Editor’s note: Normally we don’t stray into the political implications of public policy, but after Patrick wrote this response to President Obama’s new drilling policy we felt it was too interesting to keep to ourselves. So here’s a try at something new: Commentary and Opinion from Patrick Reck.
Wednesday’s announcement by President Obama to expand offshore oil drilling and gas exploration is devastating, especially for a Yankee like myself. I grew up cherishing my yearly family vacations to Ocean City, Maryland and Virginia Beach. Pristine memories of balcony breakfasts at sunrise, pirate mini-golf, and running with kites flying so high that you wonder if the sky is as endless as the sea.
Now, I get waves of nausea thinking that in 10 or 15 years, children will walk down those same beaches and gaze out, not at the brilliance of the colors in the sky and the mystery of where the horizon meets the sun, but at a row of tiny metal cranes, stooping down low to suck black blood out of the Atlantic.
Hopefully the ocean will still evoke profound wonder in developing minds, but will it be the fascination of Copernicus or the madness of Ahab?
“The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.” (more…)
