trickybeck wrote:
Sir Xsarus wrote:
catwho wrote:
Conservatives are all for keeping the US government out of business, until the business is suddenly in trouble, then it's the government's responsibility to step in and fix their mistakes.
But there is something disingenuous when regulating to prevent said emergency would have been 1000x more effective than trying to fix it afterwards. In this case, it's also the responsible thing to do for the entire planet, not just our country.
Except that it was largely regulation that caused this problem. More accurately, that caused this problem to be as major a disaster as it is. The problem is that per usual the useful kinds of regulations (like safety equipment, backups, redundancies, emergency plans, etc) were not in place to the degree they needed to, but restrictions on where the drilling could be done were in full effect. Had the left focused less on a "no drilling anywhere at all" strategy and more on "where and how can we drill that'll minimize environmental impact" this would not have happened. As a result we had regulation which mandated that this oil rig had to operate in very deep water, while not requiring a number of safety features which would have at least reduced the likelihood of a major disaster.
In order of risk to the environment, from most to least risky:
1. Drilling in 5000+ feet of water with a bare minimum of safety requirements
2. Drilling in 5000+ feet of water with lots of safety requirements
3. Drilling in 1000- feet of water with a bare minimum of safety requirements.
4. Drilling in 1000- feet of water with lots of safety requirements
5. Drilling on land with a bare minimum of safety requirements.
6. Drilling on land with lots of safety requirements.
Interestingly enough, the cost order for that (from least to most expensive) is 5, 6, 3, 4, 1, 2. So as a result of our environmental policies we managed to pick the most dangerous method of drilling for oil, but at least it was only the second most expensive! We're just brilliant, aren't we?
You do get that the only reason we drill in water that deep is because the environmentalists don't allow us to drill on land or shallow water, right? Think about what "regulations" caused this.