The horror off the Gulf Coast has unfolded in real time, week after dread-filled week, poison flowing out of the earth and into the seas, unstoppable, like subconscious dreck in a terrible dream. Watching helplessly, trying to avoid the images of dying birds and animals—and soon, perhaps, fishermen—the only relief is finding someone to blame.
Go ahead, blame BP. But you’ll be missing the real target.
Of course BP and its coevals did unlimited bad and stupid things yet to be fully disclosed. But blaming them is like getting mad at a shark for eating fish. BP exists to do exactly what it did: Take unacceptable chances in the pursuit of oil and profit, which in the oil-company ecosystem is the same thing. The profit motive, to capitalist enterprises, is what hunger and sex are to animals—a pure and irresistible drive.
BP and its partners must, naturally, be made to pay until they go belly-up, preferably in a pool of toxic hydrocarbons. And they will. Politicians can sweep a lot under the rug, but a live video feed of gushing oil and a couple hundred million grieving voters are too hard to finesse. (The time to start shorting the company’s stock was about three weeks ago. BP has roughly the same life expectancy as Louisiana’s marshes.)
But the posturing that’s coming from Congress—the hearings, the speeches, the outrage—makes me want to shoot myself. BP and its partners are just what they appear to be: rapacious global corporations. Blame them if you will, but the entity that finally must answer for the oil spill, the place where your rage and mine should be focused, is not on the companies involved in the patently insane enterprise of drilling for oil a mile under the surface of the ocean—but on the government, yours and mine, that allowed them to do it.
People who care about the environment have been consistently, unshakably, vociferously against offshore drilling from the get go: The nature and magnitude of the risk were never obscure, never hard to understand. The bottom of the ocean is a more alien place to work than the surface of the moon. So why would you allow people to punch holes in the planet’s crust to release pressurized toxic liquids down there? So my neighbors can keep filling up their Ram pickups and their dune buggies and their Suburbans with the “Drill, Baby, Drill” stickers (I am not making this up) at a price they like? Not a good enough reason.
Ask yourself: What is a democratically elected government for? It’s to build roads, negotiate treaties and equip armies, yes, but it’s also to regulate things. It’s to impose sense and order—the rule of law—on a world of disparate, conflicting interests. Among other things, elected governments exist to make and enforce rules that keep the strong and the smart and the rich from taking everything away from the weak and the poor and the dumb, including their health, their clean air and water, and their shrimp fisheries. Because that is what the powerful do if nobody stops them.
Another critical role of any decent government is to objectively assess risk and find ways to limit it. This is necessary, because so often, these little masters of the universe start thinking they’re actual gods. They win and win until they think they can’t lose. They start buying politicians and corrupting officials, and then very bad things begin to happen. (Savings-and-loan scandal ring any bells? Enron?)
I keep making the same argument about the financial crisis: If you blame AIG and Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, you’re missing the point. Blame the Congress that deregulated the system, and let the bankers do what they were born to do: Act out wild greedhead fantasies with other people’s money. Duh.
Listen: There are things we simply don’t allow, because the worst-case scenario is so unthinkably bad. We don’t let pilots drink before they fly. We don’t let children carry weapons. We don’t stockpile nuclear weapons in cities. Why? Because the risks are too great. Offshore drilling is like that. One thing goes wrong, and you’ve got what we’ve got now—catastrophe.
So we all woke up one morning and learned that drilling for oil at the bottom of the sea is a bad idea. It now seems so obvious.
The truth is that it was obvious all along.
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.
Sure, you can blame the government, but remember that it’s a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” and it seems clear that most of the people are like your neighbors, who want to fill their Ram pickups and Suburbans and dune buggies with cheap gas and really do care more about that than a polluted Gulf. Even Gulf residents, with the shit on their doorstep, are saying “No drilling moratorium.” Which clearly shows that we as a nation are nothing but incorrigible fossil-fuel ho’s. Tucson, with all its sun, should right now be totally off-the-grid and have nothing but solar-charged electric vehicles. But as long as the last drop of oil remains in the ground, no one will think far enough outside his or her comfortable box to make that happen. We’re humans. We suck.
Why is there such a thing as deep water drilling? Isn’t that like building homes in a swamp… A matter of time before something very bad happens then you have to fix it.. In 5,000 feet of water.. STUPID…So, why are they there? I think we know why they are there. IDIOTS insisted that rigs be built out of sight… Well, if this rig were built in 100 feet of water do you think this would be a problem? Hell, why do we need any offshore drilling when we have PLENTY of oil in Anwar and elsewhere on land where this is guaranteed to never happen?.. Libs, environmentalists, elite wealthy republicans AND democrats who want a good view of their yachts are the reason for this mess.. Common sense is ALWAYS lacking when the government is involved…. Move ALL of our rigs to 100 feet or less NOW… This will happen again and there is no good reason.. Drill on land wherever we find oil.. Common sense..
Magpiept is mistaken, Gulf Coast citizens do want a drilliing moratorium of offshore drilling in the Gulf Coast until it will be done safely and correctly, but it is cheaper to drill dangerously and buy off govt. regulators. Corporations own our govt. and thereby own us. Obama will put on a theatrical show, but the oil companies will continue on as usual. Safety means don’t keep drilling when you know the blow out preventer is breaking up because you want to save a couple of million dollars by not shuting down the well to fix in when you only plan to cap the well anyway, not produce.(How do you legislate against greed when our legislatures are among the greediest of all?) This well was drilled only to be capped. There is such a glut of oil the wells are drilled out in the gulf and do not produce. (They are not drilled way out there to be kept out of sight so as not to offend rich folks in their boats.) They are kept in reserve until prices are higher, until there is not such an oversupply. This has been done for decades.
