We’ll start off with the obligatory caveats that it’s “too early to tell for sure,” that “nothing official has been released yet,” and that “all we have to go on right now are back-of-the-envelope estimates” – but gotta tell you: It sure as hell looks like Interior received more comments in favor of new, responsible energy exploration than ones opposed to it.
We don’t have a lot to go on in right now, but according to Consumer Energy Alliance, a Houston-based group that advocates an “all of the above” approach to securing our energy future, it sure looks like we have them beat. From CEA’s release:
More than 325,000 American people sent letters to Interior secretary Ken Salazar over the past six months urging his agency to expand responsible access to critical energy resources offshore, and Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) helped deliver more than 150,000 of them. …
While the closure of this comment period marks a very early step in what is designed to be a long, deliberative process, the volume and intensity of public response on whether responsible offshore energy exploration should be part of our energy future suggests the status quo energy policies of the past will no longer be an option in the future. What we need now, and what these letters demand, is decisive action from this administration – not an effort to pocket veto these critical offshore energy resources.
Ok, so the good guys scored in excess of 325,000 – how about the other side? Turns out they’ve been working this one hard as well. This comes from Reuters:
The Alaska Wilderness League, along with about 20 other green groups, symbolically delivered comments to the department Monday from nearly 300,000 people opposing the proposed offshore leasing plan that would open much of the Arctic Ocean to drilling. … [The] group is pushing to halt all drilling in the Arctic Ocean until a comprehensive plan is developed to protect the area’s fragile ecosystems.
Earth to Alaska Wilderness League: Know this plan you spent millions of dollars to kill? The one you sent 300,000 letters in opposition to? Yes, well: It IS a comprehensive plan “to protect the area’s fragile ecosystems.” The five-year plan addresses lots more things than drilling, sweetheart. And maybe if you’d have read it, that would’ve become plain.
No need to cry over spilled rhetoric, we guess. Still, it’s worth noting that, despite all the press accounts out there suggesting that the greens ran up the score on the comment period, the reality of the situation appears to be this: They lost. We won. End of story. Hit the showers. And we won the previous comment period as well, fwiw – according to the Interior Department, opposition groups got crushed during the 2007-12 five-year plan process too. What was the carnage there? The final tally of four separate comment periods was 91,000 in favor, 32,000 opposed. That’s a 72 percent favorable rate.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the story was the same for the first comment period held for the 2010-2015 plan. Interior conducted that one from August to October 2008. And the tally was 86,000 in support of new exploration, and 79,000 opposed.
