Statement of Margie Alt, Environment America Executive Director, on Speaker Pelosi’s Energy Strategy
“Today Speaker Pelosi announced an energy strategy that includes many much needed solutions for changing the direction of our nation’s energy policy. We strongly support the Speaker in her effort to create a new energy future for our nation. Unfortunately the Speaker’s proposal also considers opening our protected coasts to offshore drilling. This piece of the proposal we must oppose.
The new energy future we hope to work with Speaker Pelosi to create would enable us to break our addiction to oil by increasing efficiency and shifting to clean alternatives. We need to increase fuel economy standards, enact a strong renewable electricity standard, and promote high performance energy-saving homes and businesses. These renewable energy policies are exactly the type of solutions that America needs to end our addiction to foreign oil and move us towards a clean energy future. We also need to cut subsidies to the oil and gas industry that is making record profits and instead invest this money in clean renewable energy like wind and solar.
What this country does not need is more drilling. Big Oil and its allies in Washington have been waging a slick and well funded campaign to distort the facts and convince Americans and the Congress to risk our pristine beaches for increased offshore oil drilling. In fact, more drilling will not reduce prices nor cut our dependence on dirty oil. President Bush’s own Energy Information Administration has said that drilling in currently protected offshore areas would not significantly affect domestic oil production until 2030 and even then the impact on prices would be “insignificant.” The only true ‘gain’ from more drilling would be to further fatten oil company profits.
Increased offshore oil drilling would threaten our beloved coasts and beaches with chronic pollution and potentially catastrophic spills. We are disappointed that Speaker Pelosi is considering further opening our coasts to drilling when oil savings from more efficient vehicles would better serve our needs, save consumers more money and enhance the economy.”
