Offshore Drilling Drilling Protest SF (Flickr)
I went to Interior Secretary Salazar’s San Francisco hearing on offshore drilling to cover the protest outside. From the SFBG:
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was welcomed to San Francisco last Thursday by a host of activists dressed as marine creatures, including a few diehards in head-to-toe polar bear costumes who were probably becoming endangered species themselves by standing out in the sun. At a public hearing called to solicit comments about a federal plan for new offshore-oil development, environmentalists and elected officials demanded that the new interior secretary reject new leases for oil drilling off the California coast.
One of the “die hards” in dressed in a six-foot- tall polar bear costume was Brian Nowicki, a policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
There’s lots of folks here saying no drilling, clean safe energy now, however, at the same time, we are in the middle of that period where the deadline where Secretary Salazar can restore endangered species protections to the polar bear and species threatened by global warming.
The occasion of the offshore drilling hearing drew more than 30 environmental groups under the slogan “Not the Answer.” Offshore drilling is a rallying point because, as Nowicki points out, drilling is a symbollic battle for a myriad of interconnected environmental issues.
Offshore Drilling is a double barreled threat for the polar bear and species threatened by global warming. On the first hand you have off shore oil rigs development potentially going right into the offshore habitat for the polar bear. On the other side you have the greenhouse gas emissions coming from the burning of those fossil fuels that contributes very directly to the global warming that is the primary threat to polar bears and the species threatened by global warming.
More photos after the jump…
See the whole album on Flickr.
