Obama and Offshore Drilling

Perhaps Obama calculated that he could get the carbon trading and caps legislation through if he threw the oil and gas interests a bone. In other words, a strategic political calculation. Apart from the damage to the environment and endangered habitats, there is a raw scientific calculation which we ignore at our peril-

James Hansen has said "I've come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty." (ref: ecoversity.org)

So every time we find yet more fossil fuel sources to burn, we are only rushing faster to that runaway greenhouse in our future. Nothing to celebrate, to the contrary.

Here is a KSFR Santa Fe interview with New Mexico's Senator Jeff Bingaman on the subject of the offshore drilling plan.

Update April 30:
Seems the furies have rushed to greet the administration's plan to give coal a pass and boost offshore drilling. Following the coal mine disaster in West Virginia, now an enormous oil rig has blown up in the Gulf, and an undersea geyser of oil is pumping at 5000 barrels a day from the ocean floor, a mile deep, too deep for human divers, and it could take 90 days to stop the hemorrhaging.
Reality check.