TRANSCRIPT:
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. The Obama administration’s Bureau of Land Management has auctioned nearly 45 million acres of land in the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of protesters in New Orleans are pushing back, calling for the administration not to expand offshore drilling, especially since residents are still feeling the aftermath of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Now joining us from New Orleans to discuss the protests and the issues behind it is our guest, Mike Ludwig. He is an investigative reporter for Truthout.org, and he also covered the protests today. Thank you so much for joining us, Mike.
MIKE LUDWIG: Hey, thanks for having me.
DESVARIEUX: So, Mike, what’s at stake for the people protesting this auction?
LUDWIG: Well, we had a lot of activists from all over the country and a lot of Gulf residents as well. It was also a pretty diverse crowd. You had environmental justice activists, Black Lives Matter activists, activists with the Black Youth Project, indigenous activists, and just people who live along the coastline here who lived through the BP spill. So what’s at stake is, A, the environment of the Gulf is definitely a concern for these protesters. But also, this is part of the keep it in the ground movement. There’s climate justice activists here who are saying that we don’t need any more oil coming out of the ocean or coming out of the ground. We need a transition to cleaner fuels to protect the planet from climate change. So there’s a broad array of issues being brought up by the people here today, and for them there’s a lot at stake.
DESVARIEUX: So the counterpoint is always that the oil industry creates jobs, and the people in the Gulf are dependent on these jobs. First of all, let’s bring the truth out. How dependent are the people for these types of jobs, those in the offshore oil industry, and what would be the alternatives? Could there still be jobs and…