.

Here's the letter I'm about to snail mail to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and President Barack Obama, as Interior continues to accept public comment, (until September 21):

To President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar:

"Many people who attended Interior's final hearing on drilling the entire OCS for oil and gas were eloquent iin their opposition, and, in their advocacy of the wind and wave energy alternatives, so I'd like to add that:

1) I support Secretary Salazar's suggestion that we need a tri-state, Washington/Oregon/California Coastal Commission, because Californians are in the habit of exporting pollution to poorer, neighboring states, not to mention oil and gas producing states, on the Gulf Coast, and, in the Middle East and Africa, while protecting their own air and coastline. 

Environmentalists in Oregon have been fighting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)'s plans to license three hugely dangerous and toxic LNG Terminals, and then let a Pacific Gas'n Electric joint venture/subsidiary run natural gas pipeline through Oregon wilderness, just to bring natural gas to California's huge market, even though Californians won't stand for either drilling or LNG Terminals on their own coast.

2)  I'm disturbed that the Interior Department, despite its stewardship of our coasts, seems unaware and/or unconcerned with the U.S. Navy's current proposal to expand its Northwest test bombing range, from the northernmost coast of California to that of Washington State.

3)  I hope you will not decide to sell either oil and gas leases, or wind and wave leases, simply to create jobs for the sake of jobs, rather than social value.

At all the hearings, there was much talk about creating jobs, understandably, given the harsh times so many of us now suffer.

The oil and gas industries say that more drilling will create jobs and tax revenues.

Environmentalists say that wind and wave energy will create green jobs.

I'd like to say to both of them, and to you, that creating jobs for the sake of jobs, whether they're dirty, old industrial jobs, or green,  jobs, is ultimately unsustainable.  

Jobs for the sake of jobs is the goal of a growth, debt-and-interest driven economic model, which depends on the relentless production of commodities, green, dirty, or plastic, no matter what---including the relentless production of energy to produce other commodities.

There'd be no need to create jobs for the sake of jobs if there were a humane social safety net, covering the most basic human needs, including universal health care, basic food and shelter, and education, for all.

If we created a social safety net to sustain ourselves, people, we might then sustain the environment, instead of behaving desperately and destructively, by chasing wealth, or working at environmentally destructive jobs, out of fear for our very survival and that of our families.

And, the omnipresent and hypnotic advertising that drives us to environmentally destructive extremes of consumption would no doubt diminish if jobs for the sake of jobs did not necessitate manufacturing for the sake of manufacturing, and sales for the sake of sales---i.e., growth for the sake of growth---all divorced from real social value.

The fate of the Outer Continental Shelf should be decided for the sake of the planet and the people, not the jobs.  

                                                         ----Ann Garrison, San Francisco, CA