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Guest blogger: Margo Pellegrino's message in a bottle for healthy oceans--Day 4

2008-07-03T13:32:14Z

Margo Pellegrino is four days into her 500-mile journey from New Jersey to Washington, DC in support of Oceans 21, a Healthy Oceans Act to save our seas. On Wednesday, she set out from Atlantic Highlands, NJ, and down the Raritan River.

Margo's blog: July 3
Every day brings a challenge, and I'm really glad that so far my body is holding up to it. Once I hit the Delaware I expect that there will be even more. So much depends on the weather. Right now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather continues to hold.
On Day 2 I had the wind at my back, although there were some initially rolly conditions, until the last four miles or so of the paddle. Wind kissed my face, and not very gently, almost the whole ride up the Raritan. I was privileged to have Bill Schultz, the Raritan Riverkeeper, escorting me up the Raritan River. I had left Atlantic Highlands, NJ where NRDC had invited various groups to come out for a very nice brunch with me, including John Weber of Surfrider and Benson Chiles of shore11.org, among others from the New Jersey Coastal and Ocean Coalition. I paddled around the markers outside of the "naval playpen." Apparently munitions are loaded at this site and taken over sea. I certainly did not want to get in the way of that. Anyway, Bill Schultz met me as I was coming up to Keansburg. He was on a new jetski, one that did not spew fumes, and he could ride next me and have a conversation without me choking and gagging. Every now and then he would hang about and then zip off to check on an osprey nest or some other thing. And then he would come back and provide me with some very interesting anecdotes and information. He told me about how Perth Amboy, which still has combined sewers (meaning that when it rains, you get run-off and poo in the water), just recently spent $10 million on new sand for its eroding beaches. Except you can't go in the water. There's no swimming, because there is no water monitoring. More than likely, there is no water monitoring because then the town of Perth Amboy would show high fecal counts and then have to take action to remedy the problem, and "close the beach." So make it a "no swimming beach," no need to test, and no need to "close" it. Sound like a real fun beach. There is definitely something wrong with this picture.
Bill and I got to talk a lot during this paddle. It was pretty windy, and I certainly wasn't making very good time, so there was plenty of time to paddle and talk. I mentioned how I was at a race recently and someone, one woman's coach, had brought a picture of a "danger do not eat the crabs" sign. Apparently, these signs are all over the Newark Harbor because the crabs are carcinogenic. There are a lot of people in Newark who are "subsistence" fishermen, meaning they eat what they catch because that's all they have to eat. And so they are eating carcinogenic crabs.
Of course, as we paddled into the wetlands areas, the wetlands that had dumps in them, there was an ever increasing amount of noticeable trash. I almost forgot to mention that when I was paddling to the Naval station there was quite a bit of plastic bag pieces, stuff that was obviously torn apart. Much of it had algae on it, as if it had been out there for a very long time. It was actually a depressing bit of river--so much potential, so much of it unrealized. Bill and Lorraine at Raritan Riverkeeper seriously have their work cut out for them. Sometimes the problems facing our ocean can be a bit overwhelming. For times like this, I like to read Roz's blog at Rozsavage.com, check out what's happening at shore11.org, and read David Helvarg's 50 Ways. Actually, 50 Ways is the perfect book to keep in the bathroom because the chapters are short, sweet, and informative. Of course, it is also invigorating and refreshing to find your local Surfrider Chapter and get activated. And get out there and paddle!

Guest blogger: Margo Pellegrino's message in a bottle for healthy oceans--Day 2

2008-07-01T13:50:18Z

Margo Pellegrino set out today from Little Egg Harbor in Beach Haven, NJ, on her 500-mile journey in support of Oceans 21. See footage of the launch on NBC 40 and at the Asbury Park Press.

Margo's Blog: July 1
Wooeee- what a first day. I was looking forward to a relatively easy, fast first day, as NOAA was calling for winds out of the south, but with t-storms later in the day. As I stood on the dock with my boat ready to go, answering reporters' questions about why I was hitting the water again while keeping an eye on my daughter Julia playing by the water, I watched with a slightly sinking feeling as the flag, blowing to the north, shifted to point east. Blast. An ama (outrigger) side wind. The Fuze is a fairly stable boat, and I keep the ama heavy because the last thing I need is to huli all aver the place. It makes for a slower pace, but it keeps me upright. Despite the miles I paddled last year, I still pretty much consider myself to be a novice paddler. There's a lot to learn to be really good, as in any sport.

