WASHINGTON– Senator John McCain just announced his choice for running mate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. To follow is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.
“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.
GALVESTON, Texas
Melissa Parrot drains her Coors Light, slips out of her T-shirt and hops off the tailgate of her Texas Edition Ford F-150. The pickup gets 20 miles per gallon of gas, which costs $3.96 at Exxon, which gets petroleum from the earth beneath the brown saltwater she’s about to step into.
“You’re going to get in?” asks her friend. “Why not?” Melissa says. “Look at it,” he says. “We drove all the way down here,” she says.
They live north of Houston, 70 miles away. “Might as well get in.” Melissa walks down Galveston’s East Beach, where the signs say “Drinking Is Legal,” past cigarette butts and beer bottles, toward breakers the color of Vaseline and a horizon dotted by oil rigs, into water so cloudy you can’t see your feet a few steps out.
What’s the difference between the beaches of Florida, where offshore oil drilling is prohibited, and the beaches of Texas, which opened its shores to drilling 40 years ago?
“This looks like crap,” says Melissa’s friend Kenneth Lyons, 19, still planted on the tailgate. “It’s not something you want to get into.”
