Want to spend a couple hours this weekend helping protect the environment while enjoying a bit of time at the beach with gorgeous weather? Then find your local Hands Across the Sand event this Saturday, where community members will join to save our coast from the impacts of offshore drilling.
Hands Across the Sand is a simple yet powerful event at which people gather along their local beach and briefly join hands to form as long of a line as possible and declare the message of “NO to offshore drilling; YES to clean energy.”
The event only takes 15 minutes or so, but provides a great visual demonstration of opposition to offshore drilling and the photos, videos, and news coverage help send the message far and wide. After the event is over, it’s a great opportunity to enjoy the beautiful beach you just stood up to protect.
This year is the 10th annual event and there are more than 45 events around the Southeast, including in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. Find your local event here.
SACE has been a proud sponsor of Hands Across the Sand since its beginning in 2010, and since then we have consistently seen the threat of drilling come and go year by year. Right now, the Southeast is in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration’s proposed offshore drilling plan, with the entire Atlantic and Gulf coasts being slated for drilling and seismic blasting permits on the verge of being approved from Florida to Delaware. Recent news showed that the Trump Administration is facing immense public pressure to stop this reckless offshore drilling plan, yet while the Administration is temporarily delaying it, their official policy is still to expand drilling as widely as they can. We must stand together to let the Administration know that our coast is not for sale.
Offshore drilling threatens our coastal environments and economies, and should be phased out, not expanded, especially as the coming electric vehicle (EV) revolution makes offshore drilling obsolete, as shown by SACE’s recent analysis. Clean energy and EVs are viable now and will only become less expensive and more widely available as offshore drilling will become a relic of the past. To learn more about how electric vehicles can replace offshore drilling, see our fact sheet here.
We hope you will join us on the beach on May 18 as we stand with our neighbors to protect our coast.
If you would like to learn more about what to expect at your local Hands event or would even like to sign up to host an event, please join our webinar with Hands Across the Sand Executive Director Dede Shelton tomorrow (May 16) at 12 pm ET for a live information session!