Rise up, Louisiana!
Many Louisianans remain sore over a recent column suggesting, half in jest, that the state become a U.S. protectorate. I was accusing state officials, and by extension the electorate, of groveling before oil money — at the cost of despoiling their natural paradise.
Seeing local fishermen, having been ruined by the BP well disaster, also demand more deepwater drilling has become a rather depressing element of the reportage from the Gulf. 
But now we read of a churchwoman, Patty Whitney of Terrebonne Parish, talking back at the despotism of oil. So deep is the intimidation that friends call her brave for questioning the oil culture at public forums.
Whitney said that one of her brothers argued (as have countless readers), “America needs oil.”
And she responds:
Then let them drill. Let them drill in Yellowstone Park, in the Grand Canyon, in Puget Sound, off Martha’s Vineyard. Let them mess up their own places instead of just drilling in my beautiful Louisiana.
Boy, does she ever have it right.
And a note to all my Pelican State correspondents who take credit for heating my house in winter: I’d rather have their shrimp than their oil.
Tags: Arizona, energy, environment, Louisiana, Massachusetts, oil, Washington state, Wyoming
Oil Addiction and the Art of the Passable
While cap-and-trade is tangled in a political brawl, there’s one excellent piece of energy legislation that most people agree on — the bi-partisan bill to promote electric cars. Let’s pass it fast:
Tags: energy, environment, oil, Washington
Louisiana can’t take care of itself
The time has come:
MAKE LOUISIANA A U.S. PROTECTORATE
Tags: environment, Louisiana, politics, Washington
Louisiana: Fat, happy and in constant pain
Baton Rouge September, 2008
Louisiana is said to have the fattest people in America and also the happiest.
Meanwhile, the pain never stops.
It’s time that the people started controlling that part of the pain they have power over. Time to get its economy off oil. Which is going to take some doing. Gov. Bobby Jindal has just asked Obama to lift the moratorium on deep water drilling, even as a deep-water drilling crisis threatens the state’s very future.
Tags: culture, energy, environment, Louisiana
Yes, offshore drilling is an awful idea
A trip to the supermarket fish counter broke my heart. There among the many culinary gifts of the sea was one that I might not see again for a long, long time: Gulf shrimp.
That inspired a column arguing that there are values not measured in dollars. And understanding that some people simply can’t think that way, I made a case for values measured in dollars that are not tied to oil. Here is Why Offshore Drilling is a Terrible Idea.
