A Win For The Environment!

Juan Miranda
Thursday,29,2009
12:00 am

The State lands Commission rejected a plan for compromise between Santa Barbara’s most vociferous anti-oil groups and a Houston Drilling Company, this Friday. This plan consisted of giving them permission to drill for oil off the Coast of Santa Barbara. In exchange this, the oil company promised to donate 4000 acres of land for parklands as well as the closing of all four Santa Barbara Channel platforms by the year 2022. After two hours of heavily discussions, a two to one voting decided to deny Plains Exploration and Productions from drilling the Californian ocean floor. The plan was announced this past April and seemed to be a good solution in which both sides would win, but in the last couple of weeks opposition severely grew.
I agree with this resolution to kill the plan, simply because of something mentioned in the article that I happen to agree with. If the Oil Company had been allowed to drill the ocean floor, then this would have given the idea to other companies that they could do the same. Also, like Gov. John Garamendi said, "I believe very strongly that we've got to move away from oil, gas and other carbon-based fuels.” Instead of wasting our time, looking for new places to drill oil from, we should spend our efforts and our capital in searching for alternate resources. If we keep looking for new oil spots, this will only delay the transition from petroleum to other resources because it would make it easier to simply keep pumping oil out of the ground.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santa-barbara-oil30-2009jan30,0,4266773.story