JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back to Democracy Now! I’m Juan González.

The Bush administration last Wednesday unveiled a $235 million plan to buy back the development rights for offshore oil reserves along Florida’s Gulf Coast from several petroleum companies. President Bush announced the decision in a public appearance with his brother, Governor Jeb Bush. The buyout will prevent further development of offshore drilling operations in Florida’s coastal waters.

Many environmentalists praised the plan to protect the Florida shoreline, but activists in heavily Democratic California have been pushing for a buyout in their own state for years. They say President Bush’s buyout in Florida is a ploy to help his brother as he begins his reelection campaign.

State officials urged the federal government to stop new drilling under 36 leases held by oil companies, but the Clinton administration extended several leases that were set to expire. California state agencies and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in response, arguing that local authorities should be allowed to review the leases for compliance with existing laws. The state won the suit in federal court, but the Bush administration appealed the ruling. Oral arguments are set to begin in San Francisco on Monday.

And we’re going to have a discussion about this, the relative policies of the Bush administration vis-à-vis both California and Florida. We’re joined by telephone by Rachel Binah, an environmental activist. She’s a member of the DNC and a former chairperson of the Environmental Caucus for the California Democratic Party. She owns a bed and breakfast inn in Mendocino. And we’re also joined by Sara Wan, a chairperson of the California Coastal Commission, and Mitch Perry, a reporter and assistant news director at WMNF radio in Tampa, Florida.

I’d like to begin with — first with Rachel Binah. Welcome to Democracy Now!

RACHEL BINAH: Thank you so much for inviting me.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your reaction to President Bush’s decision, and how Californians are looking at it?

RACHEL BINAH: Well, occasionally these Bush Boys, both father and sons, do the right thing, but always for the wrong reasons. And in this case, it’s so obviously political and — and extremely wonderful, on the one hand, but disturbing, because it’s typical of how they function. Immediately, Senator Barbara Boxer and Governor Gray Davis wrote to the president asking him to do the same thing here and to buy back the 36 leases that are still in play here. And it’ll be interesting to see how he deals with this. I don’t know what his plan is, but we certainly want no more drilling off this coast.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the battle there in California?

RACHEL BINAH: Well, in Santa Barbara, I believe — and I’m not an authority on what’s happening in Santa Barbara, but they were drilling for quite some time. I believe in 1969 was the major oil spill, and they’ve been selling leases there between 1968 and 1984. But up here, my involvement started with — in 1984, and I’ve been working on this issue for, you know, the past 18 years, hoping that we could stop them permanently. There were exploration hearings in 1984. And that got everybody’s attention, because the area from San Francisco to the Oregon border, which eventually became Lease Sale 91, was the primary motivation for getting everybody up here to realize that we absolutely couldn’t have it. In Santa Barbara, they didn’t want offshore oil development, but they wanted to be reasonable, so they compromised, and they were sacrificed, because if you let the oil companies start anything and put one rig in there, it leads to another and another, and it’s almost impossible to stop them.

So, when they — there was a hearing in 1988 to just before they were planning to sell these leases, we just got together in the community to stop them, and we had a filibuster. We invited all the creative people in the whole community to come together, and in all different areas of activity. And we decided to do something that was modeled after the longest filibuster in the Senate. Senator Wayne Morse once filibustered for over 24 hours, and we decided to best him. And so we signed up 1,400 people to testify before the Minerals Management Service. And all the tourist people in the area, the inn owners, sent letters to their guests from all over the country. And our motto was “Save the Kansas Coast.” So people came here from everywhere. And we believe that this coast doesn’t just belong to us, it belongs to the people of the country. So we wanted to protect it.

But there’s been a long, long history of trying to get them to give up the ghost on this. And interestingly enough — well, first of all, Barbara Boxer has been our champion for since the very beginning of our fight, and she introduced the California Ocean Protection Act several times, in the 103rd Congress, in the 104th Congress. And we put so much pressure on people politically, that Bush, in fact — Bush Sr. — created a moratorium in 1990 for 10 years. I don’t know how much of the history you want me to go through, but —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to get in — bring in Sara Wan also in the discussion, chairperson of the California Coastal Commission. This battle has been going on for quite a while. And clearly, California, certainly during the Clinton years and even in the vote for — the recent vote for president, was heavily in the Democratic column, but you didn’t have much luck even during the Clinton administration in getting these leases reviewed and bought out. What’s your reaction to what’s happening in Florida and how it’s going to affect California?

