Why haven’t I written about this earlier?
Well, it isn’t like I haven’t tried.
But every time I do, I go into a rant.
You didn’t come here to read my rants.
At least I don’t think so.
This oil spill issue has me totally livid.
Part of this can be blamed on the Bush administration. More specifically, it can be blamed on Dick Cheney’s energy task force that got rid of the requirement for the acoustic switches that could be used to shut of an oil well in an emergency situation. The switches cost about $500,000, but the oil companies just couldn’t afford that.
But I’m not being fair here.
Since the spill has happened, the progressive, green, and hip Obama administration has not stepped up to the plate. They refuse to hold BP accountable, and allow them to have virtually full control over the attempts to shut off the oil well.
Now, I’m a Democrat. I voted for Obama. I probably will do so again.
But this is pathetic.
James Carville expresses these sentiments better than I can.
I wish the president had been more engaged.
Instead, he fumbled along. Why? I asked myself.
Well, in the end, I’m left with the view that I have long possessed about how things really work in this country. It is far from a rosy scenario. It goes something like this:
I’ve known all along that the US government was controlled by big corporations. That is the story of the US political economy for a very long time. Essentially, it matters only a little bit about which party is in control. The big boys will have their say.
What’s the solution to this?
I can tell you it’s not just voting.
Voting is the least that can be done.
We have to be engaged as citizens.
Unfortunately, the level of civic engagement in this country is astoundingly low.
People are both demoralized and distrusting, and in that environment, only cynicism can reign.
But at some point, we’ve got to say we’ve got a stake in this. Otherwise, we’re doomed.
I used to spend time on the Outer Banks of North Carolina every summer. I really loved it there. I would walk several miles a day on the beach, where I’d see all sorts of seabirds, fisherman casting their lines into the surf, and occasionally would see dolphins and porpoises cavorting just offshore.
The oil will be there as it follows the loop current up the Eastern Seaboard. It will certainly have an effect on that landscape.
And when I think about it a little more, I wonder why we, as American citizens, didn’t demand a more rational energy policy? In hindsight, we all look like fools.
Let’s hope we don’t continue down that road with egg on our faces.
Summoning the ghost of Dick Cheney? Careful with your language. Suggesting that tricky Dick got rid of some extant requirement leading to this situation is misleading.
I read the link and it (even though it’s the oral testimony of one person) doesn’t support the conclusion you suggest it does.
And, as far as Monday morning quarterbacking goes, I think the relief well requirement is a much better avenue to explore than the “acoustic switch”… especially if you actually read the whole WSJ article.
I’m sure that if your standards of causality are as unexamined as the ‘Dick Cheney blew the rig!’ talking point, I’m sure this will be blamed on Sarah Palin before too long. I’ll bet if I looked there are already articles suggesting as much.
Actually Dick Cheney or Obama, it’s immaterial.
We have not demanded that our country develop another energy policy.
We are to blame.
I didn’t blame Obama. He’s one of the least qualified President’s we’ve had regarding real world issues outside of politics. He’s never run a business, balanced a budget, nor do I imagine that he’s got some practical skills in anything requiring labor, mathematics, engineering, etc.
I don’t expect he’d be in any position to magically know that there was a ticking time bomb a mile beneath the ocean on an oil rig owned by a British company. Nor, do I think that had he passed a draconian bill on the first day of his office that any of these wells already in place would be required to change, or even if they did, that they’d have been retrofitted in time to prevent this.
Just look at how slow they are in drilling one relief well with the full backing of the entire company and the pressure of the scorn of the entire world? Can you imagine what the time table would look like with no disaster and a demand that all wells be double drilled?
I’m sure that even such an effort as that would be criticized as a huge give away to whatever multinational corporation is even able to drill at a mile deep (headline: New regulations hand Haliburton golden egg).
I do find it amusing that the administration response to this is to suspend drilling in the arctic. I’d take 10 spills like this in the Arctic over one in the Gulf of Mexico.
When disasters get so humongous, they tend to render us all mute. Words as a response seem so inadequate. I don’t mean yours though. I just mean that I’m having difficulty appropriately expressing a meaningful reaction.
I think I’ll pledge myself to a letter writing campaign, to all the people already in positions of authority where they can make the right choices. Apparently they need encouragement. (I canno longer attend the local meetings where we have to wade through hours of egos, misinformation, and communal pain.) I hope others have more ideas for what to do.
The thing I do find humorous about cost/benefit analysis in respect to an oil well…. it’s almost no cost and all benefit.
I don’t have an opinion either way on an acoustic trigger, but if there is a technic that could have prevented this situation, I’d love for an industry exec to testify that it’d be too expensive at under one million dollars versus how many billions of dollars in damages and lost revenue this one spill is going to cause.
I’d venture a guess that this one catastrophe would be enough to balance the books to pay for whatever solution might have worked to be installed on every well.
It’s not like any of these things have a hard time breaking even. I’d be curious to see what the profit/day was on this well.
But it’s wise to be mindful that BP can hire accountants and engineers who do risk analysis and it’s not in their benefit to not implement plans that are expected to save money in the mid/long run.
I’ll also point out that our own government, when operating with gigantic budgets and with the best and the brightest have still managed to blow up 2 out of 5 of our Space Shuttles.
I’m sure they do.
The other problem was the regulators are bought off with women and drugs.
Those reports sound like the execs watched American Psycho and decided, hey, let’s do some of that. Sure, cocaine was so the 90s, but let’s bring it back! Wooo hooo!
if you want to get more depressed, read the conversation among these oil industry/oil expert guys:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6516
Well, Wikipedia provided me with a partial answer. The upcoming per-day lease contract was for “US$544 million, a rate of $496,800 per day.”
That’s the rent BP would pay to the owner for the rig’s use.
That doesn’t speak well to the idea that a one-time-cost of ~$500,000 was too expensive.
A book that is especially pertinent at the moment is “Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental” by Marc S. Gerstein and Michael Ellsberg. It goes into great detail about such disasters as Columbia and Challenger; Hurrican Katrina; Chernyobel; the BP Texas oil refinery explosion, the Vioxx recall, and others. Great insights into the human factors behind such.
In light of facts mentioned in this book, the current BP disaster is perhaps less surprising.
That hurts all over the world.
How many people on this blog bitching about the oil
spill drive a prius or other hybrid car? How many have
family “fleet” fuel efficiency on par with 35 mpg as
it is in China? How many purchase grain based ethanol
while millions of children starve to death annually?
How many countries spend incomprehensible amount of money in armament while millions of children starve to death annually and millions of people live below poverty level?
Good ethanol smear!
Never waste a good crisis