Krauthammer On The Effects of Environmentalists On Drilling & Accidents

I caught Charles Krauthammer's appearance last night on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program.

Krauthammer wove together a very sensible, obvious thread which has been, heretofore, overlooked by most pundits.

To wit, he noted that environmentalists have, over time, wrung their hands over potential oil spills close into shores, and, thus, had shallow-water drilling off US coasts banned.

Then there is the ANWR. The greenies have managed to prevent meaningful exploration of that Alaskan land resource, as well.

The result?

BP and other oil companies must venture offshore into deep waters. Over a mile deep. Pushing technological frontiers and operating under unfamiliar conditions.

Rather than let oil companies explore for and pump oil in relatively well-known conditions on land or in shallow waters, we thus have the first major deep water oil spill.

As Krauthammer observes, the environmentalists, ironically, brought this on all of us due to their refusal to let the oil industry tap known, safer deposits.

Instead, we now have a pipe spewing oil a mile down in the Gulf, and no prior experience with how to stop it.

So much for sensible liberal Democratic energy policies and regulation. Hopefully, someone in the GOP will publicize Krauthammer's points and galvanize public opinion behind them, and against the liberals who brought us the policies that created the conditions leading to the BP Gulf spill.