The issue of oil drilling and exploration has reared its ugly head once again, with the disaster off of Santa Barbara, California, on its way to a massive disaster affecting the Southern California coastline, including the nearby Pacific Ocean.
Already, the estimate is that 105,000 gallons of crude oil have been spilled by the oil leak, killing wild life and destroying the ecosystem in that area.
And yet, just days before this latest energy disaster, Barack Obama has authorized Shell Oil Company to drill in the Alaskan Arctic, an area that is mostly unreachable in case of an ecological and wild life disaster if an oil spill or leak occurs.
Obama has been, generally, outstanding on many aspects of environmental issues, but on the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, he has made a major mistake, which needs to be fought in court, particularly with the later example of another disaster now in the Santa Barbara, California area.
Obama has done a lot of good, but it is alarming that he would give in to Shell Oil and the energy lobby, when we have plenty of sources of domestic energy already, and seem to forget the need to start the move away from polluting oil and coal toward alternative energy resources.
The BP oil spill of 2010 still reverberates, and now the Santa Barbara oil spill, and so it is time to say NO to Shell on drilling in the Arctic Ocean in Alaska!