••• “Just days after a nationwide public comment period closed on a draft federal offshore drilling plan—one that drew more than 270,000 responses—the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management opened a new 30-day window. This time, the agency is inviting oil and gas companies to nominate specific blocks of ocean off Central and Southern California for potential leasing.” —Independent
••• The Independent obtained “eight minutes of unedited video captured the moments before, during, and after the violent arrest of a Santa Barbara man Friday morning by federal immigration agents on Carrillo Street,” including the moment when…
Doug Hayes, an 80-year-old, well-known Santa Barbara defense attorney whose office is nearby, approaches the agents. He calls them cowards and demands they remove their masks, telling them, “Why don’t you do something good? Be a citizen. Be a human being. What are your children going to think of you?”
As Hayes bends down to pick up [resident Jack] Randmaa’s backpack from the street, one of the agents, still pinning Randmaa on the ground, pepper-sprays Hayes in the face and throws him down. A stunned Hayes is helped up by observers and escorted a short distance away, where they flush his eyes with water.
••• The Independent takes a long look at Santa Barbara Airport’s flooding problems; toward the start of the piece, it calls relocating the airport “a real possibility,” but then later refers to it as “a complicated last resort.”
••• “The Santa Barbara County Public Works Department issued two closures on Tuesday, shutting down public access to part of the Maria Ygnacio Bike Path [between Calle Real and Lassen Drive] due to undermined road, and Schoolhouse Road in Montecito due to a sinkhole.” —Noozhawk (UPDATE 2/27: The county’s Public Works department issued a press release saying that “this section of the path is expected to be closed through the summer” because engineers “are unable to work during the rainy season due to environmental factors and regulatory restrictions.”)
••• Talk about guilt by association: the Independent ran an article about how a former Montecito resident shows up multiple times in Jeffrey Epstein’s correspondence, insinuating all sorts of things with no proof of wrongdoing. He comes off as an icky guy, but that’s no crime. Also, what’s up with the warning about how “this article contains sexual imagery”?
••• The tree of the month is the Hong Kong orchid tree: “The vibrantly magenta-colored flowers, up to 6 inches across, are usually seen in Santa Barbara from November through May—but can bloom here sporadically throughout the year. They are considered by many to be the most beautiful tree flowers in the world. […] All Hong Kong Orchid Trees in cultivation are descendants of just one tree found in China! Each of this tree’s progeny is its clone—grown by horticulturists using careful propagation techniques—grafting, cuttings, or air layering.” —Edhat (photo by David Gress courtesy Santa Barbara Beautiful)
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I get the argument that we shouldn’t just be pushing environmental externalities far away where we can’t see them. And incurring the environmental cost of transport.
However, the oil reserves off the coast here are trivial in magnitude compared to the total US reserves. And the economic cost of a spill vastly outweighs the economic benefit to the US or especially Santa Barbara (who see pretty much none of it— they don’t generate much revenue or jobs here). So much of our economy is tourism, even fishing, and our quality of life comes from spending time on the ocean.
I’m hoping for an honorary flame post from Christine! but rejecting offshore drilling here is a correct purely economic argument, not taking into account the emotional or environmental. We bear all the economic risk and get none of the benefits. Maybe if the profits were flowing directly into the County and City of SB it would be different.