House Passes Bills to Prevent Offshore Drilling as Moulton Announces SAVE Right Whales Act's Introduction in the Senate

Statement

Today, Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) voted in favor of two bills that would protect America's coasts from offshore drilling, which is a direct threat to the state's fishing and tourism economy and the critically-endangered North Atlantic right whale. The bills, The Coastal and Marine Economies Protection Act and The Protecting and Securing Florida's Coastline Act, both passed in the House of Representatives.

Together they would place a permanent moratorium on offshore oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, Moulton announced today that his bill, The SAVE Right Whales Act, will be introduced in the Senate by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Tom Carper (D-DE).

"Offshore drilling is not worth the risk. Period. We don't need it, and the potential downsides are far worse than any potential upside," Moulton said. "The president's plan to drill off our coasts is a direct threat to the North Atlantic right whale and the more than 90,000 jobs in our state's maritime industry that depend on clean water. Rather than doubling down on the last generation's energy sources, let's fight climate change and create a new generation of jobs by investing in clean and renewable energy for the future."

Moulton wrote the SAVE the Right Whales Act and reintroduced it in the House earlier this year with Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL). The bill has cleared the House Natural Resources Committee. Today's bipartisan introduction of the bill in the Senate is a key step forward in the legislative process

Today's news caps off a busy summer. In May, Moulton and Rutherford teamed-up with Vikki Spruill, CEO of the New England Aquarium, to advocate for the bill in an op-ed in Commonwealth Magazine. In June, Moulton successfully amended a House spending bill to more than double the amount Congress allocates to right whale research. In July, state lawmakers and conservationists held a rally in Boston in support of the bill. And in August, Moulton visited with lobstermen in Gloucester to talk about the industry's efforts to protect the whale by preventing rope entanglements.

As reported in The Boston Globe, climate change has contributed to the right whale's dire status. Offshore drilling and the fossil fuels it produces would increase green-house gas emissions and further contribute to climate change, which also threatens the North Shore's coastal communities because of sea-level rise, increasingly-severe hurricanes and floods, and water temperature changes that could push fish that are harvested by the seafood industry further out to sea or beyond America's maritime borders.

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