The ama side wind makes for a slighlty uncomfortable ride, as the chop pops up the ama (the outrigger) where it then catches the wind nicely and over you go! So yesterday's paddle wasn't the most comfortable- but - did manage to ride some of the swells that were kicked up. John Fischer and his merry crew of fellow Coast Guard Auxiliarists met me on the water at the rt. 37 bridge. There they escorted me to the Pt. Pleasant canal. The marine policeman on duty came out and yelled at me (paddlers are not allowed to paddle through), until I mentioned that I called last week about it. I was going to wait until the tide had shifted, but didn't feel like hanging around. There were little rapids, and it was quite a slog, especially through one patch where I almost felt like I was in danger of going backwards.

But it was a fine day, really. One paddle stroke at a time. Thanks so much to John and the gang- it was great to have them on the water-boat traffic in NJ is a truly unique experience! And thanks to Mark Gallo for hosting me again. Both he and John F are "repeat offenders." They hosted and escorted me last year as I paddled my way to Maine.

You can never do too much for Mother Ocean. Reading Roz Savage's blog (rozsavage.com-she's rowing the Pacific right now to higlight the problems of plastic in the ocean), I had to laugh at one of the comments-a qoute fom George on Seinfeld, who apparently tried to rescue a whale or something and got tossed and tumbled by the sea-"the ocean is angry my friends!"

Oh--much thanks to the crew at NRDC for all their work on ocean (and other) conservation. And if you are an ocean lover, please visit Blue Frontier (.org) and sign up for the Blue Summit in March '09. It will be a great event!

Let's Respect the Public With More Information

2008-06-30T14:00:00Z

We need a lot more environmental information to begin to address the lack of public understanding of environmental harms.

This may seem obvious, but it isn’t. At a meeting a few years ago, I was shocked to find the head of a state water agency opposed to an effort to provide the public with more information on sewage overflows. His argument was that he didn’t want to scare the public, and that the public wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand the information.

About our families swimming in sewage, I thought?

Sewage overflows happen much more frequently than they should. In the Clean Water Act of 1972, Congress set a goal for our waters to be fishable and swimmable by 1983. Yet today, fewer than one half of our waters have even been assessed. Of those, only about half meet their designated uses. And for most of those, the designated use is something less than fishable and swimmable.

Take our beaches, for example. In 2007, the NRDC released the results of our annual water quality survey. The results were startling. In 2006, pollution caused a record number of beach closings nationwide. Closing and advisory days topped 25,000 – more than had ever been recorded in the survey’s 17-year history. The public needs to know about this. And yet, agencies are wary of releasing information that would hold them responsible.

In one EPA negotiated undertaking I was involved with, we were discussing the possibility of electronic filing of permit applications, permits, and monitoring data. Many dischargers were first supportive – after all, it would save them time and money. But once they realized that if electronically filed it would be easily accessible, they changed their minds. They knew that publicly available information leads to more awareness, more attention, and more enforcement. They were not sure that was good.

In my opinion, this is backwards. If there is a concern about the reaction, the answer is to provide the public with more, or better, information, not less. We should have more respect for the public.

To solve this problem, we need to begin by providing the public with more information – much more information than they currently have. But we also need to provide them with better information. It’s not just about quantity, but quality. The information should be about the full range of effects – health, environmental, cultural – and not just about the associated costs.

And we need to make the information available. The internet is a truly terrific opportunity for this (if you’re reading this blog, I hope you’ll agree). Environmental information should all be up on the web so anyone can find out about the permit (or lack of a permit) for the factory or whatever is down the street from one of their kids’ schools.

This is one of NRDC’s goals. We believe that an informed citizenry is an active citizenry – one more likely to hold the federal government to its promise of providing clean water for our families, and for our kids.

Guest blogger: Margo Pellegrino's message in a bottle for healthy oceans--Day 1

2008-06-30T13:23:50Z

Last summer, Margo Pellegrino, a New Jersey mother of two, paddled from Miami to Maine in an outrigger canoe to celebrate our oceans and bring attention inspire her children and others to take an active role in the stewardship of our oceans.

