I read most of the comments to this article. Comments closed at #146, what was the NYTimes afraid of? Every comment I read and/or skimmed was against this proposal. This is very unlike comments to The NYTimes with its wide range of readers.
Just as the glow from the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was burning, this plan arrives on the scene. (I find it strange to call this area a Wildlife Refuge when hunting has been going on for centuries.) But all those years of hunting did not harm the flora and fauna of the Refuge in the way that fossil fuel extraction would have done.
Now the plan that the President first introduced a week before the BP death gusher in 2010 is being resurrected to appease the Republicans & Democrats in Southern states.
Obama’s Plan: Allow Drilling in Atlantic, but Limit It in Arctic
Environmentalists said opening the Atlantic waters would put the coasts of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia at risk for an environmental disaster like the BP spill that struck the Gulf Coast in 2010, when millions of barrels of oil washed ashore after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. Advocacy groups in those states said that the drilling could harm tourism, fishing and other coastal industries that are already major drivers of the Southeastern economy.
But lawmakers from both parties in those coastal states have pushed for years to open their waters for drilling. The Interior Department estimates there are 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the Atlantic’s outer continental shelf and 31.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.