September, 10 2021, 10:46am EDT
![Oceana](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012625/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Austin Matheny, amatheny@oceana.org, 858.395.5577
Dustin Cranor, dcranor@oceana.org, 954.348.1314
New Offshore Drilling Proposed in Wake of Devastating Oil Spills from Hurricane Ida
Oceana calls on President Biden to keep campaign promise not to sell new drilling leases.
WASHINGTON
Five days before Hurricane Ida made landfall, the Department of the Interior announced that it would hold lease sale 257 for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, covering approximately 80 million acres. Since then, the U.S. Coast Guard has received nearly 350 reports of pollution, including multiple new oil spills, in the wake of the storm.
Oceana criticized the move by the Biden administration, which comes after President Biden committed to issuing no new leases for offshore drilling during his presidential campaign.
"We must end all new leasing for dirty and dangerous offshore drilling if we are going to address the climate crisis and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels," said Oceana campaign director Diane Hoskins. "On the campaign trail, President Biden committed to ending new offshore drilling and this proposed lease sale flies in the face of that commitment. The United States will continue to suffer from the devastating impacts of climate change until we act, and that starts by preventing new offshore drilling and its associated climate pollution. We urge President Biden to reverse course and stop this lease sale from moving forward."
Hurricane Ida decimated coastal Louisiana and many communities along the East Coast with sustained winds of 150 mph or more in some areas. The Category 4 hurricane made landfall on August 29, exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf region, particularly Louisiana and Mississippi.
Hurricane Katrina left behind approximately $160 billion in damages and caused hundreds of oil and chemical spills, which leaked about 8 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf state waterways. The total environmental and economic damage from the more recent and powerful storm are not yet known.
"Extreme weather and hurricanes do not mix with offshore drilling," said Oceana marine scientist Sarah Giltz. "Hurricane-caused damage to oil and gas infrastructure is a leading cause of oil spills, and storms like Hurricane Ida are painful reminders of why we must stop the expansion of drilling. Expanded offshore drilling puts us at risk of more frequent oil spills and leads to more climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, and as a result, more extreme weather events. In 2005, high winds and flooding from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 100 platforms and damaged over 500 pipelines. In 2004, a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan sank a Taylor Energy oil platform located off the coast of Louisiana, burying numerous wells under mud. The storm-damaged wells leaked oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico for almost 15 years, and containment efforts continue to this day."
A recent analysis from Oceana found that ending new leasing for offshore oil and gas in the United States could prevent over 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions as well as more than $720 billion in damages to people, property, and the environment nationally. Additionally, the analysis found that ending new leasing will safeguard the U.S. clean coast economy, which collectively supports around 3.3 million American jobs and $250 billion in GDP through activities like tourism, recreation, and fishing.
As of today, opposition and concern over offshore drilling activities includes:
- Every East and West Coast governor, including Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, California, Oregon, and Washington
- More than 390 local municipalities
- Over 2,300 local, state, and federal bipartisan officials
- East and West Coast alliances representing over 56,000 businesses
- Pacific, New England, South Atlantic, and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils
- More than 120 scientists
- More than 80 former military leaders
- Commercial and recreational fishing interests such as Southeastern Fisheries Association, Snook and Gamefish Foundation, Fisheries Survival Fund, Billfish Foundation, and International Game Fish Association
- California Coastal Commission, California Fish and Game Commission, and California State Lands Commission
- Department of Defense, NASA, U.S. Air Force, and Florida Defense Support Task Force
For more information about Oceana's efforts to stop the expansion of offshore drilling, please click here.
Oceana is the largest international ocean conservation and advocacy organization. Oceana works to protect and restore the world's oceans through targeted policy campaigns.
LATEST NEWS
Israeli Snipers Firing at 'Anyone Who Is Moving' in Khan Younis
The southern Gaza city is the latest region where Israeli forces have issued an evacuation order, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Jul 25, 2024
At least 129 people have been killed in the last five days of Israeli shelling and artillery fire in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where the Israel Defense Forces earlier this week gave people "a couple of minutes only" to evacuate earlier this week, according to Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary, before the bombardment began.
Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that "the vast majority of dead and injured are women and children," as Israeli snipers have also been deployed in the city and are firing at Palestinians indiscriminately.
