A disastrous oil spill is gushing as much as 2,500,000 gallons of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

Before the spill, U.S. leaders were ramping up offshore drilling. Now, the Obama administration says no new drilling will be allowed until an investigation is concluded. But that’s not enough: offshore drilling is dirty, dangerous, and the wrong strategy for a safe climate future for all.

The world needs the US to move away from oil, and work with us instead to drive forward the global clean energy revolution. Let’s use this moment to send a world-wide message to President Obama, urging him to overturn offshore drilling expansion — our global outcry will be delivered in Washington with a massive banner when we reach 500,000 signers:

To President Obama and members of Congress:
We urge you to permanently call off plans to open up more of the US coastline to dangerous offshore drilling. Instead, invest in a clean and safe energy future.

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With a request for a $3.75 billion World Bank loan for a new coalfired power plant, South African political leaders seem determined to entrench a policy on climate change that disregards clear evidence of catastrophic consequences, echoing the earlier disastrous policies of former President Thabo Mbeki on AIDS. But opposition is mounting to the current plan, which would consolidate South Africa’s Eskom as the continent’s leading producer of greenhouse gases.

South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan defended the plan in a March 22 op-ed article in the Washington Post, contending that alternate energy sources were not practical to meet the country’s power needs. But critics say that the power is primarily intended to benefit large multinational companies, rather than South African consumers, and that Eskom has an abysmal record of mismanagement and indifference to public needs. Critics of the loan include not only a large South African civil society coalition, but also international groups and even the U.S. Treasury.

Africa Focus gives all the details of the campaign in South Africa and world-wide, and reposts several articles about the project : http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/c...