Political Quotes

“In the short time that I speak here today, thousands of gallons of oil will burst out of a broken well in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. That oil will add to a catastrophic spill that is now spreading across a widening swath of ocean, coming ashore in Louisiana and devastating the economy of the gulf coast. Every attempt to cap the gusher has thus far failed, and it seems we can anticipate several more months of damage to our coastline, our fisheries, and our environment. As a Nation, we have been on an oil binge since the 1850s, when we started running out of our previous nonrenewable energy resource, whale oil. The wide-scale destruction that the whale hunts of the 19th century visited on our seas is now mirrored by the damage that offshore drilling is visiting upon the gulf. Two decades ago, Congress first recognized the danger of offshore drilling and passed a moratorium banning it outside of Alaska and the gulf. In California, many will remember the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill that spewed out almost 100,000 barrels of oil over 8 days. Lax safety standards and corner-cutting were the immediate culprits in that spill, but the gulf spill shows that, even with today's advanced technology, offshore drilling is fundamentally dangerous.”