h/t David
While it's true that incidents as tragic as this BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are not "happening every day", thank goodness, I would disagree with Florida's Republican candidate for Senate Marco Rubio that they're "not a commonplace occurrence". Here are a couple of lists showing just how much oil has been spilled since the 1960's and I'm quite sure they're not complete. I'm not sure how much more "commonplace" these type of incidents have to be and how many more gallons of oil have to go pouring into our oceans before we can get our politicians to get serious about getting away from our oil dependence.
CROWLEY: I wanted to start out with something that really is a threat to Florida, as well as Mississippi and Louisiana, and that's the oil spill that we're seeing now, as it moves its way toward shore.
Are you convinced that the administration has been into this quickly enough? And has it done enough?
RUBIO: Well, I want to be fair to the administration. I think a lot of the early news about the spill was coming from the company, from B.P. And I think they were either inaccurate or shortcoming in some of the things they were saying early on.
Since that time, of course, over the last few days, we've seen the administration move aggressively, and I hope aggressively enough. Now, they have information I don't have. They know things perhaps we don't know.
And so, during an emergency, you're always cautious not to be critical because you don't want to appear to be unfair.
This is an ecological disaster. It's a crisis. It looks like it may eclipse the Exxon Valdez situation. And I hope it is dealt with quickly, rapidly, effectively, not just for Louisiana but also for Florida. I know a state of emergency has been declared here.
CROWLEY: Now, do you see B.P. being responsible for anything, particularly the late alert that, in fact, there was oil leaking under the water?
RUBIO: Well, again, I always want to be fair. I'm deeply concerned. Early on, it appeared that they were saying it was 1,000 barrels, and now, later on, we got word it was as much as 5,000 barrels.
There's some -- obviously, something went terribly wrong. I mean, this is not a commonplace occurrence. And so something happened there.
CROWLEY: And you have been for more offshore drilling. Does this make you rethink that?
RUBIO: I think it makes us rethink the technologies of offshore drilling. Certainly, this thing...
CROWLEY: Because wasn't that the deal? Oh, technology is so much better now; the chances of a spill aren't as great. This was a relatively new rig. It just seems that it's really not that safe.
RUBIO: Well, we don't know what it was using and not using. There's been some initial reports that perhaps it did not have all the up-to-date technology that you would have.
But, again, we're -- I don't want to jump to any conclusions and then later on find out I was wrong. Let me say that we do want to find out what happened. And, certainly, there is a lot of offshore drilling going on all over the world right now, and this isn't happening every day. Something went terribly wrong here. And hopefully, it's not something that's commonplace.
CROWLEY: And would you stop any idea of leasing areas, now, for offshore drilling or any building until we find out?
RUBIO: Well, I think it's premature to make statements like that. I will say, however, that I hope the inquiry will be taken seriously. I'm sure that it will. We're going to wait for all that to happen before we, you know, make hard-edged pronouncements on what the future should be with regards to this.