The snipers "are shooting anyone who is moving," wrote Tareq Abu Azzoum in a dispatch, reporting that the eastern part of Khan Younis is the main target of Israel's current assault.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) noted that the latest evacuation order reduced the area that Israel has claimed is a "humanitarian zone," as the order covered about 15% of al-Mawasi, where people from cities including Rafah and Gaza City have fled in recent months as the IDF has launched assaults in those cities.
The group told Al Jazeera that "there is no more space, even for a single tent, in the so-called 'humanitarian area' of al-Mawasi because of the overwhelming number of people displaced there."
Israel's reported indiscriminate assault on the city has included medical workers, said PRCS, which posted a video on social media Thursday of an ambulance that had been hit by live bullets fired by the IDF while medics were transporting an injured person.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor noted on Monday that the true death toll in Khan Younis—as with the rest of Gaza—may not be known for months, "with many victims remaining trapped under the rubble and in the streets, where rescue workers have not been able to retrieve their bodies."
The group also said the IDF had perpetrated "a kind of deception of the residents" of Khan Younis and villages in the area, including Bali Suhaila, where soldiers entered "amid very violent bombardment, even though the Israeli army had said in its orders that the displacement was going to be temporary."
The forced evacuation, false information about the order, and shrinking of the humanitarian zone were "all part of Israel's media disinformation campaign and psychological warfare tactics, since military assaults on forcibly displaced people and their tents have occurred continually in this area for several weeks now, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries," the Euro-Med Monitor.
The reports of indiscriminate shooting by snipers also bolster an account given by Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who volunteered at European Hospital in Khan Younis in April, to CBS News earlier this week.
"I had sniper bullets," said Perlmutter. "I have children that were shot twice... I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest... and directly on the side of the head on the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world's best sniper. And they're dead-center shots."
Perlmutter is among nearly four dozen doctors and nurses who wrote to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday, describing what they saw while volunteering at hospitals across Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, including medications and medical supplies, nearly 10 months ago.
"Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict," wrote the medical workers. "However, every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest."
"We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget," they added. "We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Billionaire Megadonor Draws Backlash for Urging Kamala Harris to Fire Lina Khan
"He's pushing her to go soft on corporate power, which is certainly not where voters are."
Jul 25, 2024
A billionaire megadonor's call for Vice President Kamala Harris to fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan if the presumptive Democratic nominee wins in November drew swift backlash from progressives on Thursday, with Sen. Bernie Sanders citing the demand as yet another example of "why we have to overturn Citizens United and end big money in politics."
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn and a major Democratic benefactor, told CNN that he believes Khan is "waging war on American business" and expressed hope that a President Harris would replace the FTC chair, who has used her position to aggressively fight corporate concentration that harms consumers and small businesses.
Watch Hoffman's interview:
Billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave $7 million to the Harris campaign.
Then he went on TV demanding she fire FTC Chair Lina Khan, who leads the Biden admin in suing companies like Amazon, stopping megamergers, and protecting workers.
Harris must reject his demand. pic.twitter.com/gcw8bMA9us
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) July 25, 2024
Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sanders (I-Vt.) and founder of the progressive media outlet More Perfect Union, accused Hoffman of "purposefully trying to fracture and divide the Kamala Harris coalition that's needed to win."
"He's pushing her to go soft on corporate power, which is certainly not where voters are," Shakir wrote on social media. "But it is where the billionaire class is."
Nidhi Hegde of the American Economic Liberties Project added that Hoffman "clearly does not understand how Khan's work has been pro-worker and pro-business."
"The Biden-Harris record on competition speaks for itself," Hegde wrote. "Also, that's real arrogant to go on national TV and just tell a presidential nominee what to do. That's not how democracy works."
Hoffman had already given more than $8.6 million to organizations supporting President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race over the weekend and endorsed Harris, who has swiftly taken over the campaign apparatus and consolidated support among Democratic lawmakers and donors as she prepares for a matchup against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Trump is also backed by tech billionaires, including the richest man in the world.
Hoffman told CNN that he intends to continue injecting money into the presidential race in support of Harris, who is reportedly planning a "Silicon Valley fundraising swing" with the LinkedIn founder.
According toThe Information, Hoffman convinced Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings to donate $7 million to a super PAC supporting Harris. CNBCreported Wednesday that efforts by Hoffman and other Silicon Valley moguls "are on track to raise over $100 million from major tech industry donors."
