I've often argued that oil and gas exploration is a state's rights issue. It is abundantly clear that the State of Florida does not want drilling to negatively affect its beaches and shores.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The exploration for oil and gas off our shores can play a role in making energy more affordable and accessible... However, effective safety measures must be in place, and exploration must be done in an environmentally sensitive manner that in no way interferes with our military.
There is no doubt that now, more than ever, we must work to end our dependence on foreign oil sources. But we cannot do so by ignoring the wishes of the coastal communities that oppose drilling.
Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.
Drilling in the refuge will not solve America's energy problem. The Energy Department's own figures show that drilling would not change gas prices by more than a penny a gallon, and this would be 20 years from now.
We should start by allowing drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge. It can provide billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.
Why would even I say we can't stop drilling in the Gulf? Because we have no alternatives. Whether or not we drill in the Gulf, or in Alaska, we will continue to wring the last out of anyplace else.
First, we should not be opening our coasts, all of our coasts, to oil drilling when we have not taken the first step, not the first step, to conserve oil.
We can sit between active drilling operations in neighboring countries, complaining that it's too risky to develop our own resources while the world around us does exactly that.
If we don't act, drilling will be allowed only 3 miles off Florida's east coast beaches.
I'll give you a great example of an issue that no one brought up during this Florida primary, the fact that we're going to have a Chinese made oil rig put in place about 60 miles off the coast of Florida.