{"id":3338,"date":"2010-05-04T15:47:04","date_gmt":"2010-05-04T19:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=3338"},"modified":"2010-05-04T15:47:04","modified_gmt":"2010-05-04T19:47:04","slug":"the-oil-spill-comes-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2010\/05\/04\/the-oil-spill-comes-to-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"The oil spill comes to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Madeline McCurry-Schmidt,<\/em> Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment intern at the Ecological Society of America.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) at a press conference today in Washington Credit: McCurry-Schmidt<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Last month, Obama surprised conservationists when he added plans to expand <\/span>off-shore drilling<\/span><\/a> to his energy policy in an effort to sway votes in Congress. Then\u2014just as both sides rose to debate the issue\u2014the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded.<\/span><\/p>\n

This morning, amid reports of shifting <\/span>ocean currents<\/span><\/a> and dying <\/span>sea turtles<\/span><\/a>, several democratic senators joined a Capitol Hill press conference organized by the Sierra Club.\u00a0The senators\u00a0gave their views about\u00a0what the oil spill means to climate change and energy policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said the disaster in the Gulf should remove off-shore drilling from the energy debate. \u201cThose who have been advocates of drilling have to look at the reality,\u201d said Menendez. He said that plans for expanding nuclear energy and \u201ccleaner\u201d energy from coal should be enough for\u00a0Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Menendez was joined by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). Nelson said that he will filibuster any energy bill that allows expanded off-shore drilling. Lautenberg supports legislation to raise liability costs for oil companies. He said previous liability costs were \u201cless than a drop in the bucket\u201d for oil companies. \u201cWe\u2019re going to raise the cost until it gets your attention.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

All three senators vowed to hold BP\u2014the company leasing the oil rig\u2014responsible for the costs of the spill. Lautenberg challenged BP\u2019s assertion that it was making the best efforts to aid in the clean-up. \u201cHell no,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re not finished until they\u2019ve paid the last check and the last drop of oil is out of there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Obama surprised conservationists when he added plans to expand off-shore drilling to his energy policy in an effort to sway votes in Congress. Then\u2014just as both sides rose to debate the issue\u2014the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. This morning several democratic senators joined a Capitol Hill press conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[720,443,55,211,726],"class_list":["post-3338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","category-ecology-in-policy","tag-bp","tag-climate-and-energy-policy","tag-gulf-of-mexico","tag-offshore-drilling","tag-oil-spill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}