Gov. Roy Cooper rightly said loud and clear Thursday that he’ll fight oil and gas drilling off our state’s beautiful, moneymaking coast. We hope he and all the other opponents in our state prevail against the Trump administration’s wrongheaded plan to open our coast to an industry that could devastate existing business.
“Last year, the Obama administration approved a five-year drilling plan that didn’t allow offshore exploration off the Atlantic coast,” WRAL reported. “But President Donald Trump recently reversed that stance, reopened the plan and put North Carolina back on the list for potential offshore drilling.”
On this page, we’ve long expressed our opposition to drilling off our coast.
We depend on our fishing and tourism industries in this state. As Cooper noted in a speech near Atlantic Beach Thursday, coastal tourism brings in about $3 billion a year and is responsible for about 30,000 jobs, and the commercial fishing industry generates another $95 million a year. And he was correct in saying offshore drilling would bring more risk than potential benefit, especially given the fact that 30 of our coastal communities and about 200 businesses have already come out against drilling, an effort that scientists say isn’t likely to produce much oil or gas, anyway
“An oil spill would devastate the coastal environment and economy for years, Cooper said, and the Trump administration is eliminating regulations that provide some safeguards against spills,” WRAL reported. “Meanwhile, other energy alternatives, such as solar and natural gas, are cheaper and plentiful, making it unnecessary to explore for oil in the Atlantic Ocean, he said.”
Cooper said: “There is a threat looming over this coastline that we love and the prosperity it brings, and that’s the threat of offshore drilling. I can sum [my stance] up in four words: Not off our coast.”
