LETTER: Keep our coastline pristine and deep six Big Oil's plans

As a native Northwest Floridian who has lived along many of its numerous coastlines, I feel drilling for oil offshore in the Gulf of Mexico is an extremely bad idea and would be detrimental to the health of the state’s shore.  

Our family is a two Prius owner family. We conserve energy and always embrace technology to better our life.  On a visit to California years back, we saw an outstanding movie entitled, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

This is probably the reason we own two hybrid cars today that get 47-plus miles per gallon as we drive around town and on highways. One of our hybrid cars is even cooled by solar power.

In addition, some hybrid cars have been adapted today to get over 100-plus miles per gallon, and that technology should be available to all consumers in the coming decade.  

We also know one friend who has adapted his Ford F-150 truck that runs on bio-diesel fuel, otherwise known as “deep fryer oil” and drives for free with the “oil” he collects from various restaurants.

Rather than the “drill baby drill” mentality that is so prevalent in Northwest Florida these days, alternative fuel technologies and advancements should be embraced and addressed with the same fervor from those folks so set on ruining our unique coastline.

And before some of your curmudgeon non-native readers retort back, I say “Get a moving van and move on down the coast; as the Louisiana and Texas frontier awaits you and your family. You will be in hog heaven among its tar-ball covered beaches.”  

This true native Floridian wants his coastline to stay the way it is today: Unspoiled from the oil industry.

Jeffrey C. Ellis
Seagrove Beach