A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [22]
APRIL
The Coast Guard’s Gulf region chief, Rear Admiral Mary Landry, who, we are told, is “leading the government’s response,” says, “You’re getting ahead of yourself a little when you try to speculate and say this is catastrophic. It’s premature to say this is catastrophic.”
Though eleven men died and the rig sank.
She’s just much too cool. Right off the bat, her statements set my confidence in the Coast Guard on a wobble. I realize immediately that it’s going to be one of those events where, from all sides, the truth gets pinballed back and forth among bumpers of spin and flippers of distortion. And other than herself, who’s Landry kidding? The immediate impressions: (1) she’s still wait-and-seeing; and (2) because of No. 1, the official response is slow.
President Barack Obama says the federal response to the disaster is “being treated as the number one priority.” He may think so, but it doesn’t feel that way. It seems as though no one is prepared for oil shooting from a mile-deep pipe.
Oddly, just one day after the rig sinks, one major press agency is calling the Exxon Valdez spill “vastly bigger than the current one in the U.S. Gulf.” That may be because right after the rig sank, Rear Admiral Landry said that no oil appeared to be leaking from the wellhead and nor was there, at the surface, “any sign of a major spill.” Landry said at the outset that most of the oil was burning off with the fireball, leaving only a moderate rainbow sheen on the water.
The impression given: fuel oil had spilled from the rig, but from the well no oil was leaking. She said, “Both the industry and the Coast Guard have technical experts actively at work. So there’s a whole technical team here to ensure we keep the conditions stable.”
Stable.
Even if this isn’t “Obama’s Katrina,” she sounds like Obama’s Michael Brown. Heckuva job, Brownie. And now the real Michael Brown comes out of his hole. President George W. Bush’s infamous FEMA chief claims that Obama is purposely dragging his feet, wanting the oil leak to worsen so he can shut down offshore drilling. “This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, ‘I’m gonna shut it down because it’s too dangerous,’ ” Brown says, adding, “This president has never supported Big Oil, he’s never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down.”
How very odd of Brownie to say that, considering that less than a month ago Obama alienated environmentalists with a blindsiding announcement that he was opening millions of acres for new offshore oil development.
Rewind: March 30, 2010. President Obama lays out an offshore drilling plan. He decides to open 167 million acres of ocean to oil and gas exploration. Candidate Obama had attacked John McCain’s proposal to expand offshore drilling, saying, “It would have long-term consequences for our coastlines but no short-term benefits since it would take at least ten years to get any oil.… When I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium.” With this March announcement, President Obama erases that promise. He ends a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida. For environmentalists, this leaves a very bad impression. Something like betrayal. Buried in the announcement—because the administration wants it to look like he’s into offshore oil—is that President Obama canceled the plans, scheduled by President G. W. Bush, for four lease sales off Alaska in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. But he left 130 million acres of those seas open to exploration. Obama’s decision keeps the entire West Coast closed to oil and gas leasing. He also takes Alaska’s Bristol