Tag Archives: Gulf spill

Political Rants

Power.

A year ago this time, on the eve of Earth day, millions of barrels of oil began spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, accompanied by millions of gallons of a toxic dispersant banned for use in the U.K. (but still, apparently, okay to use over here). Both substances were disastrous by-products of a rush to profit by multinational corporations tied to our seemingly unbreakable addiction to fossil fuels. As was pointed out at the time and many times since, such catastrophic events are inevitable at this stage in the depletion of global energy resources. All of the easy-to-get oil is gone or spoken for, so expanding this highly profitable extraction industry requires brinkmanship of the type that has soured the waters of the Gulf beyond the sorry point to which they had sunk previously.

This is generally true of the extractive energy industries. Oil is being sought from ocean depths far more profound than either drilling or safety technologies can facilitate. It is being rendered from the tar sands of western Canada, where the very earth is being ground to squeeze every ounce of the precious fluid for export to the U.S., mainly. (As a result, Canada was recently our single largest source of oil.) The volume of global reserves is calculated based upon those deposits that are economically feasible to extract – as the price per barrel rises, more reserves enter the equation. The trouble is, the very act of extracting them from an exhausted mother earth causes as much environmental degradation as burning the oil in generators and vehicles.

Last year’s spill did teach us one valuable lesson: the energy companies fear nothing more than public opinion. Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, cable television was choked with ads about “America’s Gas and Oil Industry” and all the jobs they were creating, not to mention BP and other oil companies touting their commitment to the preservation our environment and the development of renewables. When the rig blew, they vanished – Poof! No ads until well after the hole was plugged. Now they’re back again, though a bit more muted than before the disaster. They know their limits … and they know that they can only push the public so far. The real power is with us, if we can manage to use it.

We have an opportunity, right here in my backyard. Local landowners are preparing to play host to hydrofracking – another post-peak energy extraction method now destroying water resources in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. We need to make our voices heard now, before the industry gets a foothold and destroys New York the way the coal industry has riddled West Virginia.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Junk.

Back to short takes. (Did somebody say shortcake?)

Credibility gulf. If BP is to be taken at its word, oil is no longer spewing into the Gulf of Mexico by the millions of gallons. The only thing spewing right now, it seems, is the torrent of P.R. from the company responsible, as well as a copious amount of whining from the industry. The echoes of this have even my local Congressional district. Now, I’ve had my complaints about our Congressman, Mike Arcuri, and some of the positions he’s taken. But just a look at his G.O.P. opponent is enough to disabuse me of any notion of sitting on my hands this November.

Arcuri’s rival, Richard Hanna, was criticizing Arcuri for supporting Obama’s flaccid 6-month ban on deepwater drilling, saying the oil exploration companies will pull out and go somewhere else. This basically parrots the line from the Petroleum Institute, whose spokescreep I heard on NPR this morning. Think about it for half a second. When we open leasing on all that real estate again, no matter when that happens, will we have any trouble finding someone to drill, drill, drill? Of course not. What the hell, do they only have one rig? Is Hanna and the PI suggesting they can only drill in one place at a time? Pathetically ludicrous.   

Fox samples. I was sitting in a waiting room today and, like many offices, they had FoxNews on the tube. (I think that’s part of the reason why they get such high ratings.) Neil Cavuto’s show lurched from an asinine take on today’s Wall Street protests – lazy people rioting for handouts! – to a segment on Obama’s failure to save us from the Mexican narcoterrorist invasion which featured some former leatherneck who suggested applying a Fallujah-like treatment to, I don’t know, all of Mexico (“This is do-able!”). People really watch this shit? No wonder it’s all going to hell.  

Manning jailed. Seeing the military incarcerate Bradley Manning – the guy who allegedly posted evidence of Afghan War atrocities to wikileaks – is reminiscent of the scene in Catch-22 when Aarfy murders a prostitute and the M.P.s storm in and arrest Yossarian for being AWOL.  Truth imitates fiction.  

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Stuff and nonsense.

Just a few short takes this week. I’ve got a splitter of a headache – one of those neck and shoulder jobs. So my concentration is a bit compromised, but here goes.

Again-and-againistan. That Rolling Stone reporter who wrote the recent article on Gen. McChrystal has drawn a lot of criticism from various mainstream corporate press mavens. No surprise there. They are so obsessed with covering the ball-game stories – the ins and outs of policy making, careers, and personalities – that they neglect to examine these stupid wars that have been dragging on year after year. How closely have any of them scrutinized the rationale behind this policy?

Why the hell are we in Afghanistan? Our leaders say it’s to disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda so that they cannot plan new attacks on us. But to the extent that people like Osama Bin Laden are involved in operational planning for global terror attacks, all he and his pals need is a room (or a cave, but I suspect a room) big enough for a white board. Can anyone claim that we have denied him that in nearly nine years of war? Did our drones stop the Times Square bomber? (Fact is, they helped push him over the edge.) Where’s the story on that, kids?

No settlement. Despite Netanyahu’s fence-mending visit to the White House, there is no light at the end of the Israel/Palestine tunnel. His government is still strangling Gaza, still encroaching on more and more of the West Bank (in spite of the so-called settlement “freeze”, which is so conditional as to be meaningless). Old Bibi, like so many Israeli leaders, is beholden to the Frankenstein-like settlement movement that is a political lynchpin of his ruling coalition. Even if he wanted to close the settlements, he couldn’t (and trust me, he doesn’t want to). So the suffering goes on, and we keep underwriting it.

Gusher that keeps on giving. It’s been more than 70 days since BP blew a hole in the Earth, and the hemorrhaging continues. Do you sense a pattern here? Crises that never seem to end. This is a bad one. And yet, we shouldn’t pretend as though all of this oil, gas, and dispersant is spewing into a pristine Gulf ecosystem. According to the Coast Guard, millions of gallons of oil routinely spill into the Gulf every year – something like an Exxon Valdez size spill every three or four years for the past decade. Big as this blowout is, our problem is bigger than that. Let’s make the solution bigger, too. 

That’s all I’ve got. Bed time.

luv u,

jp