Moratorium lift isn’t clean break for oil spill aftermath

After a BP oil drilling rig caused one of the worst environmental disasters in history, President Barack Obama’s administration declared a moratorium on any offshore drilling in the affected Gulf of Mexico area to help the devastated ecosystem recover.

But just six months later, the administration has decided to lift the moratorium and allow companies to reapply for offshore drilling permits.

Lifting the moratorium, however, doesn’t seem to benefit anyone.

William Brown | Daily Trojan

The environmentalists are outraged, saying the area hasn’t healed yet.

It hasn’t.

The businessmen and oil magnates are outraged, saying they won’t be able to obtain a permit for several weeks because of new, harsher standards.

They won’t.

No one seems satisfied.

Someone is always bound to complain or find a flaw with all things related to public policy, but in this case neither side benefits. The Obama administration is just angering the involved parties.

Many view lifting the moratorium as a strictly political move in a crucial election year as Democrats scramble to secure seats in many states.

Obama himself will be traveling across the country to convince people to vote for Democrats — for evidence of this, we need to look no further than McCarthy Quad on Friday, where Obama will speak at a rally to support incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who will host a fundraiser in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.

By reopening the Gulf to offshore oil drilling, the Obama administration seemingly forms an alliance with big business and oil companies that caused the oil spill.

Lifting the moratorium is a creation of contrived politics. It shows a failed attempt at bipartisanship, where politicians attempt to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.

Politicians should know that just one policy change will not win over voters in a heated election year. Of course, there will always be the few exceptions among businesses or individuals that will be happy with the early lift, but the majority will simply be frustrated.

The effects of the spill were felt from the ocean floor to the economy — thousands of jobs in the Gulf disappeared. But this policy isn’t the solution to those issues; it is the Democratic Party grasping for straws to save seats in Congress.

The Democrats even appear to be failing in their efforts to please big businesses; various websites have expressed concern that although the moratorium has technically been lifted, a “de facto” moratorium has replaced it.

This means that those in charge of approving permits to allow offshore drilling will take several weeks to complete the process, which means that it’s possible people will be kept out of work until the moratorium was supposed to be lifted anyway.

This is intended to encourage undecided voters who prioritize job creation and economic development to vote democratic. But how much value have the Democrats really placed on job creation by changing a policy that was bound to expire in about a month anyway?

Lastly, we can’t ignore the fact that lifting the moratorium doesn’t help the environment recover any more than the economy. More than 400 different species in the Gulf are in serious danger; the water is heavily contaminated with carcinogens and the full extent of the damage to the ocean floor is still unknown.

Yes, the local economy is slumping because of the temporary loss of jobs. But lifting the drilling moratorium isn’t any more appropriate a solution to that struggling economy than it is to the struggling environment.

Cyrus Behzadi is a freshman majoring in communication.