This summer, NRDC is partnering with Margo on her second voyage, this time carrying messages in a bottle from people along the Atlantic Seaboard to Capitol Hill, urging Congress to Save Our Seas (S.O.S.) by passing healthy ocean legislation. Starting today, Margo is paddling 500 miles through New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia on her way to Washington, DC.

Throughout the trip, Margo will be blogging about her journey here on Switchboard. Today, she sets out from her home in Medford Lakes, NJ.

Margo's Blog: June 29

It's warm and steamy here in Medford Lakes, NJ. My kids, Billy and Julia, are happily soaking each other with their water squirters in the lake while I sit here and type. We're lucky to live on a lake that's swimmable and clean. In so many areas of the world, kids have no access to clean water. Fortunately, leaders in the past have made conservation a priority, as that is the key to a secure future. We need to manage our resources so we can count on them being there for our future generations. As Teddy Roosevelt said over one hundred years ago in his address at the Deep Waterway Convention in Memphis, Tennessee, "The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others." He understood the intrinsic connection of conserving our natural resources to our future well-being as a country. It's as simple as "money in the bank."

While my family and I love our life here on the lake, for much of the year we look forward to our week at the Jersey Shore. Growing up I was fortunate that my dad's parents lived at the Shore. As a Methodist minister, my grandfather did the ministry circuit from Long Branch to Cape May Courthouse. Back in the late 30's and early 40's he lived in a parsonage in Somers Point, where four of his six children, including my father, were born. Every visit to my grandparents was an excuse to dig for sand crabs and other treasures, or at the very least, an excuse to go down to the boardwalk and look at the sea. We loved, and still do, the smell of the salt air, the roar and crash of the waves. Never mind listening to the waves, we wanted to jump in them, be tumbled by them, and taste their saltiness, much like my children do now. The last thing we ever thought about then was getting hepatitis from the water. Not like now. Now in many parts of the country, the shellfish industry is closed down as well as beaches after rain, as nutrient-rich run-off sends bacteria and algae levels rocketing.

Now we are bombarded with information concerning the problems of the ocean and how this national treasure and resource is in crisis. We have the Pew Report on the Oceans and the US Commission on Ocean Policy, two reports developed independently, saying pretty much the same thing. Our oceans are in danger of collapse, and they need some sort of national policy to avert disaster. And they need it now.

Last year I paddled from Miami to Camden, Maine, in order to reach out to as many people as possible to draw attention to the sorry state of our ocean resources. It was my hope that if I, not a professional athlete or even a very good paddler by any stretch of the imagination, not to mention a mother of two young children, could make the effort to paddle up the coast, then others might feel moved to do what they could do to make things better for our watery world. It's relatively easy, actually, compared to paddling in 29mph gusts and ugly chop. Like Jack Johnson sings, "reduce, reuse, recycle" is a very good start. Sound ocean management policy on a national level is another. After all, the ocean knows no boundaries.

During that epic paddle, when I got to New Jersey I took a day off and visited Washington, DC. Actually, I went to Capitol Hill and listened to a group of concerned Congressmen, members of the Ocean Caucus, discuss their plan to remedy the current failings in ocean resource conservation and management. Management is pretty crucial. After all, you manage your money, right? If you spend it all, you go broke. This is basically what we are doing to our ocean, and this is exactly what these leaders in ocean conservation hope to prevent with the HR-21 bill (Oceans 21) in Congress, which is expected to be voted on in committee this before Congress convenes for the summer. We've got the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and now we need an Ocean Conservation Act.

The ocean is a wealth of resources on so many levels. Many corals and sponges produce chemicals useful in medications, although unfortunately, many of these are dying before they can be fully explored as potential cures for many of our ills, like cancer and HIV-AIDS. The coastal areas provide food and recreation, tourism is a huge industry, especially here in New Jersey. And then there's the fishing. I've got fond memories of my grandmother cooking up the fish my uncle caught, fish he never liked to eat, but liked to catch. Last year I paddled by plenty of commercial and recreational fishermen complaining of poor, if any, catches. One fisherman I ran into behind Cape Hatteras seemed to have more terrapins in his nets than fish.

