There is no good reason not to drill off the coast
By Seth Grossman, Political Columnist
(Reprinted from April 14, 2010 Current-Gazette Newspapers of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, http://www.shorenewstoday.com/news.php?id=8327)
Why drill for oil and natural gas off the beaches of New Jersey? For the same reasons we should look and drill for it off the beaches of Virginia, Florida and the Carolinas ? and on the millions of acres of government-owned land in Alaska and the Rocky Mountain states in the west.
Our prosperity needs oil and gas to power our cars, airplanes, ships, trucks, offices, factories, hospitals, laboratories, schools, etc. Our liberty needs them for our armed forces. Sixth-grade level science tells us why windmills and solar panels can?t do the job: Neither produces energy. They merely transfer it from one form to another. If a gust of wind is not strong enough to move a truck directly, it can?t turn the blades of a windmill to make enough electricity to indirectly move that truck. If sunlight on the roof of a house can?t boil water directly, it can?t produce enough electricity to indirectly heat a stove. Without oil and natural gas, we must either build nuclear power plants like France, or get horses and woodstoves and live like peasants in the Middle Ages.
We have to stop buying oil and gas from dictators who hate us and who give lots of our money to people who want to kill Americans or hurt our country in other ways.
We can?t afford to buy oil and gas from any other countries until our country again invents and produces things that people in other countries want to buy. When we buy not only oil and gas, but also tools, clothing, cell phones and wide-screen TVs from other countries ? yet sell them very little in return, we put trillions of dollars in the hands of foreigners like the Chinese. If we have nothing to sell them, those foreigners use their dollars to buy stock in our biggest corporations and our most valuable real estate ?including office buildings, farmlands and even casinos. Do you want your kids to be slaves to foreign landlords as well as paying back massive government debt?
Right now, only people who are directly or indirectly paid with taxpayer money have jobs with good pay and benefits. With producing wells offshore, we will have thousands of skilled, well-paying jobs from businesses that pay taxes instead of taking them.
What are the reasons for not drilling offshore?
Will ?ugly? oil wells offshore hurt tourism? Of course not! Some of the most popular beach resorts in the world have oil rigs or other industrial structures a few miles out sea where they are barely noticed.
Will oil leaks and spills hurt tourism? No. We know from years of experience in California and the Gulf of Mexico that leaks and spills from oil wells are extremely rare and quickly contained. There is a much greater danger of spills from the huge oil tankers that carry billions of barrels of foreign oil just off our beaches every day.
Even if the worst-case scenario does happen, it will pass. As a kid in the 1950s, I often stepped on tar from oil spills on the Atlantic City beach. My parents used turpentine or gasoline to wash it off my feet. The old-timers told me this tar came from dozens of ships, including oil tankers, that were torpedoed and sunk by German submarines 15 to 20 years before during World War II. But by the 1960s, those oil slicks were gone. Mother Nature has many methods, including oil-eating bacteria, to fix this problem.
The simple truth is that there are many good reasons to look for and drill for oil off the New Jersey coast, and no good reasons not to.
Why do so many people on the left oppose it? Part of it is ignorance. Too many people, especially young people, have been indoctrinated, not educated, in our schools. Then they are brainwashed daily by our media and pop culture.
But many, including those who dominate our media and pop culture, have a misguided agenda. They hate traditional American values so much that they are for anything that brings failure, conflict and weakness to our country.
Why is our congressman, Republican U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, against drilling off the coast of New Jersey? LoBiondo often brags about how much he loves America. But he loves being in Congress more. This is not the first time LoBiondo seriously damaged our country by caving in to loud special-interest groups so they would support him in the next election.
Somers Point attorney Seth Grossman appears live on WVLT-92.1FM heard throughout South Jersey 8-9 a.m. every Saturday. For information see www.libertyandprosperity.org, email grossman@snip.net or call (609) 927-7333. Breakfast discussions are 9:30-10:30 a.m. every Saturday at the Athena Diner, 1515 New Road, Northfield.