"Further, we must learn that with any risky technology, whether it is offshore oil drilling or nuclear power, it is not good enough to be 99% safe. One event can have a calamitous and irreversible impact. We need a major investigation to understand how this accident occurred. We must make certain that precautions are put in place so nothing like it ever happens again.

This crisis occurred at a time when the United States was considering opening new areas to offshore oil drilling. If there is a lesson to be learned from this disaster, it is that Congress must end that policy. There must be no new offshore drilling. Not now, not ever.

Offshore drilling simply does not achieve the goals that its advocates claim, and it is not worth the risk. If we are serious about wanting to break our dependence on foreign oil and move to energy independence; if we want to lower the cost of energy; if we want to combat climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions; if we want to create millions of new jobs – then more offshore drilling is not the way to go."

In light of the BP oil disaster Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promptly withdrew his plans on lifting a 40-year moratorium on drilling off the California coast. Earlier Greenpeace have called for an offshore moratorium in the USA and have asked President Barack Obama to cancel Arctic drilling plans. Schwarzenegger should of course be complimented for taking back his support for any new offshore oil drilling plans. But isn’t it a bit sad that an “unprecedented environmental disaster” has to take place before anyone cares to realize the dangers of offshore oil drilling (or nuclear energy)?

But then again this might just all be nice talk from politicians and legislators. It will be interesting to see if they will continue to talk about ending offshore drilling and transforming the nation’s energy system even after the media storm have calmed. Somehow I doubt it. After all, the current oil spill is nothing new. And we shouldn’t forget that the Gulf disaster is only unusual for being so near the US. Elsewhere in the world Big Oil rarely cleans up its dirty mess. And the Western media rarely cares about it.

But one might say that Barack Obama have called for the transformation of the US energy system long before the oil disaster in the Gulf. And yes this is true. In late 2008 when the failing auto industry was the hot topic of the day Obama said that this is "our pattern" and it has to be broken:

"We go from shock to trance. You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it’s not important, and we start, you know filling up our SUVs again.

And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It’s part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it."

But then again, this is also nothing new. As Jon Stewart shows the last eight presidents in the USA have all gone on television and promised to move America towards an energy-independent future.

“Did you notice the ads after last night’s presidential debate? ABC had Chevron. CBS had Exxon. CNN had the coal lobby. But you know what happened last week? ABC refused to run our Repower America ad — the ad that takes on this same oil and coal lobby”, said Cathy Zoi, CEO of the We Campaign, in an email newsletter to the campaigns member two days ago.

ABC is still, after more than two days, refusing to say or even respond to the We Campaign about why they won’t run the Repower America ad.

“As our country faces deep economic problems, we need to be able to have an honest debate about the root causes of our problems. As Al Gore has said, “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. And every bit of that has to change. As oil and coal backed groups outspend even major party committees in this political year, it’s outrageous that ABC would deny our ad”, said Cathy Zoi.

In response to the refusal the We Campaign launched an online petition site to make ABC change their mind. In just 24 hours over 100,000 have signed it and sent messages to ABC in support of the Repower America ad.

But offshore drilling is not a “quick fix” and it won’t help to lower the gas prices. The only ones that will profit from this are Bush and McCain’s friends in the oil industry. While people are suffering from the high gas prices the oil companies are reporting record profits after record profits.

Greenpeace has listed a bunch of reasons why offshore drilling is not the answer to high gas prices at the pump:

“The United States burns 24 percent of the world’s oil, yet we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. Even if we drilled every drop of oil the U.S. has on shore or off its coasts, we will never be able to drill our way to lower oil prices or energy security. We simply burn more than we could ever drill.”

“Offshore oil drilling is not a short-term fix. It would take at least a decade to bring new leases into production. And, it will be years before exploration could begin and years after that before production would start. If any effect were to be felt on gas prices (most likely only a few pennies per gallon), that effect is decades away.”

“Offering up more of our coastline for drilling won’t lower gas prices. Since President Bush took office in 2000, the number of wells in federally leased areas has increased exponentially, yet gas prices have doubled during that same time. Yet, this type of evidence is never mentioned in the media or by proponents for offshore drilling.”

“Another reason that drilling for more oil in the U.S. won’t result in lower gas prices is because oil prices are set on the global oil market. What this means is that all oil produced around the world is sold all at the same price. There is no guarantee that we would even be using the oil that was drilled here in the U.S. And, we certainly wouldn’t get a discount just because we drilled for it on U.S. soil. We would pay the same rate as the rest of the world.”

The only things that will lower the fuel prices, create more jobs, solve the climate crisis and fix this fragile economy is to invest in clean renewable energy sources, setting strict mpg standards for all automobiles and transform our current society to a sustainable one.

Going green will fix many problems, one of them are high gas prices.

“If the world is sliding into recession, it’s partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency. Yesterday in the Guardian, Rajendra Pachauri suggested that an impending recession could force us to confront the flaws in the global economy. Sadly it seems so far to have had the opposite effect: a recent Ipsos Mori poll suggests that people are losing interest in climate change. Opportunities for energy populism abound: it cannot be long before one of the major parties abandons the pale green consensus and starts invoking an oil cornucopia it cannot possibly deliver.”

Monbiot also explains why he no longer believes in contraction and convergence. Instead he puts his hopes on a global limit for carbon pollution that Oliver Tickell proposes in his book Kyoto2.

“In Kyoto2: How to Manage the Global Greenhouse, Tickell slaughters my favourite ideas. He shows that there is no logical basis for dividing up the right to pollute among nation states. It gives them too much power over this commodity, and there is no guarantee that they would pass the pollution rights on to their citizens, or use the money they raised to green the economy. Carbon rationing, he argues, requires a level of economic literacy that’s far from universal in the most advanced economies, let alone in countries where most people don’t have bank accounts.”

Monbiot surely paints a doom and glom scenario, but well worth a read in my opinion.