Needless to say, after last year's mega-paddle up the coast, I was thinking that this year I'd focus on writing and helping David Helvarg, President of the Blue Fontier Campaign promote the Blue Vision Summit in 2009, a meeting of ocean and coastal resource lovers from all walks of life, from all over the country. But then I got the call asking if I'd be interested in paddling to Washington, DC to rally support for Oceans 21 as well as collecting "Save our Seas" messages to take to Congress. How could I say,"No?" If there is more I can do so that my children can enjoy the wonders of the ocean as well as secure our ocean resources for their future, well, isn't that as important as putting money in the bank for them on so many different levels? After all, I hope never to see the day when swimming in the ocean is a health hazard rather than a healthy activity. Unfortunately, in too many of our coastal areas, because of run-off and overtaxed sewer plants, it is. The ocean's delicate balance tips precariously toward a dark unknown. Changes are inevitable, and they're not changes for the better. I've paddled through enough stinky algae-laden water, a result of excess nutrients, to smell it coming.
The time is now, while we can still do something. If we wait, it will only get worse. Don't believe me? Cod is a classic example. The cod industry has evaporated. Go visit Gloucester, a once-booming fish town. Oh, and try to get some locally caught clams there while you're at it. Ipswich clams are great. If you can get them. Last year as I paddled through Cape Ann's waters I could not, because of the Red Tide. I met an old fisherman during one of my "training paddles" on the Mullica River last year. Back inthe 60's he worked at the fish-factory that is now vacant and dilapidated on the Great Bay. He told me that he was on the beach of Atlantic City recently, and someone caught a cod and had no idea what kind of fish it was.
Every parent knows if their child's messy room is allowed to get worse, there's a whole lot of wailing that goes on at "clean up" time. Let's not let the growing mess we're making of our ocean get to that point. Let's take care of it while we still can, so we hear no wailing from the mouths of our beautiful children when they realize the treasures of the sea are unavailable to them. I'm only to happy to take on this latest project with NRDC while also promoting David Helvarg's Blue Frontier and the Blue Summit of 2009. Joe Payne, of the Casco Baykeepers, said it best. He quoted a famous quote, "with every privilege comes responsibility, and we are all responsible."
So maybe I'll see you on the water, hopefully you'll have an "SOS Message" for my bottle, and maybe we can chat next year at the Blue Summit in '09. We sure have to do something to put an end to the degredation of our ocean resources. Now.

Why World Energy Ministers Went to Jidda, Not Pensacola

2008-06-25T19:01:39Z

Over the weekend, Crown Prince Abdullah, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and energy ministers from around the world gathered in Jidda, Saudi Arabia in a desperate effort to tackle the worst energy crisis we have seen in decades. They did not meet in the Florida Panhandle, the North Atlantic, or any other potential offshore drilling venue. Why not? Because the global price of oil will never rise or fall based on America’s offshore wells.

I Have Seen This Before

We have been down this road before. One of my first jobs at NRDC was to help coastal communities balance growth with protections for marine life. But I was tasked with doing this work in the 1970s, when the last oil crisis sparked a call to open the whole North Atlantic to oil and gas leasing.

The destruction wrought by oil spills shocked the public into supporting one of the most successful environmental efforts in recent history: the offshore moratorium on drilling. For 27 years, it has enjoyed genuine bipartisan and public support.

If Saudi Arabia Can’t Do It, We Can’t

President Bush wants to destroy that consensus. He would like us to believe that if we break the moratorium on offshore drilling and add more oil production to our portfolio, the price of gasoline will go down. Yet that is something that not even Crown Prince Abdullah could not accomplish, and he has been at the oil business longer than Bush.

In Jidda this weekend, the big oil-consuming nations pressured Saudi Arabia--the only nation in the world that can increase production rapidly--to add more oil to the market. Abdullah agreed, but what impact did it have prices? Oil was up $2.34 to $137.70 a barrel by Monday.

DOE Says Offshore Wells Won’t Impact Price

Essentially all Saudi Arabia has to do to increase production is flip a switch. Here in the United States:

It will take seven to ten years of construction and drilling before offshore oil will arrive in refineries.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s own Energy Information Agency says “access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.”

But President Bush isn’t listening to what the AIE, the analysts, or the global markets are telling him. Instead, he is using a hallmark of his administration: manipulating Americans’ fears with dubious facts. This has led us down some very destructive paths.

