{"id":76899,"date":"2009-12-11T17:43:46","date_gmt":"2009-12-11T22:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2010486168_shelloilabouttobegindrillinginalaska.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2009-12-11T17:43:46","modified_gmt":"2009-12-11T22:43:46","slug":"shell-oil-about-to-begin-drilling-in-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/76899","title":{"rendered":"Shell Oil about to begin drilling in Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

But what about the polar bears?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was saddened to read that the Interior Department has approved Shell Oil\u2019s plans to drill exploratory oil wells in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska\u2019s northwest coast [\u201cOil drilling in Alaska OK\u2019d,\u201d News, Dec. 8].<\/p>\n

This drilling will take place in a sensitive ecosystem, home to one-tenth of the world\u2019s polar bears, who are already suffering and dying as a result of climate change. What will happen to them if there\u2019s an oil spill?<\/p>\n

Shell can\u2019t prove that it can clean up a spill in the extreme weather conditions of the Arctic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar tried to justify his decision by saying that Chukchi Sea oil exploration would help reduce America\u2019s dependence on foreign oil. This is an admirable goal, but drilling for oil in sensitive ecosystems is not the way to achieve it.<\/p>\n

Instead, we should move away from fossil fuels entirely. We can completely wean ourselves off fossil fuels in the next 20 years by switching to wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and hydroelectric power.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this preferable to further endangering our friends the polar bears \u2014not to mention ourselves?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Maggie Willson, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But what about the polar bears? I was saddened to read that the Interior Department has approved Shell Oil\u2019s plans to drill exploratory oil wells in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska\u2019s northwest coast [\u201cOil drilling in Alaska OK\u2019d,\u201d News, Dec. 8]. This drilling will take place in a sensitive ecosystem, home to one-tenth of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}