On May 6th, we hosted a gathering for coastal activists, elected officials, community leaders, and concerned citizens to connect over the issue of offshore drilling in the Mid-Atlantic. Our own Outreach Director, Justine Oller, spoke during the event about the role of NCLCV, other key partners, and most importantly, North Carolina residents, have to play in this fight. Her speech below:
I would like to start off by first thanking Mac Montgomery for organizing this event and getting you all in the room here tonight. Mac is a true environmental champion and NCLCV is much stronger for the role he plays on our Board of Directors both as an advocate for the coast and for the issues we are tackling across the state.
And welcome everyone! We’re very happy to spend this evening with you, learning more about your concerns for the future of the coast and talking through how we can work together to protect our coast from threats, namely that of offshore drilling. We have faced immense challenges at the legislature in recent years. And, it is disheartening, to say the least, to watch the environmental protections we worked hard to put into place over recent decades, undone at lightning speed – and in some cases even overnight.
While this is a trying time for environmental advocates – the challenges force us to identify new opportunities, look for new ways to protect our state. NCLCV is turning to new strategies – strategies that fit very well within our existing work but expand our “toolbox” and bring new voices to the environmental debate. As Aaron Bryant, our field organizer in Greensboro said at a community event last week, the environment is not just about polar bears. The environment is about the air we breathe in our schools, it is about the water our swim in, and it is about what comes out of taps when we turn the faucet at home. NCLCV is challenging the idea that the environment is something you have to get into your car to drive to; we are bringing it home for people so that more North Carolinians understand exactly what is at stake.
This offshore drilling fight really makes very clear what is at stake. We have only to look to our neighbors to the south, in Louisiana and Florida and Texas, and we can bear witness to the tangle of pipelines just below the ocean floor leaking oil onto the shoreline, we can see clearly destruction of waterways, of delicate ecosystems and habitats along the Gulf coast. And we see the many families out of work with massive losses in the fishing industry, shrimping industry and the many businesses supported by the tourism industry.
The battle in the Gulf coast to reign in the oil industry is, in many ways, already lost. The level of destruction to natural habitats, to livelihoods and human health has been immensely impactful. The battle for our coastline in 2015 has in many ways just begun. And, this battle is being fought right in your backyard.
In a very short period of time, OCEANA, Surfrider, the Sierra Club, Environment NC, NCLCV, and other groups and individual activists have mobilized thousands of North Carolinians to take part in the process of decision-making on offshore drilling. The challenge before us is enormous, but it is one that North Carolina has won in the past (with the help of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I will say), and it is one that we can win again. The Exxon Valdez spill made clear what was at stake for our coast, just as the Deepwater Horizon did five years ago. We need to make that clear again to residents all along the North Carolina coast, and all across the state as well.
Our partners in the Don’t Drill NC campaign are working hard along the coast to bring visibility to this fight. And, NCLCV is helping to bring visibility to this fight across the state, to build the movement from Manteo back to Murphy through strategic communications and mobilization efforts. Given our new strategies and our new tools, we are well-positioned to make an impact on this issue, and we ask for your help in joining us. We will need people talking to their neighbors about offshore drilling, writing letters to the editor in coastal papers, and in papers inland as well. We will need people talking with their local Chambers of Commerce about the danger that offshore drilling poses to local businesses and talking to local business as well. We’ll need people who can talk with their city council members and other elected officials, and we need creative minds to weigh in and help us think through how we can make this issue a statewide fight for North Carolina’s natural resources. Thank you.