But now we know better than to believe the administration’s sunny predictions and sketchy figures. There are no quick fixes to the oil crisis. Just like there was no “smoking gun” or “mission accomplished.”

The Real Way to Drive Down Gas Prices

But we do have forward-looking solutions that can get us off the gas-price rollercoaster, things like plug-in hybrids, better designed cities where we do not have to drive as much, and sustainable transportation fuels like cellulosic biofuels. Not only will these solutions make us less beholden to oil interests, but they will usher in a cleaner, more sustainable energy future for America.

Editorial Fiction at the Wall Street Journal

2008-06-20T22:25:33Z

If the Supreme Court decides to review the case of high intensity Navy sonar, as the Wall Street Journal yesterday urged, it will do well to ignore the Journal’s error-riddled editorial (“Judge Ahab and the Whales,” June 19). There is nothing “speculative” about the serious harm caused by sonar, as the Navy itself concedes. Though the harm that can be reduced by training with common sense safeguards, the Navy has refused, even in the face of overwhelming evidence linking mass whale mortalities to sonar exposure – a link characterized as “completely convincing” by the Navy’s own consultants.

Nor is there anything “activist” in the decisions of every federal court that has considered the Navy’s sonar training practices, concluding without exception that the Navy is not above the law and that, when it tests and trains with sonar, it can and must do so in an environmentally responsible manner. In the case up for review, the trial and appellate courts found that the Navy has repeatedly violated the law, that its own limited mitigation is “woefully inadequate,” and that the Navy can do a better job of protecting the health of our oceans without in any way compromising the Navy’s sonar training.

There is no question that sonar can injure and kill whales and dolphins. In fact, according to the Navy’s own conservative estimate, sonar exercises now underway in Southern California waters will significantly disturb or injure an estimated 170,000 marine mammals, including causing permanent injury to more than 450 whales and temporary hearing impairment in at least 8,000 whales – an injury that increases the risks of attack by predators. Again, those aren’t wild accusations by sandal-clad environmentalists – those are the estimates of the U.S. Navy in its official “Environmental Assessment” of the exercise.

Yet when they talk to the press, Navy officials still try to obscure the issue, casting doubt on whether sonar actually harms marine mammals. Take this recent statement by Capt. Scott Gureck, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet: “There’s no scientific proof that sonar by itself has ever directly killed or injured whales or other marine mammals.”

That’s right: water and ships also were involved, and the direct cause of death was internal bleeding.

Any hope that we could put aside the tortured semantics and focus on a solution went out the window in January when the Navy ran to President Bush for help. As many know by now, the Bush Administration issued two “emergency” waivers, one signed by the President himself, purporting to exempt the Navy from basic environmental laws in the interests of national security.

The irony is that if any emergency exists, it was created by the Navy itself, which month after month stubbornly failed to comply with environmental laws as it planned the sonar training exercises in question. Since when does failure to comply a law excuse one from complying with the law? That just doesn’t make sense. Nor does the President’s attempt to cast this controversy as an issue of national security.

Does the Navy need to train with sonar? We have never argued otherwise because the Navy has determined that mid-frequency active sonar is a critical tool for defending our ships, sailors and marines from underwater threats.

That doesn’t mean national security is jeopardized when a court orders the Navy to train in an environmentally responsible manner. The Army doesn’t train riflemen on crowded city streets, and the Air Force doesn’t practice bombing sorties over national parks. Why shouldn’t the Navy take common sense precautions when training with sonar in rich marine mammal habitat?

To be fair, the Navy has in the past adopted a number of procedures (albeit under legal pressure from conservationists) to reduce harm to whales. But the Navy has inexplicably abandoned those procedures for its southern California training exercises. After being ordered by a federal court to do more, the Navy asked the White House to excuse it from those common sense requirements -- for example, the requirement that it avoid areas where large numbers of marine mammal are known to be, and temporarily shut down active sonar when marine mammals are detected within 2000 meters of a sonar source.

The alternative, of course, is to knowingly assault these sound-sensitive creatures at close range with ear-splitting, hemorrhage-inducing noise. Whales shouldn’t have to suffer and die for the sake of convenience, and when it comes down to it, that’s really what we’re talking about.