Progressives have raised concern about Harris' ties to and views about Big Tech. As The Financial Timesnoted Wednesday: "Harris has not yet articulated her antitrust policy. But in 2010, when Big Tech was not facing as fierce a pushback from Washington and the public over its alleged market abuses, she said: 'We cannot be shortsighted... We have to allow these [tech] businesses to develop and grow because that's where the models will be created."
Citing an unnamed "donor who has spoken privately" with Harris, The New York Timesreported Wednesday that the vice president has "expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan's expansive view of antitrust powers."
Harris counts among her advisers attorney Karen Dunn, who helped defend Google earlier this year against an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and a number of states—including Harris' home state of California.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Gaza Newborn Saved From Womb of Mother Killed in Israeli Airstrike
Malek Yassin was born into the hell that is Gaza during the 293 days of relentless Israeli bombings and blockade that have claimed the lives of more than 16,000 Palestinian children.
Jul 25, 2024
The recent rescue of a newborn from the womb of his mother after she was killed by an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza refugee camp has renewed focus on the horrors endured by Palestinian children and their families during Israel's nine-and-a-half-month onslaught.
Ola Al-Kurd was nine months pregnant and "wanted to hold her child and fill our home with his presence," Adnan Al-Kurd, the slain woman's father, toldReuters.
But last Friday, an Israeli strike on their family home in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed the woman and several of her relatives. Surgeons at Al-Awda Hospital were able to safely deliver her baby, Malek Yassin, who was transferred to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah and placed in an incubator.
"This baby's life was saved and he is now alive and well," said Al-Aqsa physician Dr. Khalil Al-Dakran. However, the infant's survival is far from guaranteed.
"We are in fact facing very great difficulties in the nursery department," Al-Dakran explained, pointing to an acute lack of medication, fuel to run generators, and other critical supplies.
"What is the fault of this child to start his life under difficult and very bad circumstances, deprived of the most basic necessities of life?" he asked.
Earlier this year, another Gaza newborn rescued from her slain mother's womb at just 30 weeks' gestation died days later at Emirati Maternity Hospital in Rafah.
Israel's 293-day siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza—which has killed, wounded, or left missing at least 140,000 Palestinians—has been hell on children and their mothers. The embattled enclave's healthcare infrastructure has been largely obliterated, forcing many mothers to give birth in precarious places, including in tents, streets, and even public bathrooms.
Basic survival items like diapers and formula have also been in extremely short supply in Gaza, which the United Nations Children's Fund has called "the world's most dangerous place to be a child."
As The British Medical Journalreported earlier this year, mothers in Gaza are "burying their newborns every day" as they have nothing to feed them due to what United Nations experts, human rights groups, and parties to the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have called Israel's use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Oxfam said early in the war that children in Gaza were dying from preventable causes including diarrhea, hypothermia, dehydration, and infections.
In January, the ICJ ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts including blocking food and other aid from entering Gaza. Human rights groups accused Israel of ignoring the order.
The World Court then issued a new order in March, reiterating its directive to prevent genocide, citing "worsening conditions" in Gaza, including "the spread of famine and starvation."
Dozens of Palestinians—almost all of them children—have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of access to healthcare in Gaza over recent months.
Of the more than 39,000 Gazans who have been killed by Israel's bombs, bullets, and blockade, at least 16,000 are children, according to Palestinian and international agencies.
Israeli forces have allegedly deliberately targeted and executed children and their mothers. Israeli Air Force warplanes are dropping shrapnel-packed fragmentation bombs that doctors say are eviscerating children's bodies and causing a "constant flow of amputations."
The humanitarian group Save the Children said late last month that nearly 21,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza, with 17,000 orphaned and around 4,000 others believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. An unknown number of children are also believed to be buried in mass graves.
Israeli bombardments have wiped out entire Palestinian families.
Israel's onslaught is also causing what one Gaza mother called the "complete psychological destruction" of child survivors.
Last month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres added Israel to the so-called "List of Shame" of countries and groups that kill and injure children.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and 13 Democratic colleagues sent a letter to the Israeli and Egyptian ambassadors to the United States urging them to expedite the evacuation of critically ill and injured Palestinian children from Gaza.
"While people disagree about the war in Gaza, everyone should agree that no government should prevent injured children access to potentially lifesaving medical care," the senators wrote. "Rather, governments should be doing everything possible to assist in this situation."
"We must all treat the welfare of children in Gaza as an urgent humanitarian priority and work together to prevent further suffering," the lawmakers added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular