EcoAdvocates: A green model in the Gulf

by Meteor Blades

Five years ago, a natural disaster plus human callousness and ineptitude combined to kill more than 1800 people on the Gulf Coast and plunged an American city into a nightmare from which it has far from fully recovered. Thousands of New Orleanians still live in homesick exile. Four of the hospitals that once served the east side of the city remain permanently closed. Crime is out of control. We had a chance right then, as a nation, to make the catastrophe of 2005 into a flex moment, a window of opportunity not merely to rebuild but rather to go boldly in a new direction, a green trajectory that would restore greater New Orleans and the Katrina-obliterated towns of  Mississippi to ecological health with sustainable economies.

But, of course, the Cheney-Bush administration was in office and it had other fish to fry. Once it had completed the botch-job of its immediate response and handed out a few bucks and a few FEMA trailers, it more or less vanished from the scene. As for spurring a move down a green path in a big way, puhleez. Those were the days when the White House was still in its climate-change denier phase. Local politicians suffered their own form of myopia.

This year’s disaster along the Gulf Coast offers us another flex moment. But we can easily ignore this one, too, if we don’t wise up. And you can already taste that unwise attitude in the air. The attitude which says that the roiling gush of oil into the Gulf will probably never spew from that particular well again so we can just do a little more work with the mops and get back to business as usual. Whew! Sure, residual oil in unknown quantities clings to the sea floor, unknown long-term effects may afflict the Gulf’s water-dwelling creatures, unknown damage may be done to those who depend on those creatures for a living, and a hydrocarbons driller or two may screw up another high-tech puncture. But, every day, with the obvious crisis gone - the one with the camera focused on it - these and other problems will capture less and less attention.

We’re told, obviously so, that the immediate tasks in a disaster are to save lives, save livelihoods and prevent bad effects from becoming worse. Emergencies are no time to start rewriting the CPR manual. The problem with this is that emergencies instantly focus our intense attention but, afterward, when the societal adrenaline from the rescue effort ebbs, so does any thorough public pondering or accounting about how the way we live and consume and are organized contribute to creating these emergencies in the first place. What does get studied typically winds up as a 27-recommendation tome collecting dust somewhere, resurrected 10 or 20 years in the future as a curiosity for some columnist to highlight as what-could-have-been.

The possibilities emerging from flex moments such as Katrina and the BP gusher should be pounced on. “Don’t waste a crisis,” said Rahm Emanuel in the best sound bite I ever heard from him. Use this moment to do something big, something transformative for the Gulf, for the people, the ecology, the economy.

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Why Won't GOPer Gulf Govs Deploy the National Guard?

by Captain Future

Hey, GOPer Gulf Coast governors: where are the National Guard troops President Obama authorized you to call up to help clean up and protect the Gulf? In this emergency that you blame the federal government for not addressing, what are you doing besides political showboating?

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Deepwater Chernobyl

by Unenergy

A while ago I watched a documentary on building the sarcophagus which encloses the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster site. I have unsuccessfully, tried to find that documentary as my recollection runs that the radioactivity released from the Chernobyl site was only able to be stopped by burying the reactor core in sand, concrete and an outer shell called a sarcophagus. There seem to be parallels with the current Deepwater Horizon disaster in that we are witnessing once more that man is capable of unleashing uncontrollable forces in his pursuit of energy. Forces he had no contingency plan to deal with. Forces capable of devastating economies, destroying livelihoods and killing wildlife by contaminating the environment to such an extent that even people find they have to move away rather than suffer. That the only way that we have to fix it once that bottle is uncorked, was to just bury it in concrete. In Russia the reactor core was covered in sand then concrete. In the Gulf of Mexico disaster, first mud was tried, but once the relief wells are drilled, it will be likewise be filled with concrete. Based on this I went looking for supporting evidence to back up this initial premise, and am astounded by what I found.

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"I don't ever remember doing this" - Rig Survivor

by Unenergy

Rig survivors: BP ordered shortcut on day of blast BP official wanted workers to replace heavy mud, used to keep the well's pressure down, with lighter seawater to help speed a process that was costing an estimated $750,000 a day and was already running five weeks late, rig survivors told CNN. BP won the argument, said Doug Brown, the rig's chief mechanic. "He basically said, 'Well, this is how it's gonna be.' " In the CNN interviews, the workers described a corporate culture of cutting staff and ignoring warning signs ahead of the blast. They said BP routinely cut corners and pushed ahead despite concerns about safety.

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About that third leak...

by Unenergy

According to ABC, both BP and the Coast Guard had video of the leaks in the Gulf of Mexico from early on, and these were not released to the public. BP and Feds Withheld Videos Showing Massive Scope of Oil Spill New videos show more clearly than ever how BP, with little resistance from the Coast Guard or other federal agencies, kept the public in the dark about just how bad things were beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. This is pretty damning evidence of the power of corporate control over how the media is manipulated. The claim by the Coast Guard suppressing the information at BP instruction should be considered in the context that at the time BP are the ones in control of their well and all monitoring equipment. The Coast Guard's response had to be trust first and BP were telling them that they had plans to fix and stop the leak, thus a pragmatic approach was a co-operative approach. However the suppression story is only one part of this. What I want to know is what about that third leak?

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Even worse: shallow oil pipelines in dying wetlands

by mwmwm

So I'm mesmerized in horror, watching the hypnotic gush of the live feed. I'm groaning over the ocean life that will die unnoticed in the deep, after ingesting toxic dispersants and more-toxic oil. I'm grieving for the oil-soaked wetlands, and all those to come, suffocated by the black coating of our collective addiction to cheap energy. And then: The National Geographic reports on a problem that I'd not considered: a feedback system that I fear will consume the life and livelihoods of the coast.

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"BP's Interests are Not the same as America's Interests"

by Unenergy

I've been thinking about the outrage shifting, the blame game going on right now and just want to give you my thoughts on what is happening with respect to spin and the Gulf Gusher disaster. In July 2009, at a lecture to the Stanford Business School, the CEO of British Petroleum Tony Hayward explained to attendees that BP was going in the wrong direction before he took over as CEO because, "we had too many people that were working to save the world." This is the Youtube Video : BP's CEO Tony Hayward

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