Guest Column: Earth Day Blighted by Dirty Fuels

— by Fred Felleman for Crosscut.com —

Some hailed President Barack Obama’s recent veto of the Keystone pipeline authorization legislation as an early Earth Day gift, spelling the project’s death knell. However, his decision was actually based on process, not policy. While Obama has articulated the science behind climate change better than any predecessor, his all-of-the-above energy strategy has opened the floodgates to unprecedented levels of domestic fossil fuel extraction with lax oversight.

These policies resulted in disasters such as BP’s indelible mark on the Gulf of Mexico five Earth Days ago. In typical fashion, regulators responded with some of the long-needed oversight, but offshore production soon came roaring back.

Recent oil train derailments, exposing communities to elevated risks, also reflect the administration’s policies in the face of the gusher of under-regulated fracked oil as it became cost-effective to bring to market by rail. While Bakken oil is the primary source of this incendiary risk, there are still only proposed national regulations on fracking without consideration of climate impacts. Despite the growing number of oil-train accidents, only weak requirements for safer tanker cars are being developed though Sen. Maria Cantwell just introduced legislation beginning to address this deficiency.

Leases are also being let on public lands at bargain-basement rates for coal extraction and risky Arctic oil exploration.

( To read the full article, go to crosscut.com/2015/03/guest-opinion-dirty-fuel-exports-darken-nws-earth-day/ )

Fred Felleman is a San Juan Island consultant and serves on the Puget Sound Harbor Safety Committee, the Puget Sound Partnership Oil Spill Advisory Committee and the Strait of Juan de Fuca Regional Network.

A link to a half-hour radio interview on March 25 with [Felleman] elaborating on this subject can be found on the Speak Up Speak Out Radio website.

 Terry Wechsler, President of Whatcom Watch, contributed to this article.