Reverse This Tide

Many Think It's Time to Drill for Oil Off Our Coast. Not So Fast.

Dear Fellow Citizens:

No. Stop. Wait just a damned minute.

According to a recent poll in this newspaper, 58 percent of you believe we should drill for oil off the coast of Massachusetts, most notably in Georges Bank, which is also known as the Capital of Fish. As the official Boston Globe Magazine Fish Correspondent -- the barramundi and I still exchange Christmas cards -- I can only plead with you not to do this thing. In the first place, according to the people who study such things for the federal government, there isn't enough oil in the entire north Atlantic to supply the country even for a month, and that's only if NASCAR's in the off-season. (I know there are supposed to be eleventy bajillion years' worth of natural gas out there, too, but this is about the oil.) There are other immutable laws of nature to deal with here, the most obvious one being that oil companies lie. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, oil companies gotta lie. Which usually means promising to drill things in a safe and sane manner, which thereupon results in birds unable to fly and fish unable to swim. And, quite frankly, the fish have enough trouble right now without having to deal with that. The same day this poll came out, it was also revealed there are doubts about the continued survival of the Atlantic wolffish, a blue brute that's as ugly as Texas politics. It lives so deep in the sea that it is said to have an "antifreeze compound" in its blood to help it survive. I see no reason why we should add oil to it, as well. Not everything is the family sedan, you know.