We have not yet seen how the current administration has synthesized any of the EIS comments we submitted this year, but given their proclivity to pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with, my suspicions are that they will ignore all public input and just see what we’ll do about it.
It is not a surprise, but rather shocking how the current administration is eviscerating our national regulatory agencies, and doing it in what may appear to lay audiences as “sensible.”
…but the current administration has no plans on commissioning any new or replacement ocean research vessels. These vessels take years to build. So with this administration, it looks like the US has just forfeited our advance footing on marine science.
By way of this semantic legerdemain they would open up the floodgates for extractive and construction industries to run roughshod over their operation areas without regulatory oversight or legal consequences.
The industry is in their element when prices are around $100/bbl. When it falls to $50/bbl. they close up shop. So having lease sales in a sinking market may not yield the promises of “Drill, Baby, Drill.”
What we can attempt to do is navigate the turbulence with grace and kindness – perhaps for no other reason than it is completely anathema to how we are being tormented to react – by both the instigators and the Press.
We’ve arrived at an odd inflection point that has arisen now that National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is on the DOGE chopping block.
s I’ve previously indicated, I’ve been sparing my nerves by not reacting seriously until I “see the whites of their eyes,” – and I have to take in with amusement some of the conflicts and narratives that are being revealed.
A “legal coup” has just occurred in the US. If we do not act strongly, July 4 2024 may be the last Independence Day we’ll see in a while.
Proposed “updates” of federal documents are required every five years to make sure the regulations reflect the ‘best available science.’ Predictably the 2024 “Updates” remain at least a decade behind the “best available science…”