Actor Ted Danson, a member on Oceana’s Board of Directors, was testifying before Congress on Capitol Hill yesterday about the importance of reinstating the lapsed moratorium on offshore oil drilling.

Danson’s appeal came just a day after there was a review ordered on the controversial Bush Administration’s plan to open vast tracts of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas drilling.

The 26-year-old ban on drilling in over 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf, including Atlantic, Pacific and Alaskan waters was allowed to expire under the Bush Administration last October. Now, Congress is deciding whether to reinstate the ban or place new limits on off-shore drilling. The major concern for anti-drilling activists such as Danson is to make sure that the moratorium for offshore drilling is reinstated. Approximately 120 million gallons of oil are discharged into the world’s oceans each year.

“Oil and water simply don’t mix,” said Danson. “While not intentional, oil spills do happen and they harm everything from the smallest ocean organisms to the largest predators in the sea.”

Danson also stressed the importance of clean and carbon-free energy, such as offshore wind and solar power. According to recent estimates, the offshore wind industry could generate nearly $950 billion in economic activity and more than 250,000 jobs over the next 20 years.

Philippe Cousteau, grandson of Jean Jacques Cousteau and Member of the Ocean Conservancy, also joined Danson.

If we do not reinstate this moratorium “there is essentially no protection for land that may carry oil” and we will “perpetuate the belief that we can drill our way to energy independence” Danson commented.

Cousteau argued that “the next 50 years are crucial in oceanic protection” and “since the united states has taken a leading role in the environmental protection movement we must reinstate the moratorium to maintain this role.”

The Obama White House has started to move quickly in an effort to freeze all the terrible pending regulations proposed by the former president’s administration, including president Bush’s attempts to roll back a whole lot of environmental legislation. Last-minute rules, known as midnight regulations, are common when one administration leaves office. The Bush administration was working on a nightmare gang of regulations during the transition.

Here’s a few examples of some of the more heinous ones: a rule exempting factory farms from reporting pollution emissions from animal waste; one that would have made it easier for factories and refineries to expand without applying for new federal pollution permits; another would have opened areas of Oregon to logging and yet another would have opened two million acres of public land in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah for oil-shale drilling.

Another one of Bush’s last attempts to destroy everything in his wake was a law that enables federal representatives to approve projects without considering global warming, and without consulting biological health experts about the effect on endangered species. He also tried to removed federal protection for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes. Oh yes, and another would have helped start the heavy commercialization of meat from genetically modified animals.

A fitting last memory of Bush’s presidency will be the public’s growing knowledge of all these back door dealings being desperately shimmied through the back door just before Bush himself was shimmied out the back door. Good riddance to one of the least popular, most environmentally destructive world leaders in all of human history. What a legacy.

Areas around three uninhabited Pacific island chains are being set aside as National Monuments by President George W. Bush to protect them from oil and gas extraction and commercial fishing. This is going be the largest marine conservation effort in history, and only second time Bush has used the law to protect marine resources. Two years ago, the president turned a section of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands into a national monument.

The three areas, which total some 195,274 square miles, include the Mariana Trench, the Northern Mariana Islands, Rose Atoll in American Samoa and seven islands dotted along the equator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. All will be protected under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The law allows the government to immediately phase out commercial fishing and other exploitative uses.

Environmentalists are saying that the move is an attempt to boost the environmental record of Bush, who has been criticized for not doing enough environmental good deeds during his lackluster Presidency. In fact, he famously lifted a moratorium on oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, which has been called a grave disaster by most environmental groups.