Quote of the Day: Dick Durbin on offshore drilling

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sen. Durbin, today:

There's a lot to be learned by members and perhaps new standards when it comes to off-shore drilling. I don't think we're going to eliminate offshore drilling in the future, but any future offshore drilling is going to be held to much higher safety standards.

Higher safety standards are the least that can be expected from this (man-made) disaster.

I appreciate Durbin's concern, and I wish him well, but the real lesson here is not that there need to be higher standards, which is pretty obvious, but that, if at all possible, there shouldn't be any offshore drilling at all, and that the only way to avoid not just this sort of disaster in future but environmental destruction generally, not to mention to slow down climate change, of which our reckless oil consumption is a leading cause, and stabilize global temperatures, is to shift to alternative and renewable energy sources.

Last time I checked, solar panels and wind turbines don't have quite the catastrophic consequences as, say, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico does.