7/31/08

This week the Bush administration took another step toward opening up the rest of our coastline to offshore oil drilling.  The justification is that we need to do something to lower gas prices.  How gullible are we?  The more we lock into a fossil fuel future, the longer we remain vulnerable to the whims of the global oil market.  Not to mention the moral emptiness of perpetuating global warming problems our children and grandchildren will pay for.

Oilman T. Boone Pickens has become a surprising and refreshing spokesperson for getting on with the job of developing sustainable energy sources.  I can’t help but remember the 1970s, when I was working to resist the devastation of coal strip mines and oil shale development proposals.  Experts and energy industry spokespeople pontificated on the “reality” that solar energy and other renewables wouldn’t come on line until “for 15 years,” so in the meantime we needed to stick with fossil fuels. 

The point is that these sustainable sources won’t come on line in a big way until we commit to that future.  They will always be 15 years away until we decide we’re really doing it.

Our energy challenge is a lot like our Puget Sound challenge.  There’s been talk, talk, talk about saving the Sound, but what’s happened on the ground is more sprawling development, more shoreline destruction, more stormwater runoff—in short, more business as usual.  Yes, some good things have happened to slow the rate of Puget Sound’s degradation, but we’re seeing improvements at small scale while the problems require serious, large-scale solutions.  Saving the Sound will continue to elude us, as long as we remain patient with the endless planning and cautious avoidance of the changes we need to make.

Just today, the State Supreme Court threw another obstacle in the path of saving the Sound—in a 5-4 decision, the Court said that local areas can wait years until they address shoreline protection.  Surprisingly, the Court is saying that shorelines don’t have to be considered “critical areas” as part of the growth management act. Lots of boring words and technicalities, but the long and the short of it is that Anacortes, the area covered in the lawsuit, and Bainbridge Island, an area that immediately responded to the Court decision by suspending its work on shoreline protections, are now planning to wait well into the next decade to address this important issue. 

Hey, Puget Sound Partnership—I guess this is now in your lap.  We can’t save Puget Sound by going backwards.  

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