Tell Your Representative: Support a Permanent Ban on Offshore Drilling

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

Imagine: A thick, black, tarry substance flows into your home, coating your body and preventing you from keeping warm, causing you to slip into hypothermia. This is what life is like after an oil spill for a sea otter.¹

Oil spills are the greatest threat to otters.² Thanks to a court ruling, the Trump administration’s plan to open more of our oceans to offshore drilling has been delayed.³

But we know this administration will try again. And we know that when we drill, we spill.

For a sea otter, oil spills are a matter of life and death. Tell your U.S. House representative to support a permanent ban on offshore drilling at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=32406.

And it’s not just sea otters. Dolphins, whales, sea turtles, polar bears and more are also harmed by oil spills.

We’ve all seen the pictures of animals covered in oil, their fur or feathers or shell covered in the thick black sludge.

It’s as bad as it looks for these animals, if not worse: Being coated in oil can lead to hypothermia in mammals such as sea otters and polar bears that rely on their fur for warmth. Trying to clean off the oil by licking their fur can damage their internal organs, including their gastrointestinal tracts, kidneys, liver and lungs — to name just a few.⁴ It can also cause respiratory problems in whales and dolphins, and impede vital organ function in sea turtles.^5,6

We could save sea otters and all of the animals harmed by oil spills with one solution: Stop offshore drilling.

We’ve been working to stop the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan since it was announced in 2017, and its indefinite delay is wonderful news. But that doesn’t mean future plans for the Pacific and Atlantic aren’t in the works. We need to make sure Congress will stand strong against offshore drilling.

Tell your U.S. House representative: Stand up to offshore drilling before it’s too late.

The risks for marine animals alone should be enough to make us stop offshore drilling. But there are plenty of other consequences from offshore drilling that include worsening climate change and risking the livelihoods of coastal communities.

We need to keep drilling out of our oceans.

Act today.

1. Roger Helm, Daniel Costa, Terry DeBruyn, Thomas O’Shea, Randall Wells and Terrie Williams, “Overview of Effects of Oil Spills on Marine Mammals,” ResearchGate, February 2015.
2. A. Doroff and A. Burdin, “Enhydra lutris: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015,” accessed January 16, 2019.
3. Coral Davenport, “Interior Dept. Delays Its Plan to Open U.S. Coastline to Drilling,” The New York Times, April 25, 2019/
4. Roger Helm, Daniel Costa, Terry DeBruyn, Thomas O’Shea, Randall Wells and Terrie Williams, “Overview of Effects of Oil Spills on Marine Mammals,” ResearchGate, February 2015.
5. Roger Helm, Daniel Costa, Terry DeBruyn, Thomas O’Shea, Randall Wells and Terrie Williams, “Overview of Effects of Oil Spills on Marine Mammals,” ResearchGate, February 2015.
6. “How Do Oil Spills Affect Sea Turtles?,” NOAA Office of Response and Restoration, June 16, 2016.