{"id":146086,"date":"2015-04-20T20:35:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T20:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=146086"},"modified":"2015-04-20T20:35:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T20:35:16","slug":"we-didnt-learn-anything-from-deepwater-horizon-and-were-going-to-pay-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/we-didnt-learn-anything-from-deepwater-horizon-and-were-going-to-pay-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"We Didn&#8217;t Learn Anything From Deepwater Horizon\u2013And We&#8217;re Going to Pay For It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/environment\/2015\/04\/five-year-anniversary-deepwater-horizon-bp-spill\" target=\"_blank\">fifth anniversary<\/a> of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, an event that triggered the nation&#8217;s worst-ever oil spill. The well leaked for three months and dumped over 200 million gallons of oil into the sea. The explosion itself killed eleven men; the resulting pollution killed a stupefying amount of wildlife, including 800,000 some birds.<\/p>\n<p>And despite billions paid out by BP in fines and restoration costs, the economic impact of the disaster remains wide-reaching and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/environment\/2014\/09\/four-years-after-bp-spill-gulf-oystermen-are-still-struggling-recover\" target=\"_blank\">ongoing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But possibly even more outrageous than the spill itself is how little has been done by government to prevent a similar disaster. The oil and gas industry has stayed active in Washington, and managed to fend off serious efforts to curb drilling: Congress has passed zero new laws\u2013not one\u2013to restrict offshore drilling or force it to be safer. The Obama administration has approved over 1,500 offshore drilling permits since the spill.<\/p>\n<p>And back in January the administration <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/01\/28\/us\/obama-plan-calls-for-oil-and-gas-drilling-in-the-atlantic.html\" target=\"_blank\">announced a plan<\/a> to open <em>new<\/em>areas in the Atlantic and Arctic for offshore drilling. As my colleague Tim Murphy\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/blue-marble\/2015\/04\/cartoonish-conflicts-interest-louisianas-legislature\" target=\"_blank\">noted today<\/a>, Louisiana&#8217;s oversight of the oil industry is rife with ludicrous conflicts of interest that raise serious doubts about the state&#8217;s ability to make drilling safer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/kevin-drum\/2015\/04\/five-years-after-bp-spill-were-still-taking-insane-risks-offshore-drilling\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, an event that triggered the nation&#8217;s worst-ever oil spill. The well leaked for three months and dumped over 200 million gallons of oil into the sea. The explosion itself killed eleven men; the resulting pollution killed a stupefying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,52,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-146086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-money","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}