On network news tonite, I heard U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry say, "I must continue to manage expectations on this groundbreaking effort to address this challenge." Here's a better context for "managing expectations": CLICK THIS LINK. It is a website showing "How big is the Deepwater oil spill" using Google Earth overlay and your favorite city. Who is in favor of offshore oil drilling now? Just listen to this, from John Stewart and The Daily Show.
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Marco Rubio.
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Conservatives last year complained when the federal stimulus package contained $61 billion for energy-efficiency programs. “When and if renewable energy becomes cost-efficient, it will be adopted by private industry and won’t need subsidies,” the conservative Heritage Foundation said in a report on the stimulus funding earlier this year.
But the gasoline that we put in our cars and the oil that fires our power plants are also heavily subsidized by the government. For decades, the federal government has been providing tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, grants and tax breaks to providers of oil, gas and coal. This year’s budget included $18 billion in tax breaks to oil drillers, refineries and distributors. The foreign countries that we buy oil from pay even more. According to the most recent data from the International Energy Agency, governments in developing countries pay $310 billion in subsidies to oil, gas and coal companies.
Those are just the direct subsidies. Environmentalists note that there are indirect payments, as well, including the rise in health care bills because of pollution-related cancers or other disease; the cost of having our Navy ships patrol the shipping lanes in the oil-rich Persian Gulf; and the cost of cleaning up oil spills.
BP will pick up the tab for mopping up the Gulf, wetlands and waterways, at an estimated cost of nearly $5 billion and rising. But taxpayers will foot the bill for the unemployment benefits for the fishermen and others put out of work by the spill, while the economy as a whole will take a hit from the slowdown in the Gulf region. The Bernstein investment firm estimates the spill will cost the fishing industry in Louisiana alone an estimated $2.5 billion, while Florida tourism may suffer an estimated $3 billion in losses.
But if real estate is slimed with even an intermittent stream of oil, the costs could go much higher.
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