Drill Baby Drill??

Since this latest oil spill happened I have been thinking back to when I was a young environmental activist. Ok, maybe not an "activist", but considering the fact that I only made $60 - $70 a week and still found a way to give money to the Greenpeaces and World Wildlife Funds that were out there, I was pretty into it. Today most of these groups are entrenched in political ideology and act only in the interest of making money or gaining political power. The environmental groups used to be, or at least I thought, solely for the environment. Not so true anymore, and here is why.

I did a little bit of research and found some very interesting facts, here is what I found.

I learned that out of all the oil we extract from our planet only 0.001% of it ends up in the ocean. (that's one thousandth of a percent) Only 1% of the one thousandth of a percent is spilled into the ocean during the extracting process i.e. drilling. 60% of the one thousandth of a percent is spilled into the ocean from oil tankers used to import oil. When these tankers spill oil into the ocean it is usually far more harmful because these accidents mostly happen close to shore. So if we were to drill for our own oil instead of importing it the amount of oil spilled into the ocean would be greatly reduced.

So... If someone were to be strictly concerned for the wildlife and the environment of our planet how could they possibly be anti-drilling? How could they not be against importing oil and instead be for drilling? Not to mention all the other disadvantages involved in being dependent on middle eastern nations for a portion of our energy needs.

So I need to ask all my anti-Palin friends, the next time you hear Sarah Palin chanting "Drill Baby Drill" will you put your political ideology aside and support that idea for the sake of our environment?