Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less'with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might belocked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshorewas a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as senator Mitch McConnell put it, 'in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty'. By the time the infamous 'Drill Baby Drill' Republican national convention rolled around, the party base was in such a frenzy for US-made fossil fuels, they would have bored under the convention floor if someone had brought a big enough drill.
2008 2008-in-united-states 2008-rnc alabama anti-arabism anti-intellectualism arabs arctic-national-wildlife-refuge deepwater-horizon-oil-spill drill-baby-drill drilling-rigs employment environment environmentalism fossil-fuels louisiana may-2008 mississippi mitch-mcconnell natural-gas-prices newt-gingrich offshore-drilling offshore-oil-gas-in-us oil-platforms oil-rigs oil-wells petroleum-industry political-campaign republican-national-convention republican-party-us rocky-mountains shale-gas shales slogans texas united-states-senate us-offshore-drilling-debate

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About Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein was a contemporary Canadian author and activist. Naomi Klein is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism and organized labour, and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism and capitalism. In 2021, Klein took up the UBC Professorship in Climate Justice, joining the University of British Columbia's Department of Geography. Read more on Wikipedia →

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