SARA WAN: Well, first of all, I think it’s great that they are buying out Florida and a section of the Gulf. And I’ll agree with Rachel that you have to look at the inconsistency in the reason here. I mean, regardless of what the reason, it’s great that they are doing it, but there is a huge inconsistency. The federal government should be buying out these leases in California, as well, because this is an extremely sensitive area. We’ve got two — it’s an area — those 36 leases are in an area where we have two national marine sanctuaries. We have a range of the California sea otter, which is highly endangered. It’s a prime fishing ground. So, these are aside from the impacts onshore if we were to have an oil spill, so — which would affect our tourism, which is a major source of income to the state.

Aside from that, the federal government is fighting us. We have a lawsuit against them to be allowed to even review whether or not these leases, which have been extended repeatedly, over and over again — the first one was actually issued and sold in 1968, with a five-year — these all have five-year limits on them. They’re not supposed to be held for speculation. The federal government just recently reextended the leases, and we have taken legal action. And the federal government will not even — as you mentioned, we’re going to court on Monday. The federal government is not even willing to negotiate or to settle the lawsuit with us. And that’s the first thing that they could do. They could do that before Monday. They could settle the lawsuit and let this state review those leases to see which ones should be extended and which ones should not be, and which, by the way, would make a difference, if they were going to buy them out, as to what value the people of this country would have to pay for those leases that they bought out. So there’s a huge inconsistency here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, let me bring in Mitch Perry, a reporter and assistant news director at WMNF radio in Tampa, Florida. Welcome to Democracy Now!

MITCH PERRY: Good morning, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Mitch, Jeb Bush has made a big deal of these oil leases and of getting them bought out, but what’s been his environmental record, generally, in Florida?

MITCH PERRY: Well, to say spotty at best might be considerably positive. This is something that really helps him out, no doubt. It also helps out President Bush in terms of — he’s trying to show his credentials here in Florida, which he’s come down here eight or nine times already in the year and a half he’s been president. Jeb Bush is running for reelection this year. Any little boost he can get from the federal government that is positive and that the public supports — and opposition to offshore oil drilling is nearly unanimous amongst the public here, amongst the business community, even amongst most Republicans in Congress, as well. So it wasn’t — it’s a very nice little gift for Jeb for his reelection campaign.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rachel Binah, in terms of the Bush administration policy, in July of 2001, there was a decision to open up a previously untouched $1.5 million acre region in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas drilling. So, apparently, while the decision in Florida is favorable to environmentalists and people concerned about their beaches and the dangers of petroleum drilling, the administration seems still bent on continuing to endanger coastal areas in other parts of the country.

RACHEL BINAH: Well, not only that, there is a bill before Congress now that has to do with protection of the Great Lakes, because they want to drill for oil there. They want to drill for oil everywhere. I think it’s very interesting that when — the day after the plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife failed in the Senate, they were prepared with another plan to open up many more acres and many more leases for development in Alaska, without any possibility of congressional intervention. They had already been planning this. So these people don’t care about the environment one iota. This is the administration that acknowledges that global warming — or, rather, climate destabilization — exists. This happened a few days ago. But they refuse to deal with the fact that it’s created in large part by the use of fossil fuels. And they’re not willing to do anything about the problem. What they say is that we should adopt and adapt to it. So, it’s —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But yet, we had the Clinton administration, at least in California, also extending some of these leases, when it had the opportunity not to do so. So —

RACHEL BINAH: That, I never understood that, because, you know, Clinton did continue the Bush moratorium, and it exists until 2010. So I never did understand why they —

SARA WAN: Let me sort of chime in on that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes. Sara Wan?

SARA WAN: You have to understand that this went through the Department of Interior and Minerals Management Service, which is basically run by and for the the oil industry. They had tremendous — they had tremendous political influence and ability to deal with our lawsuit. But there was every indication after we won at the — in the trial court that the Clinton administration, in fact, was going to settle with us. And that has not happened under the Bush administration. It was under the Bush administration that they appealed. It was not —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I think on that note, we’re going to have to wrap up this segment because we’re out of time for the show. I want to thank Rachel Binah, environmental activist and a member of the DNC; Sara Wan, chairperson of the California Coastal Commission; and Mitch Perry from WMNF radio in Tampa, Florida.

That does it for today’s program. Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Miranda Kennedy, Lizzy Ratner and Michael Yee. Anthony Sloan is our music maestro and engineer. I’m Juan González, with Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Democracy Now!