Will an increase in off shore drilling
 

lead to more industrialized beaches (Gulf of Mexico, anyone?), ocean dead spots, and the like? Would it be a nightmare for the ecosystem, tourism, and the fishing industry?

I don't think it would lead directly to more dead spots, whcih I understand to result from de-oxygenated water. Industrialized beaches? Not likely in Northern California, I would guess, but to some degree it would happen.

Yes, people will stop going to Florida is there's a drilling platform 20 miles offshore.

And what's wrong with industrialized beaches anyway? What's so sacrosanct about beaches?

it would lead to the occasional oil spill, which would be disastrous for any local tourism and the local ecosystem.

it would also lead to higher oil prices, as everytime a storm pops up, traders raise the price.

Landpoke, ask yourself: could Whitman have written this on your industrial beach?


On the Beach at Night, Alone.
by Walt Whitman

ON the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of
the future.

A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
All distances of place, however wide,
All distances of time—all inanimate forms,
All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes,
All men and women—me also;
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages;
All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe;
All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future;
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, and shall forever span them, and
compactly hold them, and enclose them.

From The Simpsons

Ed Bagley Jr: "I prefer to take a vehicle that doesn't harm mother earth, this go-kart is powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction"

If you believe Wikipedia, there have been 6 American oil spills in the last 10 years, with all but one being less than 2000 tons. The single instance that was more was a land-based refinery, not even offshore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills

there are those who push for change, for betterment, for improvement, for efficiency, for smarter ways of doing things . . .

And there are naysayers, the skeptics, the cynics, the protectionists

Good thing the humorists fall in both camps. I find the ones in the second camp funnier. Has there ever been a truly funny idealist?