New England won’t be sacrificed to Big Oil

Do you remember the shocking images from the Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon oil spills? The oil-slicked birds, the wrecked beaches, the empty fishing boats, and worst of all, the stories of lost lives? The Trump administration wants to bring polluting and dangerous oil and gas offshore drilling back — including to our New England shores. Here at the Conservation Law Foundation, we’re joining a lawsuit to stop this reckless plan.

In the chaos of the first months of the new regime, you’d be forgiven for overlooking this news story, but we can’t let it go unnoticed. In one of the most outrageous moves coming out of the Trump administration, the president has issued a series of executive orders pushing to open our iconic coastal waters to oil and gas drilling.

They want to exploit the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf, which make up much of the ocean surrounding the U.S. They want to loosen rules designed to protect the marine environment and the coasts. They even want to review national marine sanctuaries and monuments, the national parks of the sea, to see if we can plant some oil derricks on them as well. That means oil rigs in our lobster grounds. Pipelines cutting through fragile marine sanctuaries. The constant threat of spills on our coasts.

If you’re wondering, “Hey, didn’t Biden ban drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf?” Yes, he did, and no, President Donald Trump’s attempt to reverse the ban isn’t legal. That’s what the lawsuit is about.

Trump claims the U.S. is in an “energy emergency.” Spoiler alert: We’re not. In fact, we’re producing more fossil fuels than ever before. This isn’t about energy security. It’s about handing over our ocean to polluters. This flimsy justification won’t hold up in court, which is why we’ve joined Earthjustice and many other environmental organizations to challenge it.

In the last year alone, climate change has fueled a hurricane that swamped North Carolina, wildfires that leveled whole neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and floods that wiped out Vermont communities. As the environmental, financial, and human costs soar before our eyes, we need to be ramping down our fossil fuel production, not ripping up the seafloor in search of more.

Fossil fuels pose an enormous danger to our climate, but they also pose a more immediate danger to everyone who has to interact with them. One study found that between 1968 and 2011, fossil fuel accidents claimed the lives of almost 5,000 Americans.

Let’s not forget that offshore drilling is a messy, high-risk business. The previously mentioned Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon catastrophes have dominated the news, but in 2003 an oil barge hit rocks off our own Cape Cod coast and dumped 98,000 gallons of oil into the waters of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The oil fouled beaches and marshes and, according to NOAA, killed countless birds while destroying oyster, clam, and fish habitat.

Our ocean is too precious to New England’s way of life to risk with dangerous, unnecessary oil drilling. Offshore drilling destroys seafloor habitats, pollutes our waters, and risks destructive oil spills. A New England ocean littered with oil rigs could mean an end to summer holidays on the beach, our iconic lobster industry, thriving fish populations, and more.

That’s why the Conservation Law Foundation is stepping up to stop the Trump administration’s reckless plan to bring offshore drilling to our shores. We’ve fought attempts to drill in our waters for decades, and we’re not stopping now. 

The Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan is an insult to every New Englander who values our ocean, our way of life, and our future. We will not let anyone turn our coast into another oil-soaked headline.