In the aftermath of MMS ex-director Birnbaum's resignation earlier today, some on this site have defended her as "taking the fall" for the Obama team, saying she can't be blamed for the misdeeds of the Bush MMS.
And to be fair, it would have been difficult for her to clean up that mess in such a short time, especially while it was administration policy to push forward with as much drilling as possible.
But it turns out she's guilty of charging ahead with expanded offshore drilling despite an explicit request for delay from NOAA Administrator (and world-class marine biologist) Jane Lubchenco.
Details follow:
Journalism Prof. Tom Yulsman has the story (click through for the whole thing, including links to documents):
With British Petroleum saying it can’t have the gusher in the Gulf permanently stoppered until August, and clear indications that the size of the spill — and the potential environmental harm — is much bigger than BP and the U.S. government have been willing to acknowledge (until just today), scientists and environmentalists alike are expressing increasing anger at President Obama and how his administration is handling the situation.
There’s no question that anger is justified. In fact, I suspect Jane Lubchenco herself (chief of NOAA) is pretty darn angry that Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the federal Minerals Management Service, ignored her agency’s request to hold off on issuing deep water drilling permits until the work of the administration’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force was completed (scheduled for last December).
In fact, if I were Jane Lubchenco, I’d be apoplectic. If MMS director Birnbaum hadn’t ignored NOAA’s request, the BP oil spill never would have happened. That’s because the MMS approved, on Birnbaum’s watch, the drilling permit for the well that is now despoiling the Gulf.
(...)
In her letter to Birnbaum, Jane Lubchenco emphasized the importance of allowing the task force time to create the policy before new drilling permits were issued. Such a policy, she wrote, will be "comprehensive and integrated," and it will emphasize "ecosystem-based management as a foundational principle."
But eh, who cares about ecosystems when it's time to drill, baby, drill?
What happened here could well be more complicated, and it may be that Birnbaum was under orders from someone higher up, but if so as a good environmentalist (as so many say) she should have fallen on her sword then.