The loss from the oil blow out (NOT spill) can not be calculated. It is the loss of the environment, the wildlife, the entire way of life. It isn’t just that we can no longer buy fresh, fat blue/gray Gulf shrimp that release the sweet,salty aroma of the Gulf of Mexico we love so much, it is that people depending on the Gulf for their livelihood from seafood, tourism, and every other business on the coast are seeing their lives destroyed along with the wildlife from the Gulf, marshes, estuaries. Businesses are shutting down, homes are facing foreclosure, cars are being repossed, families are breaking up, mental health is breaking down. Oil is poison. We have hurricanes and they will spread the oil, perhaps destroy our homes with oil and homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover loss from toxic substances.
Thirty seven years ago an environmental professor at university told us “America was built by the internal combustion engine and it will be destroyed by the internal combustion engine.” We have known this for decades. And still we live by oil and in the Gulf Coast it appears we are dying by it. We are heartbroken. Think if you woke one day and the Santa Catalinas and surrounding mountains were gone, the desert was covered in poison that keeps on coming, the wildlife was dying and you may die next. Your face bankruptcy also.
Arizona can build solar, West Texas and other areas can have wind farms and water power. It is a start. No matter how small a step, we can be more intelligent than Ms. Downing’s neighbors and buy fuel efficient cars. My lovely, safe, comfy Lexus gets 14.9 mpg in light city traffic and 18.9 on the highway. I love my car and I deserve it. But I deserve more. I just ordered a hybrid.
There are many more choices.
I turn off lights and I raise the thermostat in hellish Houston heat even if I have to walk around nearly naked at home. No plastic bags, no disposable plastic at all comes into my home unless there is absolutely no alternative. No milk cartons, no plastic wrapped items. No plastic handle toothbrushes. If anyone has more suggestions on how to avoid petrochemical usage, please comment.
People in the Gulf Coast appreciate your understanding of the misery we are suffering from the loss of our way of life. Soon the news media will go on to another story, but here we will continue to suffer.
I heard a little girl ask her dad about what she saw on tv, the oil blowing out of the earth. She said, “Daddy, will the oil all blow out and the earth pop like a balloon?”
“governments exist to make and enforce rules that keep the strong and the smart and the rich from taking everything away from the weak and the poor and the dumb, including their health, their clean air and water, and their shrimp fisheries. Because that is what the powerful do if nobody stops them.” (SIC)
Upon first reading, this statement seems purely ignorant, however it is also perhaps sly propoganda for the igornant reader as well. In partnership with government, industry has invested in highly sucessful environmental stewardship for the benefit our our country, cleaning our waterways and air, providing safe drinking water, protecting wildlife and providing clean workplaces for workers and clean environments for our neighborhoods and recreation. Is the environmental work done? No. Are things getting better? Very much so.
The author of this article is either out of touch with reality or simply wishes to ignore the truth. Is the oil spill bad? Yes. Is BP at fault? As an environmental permit writer for industry including mining and demilitarization, you may rely on the fact that both BP and the government carry equal blame for not providing for fail-safe operations and contingency planning. However, BP and other oil companies do not want to operate in deep water because it is expensive and because it is dangerous. The blame for the spill also lies with environmentalists that ceaselessly impose unrealistic and unsafe requirements on industry via the US Congress. So i ask you, are the environmentalists exempt from taking blame for this oil spill? Maybe yes and maybe no. Remember, there are alot of cooks in the kitchen when big oil designs and permits new operations. Perhaps a forensic approach in tracing the “players” involved in this project and the persons responsibile for design, permitting and operations is warranted to learn the truth beyond the general and political assumptions made in articles such as this one in the Tucson Weekly. Does anyone (especially journalists) have an interest in discovering facts to get to the truth anymore, or is everything just political?
OK, let’s have Obama wave the magic wand and “ban offshore drilling.”
What is the Messiah gonna do about all the offshore rigs outside our territorial waters? Is he going to send the SEALs to kill a bunch of Malaysians, Chinese, or Venezuelans (actually it would be kind of cool to see the reaction Chavez would have to that), etc?
At least with offshore rigs in our territorial waters, we’ve got some amount of control over their activities.
At Renee is starting to see the big picture on this one.
Wait! You had me nodding until you suggested that we don’t stockpile nuclear weapons in cities. You ever been to Alburquerque, with 250,000 warheads? Or Amarillo, where stockpiles of warheads are armed or disarmed? Or anywhere else along the chain of factories that manufacture and store nuclear weapons? Including most air force bases.
Our government, nor their associates in the private sector, have never worried about risking our lives or the environment, in their pursuit of profit..
Thank you Magpiept for expressing exactly what I was going to say! IMO Danehy has the right idea, but he doesn’t follow his argument to its logical conclusion. Of course, like Danehy says, BP only cares about doing what MOST huge corporations care about doing- making money. And the government has been the enabler for BP, just as it has been for many other business interests (again as Danehy says). Ultimately though, the blame lies with the American people in general because this never would have happened if we hadn’t elected to office those who put corporate interests above public interests (and don’t tell me we had no idea ahead of time). We have the power to elect representatives who care more about the public interest than corporate interests, but we choose not to. Until we decide we’ve finally had enough of this type of dynamic, the status quo will remain and the US will remain a “coporatocracy” rather than a representative democracy as was intended.