GUEST OPINION

Stop trashing Homer

I read an article by Frank Sanitate who argued that Homer’s “The Iliad” was trash (“The Iliad” Is Trash — and Other Thoughts About Education,” News-Press March 11). I’ll refrain from being frank by not describing the quality of his article.

Sins of omission, commission and emissions!

The truth is out there — just offshore of the aptly named Coal Oil Point.

That is where the second most prolific oil and gas seeps in the world are begging to be included in the Santa Barbara County Climate Action Plan. The climate action plan is, of course, ostensibly nothing less than a war against the production and consumption of fossil fuels, according to a theory that posits that fossil fuels must be eliminated to save the planet.

The inconvenient truth as it relates to Santa Barbara County?

Fossil fuel production actually cleans our air and water of pollutants that are naturally occurring by way of these oil and gas seeps off the coast of UCSB while also reducing greenhouse gasses. Contrary to the blathering of politicians and activists, decades of research by bonafide scientists have produced data that empirically proves that oil and gas production decreases the seeps that happen to be the largest source of the most potent greenhouse gas, methane, which is 25 times more potent than CO2.

The routinely described air pollution inventory for all sources of air pollution conveniently omits the pollution emanating from these and other natural sources as if there is no abating the same. However, an alternative approach does exist, and it offers multiple benefits! That is, permitting oil and gas operations will save our economy from energy-related inflation and abate both air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention eliminating globs of oil on our beaches.

We know this for certain, by way of the published study correlating oil and gas production and its effect on seeps by a team of research scientists from UCSB and Tufts University, among others.

As a way of background, for the past 50 years or so, regulators have been trying to clean our air of various pollutants. The efforts that paid off had to do with emissions from transportation sources, the