Don't Save Us from Oil Wells, Mr. Obama

Please, Mr. President, don't take drastic measures to save us from oil wells. Valuable human endeavors usually pose a slight risk of substantial harm. If absolute safety is the noblest cause, humans should close themselves in padded rooms and breathe filtered air. Examples of worthwhile endeavors that pose slight risks of harm abound:

A bus full of California high school students plunged off a cliff in 1976, killing 28. A bus poses the slight risk of substantial harm. We have never endured a presidential bus ban.

A psychotic shot 32 students at Virginia Tech in 2007. Attending college poses a slight risk of substantial harm. We have never endured a presidential ban on going to college.

About 41,000 are killed each year in the United States in car crashes. A person in a car is only 0.004 percent safer than someone in a coal mine, based on federal mortality data. Driving poses a relatively high risk of substantial harm and exacts an environmental toll that dwarfs the world's worst human-caused environmental disasters. We have never endured a presidential moratorium on driving.

Yet we will endure a presidential moratorium on deep-water drilling come hell or high water, thanks in large part to Colorado's own Ken Salazar, U.S. secretary of the Interior. President Barack Obama wants a ban through November because deep-water drilling poses a slight risk of harm.

Two federal judges have said no, but Obama won't back off. The White House unveiled a plan Monday, devised by Salazar, that may get around the judicial rulings. The song and dance from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the moratorium will hold up because it's more flexible.

If Salazar's loophole works, it will give some protection from the infinitesimal probability of another oil disaster this year. The loophole will absolutely, beyond question exact hardship on Americans. It may cause fuel prices to reach unprecedented levels, inflating the costs of goods. The Houston Chronicle estimates the ban will cost tens of thousands of jobs in the Gulf Coast region alone. That would ripple through a national economy that's flirting with a second big-dip recession and burdened by an ominous national debt. A moratorium — unlike most human endeavors — isn't worthwhile. Unlike other endeavors, a drilling moratorium doesn't pose a slight risk of substantial harm. It poses an absolute certainty of substantial harm.

Our country doesn't progress when it embraces safety as the highest cause. The "just keep us safe" mentality partly explains why we remain dependent on oil. As France turned to nuclear reactors to get free from big oil, we avoided the slight risk of harm posed by reactors.

Secretary Salazar, please rescind your recommendation to President Obama. There is no shame, only honor, in rethinking an idea. Let's avoid a moratorium that turns a slight risk of harm into a certainty of harm.

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