Tell Congress It’s Time to End Offshore Drilling

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

It should have been another beautiful Sunday morning. Instead, residents in Orange County, California, woke up to the news that more than 100,000 gallons of oil from a decades-old pipeline had spilled off Huntington Beach.¹

Go to https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=46613 to tell Congress: It’s time to end offshore drilling.

The oil that gushed into the sea and onto local beaches created toxic fumes, forcing locals to stay away from the area. Dead fish and birds have already begun washing ashore. This could become an ecological disaster as the oil seeps into the nearby Talbert Marsh wetlands, home to vibrant birdlife, including great blue herons, pelicans and endangered California least terns, which migrate up the Pacific Coast.²

Coming just a month after Hurricane Ida left dozens of oil spills in its wake in the Gulf, this disaster off the Southern California coast is a stark reminder that when we drill, we spill — and that it’s time to stop.³

Add your name: We need to stop drilling off our coasts.

Congress has an opportunity in the budget reconciliation bill to permanently ban offshore drilling for good along the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf coasts.⁴ It needs to act.

California has led the charge to create a clean energy future — and the nation should follow. By powering our lives with energy from the sun and the wind, not only will we be staving off the worst effects of climate change, we’ll also create a world in which our air is cleaner, our ocean life is safer, and our kids never have to worry about a day at the beach being cancelled because the sand is covered in toxic tar.

Stand up for our beaches: Sign now to help ban offshore drilling.

Fossil fuels are the energy of the past, and we need to transition to a clean energy future as fast as possible. With your help, we can.

1. Rachel Pannett, Paulina Firozi, Hannah Knowles and Bryan Pietsch, “Oil spill threatens Southern California wildlife and closes beaches as Coast Guard investigates,” The Washington Post, October 3, 2021.
2. Hannah Fry et al., “Massive oil spill sends crude onto Orange County beaches, killing birds, marine life,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2021.
3. Blacki Migliozzi and Hiroko Tabuchi, “After Hurricane Ida, Oil Infrastructure Springs Dozens of Leaks,” The New York Times, September 26, 2021.
4. Rachel Franzin, “Reconciliation measure including repeal of Arctic refuge drilling advances,” The Hill, September 9, 2021.