Is reducing sonar harm to whales and dolphins an inconvenience? Perhaps. But the courts have repeatedly ruled that environmental planning to reduce the avoidable infliction of harm to marine life is required by our most basic environmental laws – laws that reflect our collective moral sense that the natural world warrants our respect and stewardship.

It is, after all, our world, too.

We Can’t Drill To Lower Fuel Prices

2008-06-20T14:39:32Z

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the need to limit opening additional federal lands to offshore drilling. Two comments got me thinking, and made me want to expand upon my thoughts here.

One commenter named Wayne said, “What this country needs is leadership and a multi-facted approach to solve our problems which involves oil drilling in the USA.” I agree with the need for leadership, Wayne – that’s why we at NRDC have worked for decades on energy issues, and why we’re now advocating a national energy plan that engages multiple sectors of the economy.

But President Bush’s proposal is not an example of leadership. The message that fuel prices are high because oil companies don’t have enough land is false, and won’t provide relief to the American people. We simply can’t drill our way to lower prices. We have to seek other, more energy efficient alternatives. This is the fastest, and cheapest way to lower fuel prices and combat climate change.

And yet, many members of Congress are now lining up to push for a repeal of the ban on opening more federal lands to offshore drilling. As the two comments, and other articles on the web illustrate, there’s substantive debate on this issue.

And so why do I oppose opening additional, ecologically sensitive areas to offshore drilling?

Consider that companies already have more than enough resources available to them. Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%. In the last four years, the BLM has issued 10,000 more permits than have been used. That means the oil and gas companies are actually stockpiling extra permits, and that these companies hold leases to nearly 68 million acres that are not in production.

This is particularly true for offshore areas. On the outer continental shelf, there are 7,740 active leases and only 1,655 in production. Only 10.5 million of the 44 million offshore leased acres are currently producing oil or gas. Moreover, four times more natural gas is contained within the waters already open to drilling than in those protected by the ban.

We should not give these companies more land when they already have more land than they can use.

Even if we did open the ecologically sensitive areas currently under a moratorium, it wouldn’t lower fuel prices. In the past two years, domestic oil and gas production has outpaced domestic consumption fourfold. In the mean time, fuel prices have soared. If you look to the UK, to Norway, Germany and Japan – all countries that promote offshore drilling – you’ll see their prices are much higher.

I’m not alone in saying this. Click here for a great report on the topic, released by the House Committee on Natural Resources this June. The Energy Information Administration, the independent statistical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, says drilling offshore won’t help prices. And yesterday, in an editorial entitled “The Big Pander to Big Oil,” The New York Times described opening additional areas to offshore drilling by saying:

“This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.”

We can’t drill our way to lower fuel prices. As I’ve said before, efficiency is the fastest, and cheapest, way to lower fuel costs and combat global warming.

I have a lot to say on the topic of how efficiency can help meet our national energy goals. I’ll expand on that in another post soon.

Whales and Oil

2008-06-19T19:00:34Z

As offshore oil gets dragged once again onto the political scene, it’s worth remembering the environmental costs that led to the adoption of an offshore moratorium in the first place.

One of the seminal events in the modern environmental movement was the 1969 blow-out of Union Oil Platform A, which sent millions of gallons of crude into the Santa Barbara Channel and tarred beaches for miles along the California coast. The Santa Barbara spill became an object lesson for the hazards of offshore drilling, a lesson that has since been relearned in the Gulf of Mexico, the Black Sea, and many other locales here and abroad. But even aside from the occasional headline-gathering calamity, the search for oil at sea remains an environmentally risky business, and not only for its direct effects on humans.

Two weeks ago, for example, some 200 melon-headed whales stranded in the shallow waters of Loza Bay on the northwest side of Madagascar. ExxonMobil had been conducting an oil-and-gas survey nearby, using sonar a few days prior to the strandings to map the seafloor and later booting up powerful airguns to look for deposits below.

Melon-headed whales are deep-water animals that very seldom strand but seem acutely sensitive to man-made noise. A huge pod of melon-heads came into Hanalei Bay, on Kauai, in July 2004 as the U.S. Navy ran a major sonar exercise offshore. In that case residents managed after a day of struggle to lead the whales back out to sea, but the news from Madagascar is grim by comparison, with more and more animals reported dead. ExxonMobil suspended its operations, and an investigation into the strandings has begun.

