“Saving Sandy’s Coast” is classic NIMBY. I guess surfers don’t mind paying twice what the rest of the country pays for fuel. That’s the direct result of blocking local production and then importing the same oil from foreign governments we call enemies. Energy independence isn’t a slogan — it’s a supply chain. If we don’t produce here, we buy from people who don’t like us and who regulate environmental safety far less than we do.
The idea that offshore platforms are “environmentally hazardous eyesores” is just subjective aesthetics. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have friends in Louisiana who admire the engineering, the platform functionality, and the marine life that thrives around them. These structures become massive artificial reefs — magnets for biodiversity. When Hazel and Hilda were decommissioned, Big Oil offered to leave the legs in place, cut 30 feet below the surface, because established fisheries were already using them. Environmental groups killed that option, even though it would have preserved habitat.
I surfed this coastline for decades. I joined Surfrider back when it was actually about surfing. My kids thought the platforms were pirate ships. I’ve never believed they’re “oil‑spewing time bombs” or that “another disastrous spill is inevitable.” That’s rhetoric, not engineering.
If we have the technology to launch Space Force missions out of Vandenberg, we certainly have the technology to extract and transport oil safely. Modern monitoring, modern materials, and modern pipeline standards are not the same as 1969. Pretending nothing has changed is UCSB‑style ivory‑tower nostalgia, not science.
Santa Barbara lives in a bubble — repeating talking points while ignoring the basic math: Demand didn’t go away. Production did.
So now we import more oil, pay more for it, and pretend that makes us environmentally virtuous.
It doesn’t.
