America isn’t the only country reassessing their deep-sea oil drilling. On Tuesday, a judge suspended the six-month ban on deep-sea oil drilling as the White House said it will appeal the decision. Nation defense correspondent and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, Michael T. Klare speaks to Jeb Sharp of PRI’s The World about the globe’s major oil reserves and why some of those areas are suspending their drilling.

Klare, expanding on his recent Nation article, "The Oil Catastrophe," uses the example of Brazil’s recent discovery of oil 170 miles off its coast, miles below water, rock and salt deposits to show just how difficult and risky it is to get to these resources. He says drilling like this is "really going to test whether technology can operate in the outer margins of environmental risk.” Asked whether deep-water drilling can ever be safe, Klare responds, "I’m a skeptic because drilling in these deep waters is really pushing the environmental envelope."

—Melanie Breault