A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [131]
Lubchenco leads us out the back of the shop, into a nice garden area with tables under the shade of a grape arbor. It’s a perfect September morning. “We got lucky with the weather,” she says. “Grape arbors wouldn’t work so well in rain.”
“First off,” I say, “how much time do we have?”
“About an hour,” Lubchenco answers. “I’m leaving this afternoon for meetings in Europe.”
“An hour’s good,” Allen says.
Because the long-heralded final cement is getting pumped down the relief well as we take our seats, I’m sure Allen’s got plenty of other things on his mind today. So I appreciate that on such a momentous morning, he’s decided to peel off some valuable time for breakfast.
Recently, I happened to catch a long interview with Allen on Charlie Rose. Allen, who’s beefy, with a military-style crew cut, took time to describe how much his participation in releasing several rehabilitated sea turtles had meant to him. I resonated. He seemed centered and insightful, and kind. And I started feeling an uncomfortable twinge—more than a twinge—that my summer-long simmering mental caricature of him was off base. Yes, I didn’t like some things he’d said and done. But he’d worked to lead the region through two major disasters, Katrina and this. I could not think of anyone else who’d quite done that. And I was surprised to find myself thinking that if a hero is someone who steers events during a national crisis, Allen’s as much a national hero as anyone I could think of. Well, that was certainly a startling thought. I’ve been critical all summer. But for everything there is a season. A time to cast stones, and a time to gather stones together.
A few days ago, Dr. Lubchenco was the surprise guest speaker at a National Geographic event honoring the famed ocean explorer Dr. Sylvia Earle. Someone tapped my shoulder and said to meet him at a nearby restaurant, and when I did, I was surprised to find myself sitting next to both Jane Lubchenco and Sylvia Earle. I knew that Lubchenco had worked a lot with Thad Allen recently, and after dinner, as we were saying our good-byes, my twinge prompted me to tell her that I’d been writing critically of him, and I was getting the feeling that this might be unfair. “Oh,” she said, “that would be terribly unfair. He’s a good guy. You should meet him.”
And so as we sit down, Lubchenco, a coastal ecologist by profession, explains by way of introduction that Allen’s understanding goes beyond the law he must enforce and includes the ecology, the science, the regional culture, and oil drilling technology.
“I stay up late at night studying,” says Allen quite matter-of-factly. “I had to do the same during Katrina. You have to convert it to something the public can understand. If you don’t put a public face on these disasters, you’ll fail immediately. That’s what happened during Katrina. Mike Brown went and hid, y’know—”
Katrina was then, this is now. Because we’re pressed for time, I want to get down to it. So, I say, if the problem during Katrina was that the federal face was hiding, the problem this time was that the Coast Guard seemed to be guarding against public understanding and access. “How in the world,” I demand, “was declaring a felony for getting near booms—”
“I can explain.” Allen takes a sip of his coffee, a bite of his croissant, and says, “My policy was open access, except where safety and security were issues. Early on, right over the site, we had eight midair near collisions. People thought our flight restrictions were to stop the press; but it was simply to prevent collisions. Regarding boom, there were people vandalizing it to get boats