Offshore drilling rhetoric

Some of the rhetoric used by our Florida legislators when arguing in support of oil drilling is just silly.

Northwest Florida’s own Rep. Greg Evers (R-Baker) reportedly said that a vote for the drilling bill “is a vote for our way of life. A vote against it is a vote for OPEC.”

As that doesn’t even make any sense, we can only assume that Rep. Evers doesn’t understand how oil drilling works. We don’t have state sponsored oil companies in the United States. If offshore drilling is allowed, space will be leased off to private oil companies. Then, after five or ten years pass and those wells produce some oil, those private companies don’t have to keep it in the United States. They can sell it wherever they want. Offshore drilling in Florida doesn’t increase our energy independence. It does, however, negatively impact tourism, the environment, and our ability to wean ourselves off oil in favour of alternative energy sources.

Rep. Evers wasn’t the only one throwing around goofy rhetoric. Palm Beach Post columnist Randy Schultz fills us in:

House members, Rep. Van Zant said, could express their “reverence in our Creator” by allowing companies to drill for the oil and gas that God had blessed Florida with in abundance. Rep. Van Zant, who holds two degrees from Baptist seminaries, knew this turf. Earlier in debate, he had said, “We worship a God who made (the oil), and if we ran out, I think he could make some more.” Now, that is renewable energy.

One thing they apparently didn’t teach Rep. Van Zant in his Baptist seminaries is how crude oil forms. Whether a god put it there or not, it isn’t coming back once it’s gone., It just doesn’t work that way.

Let’s be honest when we talk about this issue. Let’s recognise that the Republican leadership in the Florida House didn’t just decide one day that it was a good idea to sell off Florida’s waterfront to oil companies. The oil companies are running out of oil to sell us, and they’re going to fight like crazy to drill on every last inch of this earth before they smell the coffee and start working on an alternate business plan.

Links

• Palm Beach Post: “God’s ‘renewable’ oil”