A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [30]
March 25, 2010. Three U.S. senators—Massachussetts Democrat John Kerry, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, and Connecticut switch-hitter Joe Lieberman—are trying to draft bipartisan climate-change legislation capable of getting sixty votes to overcome a filibuster. It’s the year of filibusterphobia. Graham’s main concern is that depending on foreign oil is a security threat. The environment isn’t uppermost in his mind. Considering these things, their bill includes environmental compromises so big, oil rigs could sink in them. So those three senators get a letter from ten Democrat senators. The ten warn that expanded offshore drilling could put their states at risk from oil spills, threatening fisheries, tourism, and the coast—a “national treasure that needs to be protected for generations to come.” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida says the letter means “in a nutshell: No oil rigs off protected coastal states.” Florida’s beaches are its white gold. The senators’ letter says the best way to lower oil costs is through energy efficiency and conservation.
April 4, 2010. The 700-plus-foot Chinese-owned coal carrier Shen Neng 1 slams into Australia’s Great Barrier Reef at full speed. The impact ruptures the vessel’s fuel tanks. It’s carrying 300,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil to run its engines while hauling 65,000 tons of coal.
First week of April 2010. The Government Accountability Office reports to Congress that the federal Minerals Management Service’s Alaska office hasn’t developed any guidelines for determining whether proposed developments comply with federal law. The GAO complains of “absence of a process.”
April 14–15, 2010. The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service approves a series of permit changes that will help BP speedily conclude its over-budget drilling operation being conducted on Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. BP has already secured a “categorical exclusion” from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act.
2010. Another BP platform, called Atlantis, has been operating with major apparent safety irregularities. One man who called attention to them has been laid off. He is suing BP. He says, “I’ve never seen this kind of attitude, where safety doesn’t seem to matter and when you complain of a problem and try to fix it, you’re just criticized and pushed aside.” In 2008 a manager wrote an e-mail warning of “potential catastrophic operator errors” and said that operating the rig while “hundreds if not thousands” of critical engineering drawings for its operation were never finalized is “fundamentally wrong.” The Atlantis well is capable of pumping a lot of oil, estimated at 800,000 barrels per day when fully operational. Says the man who’s been laid off, “If something happens there, it will make the Deepwater Horizon look like a bubble.”
PART TWO
A SEASON
OF ANGUISH
MAYDAY
Perhaps no pause has ever been as pregnant. Before May Day, hotel owners, fishermen, and restaurateurs—and most of the rest of the country—begin an anxious watch of satellite images and maps of how the oil is spreading, and models of how the oil could spread. The mere thought. The fear that it could all be lost. The fun, the wildlife—and the revenue they represent—ruined.
It begins looking like it could wash ashore heavily within days, coating fragile wetlands, ruining the Gulf’s famous oyster beds, and redacting the whiteness from heretofore dazzling beaches. In fact, our minds spoil those beaches before any oil reaches them. The siege mentality seizes up our thinking.
So by May Day, a certain passion play has been written: the greed of men, the sacrifice of life, utter unpreparedness compounded by inability to respond, and a blanketing dread.
“I am frightened for the country,” says the assistant chief of the National Ocean Service, David Kennedy. “This is a very, very big thing, and the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling.” And Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist wonders if anyone,