Coming to an Atlantic beach near you; crude oil, if House Republicans have their way.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to expedite lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Virginia coast that have been delayed or canceled since last year’s BP oil spill disaster, and more efforts to open up our coasts to dangerous offshore oil drilling are expected next week.
Many public officials seem to have forgotten last year’s oil disaster. What would a major spill look like in Virginia, affecting the coast from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Atlanitc City, New Jersey? We produced maps, showing how a spill on the scale of last summer’s BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could impact America’s coasts:
There are ways to meet our energy needs and break our dependence on oil, by investing in clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency, but recklessly rushing into new areas of the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Arctic won’t. Only the greed of oil companies making massive profits and pouring millions of dollars into U.S. elections to buy these kinds of votes are to gain.
