A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [104]
Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal, appearing to both lubricate his cake and eat it, complains that the oil has already ruined the seafood industry and depressed tourism, and now Obama’s ban on deep exploratory drilling is costing thousands of Louisianans their jobs. When such wanting-it-both-ways rhetoric actually makes some sense—as this does—you know we’re really in trouble. Stuck because we’ve built no options.
Bobby must therefore be pleased when, on July 8, a federal appeals court in the heart of New Orleans affirms a lower court’s June 22 decision that there should be no drilling ban. Two of the judges on the appeals panel—both appointed by Ronald Reagan—had represented the oil and gas industries as private lawyers. Judge Jerry E. Smith’s clients included ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Sunoco. Judge W. Eugene Davis represented various companies involved in offshore drilling. Blind justice.
Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser, who’s been outspoken throughout this ordeal, is apoplectic about the rule criminalizing getting within seventy feet of booms. Nungesser says the only way to maintain public confidence in the cleanup is to make it as transparent as possible.
I appreciate that sentiment, but I don’t fully agree. In my opinion, if everyone really saw what a rope-a-dope circus this “cleanup” really is, they’d acquire scant reason for confidence.
But, actually helping address the confidence chasm, out of the ashes of the former Minerals Management Service, some fresh resolve. The former federal prosecutor who now heads the Obama administration’s newly created Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement outlines for us his planned approach: “I’m not going to say you can’t drill, but if people don’t get the message that we are really stressing regulation and enforcement to an unprecedented degree they will have problems with me,” he says. “There’s a reason why we renamed the agency by putting regulation and enforcement in the name.”
Just a few days after the appeals court affirmed the overturn of the administration’s ban on exploratory drilling, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issues a new moratorium. Rather than basing the ban on depth, which the courts called arbitrary, he bases it on what he should have based it on in the first place: “evidence that grows every day of the industry’s inability, in the deep water, to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill and to operate safely.” Salazar adds, “The industry must raise the bar on its deepwater safety.” It sounds like what I want to hear: our government working to protect us.
Of course, the head of the American Petroleum Institute says the only thing he can say within the narrow confines of his job script: that the ban is “unnecessary and shortsighted,” that it will “shut down a major part of the nation’s energy lifeline,” that it “threatens enormous harm to the nation.” In other words, all the usual hype.
And, speaking of hype, a White House senior adviser this week calls the blowout the “greatest environmental catastrophe of all time.” He adds that he’s “reasonably confident” that all of the oil can be contained by the end of July.
If only all great catastrophes will be over in a week. Sad fact: this is far from the “greatest environmental catastrophe of all time.” Actually using oil is the far greater environmental disaster; oil and coal are changing the world’s climate, swelling the rising seas, and turning the oceans acidic. And in the Gulf itself, getting the oil has destroyed far more of the Mississippi River Delta’s world-class wetlands than the blowout ever will.
Congressional briefing, Capitol Hill. Testimony. National Wildlife Federation president Larry Schweiger likens the response to inventing fire trucks and building a fire department for a house that’s already in flames.