Biologists who’ve looked at the problem of oil-and-gas exploration are concerned less about mass strandings than about subtler, more far-reaching effects on marine mammals: things like habitat abandonment and interference with breeding and foraging, which are not so easily observed but are probably occurring on a population scale. The die-offs in Loza Bay are just a reminder of what offshore oil means for the creatures who live offshore.

Dear President Bush: No More Offshore Drilling

2008-06-18T22:03:06Z

Earlier today, President Bush called upon Congress to lift a ban on offshore oil drilling that was enacted more than 25 years ago. Since then, every President has extended the moratorium – first by President Bush’s father, in 1990, and then by President Clinton, in 1998.

They extended the ban for good reason. Offshore drilling is an enormously wasteful and dangerous means of energy production. Between 1980 and 1999, 73 offshore oil spills dumped millions of gallons of oil into our waters. Offshore drilling is associated with air pollution and land degradation, and with seismic activity that has been shown to have profound, even fatal, effects on marine mammals.

Nor will it do anything to reduce the price of gas or increase our energy independence, as my colleague Deron Lovaas said today. According to most estimates, it will take at least seven to ten years for the oil to go into production and even then it wouldn’t reduce energy prices.

And so what is this about? With oil hitting $130 a barrel, these are desperate times for the White House. For a former oil-man from Texas, the solution to an oil crisis means helping the oil industry, not the American public. As Ross Gelbspan said in his book Boiling Point, “Today, the White House has become the East Coast branch office of ExxonMobil and Peabody coal, and climate change has become the preeminent case study of the contamination of our political system by money.”

So let’s recognize President’s call to Congress for what it is: a political play for short-term gain that will do little to reduce gas prices over the short or the long-term. What this country needs is a plan to reduce our energy consumption. It doesn’t need another desperate move to help the oil industry.

NRDC has a plan. Solving the energy crisis should begin with energy efficiency. We need to improve the energy efficiency of our vehicles, our businesses and our homes. The cheapest, cleanest and quickest energy we can produce is the energy we save through efficiency.

In the short-term, energy efficiency can be achieved much more quickly than drilling for oil. In the long-term, it can reduce consumption, ease demand, and help to lower the price of fuel.

To get there:

We need to put a cap on carbon. The science is in; we can’t continue emitting at current rates.
We need to unleash the potential of current, available technology by getting it off the shelves and into the streets.
Third, and related to the issue of efficiency, is the need increase our investment in technology innovation. We need to work towards creating a low-carbon infrastructure in the US.

We have the opportunity to set this country in a new direction. That direction is based upon an energy policy that will solve global warming, enhance national security, and boost our economy. Energy efficiency has a leading role to play in that future; opening our oceans and our coasts to drilling does not.

Best Week Ever (and Last Week Ever)

2008-05-28T01:31:40Z

On Switchboard, that is. After eight great years at NRDC, I will be heading out into the wild world of consulting as of Friday. There are so many things I've been meaning to blog about, from my trip to the Grand Hall of Evolution in Paris, to the trash raft, and my long overdue Wave Energy follow-up. I'll get to some of those this week, and I'm taking requests, but after May 30th I'll have to put them up at Blogfish where I am joining Mark Powell to tackle the thorny issues of sustainable seafood guilt and gobies.

Today, I'd just like to highlight this excellent FAQ on white sharks from the California Department of Fish & Game, which I stumbled upon while looking up some rockfish assessments. A recent study in Aquatic Conservation looked at 21 species of oceanic sharks and found that 11 were in trouble under the IUCN red list criteria, including the great white. California has protected great white Sharks, but they're still targets worldwide as trophies and as food. Which makes it all themore important for us to come to grips with our response to sharks, which includes "ooh, that's cool" and "that thing can eat me." Because it can, but it's not likely. DFG points out just how unlikely shark attacks are in California, and that worldwide, we still catch more sharks than sharks catch us.

As one old dive instructor used to say "underwater is the only place where man rejoins the food chain." DFG seconds that with my favorite piece of advice:

"There is only one foolproof method for avoiding a white shark attack: stay out of the ocean."

And miss all the lingcod? The odds are still on our side.