Renee Rosenow

Last Thursday, Congress voted in favor of lifting the ban on drilling off of American shores. The House voted 232-187 in support of removing the ban, which had existed for more than a quarter century. The House bill would end an Outer Continental Shelf drilling halt that had been renewed every year since 1981, and prevented drilling off 85 percent of American coastal waters.

The decision to lift the ban is coming in the wake of the Republican Party trying to pass a massive financial services bailout plan to try and save the American economy. The hopes are that allowing offshore drilling will make oil prices cheaper and save people money at the pump. To what extent, though, are we willing to go to save money these days?

After the ban is lifted, oil companies will begin constructing massive offshore drilling rigs off the coasts of many states, and this is when the guessing game begins. They begin by trying to find a gas or oil “trap” beneath the surface, which, because of the ocean floor’s great depths, can be very difficult due to lack of visibility.

Then engineers use seismic surveying to gather data and decide whether or not drilling in the area would have a chance of containing oil or gas. The truth is that the search for offshore oil often turns out to be unproductive, but it still continues in nations whose economic future is in question.

Assuming oil will be found in at least some of these sites, the next big issue is that accidents do happen. Things such as leaks, blowouts, spills, barge collisions, pipeline corrosion and explosions all do happen with the main cause being human error, not the technology that is being used.

Of these issues, spills occur most frequently and present the largest problem to the surrounding marine ecosystem. For any spill, only five to 15 percent can actually be cleaned up. Furthermore, 97 percent of all spills that occur are less than 1,000 barrels (a barrel contains 42 gallons) and because their size is considered “small” they don’t need to be reported to the federal Oil Spill Risk Analysis. Even without these lesser spills being reported, millions and millions of gallons of oil have already been dumped into the ocean.

Beaches covered in tar, dead and dying wildlife, damaged fisheries and contaminated water supplies are just some of the short-term effects of an oil spill. In the long-term, toxic materials from oil can remain in the water and on land for many years, building to lethal levels and eventually destroy entire ecosystems.

The biggest benefit that could ever be achieved is that oil and gas prices would drop (until this oil and gas no longer exists) because we would have to import less of it from other countries.

Maybe it’s time that instead of looking for a short-term answer, we start looking for a long-term solution. The entire country needs to step up and stop living such a wasteful lifestyle. Why not try to use less of these things, instead of trying to make gas prices cheaper so we can afford more of it?

Options like car pooling, walking and riding bikes all have been adopted in other countries to reduce the consumption of resources, but as Americans, do we think we are above that? Are we too good to change the way we live to benefit the planet for our generation and generations to come?

The Earth is the location we were all placed to live, and we only have one. If we are already desperate enough to start drilling for oil in our water, what will we be doing in another 50 or 100 years when that oil is gone? We need to protect the oil and ecosystems we have now, otherwise soon there won’t be anything left.

It’s a sad day when Congress decides that destroying our planet by constructing massive oil rigs to save a buck is the best possible solution. If there is something we need to make sure we always conserve, it is our planet. If there is no more planet Earth, then there will be no more us.

Pellegrino is a sophomore print journalism major and copy editor for The Spectator.