Make Big Oil pay for cleanup of Sandy

Dear Pres­i­dent Oba­ma,

Ter­ror­ists have attacked the US in New Orleans and New York. They sent thugs named Katri­na and Sandy who destroyed mil­lions of homes and busi­ness­es, took pris­on­ers, took lives. In between, they set fire to much of the mid­west and scorched the land caus­ing major crop fail­ures and bil­lions in eco­nom­ic loss.

And what’s Amer­i­ca doing to hunt down the­se ter­ror­ists and make them pay for the mess they’ve caused? 

It’s push­ing for more oil explo­ration, export­ing record amounts of coal, build­ing pipeli­nes to the Tar Sands and frack­ing for gas. That’s like send­ing char­i­ta­ble dona­tions and will­ing recruits to the Tal­iban post-9/11 and call­ing it ret­ri­bu­tion.

I’m direct­ing my anger at you because it’s the only place I think will make a dif­fer­ence. Rom­ney is too deep in the pock­ets of the oil indus­try. He “likes coal.” He toes the Repub­li­can par­ty line that it’s a vast con­spir­a­cy and any­one who admits out loud that the sci­ence is iron­clad is a trai­tor – despite his for­mer acknowl­edge­ment of the need for action. 

But instead of chal­leng­ing him on those points, you’ve spent this cam­paign try­ing to out-pan­der to the pol­luters. You’ve crowed about more oil drilling on nation­al lands. You’ve been silent on cli­mate change to the broad nation­al audi­ence that needs to hear lead­er­ship from you on this. 

So as we approached the final stretch before the elec­tion, Moth­er Nature cleared her throat, and let it be known that she was going to say some­thing if you weren’t.

The cost of US neglect to Glob­al Warm­ing just went up by more than 20 Bil­lion USD in the space of 72 hours. That’s not even count­ing what it cost to have Wall Street closed for two days for the first time since the 19th cen­tu­ry. Homes and busi­ness­es destroyed, 30 mil­lion in emer­gen­cy relief for pow­er out­ages and flood cleanup. The great­est city in the world brought to its knees. 

And as the peo­ple of New York and New Jer­sey and every­where else that were blast­ed by Sandy’s scream begin to clean up, why is it that the peo­ple respon­si­ble for this aren’t asked to lend a hand? Why aren’t some of the 71 mil­lion dol­lars spent by US Oil com­pa­nies on lob­by­ing the US Gov­ern­ment being redi­rect­ed to emer­gen­cy relief? 

I say make them pay. Make the pro­duc­ers of fos­sil fuels pay for their mess. Tax car­bon. End sub­si­dies. Use the pro­ceeds to build the flood defens­es that the US will need in the new nor­mal world of 100 year storms every few years. 

Announce an imme­di­ate wind­fall tax on the oil barons to pay for the cleanup in New York and New Jer­sey.

Tell them they can’t drill in the Arc­tic. Tell them they can’t build more coal plants, they can’t send coal abroad. Tell them they’re no longer going to prof­it from destroy­ing our future, but turn those pro­ceeds over to man­ag­ing a tran­si­tion away from addic­tion to their prod­ucts.

Tell them, Mis­ter Pres­i­dent, that we’re going to start treat­ing them as what they are: the biggest threat to US secu­ri­ty. The biggest threat to the future of our plan­et. And on Day 1 of your next term, make them pay for this.

If you can hunt down and kill one man who killed 3,000 Amer­i­cans, you can stand up to an indus­try that’s set to kill 100 mil­lion by 2030.

Yours tru­ly,

Bri­an Fitzger­ald