Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Your Chance To Save The World

I asked Ken Salazar, Secretary,U.S. Department of the Interior in a modified form letter to not start WWIII by drilling in the US Arctic. I am posting a copy of the form letter sent to me along with my changes. The original is plain print. My changes are in italics. 


I hope you will tell Salazar not to start WWIII also. 


Salazar's address is included at the bottom of the letter, if you want to use it. I plan to add other forms of contact information as well.


Here is my letter along with the original from the Center for Biological Diversity. 



"The Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups have called on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to say no to BP’s Liberty project until proper environmental reviews can be completed. The decision about whether to risk destroying the Arctic as BP has destroyed the Gulf is in Secretary Salazar’s hands. Please tell the secretary not to let BP drill in the Arctic.:

Subject: Don’t Let BP Oil the Arctic
Your Letter:

I request that you, as head of the Department of the Interior, deny BP's application to drill for the Liberty production drilling project, slated to begin this fall in the Alaskan Arctic." Pravda, the semi-official voice of Russian leadership, stated that they believe that WWIII will begin over the rights to the North Pole and Arctic area. I assume that the rush for drilling is occasioned by the Russians planting their flag on the Arctic sea floor and filing for possession with the UN and the Canadians superior claims to the area, due to having residents in the area, unlike anyone else.

Having BRITISH Petroleum drilling in the US Arctic area seems like a questionable plan, considering that Canadians are part of the UK Commonwealth. Even worse is getting the US into a shooting war with nuclear weapons over drilling in a pristine wildlife refuge, without letting the US people in on the matter. If you bear a large part of the responsibility for killing off most of the populations of the USA, Russia, and who knows how many others, because of getting us into a nuclear war, I wouldn't think there would be any hole you could hide in on or off the planet to avoid the consequences.  I do hope you will pause and reconsider.

I'm piggybacking my two cents in with others who are mainly concerned for, and aware of the environmental consequences of drilling, so far. I agree with them about those aspects of this matter. It seems that getting us into a nuclear war kind of supercedes the rest of it, however.

"The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has called into question BP's assurances about safety and response capability. Interior should therefore reject BP's current Liberty drilling plan and defer any future consideration of the project until the federal government has completed a full environmental review that realistically takes into account BP's response capabilities in the Arctic.

I further request that you defer any future approval until and unless you can ensure that BP can devote adequate resources to any incident that might occur in the Arctic.

BP has described its Arctic Liberty project as “one of its biggest challenges to date.” If the project goes forward, Liberty's ultra-extended reach wells will be the longest ever attempted. In order to drill these unprecedented wells, BP had to commission the building of the largest drilling rig in the world. Once drilled, BP's horizontal wells will be more prone than traditional wells to gas kicks, which are the most common cause of blowouts.

Despite the inherent dangers in experimenting with this untested technology, the Interior Department's environmental review of the Liberty project was lax at best. BP in fact wrote its own environmental assessment of the impacts of the Liberty project. Not surprisingly, BP found that there would be no significant impacts from the project and that the possibility of an oil spill was low.

If anything, the Arctic is even more vulnerable to an oil spill than the Gulf of Mexico. There is no technology for cleaning oil in broken ice conditions. The sea-ice environment is extremely dynamic, and the Arctic is subject to dangerous weather conditions, including high winds and storms, that could seriously complicate any response to a spill. What's more, there isn't the infrastructure or capacity to respond. The nearest Coast Guard station is more than 1,000 miles away in Kodiak, and much of the oil spill response equipment in the Arctic is more than 20 years old. Until BP makes an affirmative showing, verified by the Department of the Interior, that it is capable and ready to respond to a significant oil spill in the Arctic, the Liberty project should not move forward.

The Interior Department has the legal right, as well as the responsibility, to deny BP's application to drill at Liberty this year and defer future approvals until it can guarantee there will not be a BP disaster in the Arctic. Lax environmental review of BP's drilling plans led to the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of this country. The Department of the Interior must not allow BP to take its chances in the Arctic." I don’t believe the Department of Interior should allow BP to take everyone else’s chances in the Arctic either. I think we could muster a dual party majority of the US citizens who would agree that we are not prepared to begin WWIII at this time.

"Your letter will be sent to the following recipient(s):
Ken Salazar, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20240"

http://www.doi.gov/public/contact-us.cfm
Phone: (202) 208-3100
E-Mail: feedback@ios.doi.gov
Web: Feedback form

People and Bureaus:


DOI Social Media



The Department of the Interior's primary social media outlets

Here is a link to the original page on the 

Center for Biological Diversity's site:



Please pass this on as much as you are 

willing and able to do. This could be 

your chance to save the world.

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