That's great, Jim. A prodigious rant but, where's the meat? Hurricane Katrina went through the Gulf of Mexico like a portagee through a WestMarine sale. Where's all the oil damage from all those
rigs? There wasn't any. I've seen plenty of oil spills and most of them result from carelessness with some from just freak nature. In all of them, the key is having proper equipment available for containment and clean-up.
Nevertheless, an oil spill is NOT the end's of the earth even if it seems like it. In fact, the number one source of pollution in the Gulf is oil. Oil that naturally seeps through the tectonic plates beneath the ocean floor and upwells to the surface. Colonies of bacteria that live off this oil form around the discharge points on the sea bottom and consume it as well. The Valdez incident so popular in myth was aggravated in it's damage by the USCG hindrance of proper clean-up methods, specifically dispersant's. Yet even with a large spill nature has shown an amazing ability to recover, probably because nature herself has created situations where oil is released. I'll not argue that it is no big thing and certainly argue that stringent safety measures must be taken but I'll also argue that you probably have no idea of how many and how safe most oil production is. In the maritime industry we commonly ship hundreds of thousands of tons right by you and pollute no more than that old 2-cycle tied up astern of you.
The Lake Michigan drilling proposed is to be done from on-shore and would be directional drilling out under the lake. The technique is very safe and is a proven technology.
It's actually not up to California or Florida the way it is to Michigan and the Great Lakes states. The waters being drilled in are not state waters in those states, they're controlled by the Feds. They are US territorial waters. The states can squawk but they cannot stop it.
Your last statement does, I guess, make you an eco-Nazi. It is the presumption of eco-arrogance to assume that the citizens of the Gulf regard their waters any less stringently than you do the Great Lakes. And, unlike you, a great many of them make their living from those very waters. They have far more interest in their preservation than the recreational boater does.
I'm with you on conservation but it is something that only works on an individual basis. Once you have a lot of individuals doing it you can make a dent. But when the matter is government imposed, you end up with a cluster fluck of unintended consequences that largely undoes any benefits. The market is the only reliable agent for change. I'd remind you of that Iowa town where they got half the people on the energy-saving light bulbs and energy consumption actually went up. Cheaper energy means more will be used in profligance.