ROLLING BACK BANS

t.man hatter
In our recent post, Unintended Bureaucratic Consequences, we raised the question:What do you want, heat or pollution?

Heat is a synonym for energy. The roll back of an environmental law in Australia that many believed was hurting the economy and the mining industry there is, as we suggested, no small matter.

Mining can be a dirty business with the ever-present possibilities of big environmental damage if one is to believe the environmentalists. Going back to the Santa Barbara oil spill long before the Valdez or Gulf of Mexico incidents, we have all learned offshore oil drilling has its risks, as does we now know, onshore transportation of hydrocarbons.

Though it may be a small point, one has to ask how much does the EU's dependence of Russian gas since the Ukraine eruption first broke play into this: A little, a lot or not at all? Japan is a relatively small island but a big energy dependent nation. And there are others.

Now comes the following story about the Obama administration's rolling back similar bans of offshore drilling along the East Coast in an area from Delaware to Florida.

You can bet the environmental crowd ain't cheering right now. But this is not about our taking sides; it's about still another question. Is this the beginning of a trend that could impact not just the economy but one's investments?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OFFSHORE_DRILLING_AIR_CANNONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-07-18-14-07-18