The Center for Biological Diversity reports the Obama administration is continuing to exempt new offshore drilling operations from environmental review despite the Gulf disaster. Since the April 20th explosion at the BP rig, the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service has approved twenty-seven new offshore drilling permits. All but one of the projects were granted the same environmental review exemption used to approve the BP drilling site. On Saturday the Sierra Club held a rally for volunteers in New Orleans to help organize the clean-up from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Allison Chin: “Today we’re all here, standing together, to ensure that there’s justice for Gulf communities and to ensure that this never, ever happens again. This is America’s wake-up call. It’s a shame that it takes a tragedy, a travesty like this, to wake up America, but this is America’s wake-up call.”

George Barisich, the president of the Louisiana Commercial Fishermen’s Association, also spoke at the Sierra Club rally.

George Barisich: “That’s up to God. If God keeps the currents and the waves to keep it away from us, so that they can corral it, disperse it, do whatever they can, then we’ve got a chance. But once again, that’s if they stop it, 'cause if they don't stop it, as the duration runs out, Mother Nature is going to stick it to you. You got three months, you’re in hurricane season. You get a depression, you don’t need a hurricane. You get a depression, give me four-foot storm tides, that stuff is going over, the oil is going further in. It’s going to kill trees and everything else. Oil kills everything.”