Fox News’ Bill Kristol: Offshore Drilling is Safe until the Oil Rig Blows Up

Fox News contributor Bill Kristol was on Special Report with Bret Baier tonight defending off shore drilling, when he made perhaps the stupidest statement of all time. He said offshore drilling is quite safe, “and very environmentally clean, except where there is a disaster like this.” Essentially Kristol is saying that offshore drilling is safe, until the oil rig bursts into flames.

Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:

Kristol said, “Look the data’s pretty clear in general that the offshore drilling of oil has become incredibly quite safe, not perfectly safe, but compared to other ways of getting energy, quite safe compared to the mining of coal for example, and very environmentally clean, except when there is a disaster like this spill, but Exxon Valdez was much bigger. If we cut down on offshore drilling, we will increase what coal mining in the US, or tankers? Tankers are less safe and tend to have bigger spills like the Exxon Valdez in 1989. I was in government then. That got cleaned up faster than people expected and did less lasting damage.”

Mr. Kristol was lying about the long term damage from the Exxon Valdez spill. Scientific American did a story last year on a study from the University of North Carolina that “showed that oil has persisted in surprisingly large quantities for years after the Exxon Valdez spill in subsurface reservoirs under coarse intertidal sediments…. Exposure to this oil, in turn, caused additional animal deaths. Salmon, for example, had increased mortality for four years after the spill because incubating eggs had come into contact with it. Larger marine mammals and ducks, meanwhile, suffered ill effects because their prey was contaminated. The team estimates that shoreline habitats such as mussel beds affected by the spill will take up to 30 years to recover fully.”

Kristol carefully selected coal mining and tankers to compare offshore drilling to. He didn’t bother to discuss any of the clean renewable alternative energy sources that really would be safer than offshore drilling. Leave it to Fox News to keep pushing the oil company propaganda, but Kristol’s comment that off shore drilling is safe and environmentally friendly until the oil rig blows up belongs in the Idiot Hall of Fame. Coal mining is safe too until the mine collapses and flying is safe until the plane crashes. These are the pearls of wisdom that Fox News pays Bill Kristol the big money to deliver.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association